TEXT [Commentary]

  D.   True Worship (12:18-29)

18 You have not come to a physical mountain,[*] to a place of flaming fire, darkness, gloom, and whirlwind, as the Israelites did at Mount Sinai. 19 For they heard an awesome trumpet blast and a voice so terrible that they begged God to stop speaking. 20 They staggered back under God’s command: “If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.”[*] 21 Moses himself was so frightened at the sight that he said, “I am terrified and trembling.”[*]

22 No, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering. 23 You have come to the assembly of God’s firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God himself, who is the judge over all things. You have come to the spirits of the righteous ones in heaven who have now been made perfect. 24 You have come to Jesus, the one who mediates the new covenant between God and people, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks of forgiveness instead of crying out for vengeance like the blood of Abel.

25 Be careful that you do not refuse to listen to the One who is speaking. For if the people of Israel did not escape when they refused to listen to Moses, the earthly messenger, we will certainly not escape if we reject the One who speaks to us from heaven! 26 When God spoke from Mount Sinai his voice shook the earth, but now he makes another promise: “Once again I will shake not only the earth but the heavens also.”[*] 27 This means that all of creation will be shaken and removed, so that only unshakable things will remain.

28 Since we are receiving a Kingdom that is unshakable, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe. 29 For our God is a devouring fire.

NOTES

12:18 You have not come to a physical mountain. . . . as the Israelites did at Mount Sinai. More literally, the best ancient mss (46 א A C 048 33 it syrp cop) only say, “You have not come to something tangible.” No “mountain,” much less “Mount Sinai,” is mentioned until 12:20. (Some mss, D 044 1739 M, add the word “mountain” in 12:18.) The reference to “fire, darkness, gloom, and whirlwind,” however, and the details from Exod 19 that follow (12:19-21), as well as the contrast with “Mount Zion” (12:22), all evoke Mount Sinai, justifying the words added in the NLT.

12:20 They staggered back under God’s command. Rather, “they could not bear the command.” Nothing is said of their bodily movements.

12:21 “I am terrified and trembling.” The first adjective seems to come from Deut 9:19, where Moses feared for his people (“I feared that the furious anger of the LORD, which turned him against you, would drive him to destroy you”), but the writer of Hebrews implies that Moses feared for himself as well, adding a second adjective “trembling” (entromos [TG1790, ZG1958], as at the burning bush, where, according to Stephen’s sermon, Moses “shook with terror and did not dare to look”; Acts 7:32).

12:23 the assembly. This is one of only two occurrences in Hebrews of the word commonly translated in the NT as “church” (ekklēsia [TG1577, ZG1711]), the other being 2:12 (“assembled people,” from Ps 22:22). In neither instance does the word refer directly to a specific church or congregation (such as the one to which Hebrews was written), yet both evoke (probably by intention) the image of a Christian congregation—any congregation—gathered for corporate worship (see 10:25). The only difference is that this “assembly” embraces believers of the past (see ch 11) no less than of the present.

written in heaven. Lit., “enrolled [as citizens] in heaven” (see Luke 2:3; BDAG 108).

the spirits of the righteous ones in heaven. The “spirits” of the righteous are simply the righteous themselves seen in relation to “God himself, who is the judge over all things” (see note on 12:9, “the Father of our spirits”). Moreover, the words “in heaven” are not in the original text. The scene is understood to be in heaven in any case (see the preceding note), but the added words could give the impression that these “righteous ones” are angels, which they are not. Their characterization as now “made perfect” makes clear that they are human beings (see 2:16).

12:24 You have come to Jesus. As in 12:2 (see note) and frequently throughout Hebrews, the original text withholds the sacred name “Jesus” until the end of its clause: lit., “You have come to the one who mediates the new covenant, Jesus.”

which speaks of forgiveness instead of crying out for vengeance like the blood of Abel. Lit., “which speaks something better than Abel.” But the interpretation implied by the NLT is correct (see note on 11:4).

12:25 refuse. Lit., “to beg off” (the same verb as in 12:19, “they begged God to stop speaking”). This verb has the same meaning here as “reject.”

the One who is speaking. Not “that which is speaking.” The author recognizes that when Jesus’ “sprinkled blood” speaks, it is Jesus himself who speaks, just as Abel spoke when his blood “cried out from the ground.”

Moses, the earthly messenger. Lit., “the one who warned on earth.” The text makes no mention of Moses. Far from being the speaker, Moses was himself “terrified and trembling” (12:21). “The one who warned on earth” can only be God, whom the people at Sinai “begged . . . to stop speaking” (12:19; see Lane 1991:476; Attridge 1989:379). The phrase “on earth” does not characterize the speaker as “earthly” but simply tells where the event took place—not in heaven but at a “physical” or tangible place on earth (12:18). Nor did the people “refuse to listen” to Moses. On the contrary, they said, “You speak to us, and we will listen. But don’t let God speak directly to us, or we will die” (Exod 20:19).

12:26 When God spoke from Mount Sinai his voice shook the earth. Lit., “whose voice once shook the earth” (there is no explicit mention of “God” or “Mount Sinai”). The antecedent is “the One who speaks to us from heaven” (12:25), which can only be “Jesus” (12:24). The effect is to identify Jesus Christ with the God of the Hebrew Bible (see commentary).

12:27 and removed. The word signifying the removal of created things (metathesis [TG3331, ZG3557]) is the same word used of a decisive “change” or replacement of the Jewish law (7:12) and corresponds to the verb used for Enoch’s removal from the earth when he disappeared (11:5).

12:28 let us be thankful. Lit., “let us have grace” (an idiom for “be thankful”; see BDAG 1080). Some mss (including 46* א P 044 and most Latin versions) have a variant reading in the indicative mood, echomen charin [TG2192/5485, ZG2400/5921] (we are thankful). Other mss (including 46c A C D 044 0243 1739 M) have a reading in the subjunctive mood, echōmen charin. This is rendered in the NLT as “let us be thankful,” which is preferable because, as Koester points out (2001:557), “exhortations follow.”

by worshiping him. Here, too, the mss are closely divided between “let us worship” (46 A D L 048 33) and “we worship” (א 044 0243 1739 M). Again, the NLT (rightly) presupposes the former.

12:29 For our God is a devouring fire. The allusion is to Deut 4:24, “The LORD your God is a devouring fire; he is a jealous God.” Hebrews changes “your” to “our,” in keeping with the context, linking the saying to the context with two conjunctions, “also,” or “too” (kai [TG2532, ZG2779]), and “for” (gar [TG1063, ZG1142]). The NLT incorporates “for” but overlooks the “also.” A better rendering might be, “For our God too is a devouring fire,” or still better, “For to us, too, God is a devouring fire.” The point of reference is the fire of Mount Sinai, which still threatens the unbeliever.

COMMENTARY [Text]

The section begins with a connecting conjunction “for” (gar [TG1063, ZG1142]), not shown in the NLT, “For you have not come” (my italics), raising the question of its relationship to what precedes. Because the introduction of Esau as a cautionary tale (12:16-17) was somewhat parenthetical, the author seems to have in mind the warning just before that—namely, “Look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God . . . [so that] no poisonous root of bitterness grows up to trouble you” (12:15). He now gives the reason for such warnings: because “the grace of God” is, in its own way, an even more severe taskmaster than the ancient law of Moses. Because God is speaking to us not as he spoke long ago on earth (12:18-21) but now from heaven (12:25), the consequences of not paying attention and failing to receive the grace of God are that much greater (12:25-29).

“Coming to God” has been a characteristic (if not the characteristic) expression throughout Hebrews for both Jewish (10:1) and Christian worship (see 4:16; 7:25; 10:22; 11:6). Now at last the author describes what this “coming” or “drawing near” does not mean (“You have not come”; 12:18), and then what it does mean (“You have come”; 12:22). Here too for the first time he speaks of this experience as a present reality, not as something believers are being invited to do (as in 4:16 or 10:22), but as something they have done or are now doing. This is appropriate because he has set before them both a pilgrimage (ch 11) and a race (12:1-17), and he now imagines them standing at the end of that pilgrimage or race in the presence of God and on the threshold of eternity. In Christian worship, he implies, we do exactly that. In worship, the “not yet” becomes the “already.” To borrow another biblical writer’s imagery, the eschatological “Day of the Lord” becomes “the Lord’s Day” of Christian worship (see Rev 1:10).

First, the author looks at what we have not come to in worship: not to anything tangible here on earth, not to the “flaming fire, darkness, gloom, and whirlwind” that God’s people once faced. His language evokes Mount Sinai (see note on 12:18) and the giving of the law (see Exod 19:18; Deut 4:11; 5:22). There the people “heard an awesome trumpet blast and a voice so terrible that they begged God to stop speaking” (12:19; see Exod 20:19; Deut 5:25). The warning from God frightened them: “No hand may touch the . . . animal that crosses the boundary; instead, stone them”—not because they worried about their animals, but because if even animals faced the penalty of death, how much more would humans (see Exod 19:13, “people or animals”). The message from God was not “Come to me,” or “Come close to God, and God will come close to you” (see Jas 4:8), but just the opposite: “Stay back.” This echoes Exodus 19:12, which says, “Mark off a boundary all around the mountain. Warn the people, ‘Be careful! Do not go up on the mountain or even touch its boundaries. Anyone who touches the mountain will certainly be put to death.’” A combination of sight and sound drove them away in fear. Even Moses himself, who had no fear of Pharaoh (see 11:27), admitted to being “terrified and trembling” at the sight (12:21).

What is the implication of all this for the reader of Hebrews? Is it that the people of Israel under the old covenant could not “come to,” or “draw near” to, such a terrible place as this but that we now can, and do, through Christ’s sacrifice? Obviously not, because this is said to be the place to which we have not come (12:18). On the contrary, we are told, “You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (12:22). The scene is not a mountain in a desolate wilderness but a “city” (see 11:16), or more specifically, Abraham’s “city with eternal foundations . . . designed and built by God” (11:10), now named “the heavenly Jerusalem.” Angels are in attendance here, just as at Sinai (see 2:2), “countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering” (12:22). This “joyful gathering” or “high festival” (panēgurei [TG3831, ZG4108]; see BDAG 754) appears to be the “special rest” or “Sabbath observance” said to be still waiting for the people of God” (4:9; see note). The Jewish “solemn assembly” or “high festival” has always been the Sabbath (see Philo Moses 2.211, where panēgurizein, “to hold high festival,” is to celebrate the Sabbath; Yonge 1993:509; see Koester 2001:45).

Here in this final vision, the hope of a “special rest” or “Sabbath observance” merges at last with Abraham’s hope of “a city with eternal foundations.” All the people of God are gathered with the angels in this city, whether they are called “the assembly of God’s firstborn children, whose names are written in heaven” or “the spirits of the righteous ones . . . made perfect” (12:23). The first designation calls attention to their status from all eternity as God’s chosen ones, and the second to their redemption and spiritual journey in Christ to the place where they now stand. They are God’s “firstborn” (prōtotokoi [TG4416, ZG4758]) by virtue of their relationship to God’s “firstborn Son” (1:6, NLT mg; see note). They are redeemed by blood like Israel’s “firstborn” (11:28), and (unlike Esau; 12:16) they have not renounced but embraced their birthright. Like Jesus’ 72 disciples (Luke 10:20), their “names are written in heaven”—that is, they are not visitors or guests in this city but fully enrolled as its citizens (see note on 12:23). In short, they are “the righteous” who have lived by faith (see 10:38; 11:4), and they have come to Mount Zion by a long, hard route. Like God’s firstborn Son himself (2:10; 5:9; 7:28), and through him (10:14), they “have now been made perfect.” What could not be accomplished “without us” (11:40) is here accomplished in the author’s vision: All the people of God, past and present, have reached “perfection” by entering their Sabbath rest in the heavenly Jerusalem. This is what happens finally at the last day, the author is saying, yet it is also what happens “in a sense” (see 11:19; see note) every time the believing community gathers for authentic worship.

What then is the object of authentic Christian worship? The question is not, “To what mountain have we come, or what city?” It is rather, “To whom have we come?” Not a place, but persons. Embedded between the two designations for the people of God (“the assembly of God’s firstborn children” and “the spirits of the righteous ones . . . made perfect”) is the centerpiece of the whole scene: “God himself, who is the judge over all things” (12:23). He is “the living God” to whom the city belongs (12:22) and to whom the worshipers are accountable (see 3:13; 9:14; 10:31). Whatever else it may be, worship is “coming to God” (7:25; 11:6) or to God’s “throne” (4:16), but there is another Person here, and it is to him that the whole dramatic scene is pointing: “You have come to Jesus” (12:24). John Bunyan, tormented by guilt, claimed that he “felt this word to sound in my heart, I must go to Jesus.” He asked his wife, “Is there ever such a Scripture, I must go to Jesus?” She did not know, and when he sat and thought about it, the text “came bolting in upon me, And to an innumerable company of angels, and withal the twelfth chapter of Hebrews about the mount Sion, was set before mine eyes” (Bunyan 1987a:67). The name “Jesus” is withheld almost to the end, not only within its own clause (see note on 12:24), but in the scene as a whole. All that has gone before, as Bunyan rightly perceived—Mount Zion and the countless angels (12:22), the assembly of the firstborn, God the judge, the spirits of the righteous (12:23)—has been introduced solely to lead up to what is crucial and indispensable: “The one who mediates the new covenant—Jesus.” In these few words the author gathers up the whole argument of chapters 8–10, for without that argument, without that new covenant and Mediator, there would be nothing to “come to,” no true worship.

The imagery to this point has been largely visual—a mountain, a city, a joyful assembly of saints and angels. But just as at Sinai (12:19), a voice is heard as well: this time the voice of Jesus, speaking something “better” (12:24; see note). Better than what? The context leads us to expect better than that “awesome trumpet blast” at Mount Sinai and that voice “so terrible that they begged God to stop speaking” (12:19). But that is not the point of comparison, at least not at first. Instead, the author reaches back a whole chapter to claim that Jesus speaks something “better than Abel” (see 11:4, where the long dead Abel “still speaks to us”; see note). The point of comparison is that it was Abel’s blood that spoke (see Gen 4:10, “Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!”), just as here the voice of Jesus is the voice of his “sprinkled blood” (see 9:14). If indeed Jesus is “the one who mediates the new covenant,” and if the covenant cannot be ratified without the shedding of blood (see 9:15-22), it can hardly be otherwise. But Abel’s blood cried out for retribution, while the blood of Jesus cries out for “something better”—not retribution but forgiveness (12:24; see also 10:17-18).

It would be easy to conclude from this that the voice of Jesus is a “kinder, gentler” voice than the voice of God from Mount Sinai, but the author is quick to add a cautionary note: “Be careful,” he warns, “that you do not refuse to listen to the One who is speaking” (12:25). Jesus is “the One who is speaking,” and his blood speaks not “from the ground” (or “from the earth”) like Abel’s (Gen 4:10) but “from heaven.” Consequently, it is a demanding as well as a forgiving voice, not to be “refused” or “rejected” with impunity. When the people of Israel at Mount Sinai “begged God to stop speaking” (12:19), they were “refusing” God himself, not just “Moses, the earthly messenger” (12:25). Consequently, that generation “did not escape” but died in the wilderness (see 3:7-19), and the author insists that an even worse fate is in store for those who reject the blood of Jesus, who now “speaks to us from heaven.” The author used exactly the same argument from lesser to greater near the beginning of Hebrews. If “every violation of the law and every act of disobedience was punished” at Sinai, he asked, “what makes us think we can escape if we ignore this great salvation?” (2:2-3). Now the audience can appreciate the full force of those words. The “great salvation” mentioned before was “first announced by the Lord Jesus himself and then delivered to us by those who heard him speak” (2:3), and here too the speaker is still Jesus (see 12:24).

With a bold stroke, the author identifies the voice at Sinai that “shook the earth” with the voice of Jesus (12:26; see note), who now “makes another promise” (one that sounds more like a threat): “Once again I will shake not only the earth but the heavens also” (12:26). The words are taken almost verbatim from Haggai 2:6, with the small addition of “not only . . . but also,” accenting the magnitude of the catastrophe to come. For the Christian reader, the language evokes the book of Revelation, where a “great earthquake” heralds the end of the age, as even “the stars of the sky fell to the earth like green figs falling from a tree shaken by a strong wind. The sky was rolled up like a scroll, and all of the mountains and islands were moved from their places” (Rev 6:12-14; see also Rev 8:5; 11:19; 16:18). The author of Hebrews comments that Haggai’s phrase “once again” (rather than “again and again”) implies that the future “shaking” of heaven and earth will be the last, signaling the “removal” of the created universe “so that only unshakable things will remain” (12:27; see note). Again this echoes something he said near the beginning of Hebrews, this time about the heavens and the earth: “They will perish, but you remain forever. They will wear out like old clothing. You will fold them up like a cloak and discard them like old clothing” (1:11-12; see also 2 Pet 3:10-12). On such a view it is natural to ask, “What then remains, other than God himself? What are the ‘unshakable things’”?

The answer lies close at hand. Surely the “unshakable things” include “the heavenly Jerusalem,” the “countless thousands of angels” gathered there, the “assembly of God’s firstborn children,” and the “sprinkled blood” of Jesus—the whole scene before which the readers of Hebrews now stand and to which they have come in worship. The author sums it up here in a single word: “A Kingdom that is unshakable” (12:28, my italics). The appropriate response to such a Kingdom is not passive waiting but active worship. “Let us be thankful,” the author concludes, “and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe” (12:28). “Let us be thankful” is literally “let us have grace” (or “gratitude”; see note), echoing and reinforcing the warning to “look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God” (12:15; see also 13:9, “Your strength comes from God’s grace”). To “be thankful” is to receive grace, and without grace—just as without faith—it is “impossible to please God” (see 11:6). Gratitude, therefore, is the key to the kind of worship that God finds acceptable—joyful gratitude tempered “with holy fear and awe” (12:28). “Holy fear” or “deep reverence” (eulabeia [TG2124, ZG2325]) was the reason God rescued Noah when he “obeyed God” by building an ark (11:7) and answered his own Son when he “offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears” (5:7). The author insists that God requires no less even of those who now come to him through Jesus’ sprinkled blood (see 12:24). Whatever vast distance there may be between Mount Sinai and Mount Zion, it is just as true here as there that “our God is a devouring fire” (12:29; see note).

The last brief sentence comes as a shock to the modern reader, and it must have been just as great a shock to the original audience of Hebrews. The allusion is to Deuteronomy 4:24, which says, “The LORD your God is a devouring fire; he is a jealous God” (see also Exod 24:17; Deut 9:3). The text comes from the world of “flaming fire, darkness, gloom, and whirlwind” at Mount Sinai (12:18), and the reader will naturally think of the fire of judgment (see 6:8; 10:27), which is surely an appropriate justification for “holy fear and awe” (12:28). Yet the image also follows appropriately on the preceding call to “be thankful and please God by worshiping him” (12:28), for a “devouring fire” could just as easily be God’s response to the “sacrifices” we offer in worship (see 13:15, 16), signaling pleasure and satisfaction with them and with us. We need only remember God’s response to Elijah’s offering, when “the fire of the LORD flashed down from heaven and burned up the young bull, the wood, the stones, and the dust. It even licked up all the water in the trench! And when all the people saw it, they fell face down on the ground and cried out, “The LORD—he is God! Yes, the LORD is God!’” (1 Kgs 18:38-39). God as “devouring fire” stands as both a threat and a promise at this point in the argument—a threat to those who approach him without “holy fear and awe,” but a promise to all who by grace “please God” with acceptable offerings of praise and thanksgiving.