TEXT [Commentary]

  E.   Unshakable Things (13:1-21)

1 Keep on loving each other as brothers and sisters.[*] 2 Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it! 3 Remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies.

4 Give honor to marriage, and remain faithful to one another in marriage. God will surely judge people who are immoral and those who commit adultery.

5 Don’t love money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said,

“I will never fail you.

I will never abandon you.”[*]

6 So we can say with confidence,

“The LORD is my helper,

so I will have no fear.

What can mere people do to me?”[*]

7 Remember your leaders who taught you the word of God. Think of all the good that has come from their lives, and follow the example of their faith.

8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. 9 So do not be attracted by strange, new ideas. Your strength comes from God’s grace, not from rules about food, which don’t help those who follow them.

10 We have an altar from which the priests in the Tabernacle[*] have no right to eat. 11 Under the old system, the high priest brought the blood of animals into the Holy Place as a sacrifice for sin, and the bodies of the animals were burned outside the camp. 12 So also Jesus suffered and died outside the city gates to make his people holy by means of his own blood. 13 So let us go out to him, outside the camp, and bear the disgrace he bore. 14 For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come.

15 Therefore, let us offer through Jesus a continual sacrifice of praise to God, proclaiming our allegiance to his name. 16 And don’t forget to do good and to share with those in need. These are the sacrifices that please God.

17 Obey your spiritual leaders, and do what they say. Their work is to watch over your souls, and they are accountable to God. Give them reason to do this with joy and not with sorrow. That would certainly not be for your benefit.

18 Pray for us, for our conscience is clear and we want to live honorably in everything we do. 19 And especially pray that I will be able to come back to you soon.

20 Now may the God of peace—

who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus,

the great Shepherd of the sheep,

and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood—

21 may he equip you with all you need

for doing his will.

May he produce in you,[*]

through the power of Jesus Christ,

every good thing that is pleasing to him.

All glory to him forever and ever! Amen.

NOTES

13:1 Keep on loving each other as brothers and sisters. Lit., “Let brotherly love remain.”

13:2 hospitality to strangers. This is something to be undertaken intentionally, even though hospitality toward angels is necessarily unplanned and unintentional.

without realizing it. There is a play on words in that the Greek word used here (lanthanō [TG2990, ZG3291], “to escape someone’s notice,” in this case one’s own) is a cognate of the preceding imperative “don’t forget” (mē epilanthanesthe [TG3361/1950, ZG3590/2140]).

13:3 as if you felt their pain in your own bodies. Lit., “as being yourselves [there] in body.”

13:4 Give honor to marriage. Lit., “Honorable the marriage among all.” This could mean “Marriage is honorable,” but the NLT (rightly) supplies imperative rather than indicative forms of the verb “to be” (that is, “let it be” rather than “is”) both here and in the next verse: “Let marriage be honorable.”

people who are immoral and those who commit adultery. In Greek as in English, “immoral” (pornous [TG4205, ZG4521]) is the more general term, having been applied to “Rahab the prostitute” (11:31) and to Esau (12:16). “Those who commit adultery” (moichous [TG3432, ZG3659]) are a subgroup who have been unfaithful to their spouses in marriage. Both nouns are masculine here but generic in their application.

13:5 For God has said. Lit., “For he himself has said.” That “God” is the implied subject is clear from the final words of the preceding verse in Greek: “God will surely judge” (krinei ho theos [TG2316, ZG2536]). Possibly the reference to God “himself” signals the author’s awareness that he is deliberately assigning Moses’s words (Deut 31:6, 8) to God (see commentary). Philo made exactly the same transformation (Confusion 166; Yonge 1993:249), perhaps based on Josh 1:5, where the wording is slightly different, “I will not fail you or abandon you.” This is plausible because the second instance in Deuteronomy (Deut 31:8) is addressed to Joshua as well.

13:9 Your strength comes from God’s grace. More literally, “It is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace” (NRSV).

not from rules about food. Lit., “not by foods.” The translation “rules about food” suggests dietary laws, but “foods” could just as easily refer to ritual or sacrificial meals.

13:10 the priests in the Tabernacle. Lit., “those who worship in the Tabernacle.” No “priests” are mentioned, and it is unlikely that actual priests are in view.

13:12 So also Jesus suffered and died. The Greek has only “suffered,” but the translation is legitimate (see 2:9, “because he suffered death for us”). It was not uncommon for the verb “to suffer” to refer to Jesus’ death as well as the sufferings leading up to it (see BDAG 785). The very use of the word “Passion” (from the Latin for “suffering”) to refer to the death of Jesus reflects this.

outside the city gates. Lit., “outside the gate.” Some ancient mss (including 46) instead read “outside the camp” (as in 13:11 and 13). This is probably not original, for scribes might very well have assimilated the wording here to the wording of the surrounding verses (to say nothing of Lev 16:27 itself, the source text).

13:13 bear the disgrace he bore. Lit., “bearing his disgrace,” but the interpretation implied by the NLT is correct: not merely bearing disgrace for Jesus’ sake but bearing the same disgrace that he bore during his Passion (this was true of Moses as well; see note on 11:26).

13:14 our permanent home . . . a home yet to come. The “home” is quite specifically a “city” (as in 11:10, 16; 12:22). Thus, more literally, “we have no permanent city here, but we are looking forward to the one yet to come.”

13:15 proclaiming our allegiance to his name. Lit., “that is, the fruit of lips confessing his name.”

13:17 spiritual leaders. The word used is the same as in 13:7, which is simply “leaders.” That they were in fact “spiritual” leaders is assumed in both instances (as also in 13:24) but is not explicit.

not with sorrow. More precisely, “not with groaning” (mē stenazontes [TG3361/4727, ZG3590/5100]). The word implies not so much sorrow as frustration, discontent, and even anger (BDAG 942; see Jas 5:9, also Shepherd of Hermas, Vision 3.9.6-7). Sorrowful prayer might well be a “benefit” to those for whom it is offered, but angry complaints to God obviously would not (see Michaels 2001:235).

13:20 brought up from the dead. The Greek verb (anagō [TG321, ZG343]) can mean either “brought up” or “brought back again,” but not both. Here it is probably the former (see BDAG 61). The text is obviously not saying that Jesus was “brought up” from the dead twice!

and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood. Or, “in the blood of an eternal covenant.” The translation unnecessarily raises the question of who did the “ratifying,” God or Christ.

COMMENTARY [Text]

Hebrews draws to a close with a series of seemingly miscellaneous commands followed by personal words of greeting, much like a typical letter of Paul (for example, see 1 Thess 5:12-28). Some interpreters have viewed the last chapter as only loosely related to the rest of Hebrews or even as the work of a different hand trying to sound like Paul and transforming a sermon into a letter. This does not work, for the connection between the end of chapter 12 and the beginning of chapter 13 could hardly be closer (see Filson 1967:15-16). Having just written that “only unshakable things will remain” (12:27), he now enumerates some specific things that do “remain” and belong to God’s “unshakable Kingdom.” First, “let brotherly love remain” (see note on 13:1), and then a number of love’s corollaries: “hospitality to strangers” (13:2), kindness to those in prison or in pain (13:3), faithfulness in marriage (13:4), contentment with one’s possessions (13:5-6), and respect for one’s leaders (13:7).

To some extent, these are virtues the audience is said to have displayed in the past and for which they have been commended. They have shown their love for God by caring for other Christians (6:10), and the author has urged them to “keep on loving others as long as life lasts” and to “follow the example of those who are going to inherit God’s promises because of their faith and endurance” (6:11-12). He recalls “those early days” when they had “remained faithful even though it meant terrible suffering” and when they were not only “exposed to public ridicule and . . . beaten” but “helped others who were suffering the same things.” More specifically, they had “suffered along with those who were thrown into jail.” And they had lost material possessions and accepted the loss with joy (10:32-34). Here again the author calls them implicitly to “think back on those early days” (see 10:32). The words “don’t forget” (13:2), “remember” (13:3), “remember also” (13:3), and, yet again, “remember” (13:7) punctuate his list of moral instructions.

Hospitality was a virtue much prized among early Christians because traveling missionaries and prophets were dependent on it (for example, see 3 John 1:5-8; 1 Clement 10.7–12.8). One biblical example already mentioned was Rahab, whose “friendly welcome” to Israel’s spies was an act of faith (11:31). Now he generalizes, adding as an incentive the thought that “some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it” (13:2). Possibly the writer has in mind the encounter between Abraham and Melchizedek (particularly if Melchizedek is viewed as an angel; see 7:1-10), but in that instance it was not altogether clear who was the host and who was the guest. More likely the author, well versed in the life of Abraham (11:8-19), is thinking of the occasion when the Lord came to Abraham at Mamre in the form of three men, to whom Abraham supplied water for their feet and an elaborate meal without realizing that they were God’s messengers (Gen 18:1-15; Josephus Antiquities 1.196-198; Philo Abraham 107-113; Yonge 1993:420).

Yet why introduce such a seemingly far-fetched possibility here? Is it simply a way of reminding the readers that God rewards hospitality? Or does it have to do with the author’s strong interest in angels in the two opening chapters? Does the author still have in mind the principle that angels are “spirits sent to care for people who will inherit salvation” (1:14) not only in the distant past but even now? It is difficult to say. Paul had urged certain kinds of behavior in his congregations “because the angels are watching” (1 Cor 11:10). Even Jesus himself, according to Matthew, meets us in certain people we encounter who are “hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison” (see Matt 25:31-46). It is not impossible that in Hebrews angels are seen as messengers sent now and then from heaven to test how we behave toward one another. If this is the case, the author does not belabor the point but simply lets the vague allusion to angelic encounters in the past evoke whatever reaction it will (for other angelic encounters, see Gen 19:1-14; Judg 6:11-18; 13:3-22; Tob 12:1-20). Readers are left to draw their own conclusions.

The interest in “those in prison” and “those being mistreated” echoes not only the reminiscences of the “early days when you first learned about Christ” (see 10:32-34) but also the anonymous heroes of faith who were “tortured” (11:35), “jeered at,” “chained in prisons” (11:36), or “destitute and oppressed and mistreated” (11:37), all those who were “too good for this world” (11:38). Quite possibly, as I have suggested (see note on 10:34), the author himself may have been either in prison or recently released from prison (see 13:23). Having urged his audience not to neglect meeting together (10:25), he shows his deep concern here for those in the community who are prevented by circumstances from doing so. In such cases it is the community’s responsibility to reach out and demonstrate its solidarity with those who cannot be present in the body for instruction and worship.

Marriage (13:4) is mentioned here for the first time in Hebrews, although the marriage relationship may have been in view in the author’s emphasis on personal holiness (12:10, 14) and in his warning not to be “immoral or godless like Esau” (12:16; see note). Paul linked “holiness” (hagiasmos [TG38, ZG40]) with sexual purity quite explicitly (1 Thess 4:3-4), and it is possible that Hebrews does so implicitly. Having used the family as a metaphor for our relationship to God and one another (see 12:5-11), the author turns his attention briefly to the sanctity of marriage. Quite possibly he is issuing a warning on two fronts. On one hand, the warning is to “remain faithful to one another” (more literally, to “keep the marriage bed undefiled”). This he undergirds with the thought that “God will surely judge” the immoral and adulterers, just as surely as he judged Esau. On the other hand, he may have in mind those who are tempted to renounce marriage altogether (see Matt 19:10, “It is better not to marry,” and 1 Tim 4:3, “They will say it is wrong to be married”). To them he says, “Give honor to marriage”—that is, as a divine institution—and don’t worry about the immoral and the adulterers, for God will judge them. The theme of divine judgment is a familiar one in Hebrews (see 4:12-13; 6:8; 9:27; 10:27, 30-31), and its application here to sexual morality and marriage suggests that the author considers these matters just as vital to the life and strength of the Christian community as faithfully meeting together for worship. Hebrews is fully consistent with Paul and the biblical tradition both in requiring sexual purity (see 1 Cor 6:12-20) and in honoring the institution of marriage (see 1 Cor 7:1-10; 1 Tim 3:2).

In the tradition of Jesus (Matt 6:19-24) and Paul (see 1 Tim 3:3; 6:6-10), the author cautions, “Don’t love money; be satisfied with what you have” (13:5). He has not previously mentioned money explicitly (except for the tithe; 7:4-10) but has commended his readers for valuing faith above material possessions (see 10:34). Here he reinforces the command with two Scripture citations. The first is something Moses promised Israel (Deut 31:6), specifically Joshua (Deut 31:8): God “will be with you; he will neither fail you nor abandon you.” The writer of Hebrews transforms it into God’s own words: “I will never fail you. I will never abandon you” (13:5, my italics; see note). The second is a biblical testimony from the psalmist that readers are invited to claim as their own: “The LORD is my helper, so I will have no fear. What can mere people do to me?” (13:6; see Ps 118:6). This text, as John Bunyan clearly saw (in Grace Abounding; see Bunyan 1987a:56), has an application far wider than the single issue of not “loving money,” for it speaks eloquently to the predicament of “those in prison” and “those being mistreated” (13:3), as well as those growing weary in their own “struggle against sin” (see 12:3-4). The image of God as “helper” recalls the invitation nine chapters earlier to “come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There . . . we will find grace to help us when we need it most” (4:16).

The last in the series of commands is “Remember your leaders who taught you the word of God” (13:7). By the “word of God,” the author has in mind the message of salvation “first announced by the Lord Jesus himself and then delivered to us by those who heard him speak” (2:3). Presumably these “leaders” are “those who heard him speak,” comparable to Luke’s “eyewitness reports . . . from the early disciples” (Luke 1:2). To their ministries the author of Hebrews attributes “signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit” (2:4), but that is not his emphasis here. He never calls them “the Twelve” or “the apostles” (Jesus being the only “Apostle”; see note on 3:1), but these “leaders who taught you the word of God” at least belong to the apostolic generation. Their lives on earth are over, and he points to “all the good that has come from their lives.” Like the biblical heroes of faith, they now are figures of the past, and like them they stand as examples of “faith” to the readers (see 6:12, commending “the example of those who are going to inherit God’s promises because of their faith and endurance”). The implication is that the virtues the author has been listing—brotherly love, hospitality, kindness to those suffering or in prison, fidelity in marriage, contentment with one’s material possessions—are ones exemplified and handed down from those “leaders” and evidently required of the leaders who succeeded them (see 13:17, 24). Paul is represented as having laid down for Timothy such requirements for leadership as being a man “faithful to his wife,” “having guests in his home,” “gentle, not quarrelsome, and not lov[ing] money” (see 1 Tim 3:2-4). And Paul commended Onesiphorus for visiting him in prison (2 Tim 1:16). The author of Hebrews shares the same values, largely on the basis of remembrance of, and respect for, things past. When he proclaims, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (13:8), he is at one level simply reiterating what the Father already said about the Son, that “you are always the same; you will live forever” (1:12). Yet this is more than simply the author’s spontaneous confession of faith. It is rather the thoughtful, logical conclusion to the seven verses preceding it. While the author believed firmly in the preexistence of Jesus (see 1:2), “yesterday” does not refer primarily to eternity past but to a more recent past “when you first learned about Christ” (10:32) from “your leaders who taught you the word of God” (13:7). If “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever,” so too is the message of Jesus (2:3) and the pattern of behavior required by that message.

These things handed down from the past are the “unshakable” things that will “remain” (12:27). Innovation is no virtue. “So do not be attracted by strange, new ideas,” the author warns, adding that “your strength comes from God’s grace, not from rules about food” (13:9; see note). The mention of “grace” recalls the warning to “look after each other so that none of you fails to receive the grace of God” (12:15) and the call to “have grace” or “be thankful” as the key to “pleasing God” with acceptable worship (12:28). More surprising is the contrast between “grace” and “foods.” Earlier, Esau was introduced as an example of one who failed to receive the grace of God by trading his birthright for “a single meal” (12:15-16), and before that the author relegated “food and drink and various cleansing ceremonies” to the status of mere “physical regulations . . . in effect only until a better system could be established” (9:10). He seems to reflect the view of both Jesus (see Mark 7:15) and Paul (see Rom 14:17; 1 Cor 6:13; 1 Tim 4:3-4) that food, while necessary for physical life, is a matter of indifference so far as eternal life is concerned. The question here is what view the writer of Hebrews was opposing. Did he have in mind the Jewish dietary laws, as the translation, “rules about food,” implies? That would not seem to come under the heading of “strange, new ideas” (13:9) but rather of something quite traditional. Or did he know of some who were carrying the Jewish dietary laws to the extreme of vegetarianism (see, for example, Rom 14:2)? Was it a matter of what one must eat, or what one must not eat?

These are difficult questions because the author’s references to food are so few and so brief. It is likely that some were proposing that the benefits of Christ’s Passion were to be appropriated by ritual or ceremonial meals of some sort, as in certain Hellenistic mystery religions. This seems to be borne out by the next verse, which continues to speak of “eating” (or rather of not eating): “We have an altar from which [those who worship] in the Tabernacle have no right to eat” (13:10; see note). The expression “we have” is a familiar one in Hebrews (see note on 8:1), referring either to the priesthood of Jesus Christ or to the benefits that his priesthood confers. The “altar” too evokes the image of Christ’s priestly sacrifice. But is this altar the cross on which Christ died or a spiritual altar in heaven? No heavenly altar has been mentioned, although one could be inferred from references to heavenly things that served as models for their earthly counterparts in Jewish worship (8:5) and “had to be purified with far better sacrifices than the blood of animals” (9:23; see note). More likely, “the altar from which those who worship in the Tabernacle have no right to eat” is the cross. “Those who worship in the Tabernacle” are not priests (see note on 13:10), nor in all likelihood the “leaders” of the community (13:7), but all Christian believers, who “please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe” (12:28). While such “worshiping” (latreuō [TG3000, ZG3302]) can be a priestly activity (8:5), more often it is simply an activity of the people of God, whether under the old covenant (9:9; 10:2) or the new (9:14; 12:28).

Because of the mention of “the Tabernacle,” some interpreters claim that the old covenant is in view here—that is, “we [Christians] have an altar” from which the Jews are excluded (see Lane 1991:539; Attridge 1989:396). More likely, it is a Christian altar from which even Christians “have no right to eat.” If “the Tabernacle” is the “heavenly Tabernacle . . . built by the Lord and not by human hands” (8:2), where Christian believers “boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus” (10:19; cf. 4:16), then the point is that even though “we have an altar,” we nevertheless “have no right to eat” of the sacrifice offered on that altar. That is, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is not something to be appropriated by any kind of ritual or ceremonial meal. It is not that Jews have no right to eat of Christ’s sacrifice but Christians do. It is rather that no one has that right because it is not that kind of a sacrifice. It is not comparable to those offerings from which priests and their families were permitted, even instructed, to eat (see Lev 7:6-7; Num 18:10). It is comparable rather to the Day of Atonement ritual, in which the sacrifices were never eaten, but instead “the high priest brought the blood of animals into the Holy Place as a sacrifice for sin, and the bodies of the animals were burned outside the camp” (13:11; see Lev 16:16-27; also Lev 6:30). This is not surprising, for the Day of Atonement has been all along the author’s dominant point of comparison to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ (see, for example, 9:7, 11-14, 25-28).

Obviously, the author did not have to make his point in this way. He could have understood “eating” metaphorically, acknowledging that Christians do “eat” (that is, partake of, or benefit from) Christ’s sacrifice by trusting in him for their salvation (for example, see John 6:52-58). He himself has spoken of those who “tasted the heavenly gift” (6:4, NIV) and “tasted the goodness of the word of God and the power of the age to come” (6:5). But here he rejects the notion of eating from the altar even as a metaphor. The apparent reason is that some in the community with “strange, new ideas” have made ceremonial meals an issue, and the author believes that such practices “don’t help those who follow them” (13:9). He is unwilling to concede them anything, even on a metaphorical level. He wants to dissociate himself and his readers from any notion of sacrificial meals as a form of worship.

All this raises again the question of whether the author knows of the Christian Eucharist, and if he does whether or not he approves of it. He has been consistent throughout Hebrews in avoiding the subject whenever it might have come up: first when he omitted mention of Melchizedek’s gift of bread and wine to Abraham (7:1), and later when his discussion of the “new covenant” and of Moses’s “words of institution” in Exodus gave him the opportunity to do so (9:20; see Exod 24:8). As we have seen, however, it was not unusual for early Christian writers to avoid mentioning the Lord’s Supper (see commentary on 9:22). The author’s disapproval is directed not at the notion of Christians eating together, whether at the Lord’s Table or in more informal ways, but at the notion that such meals are in any way sacrificial. We come to God and make our sacrifices, he insists, in other ways than by eating.

In what other ways? How do Christian believers appropriate the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice and make it their own? The answer lies in the phrase “outside the camp” (13:11, 13). While verse 11 is not a direct quotation from Leviticus 16:27, this one phrase is. The author found in it a point of comparison between the fate of the sacrificial animals after the Day of Atonement ritual and the fate of Jesus (13:12), our High Priest. Just as their bodies were burned “outside the camp,” so Jesus suffered “outside the city gates.” While the analogy is not perfect in that Jesus’ body was not burned, the author weaves it into a “chiastic” (A B B’ A’) pattern:

A. The blood of the animals was taken “into the Holy Place as a sacrifice for sin.”

B. Their bodies were burned “outside the camp” (13:11).

B´. Jesus suffered “outside the city gates.”

A´. This was so as to “make his people holy by means of his own blood” (13:12).

The audience knows all about redemption through Jesus’ blood (from chs 9–10), but what stands out here are the companion phrases “outside the camp” and “outside the city gates” respectively. The author built on inferences from Gospel traditions that Jesus was crucified “near the city” (John 19:20), yet outside the walls of Jerusalem (see Mark 15:20; Luke 23:26; John 19:17), in keeping with Jewish custom regarding stoning (Num 15:35; 1 Kgs 21:13; Acts 7:58). This tradition was not quite universal among early Christians. According to Melito of Sardis, Jesus’ crucifixion “was in the middle of the main street, even in the center of the city, while all were looking on” (On the Passover 94; Hawthorne 1975:171; see also Rev 11:8-9). Yet even the one major exception makes the same point—that is, that he was executed publicly, within sight of everyone. Such a public humiliation would have been an occasion of “disgrace” (oneidismon [TG3680, ZG3944], 13:13), or “shame” (aischunē [TG152, ZG158]; see note on 12:2). The author of Hebrews urges his readers to “bear the disgrace” that Jesus bore, like Moses did long ago (11:26). This they must do by going “out to him, outside the camp” (13:13).

It comes as no surprise that we appropriate Jesus’ sacrificial death and make it our own not by ceremonial meals but by faithful discipleship. The author urged us to “run with endurance the race God has set before us . . . keeping our eyes on Jesus” (12:1-2), and here he adds only that in doing so we “bear the disgrace he bore,” disregarding “shame” just as he did. But why “outside the camp”? For Jesus “the camp” was the walled city of Jerusalem with its “city gates,” and “outside the camp” was a place of shame and public disgrace. The emphasis in Hebrews is not on a specific identification of “the camp” (whether Judaism, the city of Jerusalem, or a Christian ghetto of some kind) but rather on what it means to be “outside” the camp in the sense of being subject to ridicule, abuse, even possible martyrdom. The call to “go out to him, outside the camp” is in effect an “equivalent of the call to take up the cross” (Attridge 1989:399; see Mark 8:34). Other than Jesus himself, the model for doing so is Moses, who “chose to share the oppression of God’s people instead of enjoying the fleeting pleasures of sin” and thought it “better to suffer for the sake of Christ than to own the treasures of Egypt” (11:25-26). The same dualism is evident here in what comes next: “We have no permanent city here, but we are looking forward to the one yet to come” (13:14; my translation; see note).

The city “yet to come” is recognizably Abraham’s “city with eternal foundations . . . designed and built by God” (see 11:10, 16), or more specifically “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (12:22). Whether a contrast is implied with an impermanent or transitory earthly Jerusalem is uncertain. If Hebrews was written somewhere around the time Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, such a contrast would be a distinct possibility. Yet the point should not be pressed, because the phrase “no permanent city” leaves the city undefined, even though “the one yet to come” is both definite and specific. The city “we do not have” and to which we do not belong could be any city: Jerusalem, Rome, or wherever the author or the recipients of Hebrews may have been living. Whatever the city, the point is that believers have no stake in its destiny, for it too, with the rest of creation, “will be shaken and removed, so that only unshakable things will remain” (12:27; see also 1:11-12).

What does it mean, then, to go “outside the camp” and “bear the disgrace” that Jesus bore? Does it mean to turn our backs on the earthly city and look heavenward? Or is it just the opposite, that we must engage the city of this world boldly in the “naked public square”? Neither of the above is exactly the intended meaning, although the second is closer to the truth. The call is not so much to convert or convince the world as to bear faithful testimony by enduring the world’s scorn and oppression like the faithful who preceded us (see 11:35-38). The public arena is a risky place to be, the author is saying, for it is where Jesus was crucified. Yet it is where we must be. The best analogy is perhaps Paul’s claim that “God has put us apostles on display, like prisoners of war at the end of a victor’s parade, condemned to die. We have become a spectacle to the entire world—to people and angels alike” (1 Cor 4:9). What Paul said of the apostles is in Hebrews true of all Christian believers. At the same time, the author would have agreed with Peter that Christ’s “shame” or “disgrace” is no disgrace at all in God’s sight: “It is no shame to suffer for being a Christian. Praise God for the privilege of being called by his name!” (1 Pet 4:16). In some sense, we ourselves are the sacrifice we offer, just as Christ offered “himself” (7:27; 9:14, 25; 10:12), or his own “body” (10:5, 10), on the cross. Paul made this very point (see Rom 12:1), but Hebrews says it a little differently, defining our sacrifices of ourselves concretely in two ways. First, “let us offer through Jesus a continual sacrifice of praise to God, proclaiming our allegiance to his name” (13:15; see note). By our explicit verbal testimonies, we “bear the disgrace” Jesus bore in the world. Second, the author adds, “Don’t forget to do good and to share with those in need” (13:16). Again (as in 13:1), the imperative “don’t forget” signals that all the author is doing is reminding his readers of how they have behaved in the past (see 6:10; 10:32-34) and urging them to act in the same way now. These two things, faithfulness to our confessions of Jesus Christ and faithfulness to one another in time of need, are “the sacrifices that please God” (13:16), that “devouring fire” whom we worship “with holy fear and awe” (see 12:28-29).

The sense of continuity with the past is also evident in what comes next. Having paid tribute to past “leaders who taught you the word of God” (13:7), the author now urges similar respect for their successors: “Obey your spiritual leaders, and do what they say” (13:17). The accompanying notion that they “watch over your souls” implies not so much close scrutiny as rather wakeful nights, probably spent in prayer (see Luke 21:36; Eph 6:18). Prayer is seen here as a pastoral duty, as Clement of Alexandria recognized over a century later when he urged those who were rich to “Appoint for yourself some man of God as trainer and pilot. . . . Let him spend many wakeful nights on your behalf, acting as your ambassador with God and moving the Father by the spell of constant supplications” (Salvation of the Rich sec. 41). Such “spiritual leaders” (see note) are “accountable to God,” as all believers are (4:13), but to a greater degree because they are responsible for the conduct of others as well as themselves (see Jas 3:1).

To some extent the command to “obey your spiritual leaders” echoes Paul, who urged the Thessalonians to “honor those who are your leaders in the Lord’s work. . . . Show them great respect and wholehearted love because of their work” (1 Thess 5:12-13). But there is a veiled threat here which is not found in Paul. The author’s concern is that the leaders’ ministry of intercession should be an occasion for them to rejoice and not “groan” or complain to God out of frustration or anger (see note on 13:17). Clement of Alexandria warned his “rich man” in much the same way to “fear” his spiritual advisor “when he is angry, and be grieved when he groans” (ibid.). Even Paul attributed a kind of “intercession in reverse” to Elijah, when he “complained to God about the people of Israel and said, ‘LORD, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me, too’” (Rom 11: 2-3; see 1 Kgs 19:10, 14). In a masterpiece of understatement, the author of Hebrews warns that such complaints to God from their leaders would “not be for your benefit.” This is one of the mildest warnings in the entire book, yet given all the threats that have preceded it—“impossible to bring back to repentance” (6:4), “terrible expectation of God’s judgment” (10:27), and “to fall into the hands of the living God” (10:31)—it gets the point across quite well, for the effect of such complaints would be to consign the disobedient to their inevitable fate. A word to the wise should be sufficient.

The author could have added, “Pray for these leaders of yours who stay up all night praying for you,” but instead he put himself in the leaders’ place: “Pray for us, for our conscience is clear and we want to live honorably in everything we do” (13:18). Like the leaders, he, too, is “accountable to God.” His voice, as we have seen, sounds like Paul’s voice (see Eph 6:19; Col 4:3), and this is even more evident when he adds, “And especially pray that I will be able to come back to you soon” (13:19). The terminology “come back to you,” or “be restored to you,” obviously implies a previous close relationship between the author and the intended readers, comparable to Paul’s relationship with his churches (see, for example, Rom 15:30-32; 1 Thess 3:11; Phlm 1:22). Even the abrupt shift from “us” and “we” (13:18) to “I” (13:19) is attested in Paul (see Col 4:3-4). Like Paul on certain occasions (for example, 1 Thess 2:17-18), the author seems hindered in some way from coming immediately to visit the readers, and therefore he is dependent on their prayers. In return, like their “leaders” (13:17), he offers up his own prayer for them in the form of a benediction which seems to bring closure to all that he has said (13:20-21).

The benediction is quite possibly traditional, that is, an early formulation that may have been already familiar to the audience in connection with their gatherings for worship. Two themes stand out, both conspicuous in Hebrews as a whole: first, the phrase “ratified an eternal covenant with his blood” (13:20; see note), recalling the “new covenant” (ch 8) and the necessity that it be ratified by the shedding of blood (chs 9–10); second, the emphasis on “doing his will,” with the implication that doing the will of God is what is “pleasing to him” (13:21). Hebrews can put it either way: that obedience, as the biblical prophets said, is better than sacrifice (see 10:6-7), or that obedience itself is the true sacrifice that God accepts, whether in Jesus’ life (10:9-10) or in ours (see 12:28-29; 13:15-16). At the same time, there are one or two “new” or unexpected notes sounded here, notably the common Christian theme of resurrection, that God “brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep” (13:20). While Jesus’ resurrection has not been mentioned before, it was clearly implied in the notice that when he prayed “to the one who could rescue him from death . . . God heard his prayers” (5:7). Here it becomes explicit, suggesting that all the previous references to Jesus being “perfected” (see 2:10; 5:9; 7:28) or sitting at God’s right hand (see 1:3; 8:1; 10:12) meant nothing very different from resurrection as Paul or the Gospel writers or the book of Acts understood it (see also 11:19, 35, where the author speaks of resurrection more generally).

As to “the great Shepherd of the sheep,” that too comes unexpectedly, for neither Hebrews nor the letters of Paul make use of such imagery in connection with Jesus (see, however, 1 Pet 2:25; 5:4). Probably it is a corollary of Jesus’ resurrection, in keeping with the Gospel tradition, where Jesus, after quoting the text, “God will strike the Shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered” (Zech 13:7), added that “after I am raised from the dead, I will go ahead of you [that is, ‘lead you as a shepherd’] to Galilee” (Mark 14:27-28; also Matt 26:31-32). The benediction ends with a doxology that could easily have served as a conclusion to the whole book: “All glory to him forever and ever! Amen.” Yet in fact, as is often the case with doxologies, it does not (see Rom 11:36; Eph 3:20-21; Phil 4:20; 1 Tim 1:17; 2 Tim 4:18; 1 Pet 4:11; 5:11).