§30 The Transcendent Nature of Hope (Heb. 11:13–16)
Our author interrupts his inventory of paragons of the faith and their specific triumphs of faith in order to elaborate the material of verses 8–10. The perspective set forth here, wherein one lives in this world as an alien, is of the essence of faith as it is first described in verse 1. The things hoped for, although not yet seen, control the life of the person of faith. The OT saints looked for the reality God had promised. It was an eschatological reality, “a heavenly country,” “a city” prepared by God. The implications for the author’s Jewish readers and their present situation are clear. Indeed, it is just this kind of faith that views life as a pilgrimage that the author desires for his readers.
11:13–14 / The paragons of faith mentioned thus far, like those about to be mentioned (cf. v. 39), died without receiving the things promised (lit., “the promises”). They died while living by faith, that is, having lived their lives under the controlling influence of a reality distant and not yet experienced, they faced death in that same spirit. Their believing response to what lay in the future is described by the author in the picturesque language of their having seen it from a distance and having welcomed it (John 8:56). It was their orientation toward the promises that enabled them to regard their present status as only temporary and to describe themselves as aliens and strangers on earth (Gen. 23:4; 47:9; 1 Chron. 29:15; Ps. 39:12). Their true home accordingly lay elsewhere, and thus they sought for themselves a country of their own (lit., “fatherland,” “homeland”). Although the author does not use the language of shadow and reality here (as in 8:5 and 9:23f.), he could easily have done so. The promises and the experience of temporal, earthly blessings were for these persons only the shadow or copy of the transcendent eschatological reality to come.
11:15–16 / Abraham and his family could, of course, have returned to Mesopotamia if they had continued to regard that land as their true home. But this was not what was in their thoughts or what governed their lifestyle. Nor should it be in the minds of the readers (see 10:39). It was not their absence from Mesopotamia that caused Abraham and his family to refer to themselves as strangers and exiles. What they looked for was a better, a heavenly place (the word country does not actually occur in these verses; NIV carries it forward from v. 14). The author again refers to a city that God has prepared for them (cf. v. 10). This is an eschatological expectation, not a temporal one. The point of the words God is not ashamed to be called their God (cf. Exod. 3:6) is simply that God is faithful to his promises. Their expectation may thus be referred to as an already existing reality. Indeed, it is already being experienced by the church (12:22), as well as something yet to come in all its fullness (Rev. 21:2).
11:13–14 / Here the opening word in the Greek is not pistei, “by faith,” as it is regularly in this chapter, but kata pistin, lit., “in accordance with faith.” No important difference is meant by this change, which is probably due to the following verb, “they died.” It is not “by faith” because faith does not explain their dying. It is rather “in faith” or “in accordance with faith” that they died, i.e., with their hearts set upon the goal that God promised them, NIV’s interpretive expansion still living by faith for the simple kata pistin has the effect of making this point clear.
It is plain from this verse (13) that Abraham did not experience God’s promises in their deepest sense. Earlier (6:15) our author indicated that Abraham did receive a kind of initial fulfillment of the promises. But that initial fulfillment was far short of the true intent of the promises. By identifying the expectation of Abraham with that of the church (cf. vv. 39–40), the writer again underlines the unity of salvation history. The verb underlying receive (komizō) occurs elsewhere in Hebrews in 10:36 and 11:39 together with the noun “promise” (cf. also 11:19). The Greek for from a distance (porrōthen) occurs only here and in Luke 17:12 in the NT. Welcomed (aspazomai), which may also be translated “greeted,” occurs again in its normal sense twice in 13:24. Admitted is from homologeō, a verb that occurs again in 13:15 (“confess”). The word strangers (parepidēmos) is used in a similar way in 1 Peter (1:1, 2:11) to describe the life of the Christian in this world. First Peter 2:11 links this word with the synonym paroikoi, instead of xenoi (NIV translates both “aliens”). (Our author uses the cognate verb paroikeō, “lived as a foreigner,” in v. 9.) Looking for reflects the strong verb epizēteō, “seek,” which occurs in exactly the same sense in the exhortation of 13:14. The words “country of their own” occur only here in Hebrews (cf. Luke 4:24).
11:15–16 / The patriarchs were faithful in their expectancy. Therefore they did not desire to return to Mesopotamia (NIV’s thinking of is lit., “remembering”). This stands in sharp contrast to the generation that wandered in the wilderness and failed to enter God’s rest (4:6), but who instead desired to return to Egypt. Longing for translates oregomai, a rare word in the NT (occurring elsewhere in the NT only in 1 Tim. 3:1; 6:10). Better, a key word in Hebrews, is most often used to contrast the old covenant with the superior new covenant (see note on 1:4). For heavenly (epouranios), see note on 3:1. What is in view is that transcendent and perfect reality that awaits the saints of God (cf. 1 Cor. 2:9; Rom. 8:18). When Jesus quotes Exod. 3:6, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Matt. 22:32), he adds that “He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” This suggests, in a way similar to the present passage, that the patriarchs will through the resurrection inherit the transcendent promises that God had spoken to them. God’s purpose was that “only together with us would they be made perfect” (v. 40). The city that God has prepared has already been referred to in v. 10. See note on that verse.