Hebrews 13:9

13:7-15 The instructions and examples of ministers, who honourably and comfortably closed their testimony, should be particularly remembered by survivors. And though their ministers were some dead, others dying, yet the great Head and High Priest of the church, the Bishop of their souls, ever lives, and is ever the same. Christ is the same in the Old Testament day. as in the gospel day, and will be so to his people for ever, equally merciful, powerful, and all-sufficient. Still he fills the hungry, encourages the trembling, and welcomes repenting sinners: still he rejects the proud and self-righteous, abhors mere profession, and teaches all whom he saves, to love righteousness, and to hate iniquity. Believers should seek to have their hearts established in simple dependence on free grace, by the Holy Spirit, which would comfort their hearts, and render them proof against delusion. Christ is both our Altar and our Sacrifice; he sanctifies the gift. The Lord's supper is the feast of the gospel passover. Having showed that keeping to the Levitical law would, according to its own rules, keep men from the Christian altar, the apostle adds, Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp; go forth from the ceremonial law, from sin, from the world, and from ourselves. Living by faith in Christ, set apart to God through his blood, let us willingly separate from this evil world.

Sin, sinners, nor death, will not suffer us to continue long here; therefore let us go forth now by faith and seek in Christ the rest and peace which this world cannot afford us. Let us bring our sacrifices to this altar, and to this our High Priest, and offer them up by him. The sacrifice of praise to God, we should offer always. In this are worship and prayer, as well as thanksgiving.

Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines. {6} For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with {d} meats, which have not profited them that have been {e} occupied therein. (6) He speaks to those who mixed an external worship and especially the difference of meats with the gospel which he clearly condemns as repugnant to the benefit of Christ. (d) By this one form which concerns the difference of clean and unclean meat, we have to understand all the ceremonial worship. (e) Who observed the difference of them superstitiously.

Be not carried about (μὴ παραφέρεσθε) A.V. follows T.R. περιφέρεσθε. Rend. "carried away." The present tense indicates a present and active danger. With divers and strange doctrines (διδαχαῖς ποικίλαις καὶ ξέναις) For "doctrines" rend. "teachings." These teachings represent various phases of one radical error - the denial of Jesus's messiahship and of his messianic economy as superseding Judaism and all other means of salvation. Among them the writer's mind would naturally turn to the prescriptions concerning clean and unclean meats and sacrificial festivals. See next clause. These teachings were various as contrasted with the one teaching of the gospel; they were strange as they differed from that teaching. Comp. Galatians 1:6-9. For ποικίλαις see on 2 Timothy 3:16. That the heart be established (βεβαιοῦσθαι τὴν καρδίαν) There is an emphasis on heart as well as on grace. These strange teachings all emphasized externalism, in contrast with Christianity, which insisted upon the purification of the heart and conscience. The contrast is strongly stated in Hebrews 9:9, Hebrews 9:14, and the Epistle constantly directs the readers to the heart as the true point of contact with God, and the source of all departures from him. See Hebrews 3:8, Hebrews 3:10, Hebrews 3:12, Hebrews 3:15; Hebrews 4:7, Hebrews 4:12; Hebrews 8:10; especially Hebrews 10:22.

Hence, the writer says, "it is good that the solid basis of your assurance before God be in the heart, purged from an evil conscience, so that you can draw near to God with a firmly-established confidence, with a true heart, in full assurance of faith": Hebrews 10:22; comp. 1 Thessalonians 3:13; 2 Timothy 2:22. With grace, not with meats (χάριτι οὐ βρώμασιν) The heart is the proper seat of the work of grace. Free grace is the motive-power of Christ's sacrifice (2 Corinthians 8:9; Galatians 1:15); it is behind the blood of the new covenant, and is the energetic principle of its saving operation. See Romans 5:2, Romans 5:15; 1 Corinthians 15:10; Ephesians 2:5, Ephesians 2:7, Ephesians 2:8; 2 Thessalonians 2:16; Hebrews 2:9; Hebrews 4:16; Hebrews 10:29. With meats stands for the whole system of ceremonial observances, in contrast with grace, working on the heart. See Hebrews 9:10. This ceremonial system yielded no permanent benefit to those who lived under it. See Hebrews 7:25; Hebrews 9:9, Hebrews 9:13, Hebrews 9:14; Hebrews 10:1, Hebrews 10:2, Hebrews 10:4. Which have not profited them that have been occupied therein (ἐν οἶς οὐκ ὠφελήθησαν οἱ περιπατοῦντες) Lit. in the which they who walked were not profited. Περιπατεῖν to walk about is often used to express habitual practice or general conduct of life. See Romans 6:4; 2 Corinthians 10:3; Ephesians 2:10; Colossians 3:7; Colossians 4:5.

Hebrews 13:9 . Διδαχαῖς , with doctrines ) So Paul , Ephesians 4:14 .— ποικίλαις , various ) which differ from the one faith in the one and the same Jesus Christ. There was variety in the Levitical worship; ch. Hebrews 9:10 .— ξέναις , strange ) which differ from the faith of your ministers ( τῶν ἡγουμένων ). The Levitical rites were now also strange to their present faith, Hebrews 13:9-14 ; and the apostle was now forgetful of their oldness (The Old Testament). He does not therefore call them old , but strange .— μὴ παραφέρεσθε ) be not carried away [ Neben hin .—Not. Crit.] So παρὰ in composition, ch. Hebrews 2:1 . The antithesis, βεβαιοῦσθαι , to be established , 1 Samuel 21:13 (14), ויתהלל , LXX. καὶ παρεφέρετο . Ecclesiastes 1:17 , הללית Theodotion translates παραφοράς .— καλὸν γὰρ χάριτι βεβαιοῦσθαι τὴν καρδίαν , for it is good for the heart to be established with grace) A categorical sentence: χάριτι βεβαιούμεθα ( κατὰ ) τὴν καρδίαν , we have the heart established by grace; to which the antithesis corresponds, not with meats; but the modal expression, good, is added from the feeling of the apostle, to give a point to the admonition. So Paul, Romans 6:17 , note. Καλὸν , good, beautiful (becoming), salutary: also pleasant, without strange variety; and profitable.

The antithesis, have not profited.— χάριτι , with grace) grace, which becomes ours through Christ, who offered His body.— βεβαιοῦσθαι ) to be established. Στηριχθηναι , to be supported, is a kindred word, just as the heart, according to the Hebrew phraseology, is supported by bread or the staff of bread; Jdg 19:5 ; Isaiah 3:1 ; Psalm 104:15 , etc. That is here denied of meats, and is claimed for grace.— οὐ , not) Judaism and Christianity do not agree.— βρώμασιν , with meats) An Extenuation,[91] as ch. Hebrews 9:10 . Those meats are also denoted which were eaten in the holy place. The antithesis is, to eat , Hebrews 13:10 . The Jews have their own meat; and we have ours, which is most healthful to us.— ἐν οἷς , in which ) Construed with περιπατήσαντες .— οὐκ ὠφελήθησαν ) comp. ἀνωφελὲς , ch. Hebrews 7:18 .— οἱ περιπατήσαντες , they who have walked ) long and much . [91] See App. The same as Litotes.

9 . Be not carried about …] Lit. “With teachings various and strange be ye not swept away.” From the allusion to various kinds of food which immediately follows we infer that these “teachings” were not like the Gnostic speculations against which St Paul and St John had to raise a warning voice ( Ephesians 4:14 ; Colossians 2:8 ; 1 John 4:1 ), but the minutiae of the Jewish Halachah with its endless refinements upon, and inferences from, the letter of the Law. This is the sort of teaching of which the Talmud is full, and most of it has no real connection with true Mosaism. it is a good ] “a beautiful, or excellent thing” ( kalon ). with grace ] By the favour or mercy of God as a pledge of our real security. not with meats ] Not by minute and pedantic distinctions between various kinds of clean and unclean food ( Hebrews 9:10 ). The word bromata , “kinds of food,” was never applied to sacrifices. On the urgency of the question of “meats” to the Early Christians see my Life of St Paul , 1. 264. which have not profited them that have been occupied therein ] These outward rules were of no real advantage to the Jews under the Law. As Christianity extended the Rabbis gave a more and more hostile elaboration and significance to the Halachoth , which decided about the degrees of uncleanness in different kinds of food, as though salvation itself depended on the scrupulosities and micrologies of Rabbinism.

The reader will find some illustrations of these remarks in my Life of St Paul , i. 264. The importance of these or analogous questions to the early Jewish Christians may be estimated by the allusions of St Paul (Romans 14.; Colossians 2:16-23 ; 1 Timothy 4:3 , &c.). No doubt these warnings were necessary because the Jewish Christians were liable to the taunt “You are breaking the law of Moses; you are living Gentile-fashion ( ἐθνικῶς ) not Jewish-wise ( Ἰουδαικῶς ); you neglect the Kashar (rules which regulate the slaughter of clean and unclean animals, which the Jews scrupulously observe to this day); you feed with those who are polluted by habitually eating swines’ flesh.’ These were appeals to “the eternal Pharisaism of the human heart,” and the intensity of Jewish feeling respecting them would have been renewed by the conversions to Christianity. The writer therefore reminds the Hebrews that these distinctions involve no real advantage ( Hebrews 7:18-19 ).

9. about—rather, as oldest manuscripts read, "carried aside"; namely, compare Eph 4:14. divers—differing from the one faith in the one and the same Jesus Christ, as taught by them who had the rule over you (Heb 13:7). strange—foreign to the truth. doctrines—"teachings." established with grace; not with meats—not with observances of Jewish distinctions between clean and unclean meats, to which ascetic Judaizers added in Christian times the rejection of some meats, and the use of others: noticed also by Paul in 1Co 8:8, 13; 6:13; Ro 14:17, an exact parallel to this verse: these are some of the "divers and strange doctrines" of the previous sentence. Christ's body offered once for all for us, is our true spiritual "meat" to "eat" (Heb 13:10), "the stay and the staff of bread" (Isa 3:1), the mean of all "grace." which have not profited—Greek, "in which they who walked were not profited"; namely, in respect to justification, perfect cleansing of the conscience, and sanctification. Compare on "walked," Ac 21:21; namely, with superstitious scrupulosity, as though the worship of God in itself consisted in such legal observances.

(9) Be not carried about. —The better reading of the Greek gives a meaning somewhat different, Be not carried away by divers and strange teachings. The ordinary reading may have come in from Ephesians 4:14 . The “teachings” by which they were in danger of being led astray were various, and were all foreign to the one true word. The contrasts expressed in the second part of this verse and in Hebrews 13:10-11 , throw light on the nature and source of the erroneous doctrine. Its subject was not “grace,” but “meats;” its promoters were connected with those who serve the Tabernacle. Hence the writer is probably speaking of doctrines and practices similar to those censured by St. Paul in Colossians 2:16-23 . (See the introductory Note on Romans 14; also 1Timothy 4:3 .) In Hebrews 9:10 we read of “meats and drinks” in connection with the Law of Moses; here the divers and strange teachings” must include human additions to that Law and perversions of its spirit. With grace; not with meats.—Better, by grace, not by meats. Instead of being “carried away by strange teachings,” let your hearts be made firm and sure by grace.

As the whole system of ceremonial observance is alluded to under the one term “meats,” so the blessings of the Christian faith are comprised under “grace,” a word used throughout this Epistle with peculiar significance. (See especially Hebrews 10:29; Hebrews 12:15; Hebrews 12:28.) One human system of teaching will but lead on to another; grace will keep the heart firm in its loyal love to Jesus Christ, who is ever “the same” (Hebrews 13:8). Which have not profited.—Literally, in which they that walked were not ‘profited. To the English reader the mode of expression must appear peculiar; in the Greek, however, there is little or no incongruity, for the word which we render “walk” is used most freely to denote a course or manner of life. Comp. Ephesians 2:10, “unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” Here the meaning is, that those who have made these external observances the rule of their life have failed of the profit which they sought. (Comp. Hebrews 7:18-19.)