Commenting on Heb 10:23-31 (esp. v. 27), J. Webb Mealy wrote that:
Verse 27 [is] the key verse for
our study . . . The context once again follows the pattern which, although not
without exception in the NT, characterizes a strong majority of passages that
warn of fiery judgment. The teaching, with its threat of punishment, primarily
targets Christian disciples who do not act like disciples, rather than
discussing punishment as the appropriate fate of outsiders and nonbelievers.
An alternative rendering of v. 27
might be, “There is only the fearful prospect of judgment and of a raging fire
that is about to consume the opponents.”
This verse is clearly an allusion
to (the LXX Greek version of) Isa. 26:11, which we discussed above in our
sequential survey. The shared words fire (pur), rage/zeal (zēlos),
consume (esthiō), and enemies/opponents (hupenantios) tie the two
passages together. Just as in Isaiah 26, the themes of 1 instantness and
2 completeness both stand out here. The 1 instantness is conveyed
by the words “that is about to.” The author of Hebrews doesn’t quote the
previous sentence in Isaiah, which says that “your hand is raised, but they
don’t knot it,” but his own phraseology makes it rather obvious that he knows
that sentence, and that he has in mind the picture of a punishment that is
poised to strike at once without warning. The 2 completeness of the
destruction is conveyed both by the “raging fire” and by the statement that it
will “consume the enemies/opponents.” (J. Webb Mealy, The End of the
Unrepentant: A Study of the Biblical Themes of Fire and Being Consumed [Eugene,
Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2013], 66-67)
