Tuesday, April 12, 2022

J. Webb Mealy on Hebrews 10:27

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)