Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Hebrews 10:25

τὴν ἐπισυναγωγὴν ἑαυτῶν, i.e. “our Christian gatherings.” Apparently the flagging zeal and waning faith of the Hebrews had led some of them to neglect the Christian assemblies for worship and Holy Communion (Acts 2:42). Ἐπισυναγωγὴ only occurs in 2 Thessalonians 2:1, and is perhaps chosen to avoid the Jewish word “synagogue”; and the more so because the duty of attending “the synagogue” was insisted on by Jewish teachers. In the neglect of public worship the writer saw the dangerous germ of apostasy.

καθὼς ἔθος τισίν. This neglect of attending the Christian gatherings may have been due in some cases to fear of the Jews. It shewed a fatal tendency to waver in the direction of apostasy.

παρακαλοῦντες. Though the active is used it implies the duty of mutual encouragement.

τὴν ἡμέραν. The Day which Christians expected was the Last Day (1 Corinthians 3:13). They failed to see that the Day which the Lord had primarily in view in His great eschatological discourse (Matthew 24) was the Close of the Old Dispensation in the Fall of Jerusalem. The signs of this were already in the air, and that approaching Day of the Lord was destined to be “the bloody and fiery dawn” of the Last Great Day—“the Day of days, the Ending-day of all days,” the Settling-day of all days, the Day of the promotion of Time into Eternity, the Day which for the Church breaks through and breaks off the night of this present world” (Delitzsch).

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Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Hebrews 10:25

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