Hebrews 10:27

but a certain fearful looking for of judgment All that is left for willing apostates when they have turned their backs on the sole means of grace is "some fearful expectance of a judgment." They are "heaping up to themselves wrath against the day of wrath" (Romans 2:5).

and fiery indignation Lit., "and a jealousy of fire." He is thinking of God "as a consuming fire" (Hebrews 12:29) and of the question "Shall thy jealousy burn like fire?" Psalms 79:5 (comp. Ezekiel 35:5).

which shall devour the adversaries "Yea let fire devour thine enemies" (Isaiah 26:11). It has so long been the custom to interpret such passages of "eternal torments" that we lose sight of the fact that such a meaning, if we may interpret Scripture historically, was in most cases not consciously present to the mind of the writers. The constant repetition of the same metaphor by the Prophets with no reference except to temporal calamities and the overthrow of cities and nations made it familiar in this sense to the N.T. writers. By "the adversaries" here are not meant "sinners," but impenitent Jews and wilful apostates who would perish in the Day of the Lord (2 Thessalonians 1:8). It is at least doubtful whether the writer meant to imply anything beyond that prophecy of doom to the heirs of the Old Covenant which was fulfilled a few years later when the fire of God's wrath consumed the whole system of a Judaism which had rejected its own Messiah. The word for "adversaries" only occurs in the N.T. in Colossians 2:14.