Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Hebrews 12:18-29

In this paragraph we have the climax of the Epistle. Its doctrine and its exhortation alike culminate here. The great aim of the writer has been to persuade the Hebrews to hearken to the word spoken by God in Christ (Hebrews 1:1; Hebrews 2:1-4). This aim he still seeks to attain by bringing before his readers in one closing picture the contrast between the old dispensation and the new. The old was characterised by material, sensible transitory manifestations; the new by what is supersensible and eternally stable. The old also rather emphasised the inaccessible nature of God, His unapproachable holiness, His awful majesty, and taught men that they could not come near; the new brings men into the very presence of God, and though He be “Judge of all” yet is He surrounded with the spirits of perfected men. But as the writer seeks to quicken his readers to a more zealous faith He shows also the awful consequences of refusing Him that speaketh from heaven. Not the fire and smoke of Sinai threaten now to consume the disobedient, but “our God is a consuming fire”; not a symbolic and material element threatened, but the very Eternal and All-pervading Himself. And, returning to the idea with which he commenced the Epistle and so making its unity obvious, the writer contrasts the voice that shook the earth with the infinitely more terrible voice that shakes the heavens also, that terminates time and brings in eternal things.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Hebrews 12:18-29

Old Testament

New Testament