Hebrews 6:5

καὶ καλὸν γευσαμένους … “and tasted God's word that it is good”. ῥήματα καλά in LXX (vide Joshua 21:43) are the rich and encouraging promises of God, cf. Zechariah 1:13, ῥήματα καλὰ καὶ λόγους παρακλητικούς. Here it probably means the Gospel in which all promise is comprehended; cf. 1 Peter 1:25, ῥῆμα Κυρίου … τοῦτο δέ ἐστι τὸ ῥῆμα τὸ εὐαγγελισθὲν εἰς ὑμᾶς. Persons then are here described who have not only heard God's promise, but have themselves tasted or made trial of it and found it good. They have experienced that what God proclaims finds them, in their conscience with its resistless truth, in their best desires by quickening and satisfying them. The change from the genitive, δωρεᾶς, to the accusative, ῥῆμα, after γευσ. is variously accounted for. Commonly, verbs of sense take the accusative of the nearer, the genitive of the remoter source of the sensation; but probably the indiscriminate use of the two cases in LXX and N.T. arises from the tendency of the accusative in later Greek to usurp the place of the other cases. Yet it is not likely that so careful a stylist as our author should have altered the case without a reason. That reason is best given by Simcox (Gram., p. 87), “ γεὐεσθαι in Hebrews 6:4-5, has the genitive, where it is merely a verb of sense, the accusative where it is used of the recognition of a fact καλόν being (as its position shows) a predicate”. With this expression may be compared Proverbs 31:18, ἐγεύσατο ὅτι καλόν ἐστι τὸ ἐργάζεσθαι. Bengel's idea that the genitive indicates that a part, while accusative that the whole was tasted, may be put aside. Also Hofmann's idea, approved by Weiss, that the accusative is employed to avoid an accumulation of genitives. δυνάμεις τε μέλλοντος αἰῶνος “and [tasted] the powers of the age to come” [that they were good, for καλάς may be supplied out of the καλόν of the preceding clause; or the predicate indicating the result of the tasting may be taken for granted]. δυνάμεις is so frequently used of the powers to work miracle imparted by the Holy Spirit (see Hebrews 2:4; 1 Corinthians 12:28; 2 Corinthians 12:12; and in the Gospels passim) that this meaning is generally accepted as appropriate here. See Lunemann. αἰὼν μέλλων is therefore here used not exactly as in Matthew 12:32; Ephesians 1:21 where it is contrasted with this present age or world, but rather as the temporal equivalent of the οἰκουμένη ἡ μέλλουσα of chap. Hebrews 2:5, cf. also Hebrews 9:11; Hebrews 10:1.; and Bengel's note. It is the Messianic age begun by the ministry of Christ, but only consummated in His Second Advent. A wider reference is sometimes found in the words, as by Davidson: “Though the realising of the promises be yet future, it is not absolutely so; the world to come projects itself in many forms into the present life, or shows its heavenly beauty and order rising up amidst the chaos of the present. This it does in the powers of the world to come, which are like laws of a new world coming in to cross and by and by to supersede those of this world. Those “powers,” being mainly still future, are combined with the good word of promise, and elevated into a distinct class, corresponding to the third group above, viz.: resurrection and judgment (Hebrews 6:2).” The persons described have so fully entered into the spirit of the new time and have so admitted into their life the powers which Christ brings to bear upon men, that they can be said to have “tasted” or experienced the spiritual forces of the new era.