Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Hebrews 3:16-19

Hebrews 3:16-19. The argument of these verses has been variously interpreted, and the varieties are seen in the difference of the translation. The Authorised Version translates ‘ some... howbeit not all;' the Revised translates ‘ who... ? nay, did not all.' Most of the ancient commentators, and many of the modem, adopt the translation ‘ some ' in Hebrews 3:16, even when they translate ‘ with whom ' as a question in Hebrews 3:17; forms though they be of the same word, but with difference of accent. Bengel, Alford, and many more translate ‘ who ' and ‘with whom' as questions in both cases. They hold that it contributes to the force of the argument to affirm that all perished. But on the whole the Authorised seems the preferable rendering; for (1) the facts rather require the statement that not all perished. Besides Caleb and Joshua, all the children who were under twenty years of age when they left Egypt, and the women and the Levites, were exceptions. (2) The N. Test. comment favours it also, for in 1 Corinthians 10:5 it is expressly said that it was ‘with the greater part of them' (or, ‘with very many of them') ‘God was not well pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness;' and again and again it is said in the same context that some of them were idolaters, and some of them tempted, and some of them murmured (Hebrews 3:7-10); while the appeal to these facts (the limited extent of the ruin, not the universality of it) is used in that passage for the same purpose of warning as here; and (3) the argument is better enforced by the translation of the Authorised than by the proposed change. ‘Beware, for all perish,' may seem impressive; but it is more impressive still to say, as is said in 1 Corinthians 10, ‘Most perished,' and perished through unbelief; those who were spared were only the minority, and they were spared because they were not guilty of the disobedience of the greater part of the nation. Blended fear and hope is the warning most likely to impress and encourage; nor was there danger of the Hebrews reading the lesson so as to foster delusion when it is so carefully intimated that men must perish wherever there is unbelief.

Whose carcasses literally limbs, suggesting, perhaps, the gradual decay of the nation's strength one falling here, another there, till they were strewn all over the wilderness.

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Hebrews 3:16-19

Old Testament

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