Hebrews 11:32–40

11:32 Our preacher is mindful of the length of time that would be involved in listening to his sermon-letter being read aloud. He has already abbreviated what could have been a longer discussion of the tabernacle’s furniture (9:5). Now he condenses the rest of OT history’s profiles of faith, since “time would fail me” to discuss in detail the stories of Israel’s judges, kings, and prophets after the conquest of the Promised Land. He will draw attention to his restraint in his final greetings as a reason for his hearers to “bear with my word of exhortation, for I have written to you briefly” (13:22).

The names of judges (Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah), a king (David), and a prophet (Samuel) would bring their stories to the minds of Jewish listeners. The names are not in strict chronological order. In the OT, Barak (Judges 4–5) appears before Gideon (Judges 6–8), and Jephthah (Judges 11–12) before Samson (Judges 13–16). Then Samuel, Israel’s last judge as well as a prophet (1 Samuel 1–25), appears before David (1 Samuel 16–2 Samuel 24). Perhaps in each pair the more prominent individual is mentioned first. It is also fitting to list “Samuel and the prophets” last, since Samuel is viewed as the head of those prophets following Moses, who pressed the Lord’s lawsuit against Israel for their breach of covenant while promising God’s continuing faithfulness to his unfaithful people (Acts 3:24). Each of the six “through faith conquered kingdoms,” “enforced justice” (in varying degrees), “became mighty in war,” and “put foreign armies to flight” (Heb. 11:33–34), defending Israel against surrounding enemies such as the Canaanites, Midianites, Ammonites, and Philistines.

Nevertheless, although our author highlights the faith of these men, the OT accounts present blemished portraits of the judges and of King David. Like Moses, Gideon strove to evade God’s call to courageous leadership (Judg. 6:11–40; cf. Exodus 3–4). Barak timidly refused to take up arms without the support of the judge-prophet Deborah (Judg. 4:6–8). Samson scorned his holy status as a Nazirite, wielding his extraordinary strength more often in service to his own sensual lust and rage than in submission to his God (Judg. 14:1–4, 8–9, 19–20; 15:1–8; 16:1–17). Jephthah rashly vowed away his daughter’s life in exchange for victory in battle, and then even more wickedly kept his vow, contrary to God’s law (Judg. 11:29–40; cf. Ex. 13:15; Deut. 12:29–31; 18:10). David waged war in the name of the Lord (1 Sam. 17:45) but later shamed the Lord’s name through adultery and murder, bringing rape and bloodshed into his own family and civil war to Israel (2 Samuel 11–18). Even Samuel apparently replicated the paternal negligence of the priest who had raised him, so that his sons turned out as badly as Eli’s (1 Sam. 2:12–17, 22–36; 8:1–4).

If the author had intended to convey the impression that God commended OT figures who were stalwart in trust and spotless in character, he might have selected judges described so briefly that their flaws remained unmentioned (such as Othniel, Ehud, and Shamgar; Judges 3) or a king such as Josiah, distinguished for his righteous reforms (2 Kings 22–23; but see 2 Chron. 35:20–22). Instead our preacher calls us to listen to God as he testifies on behalf of patriarchs, politicians, prophets, and prostitutes who had fluctuating faith and questionable morality but who continued to trust God to be faithful to his promises. If they could act in faith and see God work, so could the sermon-letter’s first hearers, some of whom had “drooping hands” and “weak knees” (Heb. 12:12–13)—and so can we in our trials and frailty.

11:33–34 The overview of faith’s victories after the conquest of Canaan includes military victories against Israel’s hostile neighbors: these heroes “conquered kingdoms, . . . were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.” In addition to the leaders named in verse 32, God granted triumph in battle to other judges, to Jonathan son of Saul, and to Judah’s later kings. Justice was administered by judges such as Deborah and Samuel (Judg. 4:4–5; 1 Sam. 8:1–7; 12:1–5) and by kings such as David and Solomon (2 Sam. 8:15; 1 Kings 3). Although we cannot overlook the defects of those named in verse 32, we must not underestimate the faith involved in Gideon’s waging war against Midian with a brigade reduced from thousands to three hundred, or in Samson’s single-handed slaughter of Philistines, or in young David’s confrontation with the well-armed Philistine champion Goliath.

Those who “obtained promises” would include David, to whom the Lord promised an ongoing dynasty (cf. 2 Sam. 7:11–13). Like Abraham, who received an initial fulfillment of God’s promise of offspring in the birth of Isaac (cf. comment on Heb. 6:15), so other OT believers who awaited the fulfillment of promises Christ would bring (8:6; 11:39–40) received preliminary installments of the redemption for which they hoped (e.g., David’s son Solomon would build God’s house; 2 Sam. 7:12–13; 1 Kings 6).

Various OT believers were delivered from violent death. Samson and David “stopped the mouths of lions” by killing them (cf. Judg. 14:5–6; 1 Sam. 17:34–37), but the wording here echoes Daniel: “My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths.” Daniel emerged unharmed “because he had trusted in his God” (Dan. 6:22–23). Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego “quenched the power of fire” (cf. Daniel 3). David “escaped the edge of the sword” (cf. 1 Sam. 17:45–51), as did prophets such as Elijah, Elisha, and Jeremiah, who had no weapons in hand to defend themselves but relied on their faith in God (1 Kings 19:1–3; 2 Kings 6:30–7:20; Jer. 26:7–24).

11:35 The capstone of the rescues received by OT people of faith was deliverance from death itself, the “last enemy” (1 Cor. 15:26). During a famine, the prophet Elijah sojourned with a Gentile widow and her son in Zarephath, and the Lord sustained her meager store of food through the prophet’s presence. When her son fell ill and died, God granted Elijah’s plea to restore the child to life (1 Kings 17:8–24). His successor, Elisha, received hospitality from a Shunammite couple, and God granted them a son in answer to the prophet’s prayer. When the boy suddenly fell ill and died, the Lord returned him to life and to his mother through the prophet’s intercession (2 Kings 4:8–37).

Suddenly, in the middle of verse 35, the Greek syntax signals a thematic shift: “But others [alloi de] were tortured [tympanizō], not accepting release, in order that they might obtain a better resurrection.” Abraham had received Isaac back in a metaphorical [en parabolē] resurrection (Heb. 11:19), and the mothers of Zarephath and Shunem received sons back in physical revivification. But by faith others endured torture that ended in death, anticipating a new life in the age to come, from which suffering, sorrow, and death will be banished altogether. Those who refused the offer of release because they hoped for a better resurrection may allude specifically to the account of the torture and martyrdom of the aged scribe Eleazar and a family of seven brothers at the hands of the Syrian tyrant Antiochus IV Epiphanes, reported in the apocryphal book of 2 Maccabees. This account mentions the rack (tympanon) as an instrument of torture, and the brothers’ mother encourages them to endure suffering faithfully, expressing to the youngest her hope that “in God’s mercy I may get you back again along with your brothers” (2 Macc. 7:29).¹

11:36–38 Persecutions less extreme than martyrdom—“mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment” (v. 36)—were endured by the prophets as a group (2 Chron. 36:15–16; cf. Mark 12:2–5), including by some to extreme lengths (1 Kings 22:24–27; Jer. 20:2; 37:15–16). These afflictions, the price of bearing the “reproach of Christ” (Heb. 11:26; cf. 13:13), were akin to those that the original audience of Hebrews had borne in the past and were confronting in the present (10:32–34; 13:3). In the first Christian generation, Jesus’ apostles and followers endured such hardships, regarding themselves honored when suffering contempt for the sake of his name (Acts 5:40–41; 8:3; 9:1–2; 16:22–24; 2 Cor. 11:23–27). OT martyrs were slain by stones, saws, and swords. Judah’s king Joash had learned God’s law from the faithful priest Jehoiada, but after his mentor’s death, Joash forsook the Lord. When confronted by Jehoiada’s son Zechariah, the king ordered his death by stoning (2 Chron. 24:17–22). Jewish tradition reported that the prophet Isaiah was put to death by being sawn in half on the orders of King Manasseh. Rulers of both Israel in the north (1 Kings 19:10) and Judah in the south (Jer. 26:20–23) cut faithful prophets down with the sword for speaking the Lord’s troublesome words of judgment.

Even those not called to pay the ultimate price of martyrdom endured a lifestyle of deprivation and marginalization, alienation and exclusion befitting their identity as “strangers and exiles on the earth” (Heb. 11:13). Their destitution, clothing (“skins of sheep and goats”), and homeless “wandering about in deserts and mountains” showed they had no status or security in society (cf. 1 Kings 17:3–7; 2 Kings 1:8; Matt. 3:1–4). They were expelled “outside the camp” (Heb. 13:11–13; cf. comments on 13:11–12; 13:13–14). Their shelter, such as it was, in “dens and caves” (cf. Judg. 6:2; 1 Sam. 13:6; 1 Kings 18:4), foreshadowed the plight of the original audience of Hebrews, whose property had been seized (Heb. 10:34).

Our author would concur with the apostle Paul’s assessment that Christ’s apostles—and, in fact, all of Jesus’ followers—are regarded by those outside the church as “scum of the world, the refuse of all things” (1 Cor. 4:13). The faith that pleases God, however, since it is the demonstrable evidence of things not seen (Heb. 11:1), provides a radically different perspective. It enabled Moses to assess the reproach of Christ, endured in solidarity with God’s mistreated people, as greater wealth than Egypt’s treasures (vv. 25–26). Such faith reveals that these outcasts, whom the world despised, were actually the people “of whom the world was not worthy” (v. 38). They were heirs destined for a far better homeland than this world has to offer: a heavenly country (v. 16).

11:39–40 The discourse on God-pleasing faith began with the announcement that those ancient believers whose lives we read of in the OT were “commended” by God (11:2), and it closes as it opened. By inscribing their stories into his Scriptures, God still bears testimony that these saints were righteous, for they lived by persevering faith (10:36–39). God “commended” Abel and Enoch (11:4, 5) and all those who lived by faith, hoping for the arrival of Christ in redemptive history. Some tasted partial and provisional fulfillments of God’s promise, but on the whole they “did not receive what was promised,” for the “something better” that God provided for us is the new and better covenant, inaugurated on better promises by the blood of Jesus (8:6–12; 9:13–15). By his blood both they who pre-hoped in the Messiah (Eph. 1:12) and we who hear him speaking salvation “in these last days” (Heb. 1:1–2; 2:3–4) are together perfected, cleansed, and qualified to draw near to God.