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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - Hebrews 11:6 - 11:6
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
without - Greek, “apart from faith”: if one be destitute of faith (compare Rom 14:23).
to please - Translate, as Alford does, the Greek aorist, “It is impossible to please God at all” (Rom 8:8). Natural amiabilities and “works done before the grace of Christ are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ; yea, rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin” [Article XIII, Book of Common Prayer]. Works not rooted in God are splendid sins [Augustine].
he that cometh to God - as a worshipper (Heb 7:19).
must believe - once for all: Greek aorist tense.
that God is - is the true self-existing Jehovah (as contrasted with all so-called gods, not gods, Gal 4:8), the source of all being, though he sees Him not (Heb 11:1) as being “invisible” (Heb 11:27). So Enoch; this passage implies that he had not been favored with visible appearances of God, yet he believed in God’s being, and in God’s moral government, as the Rewarder of His diligent worshippers, in opposition to antediluvian skepticism. Also Moses was not so favored before he left Egypt the first time (Heb 11:27); still he believed.
and ... is - a different Greek verb from the former “is.” Translate, “is eventually”; proves to be; literally, “becomes.”
rewarder - renderer of reward [Alford]. So God proved to be to Enoch. The reward is God Himself diligently “sought” and “walked with” in partial communion here, and to be fully enjoyed hereafter. Compare Gen 15:1, “I am thy exceeding great reward.”
of them - and them only.
diligently seek - Greek, “seek out” God. Compare “seek early,” Pro 8:17. Not only “ask” and “seek,” but “knock,” Mat 7:7; compare Heb 11:12; Luk 13:24, “Strive” as in an agony of contest.