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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Hebrews 11:10 - 11:10
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Heb_11:10. Inner motive for the πίστει παρῴκησεν , Heb_11:9. His believing expectation was directed not so much to earthly possession, as to the possession of that which was higher and heavenly. His true home he thought not to find upon earth, but only in heaven.
τὴν τοὺς θεμελίους ἔχουσαν πόλιν ] the city which has the foundations, firm and enduring city. The opposite to the tents, which form only a temporary lodging, and may be easily broken up and carried away. What is meant is not the earthly Jerusalem (Grotius, Clericus, Dindorf), to which the author, considering the excessive attachment of his readers to the earthly city of God and the earthly sanctuary, could only have alluded most unsuitably, but the archetype of the same: the heavenly city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, of which the possession for the Christians also is as yet something future, since they will obtain a dwelling therein only at the epoch of the consummation of the Messianic kingdom. The idea of a heavenly Jerusalem was already current among the Jews; its descent to earth was expected on the arising of the Messiah. See Schöttgen, de Hieros. coelesti, in his Hor. Hebr. p. 1205 ff.; Wetstein, N. T. II. p. 229 ff.; Ewald, Comm. in Apocal. pp. 11, 307. From the Jews this conception passed over to the Christians, in so far as that which the Jews expected at the first arising of the Messiah was placed by the latter in the time of the return of Christ. Comp. further Heb_10:13-16, Heb_12:22, Heb_13:14; Gal_4:26; Rev_3:12; Rev_21:2 ff., Rev_21:10 ff.
ἧς τεχνίτης καὶ δημιουργὸς ὁ θεός ] of which the designer and artificer (creator) is God. δημιουργός in the N. T. only here, as in the O. T. only 2Ma_4:1.