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Heb_13:4. Exhortation to chastity in the narrower sense.
Τίμιος ] held in estimation, honourable, sc. ἔστω . Others supplement ἐστίν . So already the Peshito (honoratum est connubium inter omnes), then Beza, Grotius (apud omnes gentes moratas honos est conjugio), M‘Caul, and others. But against this stands the addition: καὶ ἡ κοίτη ἀμίαντος , since the latter could not be asserted as a truth in point of fact. Rather might the indicative rendering thereof be preserved by taking the clauses descriptively: “Marriage honourable in all things,” etc., which then would not be different in sense from the direct requirement that marriage should be honourable. Nevertheless, this mode of interpretation too—recently adopted by Delitzsch—could only be justified if it were followed by a long series of similar statements; here, on the other hand, where imperatives are placed in close proximity before and after, it is unnatural.
ὁ γάμος ] marriage. In this sense the word occurs frequently with the Greeks. In the N. T. it has everywhere else the signification: wedding, and its celebration.
ἐν πᾶσιν ] is neuter: in all things. The majority take ἐν πᾶσιν as masculine. There is then found expressed in it the precept, either, as by Luther and others, that marriage should in the estimation of all be held in honour, i.e. not desecrated by adultery; or, as by Böhme, Schulz, and others, that it should not be despised or slighted by any unmarried person (according to Hofmann, by any one, whether he live in wedlock, or he think that he ought for his own part to decline it); or finally, as by Calvin and many, that it is to be denied to no order of men (as later to the Catholic priests). In the two last cases it is generally supposed that the reference is to a definite party of those who, out of ascetic or other interest, looked unfavourably upon the married life. But for all three modes of explanation, παρὰ πᾶσιν would have been more suitably written than ἐν πᾶσιν ; and a preference for celibacy on the part of born Jews in particular, to whom nevertheless the Epistle to the Hebrews is addressed, is an unexplained presupposition, because one not in accordance with the teaching of history.
καὶ ἡ κοίτη ἀμίαντος ] and the marriage bed (against the ordinary usus loquendi, Valckenaer and Schulz: the cohabitation) be undefiled.
πόρνους γὰρ καὶ μοιχοὺς κρινεῖ ὁ Θεός ] for fornicators and adulterers will God judge (condemn at the judgment of the world). Comp. 1Co_6:9 f., al. The ὁ Θεός placed at the close of the sentence is not without emphasis. It reminds that, though such sins of uncleanness remain for the most part unpunished by earthly judges, the higher Judge will one day be mindful of them.