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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Heb_4:1. Exhortation to the readers, deduced from the historic fact, Heb_3:15-19, and softened by the form of community with the readers adopted by the author, which, however, is involuntarily abandoned again at the close of the verse.
Φοβηθῶμεν οὖν ] Let us therefore be apprehensive.
Indication not of the mere being afraid, but of the earnest endeavour, based upon the fear of coming short of the proposed goal. Calvin: Hic nobis commendatur timor, non qui fidei certitudinem excutiat, sed tantam incutiat sollicitudinem, ne securi torpeamus. Metuendum ergo, non quia trepidare aut diffidere nos oporteat quasi incertos de exitu, sed ne Dei gratiae desimus.
καταλειπομένης … αὐτοῦ ] is made by Cramer and Ernesti dependent on ὑστερηκέναι , against which, however, the anarthrous participle in itself suffices to decide. It is parenthetical, and καταλειπομένης with emphasis preposed: while there yet remains promise of entering into His rest. But a promise remains so long as it has not yet received its fulfilment. For with its fulfilment it ceases to be a promise, loses its existence—inasmuch as the character of the future essential to it has then become present. Erroneously do Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Beza, Strigel, Hyperius, Estius, Schlichting, S. Schmidt, Limborch, Braun, Semler, Carpzov, al., explain: “by neglect or non-observance of the promise.” For, although καταλείπειν can signify that (comp. Act_6:2; Bar_4:1), yet in that case the article τῆς could not have been wanting before ἐπαγγελίας and certainly also an active ( καταλείψας τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν ) would have been chosen in place of the passive participle. Finally, against the latter explanation, and in favour of that above given, pleads the ἀπολείπεται , Heb_4:6; Heb_4:9.
αὐτοῦ ] not of Christ (Rambach, Chr. F. Schmid), but of God. This is required by the connection, alike with that which precedes (Heb_3:11; Heb_3:18) as with that which follows (Heb_4:3-5; Heb_4:10).
ἡ κατάπανσις ] the repose and blessedness which belong to God Himself, and which shall become the portion of believing Christians in the epoch of consummation beginning with the coming again of Christ.
δοκῇ ὑστερηκέναι ] should appear [be seen] to have come short, i.e. to have failed of attaining to the κατάπαυσις . The infinitive perfect characterizes that which, with the dawn of the Parousia, has become an historically completed, definite fact. δοκῇ ὑστερηκέναι , however, does not stand pleonastically in place of the bare ὑστερῇ or ὑστερήσῃ (Michaelis, Carpzov, Abresch, al.), nor is it placed “because, in connection with the question whether and where the ὑστερηκέναι , exists as a concluded, and therefore irreparable, fact, the human perception does not extend beyond a mere videtur” (Kurtz); for it is not here a case of a question to be decided by men still living upon earth. It serves rather, as the videatur often added in Latin, to give a more refined and delicate expression to the discourse. Comp. 1Co_11:16. Erroneously, however, Delitzsch, that in δοκῇ there is contained not only a softening, but, at the same time, also an accentuation of the expression; the sense being: “they are to take earnest heed, lest haply it should even seem that this or the other has fallen short.” For the augmenting “even” is only arbitrarily imported.
Grotius explains δοκῇ by: “ne cui vestrum libeat,” for which, however, the construction with the dative ( δοκῶ μοι ) would have been required, and to which, moreover, the infinitive perfect does not lend itself. Schöttgen finally, Baumgarten, Schulz, Paulus, Stengel, Ebrard, and Hofmann take δοκῇ in the sense of opinetur. The author is thus supposed to be warning the readers against the delusion that they were too late, i.e. that they lived at a time when all the promises had long been fulfilled, and no further means of salvation was to be expected. But the linguistic expression in itself is decisive against this interpretation. The author could not then have put φοβηθώμεν οὖν , μήποτε , but must have written μὴ οὖν φοβηθῶμεν ὑστερηκέναι , or something similar. Moreover, the whole historic situation of the readers of the Epistle to the Hebrews is out of keeping with this view. It was not therein a question of consoling and calming those who still despaired of being able at all to attain to salvation, but of the warning correction of those who were wanting in the assurance of conviction that faith in Christ is the sufficient and only way to salvation. Only a warning to the readers, not by their own behaviour, like the fathers, to incur the loss of salvation, can therefore be contained in Heb_4:1.