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Heb_4:3. Confirmation, not of καταλειπομένης ἐπαγγελίας κ . τ . λ ., Heb_4:1 (Bengel), nor of καὶ γάρ ἐσμεν εὐηγγελισμένοι , Heb_4:2 (de Wette, Bloomfield, Bisping), and just as little of the two clauses of Heb_4:2 taken together (Delitzsch, Riehm, Lehrbegr. des Hebräerb. p. 799; Moll), but of τῇ πίστει , Heb_4:2. So also Bleek, Alford, and Kurtz. What Riehm (p. 800, note) alleges against this interpretation—viz. that the author has already, in Heb_3:15 ff. (specially Heb_3:19), shown clearly enough that the Israelites in the wilderness could not enter into the promised rest on account of their unbelief, that it was therefore impossible that a special proof for this fact should once more be required—does not apply; because this very πιστεύσειν was the main question, about the quite special accentuation of which he is seen from the context to be concerned. For surely the whole disquisition, Heb_3:7 to Heb_4:13, has its all-combining centre precisely in the endeavour to animate to πίστις the readers, who were in danger of sinking, like the fathers, into ἀπιστία . The emphasis rests, therefore, upon οἱ πιστεύσαντες , and the sense is: for into rest enter just those of us who have manifested faith. For οἱ πιστεύσαντες cannot signify: if we have displayed faith (Böhme, de Wette, Bisping); this must have been expressed by the anarthrous πιστεύσαντες . On the contrary, οἱ πιστεύσαντες adds a special characterization of the subject of εἰσερχόμεθα , and has the aim of limiting the quite generally expressed “we” to a definite class of us. The present εἰσερχόμεθα is employed with reference to the certainty of that to be looked for in the future, and οἱ πιστεύσαντες , not οἱ πιστεύοντες is placed, because the πιστεύειν must have already preceded as an historic fact, before the εἰσέρχεσθαι can be accomplished.
καθὼς εἴρηκεν κ . τ . λ .] Scripture proof for the first half of Heb_4:3, from the already cited words of Psa_95:11. Wrongly is καθὼς εἴρηκεν connected by Piscator with Heb_4:1, by Brochmann and Bleek II. with Heb_4:2. For to suppose parentheses before it is unwarranted. In quite a contorted manner Hofmann (p. 187): with καθὼς εἴρηκεν begins a protasis, which finds its apodosis in πάλιν τινὰ ὁρίζει ἡμέραν , Heb_4:7; and even the fact that the latter is apodosis to ἐπεὶ ἀπολείπεται does not, according to him, preclude the possibility of this construction, because this second protasis is connected by οὖν with the first, as a deduction from the same!
εἴρηκεν ] sc. ὁ θεός .
ἐν τῇ ὀργῇ μου ] sc. at their unbelief and obstinate perverseness, which naturally suggested itself to the readers from the passage of the psalm more copiously adduced in the third chapter, and the reasoning of the author there attached to it.
καίτοι τῶν ἔργων ἀπὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου γενηθέντων ] although the works were completed from the creation of the world; and accordingly the κατάπαυσις of God was something long present and lying in readiness, in which the Israelites, if they had been believing, might well have obtained part. The words, therefore, serve to point out the deep significance of the divine oath.[64] Wrongly are they taken ordinarily as epexegesis to τὴν κατάπαυσίς μου , in supplying ΚΑΤΆΠΑΥΣΙΝ afresh after ΚΑΊΤΟΙ . Then either ΤῶΝ ἜΡΓΩΝ Κ . Τ . Λ . is made dependent on the ΚΑΤΆΠΑΥΣΙΝ supplied, in that ΚΑΊΤΟΙ is taken, contrary to linguistic usage, in the sense of “et quidem:” “into the rest, namely, from the works which had been completed from the creation of the world” (so Schlichting, S. Schmidt, Wolf, Carpzov, Kypke, Baumgarten, Stuart, Heinrichs, Klee, Bloomfield), to which construction, moreover, the repetition of the article ΤῶΝ after ΤῶΝ ἜΡΓΩΝ would have been in any case necessary; or else ΤῶΝ ἜΡΓΩΝ … ΓΕΝΗΘΈΝΤΩΝ is regarded as a genitive absolute: “namely (or even, although), into a rest, which ensued upon the works of creation being completed” (so Vatablus, Calvin, Beza, Limborch, Cramer, Böhme, Bisping), which however, in like manner, must grammatically have been otherwise expressed. But, in general, the author cannot here have been at all occupied with the subjoining of a definition with regard to the kind of rest which was meant, since he does not anywhere distinguish several kinds of rest, but without further remark presupposes that the κατάπαυσις which ensued for God after the completion of the works of creation is identical with that once promised to the Israelites and now promised to the Christians.
ΤῶΝ ἜΡΓΩΝ ] sc. τοῦ θεοῦ . The necessity for thus supplementing is apparent from Heb_4:4; comp. also Heb_4:10. Very arbitrarily, and forcing in a thought entirely foreign to the context, Ebrard understands ΤῶΝ ἜΡΓΩΝ of the works of men, supposing that with καθὼς εἴρηκεν “the author proceeds to show to what extent even the O. T. itself points out the insufficiency of the law and its ἜΡΓΑ ” (!), regards ΤῶΝ ἜΡΓΩΝ as antithesis to the preceding ΟἹ ΠΙΣΤΕΎΣΑΝΤΕς (!), and finds the thought, “that all that which can be called ἜΡΓΑ has been wrought from the time of the creation of the world, but has not sufficed to bring mankind to the ΚΑΤΆΠΑΥΣΙς , to a condition of satisfied repose,” whence follows “that an entirely new way of salvation—not that of human doing and human exertion, but that of faith in God’s saving deed—is necessary in order to attain to the ΚΑΤΆΠΑΥΣΙς ” (!).
ἈΠῸ ΚΑΤΑΒΟΛῆς ΚΌΣΜΟΥ ] from the foundation of the world, i.e. since the world began. Comp. Heb_9:26; Mat_13:35; Mat_25:34; Luk_11:50; Rev_13:8; Rev_17:8.
[64] The aim in καίτοι τῶν ἔργων κ . τ . λ . is not, as Bleek thinks, to prove: “that men had not perchance even then, after the creation of the world, entered with Him [sc. by the institution of the Sabbath] into the rest here intended by God;” for this was a truth which hardly stood in need of any proof.