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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Hebrews 11:7 - 11:7
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
7. χρηματισθείς. The same word is used as in Heb 8:5, Heb 12:25.
τῶν μηδέπω βλεπομένων. The participle with the art. is in the N. T. normally negatived by μὴ, except in oases of antithesis (like Rom 9:25) and in Eph 5:4 if τὰ οὐκ ἀνήκοντα be there the true reading. Here the μὴ indicates the subjective standpoint.
εὐλαβηθείς. Influenced by godly caution and reverence; the same kind of fear as that implied in Heb 5:7.
κατέκρινεν. His example was in condemnatory contrast with the unbelief of the world (Mat 12:41; Luk 11:31).
τῆς κατὰ πίστιν. “Which is according to faith” (comp. Eze 14:14). Noah is called “righteous” in Gen 6:9, and Philo observes that he is the first to receive this title, and erroneously says that the name Noah means “righteous” as well as “rest.” St Paul does not use the phrase “the righteousness according to faith,” though he has “the righteousness of faith” (Rom 4:13). “Faith” however in this writer never becomes the same as mystic oneness with Christ, but means general belief in the unseen; and “righteousness” is not “justification,” but faith manifested by obedience. Throughout this chapter righteousness is the human condition which faith produces (Heb 11:33), not the Divine gift which faith receives. Hence he says that Noah “became an heir of the righteousness which is according to faith,” i.e. he entered on the inheritance of righteousness which faith had brought him. In 2Pe 2:5 Noah is called “a preacher of righteousness”; and in Wis 10:4 “the righteous man.”