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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Hebrews 6:19 - 6:19
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19. ὡς ἀγκύραν. An anchor seems to have been an emblem of Hope—being something which enables us to hope for safety in danger—from very early days (Aesch. Agam. 488), and is even found as a symbol of Hope on coins. Clement of Alexandria tells us that it was one of the few symbols which Christians wore on their signet-rings, and it is frequent in the Catacombs. The notion that this metaphor adds anything to the argument in favour of the Pauline authorship of the Epistle, because St Paul too sometimes uses maritime metaphors, shews how little the most ordinary canons of literary criticism are applied to the Scriptures. St Paul never happens to use the metaphor of “an anchor,” but it might have been equally well used by a person who had never seen the sea in his life.
“Or if you fear
Put all your trust in God: that anchor holds.”
Tennyson, Enoch Arden.
εἰσερχομένην εἰς τὸ ἐσώτερον τοῦ καταπετάσματος. This expression is not very clear. The meaning is that the hawser which holds the anchor of our Christian hope passeth into the space which lies behind the veil, i.e. into the very sanctuary of Him who is “the God of Hope” (Rom 15:13). “The veil” is the great veil (Parocheth) which separated the Holy from the Holy of Holies (Exo 26:31-35; Heb 10:20; Mat 27:51, &c.). The Christian’s anchor of hope is not dropped into any earthly sea, but passes as it were through the depths of the aerial ocean, mooring us to the very throne of God.
“Oh! life as futile then as frail!
What hope of answer or redress?—
Behind the veil! Behind the veil!”
In Memoriam.
The word καταπέτασμα usually applies to this veil before the Holy of Holies, while κάλυμμα (as in Philo) is strictly used for the outer veil.