Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Hebrews 6:8 - 6:8

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Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Hebrews 6:8 - 6:8


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

8. ἐκφέρουσα δὲ ἀκάνθας. “But if it freely bear thorns,” Isa 5:6; Pro 24:31. This neglected land resembles converts who have fallen away.

τριβόλους. The Latin tribuli (τρεῖς, βολή). Gen 3:18, &c. In N. T. only here, and Mat 7:16.

ἀδόκιμος. The same word, in another metaphor, occurs in Jer 6:30.

κατάρας ἐγγύς. Lit., “near a curse.” Doubtless there is a reference to Gen 3:18. St Chrysostom sees in this expression a sign of mercy, because he only says “near a curse.” “He who has not yet fallen into a curse, but has got near it, will also be able to get afar from it”; so that we ought, he says, to cut up and burn the thorns, and then we shall be approved. And he might have added that the older “curse” of the land, to which he refers, was by God’s mercy over-ruled into a blessing.

ἡς τὸ τέλος εἰς καῦσιν. Lit., “whose end is for burning.” Comp. Mat 13:30; Isa 44:15; “that it may be for burning.” It is probably a mistake to imagine that there is any reference to the supposed advantage of burning the surface of the soil (Virg. Georg. I. 84 sqq.; Pliny, H. N. XVIII. 39, 72), for we find no traces of such a procedure among the Jews. More probably the reference is to land like the Vale of Siddim, or “Burnt Phrygia,” or “the Solfatara,”—like that described in Gen 19:24; Deu 29:23. Comp. Heb 10:27. And such a land Judea itself became within a very few years of this time, because the Jews would not “break up their fallow ground,” but still continued to “sow among thorns.” Obviously the “whose” refers to the “land,” not to the “curse.”