What the book is
Hebrews calls itself “this message of encouragement” (13:22). It reads less like a letter than a sermon, built on the Old Testament and pressed home with warnings and appeals. Its readers were believers who had suffered for their faith and were tempted to drift away. To hold them, the writer shows how Jesus fulfils and surpasses everything in Israel’s worship: the angels, Moses, the priesthood, the sacrifices and the tabernacle itself. It opens:
Long ago God spoke to the ancestors through the prophets, in many separate portions and by many different means. But at the end of these days he has spoken to us through the Son, whom he appointed heir of all things and through whom he also made the ages.
Chapter 11, the long roll call of men and women of faith from Abel to the prophets, is one of the best-known chapters in the Bible.
Who wrote it, and when
No one knows who wrote Hebrews. The book names no author, and its first readers seem to have known who it was. In the Eastern church it was long counted among Paul’s letters, and it is bound with them in the earliest collection that survives; but its style, vocabulary and way of arguing are unlike Paul’s, and the writer says he heard the message from those who heard the Lord (2:3), where Paul insists he received it from Christ himself. Barnabas, Apollos and Priscilla have all been suggested. Origen, in the third century, said that only God knows who wrote it, and most scholars agree.
It was written before the end of the first century, since Clement of Rome knew it around AD 96. Many date it before AD 70, because it speaks of the priests’ work as still going on and says nothing of the temple’s destruction.
How the book is laid out
- The Son, greater than the angels (1–2): God has spoken through his Son, who for a little while was made lower than the angels and tasted death for everyone.
- Greater than Moses (3–4): a warning from Israel in the wilderness, and the rest that remains for God’s people.
- The great high priest (5–7): Jesus, a priest in the order of Melchizedek, the priest-king who met Abraham, with a sharp warning against falling away (6).
- The new covenant and the one sacrifice (8–10): the covenant promised in Jeremiah 31, and Christ’s own blood offered once for all, opening the way into God’s presence.
- Faith (11): Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Rahab and many more, who held on to what was promised.
- Endurance (12–13): running the race with eyes on Jesus, the discipline of a Father, and closing instructions and greetings.
What to look for
Faith is Hebrews’ great word, and the draft keeps it the same throughout. The writer quotes the Old Testament from its Greek translation, the Septuagint, and sometimes the argument depends on its wording, as with “a body you have made ready for me” (10:5). See The Septuagint, the first Bible translation and How the New Testament quotes the Old.
How Open Word Bible translates Hebrews
”Apart from God” (2:9). Almost all manuscripts say that Jesus tasted death for everyone “by the grace of God”. The SBL Greek New Testament, which the draft follows, reads instead “apart from God”, a reading known to early Christian writers such as Origen. The two Greek phrases look much alike, and a copyist could easily have changed the startling one into the familiar one. The draft follows its text, with “by the grace of God” in a footnote, and a decision explains what the phrase most likely means: that Jesus went through death fully, without God sparing him, not that the Son was ever cut off from God.
The warning (6:4–6). The writer says that those who have shared in the Spirit’s gifts and then fall away cannot be brought back to repentance. What this means has long divided churches. The draft translates the Greek as it stands, and the footnote sets out the main readings: that such people were never true believers, that believers can lose their salvation, or that the case is put to warn and not to describe anyone.
Faith defined (11:1). “Faith is the assurance of what we hope for, the proof of realities we do not see.” The two key words are rare and have been read in several ways, among them “substance”, “confidence” and even “title deed”; the footnotes give them.
The firstborn (1:6). When God “brings the firstborn into the world”, the writer most likely means the Son’s enthronement after his resurrection; the footnote gives the other readings, his birth and his coming again.