Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Hebrews 11:14
For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.
14. that they seek a country ] Rather, “that they are seeking further after a native land.” Hence comes the argument of the next verse that it was not their old home in Chaldea for which they were yearning, but a heavenly native-land.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
For they that say such things … – That speak of themselves as having come into a land of strangers; and that negotiate for a small piece of land, not to cultivate, but to bury their dead. So we should think of any strange people coming among us now – who lived in tents; who frequently changed their residence; who became the purchasers of no land except to bury their dead, and who never spake of becoming permanent residents. We should think that they were in search of some place as their home, and that they had not yet found it. Such people were the Hebrew patriarchs. They lived and acted just as if they had not yet found a permanent habitation, but were traveling in search of one.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 14. Declare plainly that they seek a country.] A man’s country is that in which he has constitutional rights and privileges; no stranger or sojourner has any such rights in the country where he sojourns. These, by declaring that they felt themselves strangers and sojourners, professed their faith in a heavenly country and state, and looked beyond the grave for a place of happiness. No intelligent Jew could suppose that Canaan was all the rest which God had promised to his people.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The reason of faiths effect in their dying, is the bringing in view a better life, state, and place than any earthly one. For these believers, by word and life professing themselves to be strangers and pilgrims on this earth, and seeing Gods promises, and embracing them,
declare and show plainly to all who see them, or converse with them,
that they seek a country, and a place of rest, which they were not possessed of. For no person is a stranger or pilgrim in his own country; but these inquired the way, and walked in it, which led them to a better than any this earth afforded them: and so the apostle brings us back to that which he had declared before, Heb 11:10, and immediately prevents the suggestion, that this country should be their former country, and clears it to be a better.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
14. Forproof that “faith”(Heb 11:13) was theiractuating principle.
declare plainlymake itplainly evident.
seekGreek,“seek after“; implying the direction towards whichtheir desires ever tend.
a countryrather asGreek, “a fatherland.” In confessing themselvesstrangers here, they evidently imply that they regard not thisas their home or fatherland, but seek after another and a better.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For they that say such things,…. That they are strangers and pilgrims on earth:
declare plainly that they seek a country; heaven, so called, for the largeness of it; it is a good land, a land of uprightness; a pleasant land, a land of rest, though a land afar off; here the Father of Christ, and Christ himself, and all his people dwell: the Syriac version renders it, “their own city”; the place of their nativity, of which they were citizens: the act of “seeking” it supposes some things, with respect to the place where they were, as that they were in a strange land, had no settlement there, nor satisfaction in it, and that they sat loose to the world, and the things of it; and some things respecting the country sought after, as that they were not in it; that it was at a distance from them; that they had some knowledge of it, and of the way to it; that their desires were after it, and that they had a strong affection and value for it: the right way to this country is not mere civility and morality, nor legal righteousness, nor birth privileges, nor submission to outward ordinances, nor a mere profession of religion, but the Lord Jesus Christ; he is the true way to eternal life; it is his righteousness which gives a title to it, and on account of which believers expect it, though not without holiness, nor without trouble. The right manner of seeking it is, in the first place, above all things else, with the whole heart, by faith, and by patient continuance in well doing. Many are the reasons which may induce believers to seek it; it is their own, and their Father’s country; it is a better one than that in which they are; and because of the company they shall there enjoy, and the work they shall be employed in; and because of the happiness they will be possessed of; and because their inheritance, riches, and treasures, lie here.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
A country of their own (). Land of the fathers (), one’s native land (Joh 4:44). Cf. our patriotic, patriotism.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Declare plainly [] . o P. See on Joh 14:21. Occasionally in LXX Rend. “make it manifest.”
They seek a country (patrida ejpizhtousin). The verb is found in LXX, chiefly in the sense of seeking after God or another deity. See 2Ki 1:3, 6; 2Ki 3:11; 2Ki 8:8; 2Ki 22:18; 2Ch 18:6. Comp. ejpizhtoumenh poliv a city sought after (Zion), Isa 61:12. Patriv is a native country; a fatherland. Only here and in Gospels and Acts. Quite often in LXX
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “For they that say such things,” (hoi gar toi auta legontes) “For those saying these things,” giving this kind of testimony, as Abraham did, Gen 23:4; as Jacob did, Gen 49:18; as Job did, Job 19:25-26; and as Simeon did, Luk 2:25-32.
2) “Declare plainly that they seek a country,” (emphanizousin hoti patrida epizetousin) “Make it emphatically manifest that they seek a fatherland,” an inheritance land, Canaan, as their home, a land with which they have racial, family lineage rights of redemption heirship thru Christ; and even a position as kings and priests with him and unto him in glory, in the coming ages, Rom 8:17-18; Rom 8:23; Rev 5:9-10; 1Co 2:9; 2Co 4:18.
FAITH SEES ETERNAL LIFE
As he that is to pass over some broad and deep river must not look downward to the current of the stream, but must set his foot sure, and keep his eye on the bank, on the farther shore; so he that draws near death must look over the waves of death, and fix his eye of faith on eternal life.
– Cawdry
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
(14) Such things.I am a stranger and a sojourner with you (Gen. 23:4). The days of the years of my pilgrimage. . . . the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage (Gen. 47:9).
Declare plainly that they seek a country.Rather, make it plain that they are seeking a home, or fatherland.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
14. Say such things Confess themselves pilgrims on earth.
A country A home-land, which, ceasing to be nomads and immigrants, they can call “my country.” The pilgrim here longs for the country of the resurrection.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘For they that say such things make it manifest that they are seeking after a country of their own.’
For they who declare such things, that they are ‘strangers’ and ‘sojourners’ (as those who live in a foreign land and with no permanent possession or right of citizenship), are looking forward in faith and certain hope to the great blessings that God has in store for them, and reveal quite clearly that they are seeking a country of their own. A place where they can worship God fully and obey Him. A place where they will enjoy His continual blessing and presence. A place where the world will affect them no longer. A place of peace, love and security. A place which is God’s inheritance. A place which they have not yet entered. This is true of all who say such things, whether then or now.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Heb 11:14. Declare plainly that they seek a country. This translation by no means comes up to the spirit and beauty of the original. The word (derived from , a father,) does not signify a country in general, but such a country as a man’s fatherdwells in, and possesses as rightfully his own; and wherein consequently his children have a right to dwell withhim. This their father’s own country is opposed to a strange or foreign country, Heb 11:9 wherein they looked upon themselves as strangers, sojourners, pilgrims, or travellers; Heb 11:13. Their father’s country, and what therefore those obedient children of God might in a sense call their native country, or their proper home, is the blessed place where God their Father will dwell with them for ever; even the city of the heavenly Jerusalem. See Rev 22:3-5.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Heb 11:14 ff. That the patriarchs are , they have themselves confessed; that they were so , the author has added by way of more nearly defining. The legitimacy of this exposition of their words he now proves (Heb 11:14 , Heb 11:16 ). By those utterances the patriarchs declare that they have not already a country, they are only seeking it. If, now, they had set their hearts upon an earthly country, they would certainly have had time and opportunity enough to have returned to that which they had left, but this they did not; they must thus have longed for a heavenly country.
] Theodoret: . Oecumenius and Theophylact: .
] ardently to seek or desire something.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
14 For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.
Ver. 14. That they seek a country ] Fugiendure est ad clarissimam patriam; ibi pater, ibi omnia. Away, home to our country, saith one, there is our Father, there is our all, saith Plotin. (ap. Aug. de Civ. De;). To die, is, in Bernard’s language, no more than redoatriasse, to go home again.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
14 .] For (justification of the assertion, that it was that they ran and finished their course, by the inference from their own confession) they who say such things make manifest (so Act 23:15 ; where see examples in Wetst. The word in this sense is pure classical Greek: cf. Plato, Soph. p. 244, , , ; and p. 218, ) that they seek after (in , the preposition implies the direction of the wish or yearning) a home (our English word ‘country,’ without some possessive pronoun, does not give the idea strongly enough. Even Bleek, who might have given it, dass sie ein Baterland suchen , has rendered, dass sie nach der Heimath suchen : , , , , . Thdrt.).
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Hebrews
SEEK THE FATHERLAND
Heb 11:14
WHAT things? Evidently those which the writer has just been saying that the patriarchs of old ‘said,’ as stated in the previous words – ‘They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims upon earth.’ The writer has in his mind, no doubt, some of the beautiful incidents of the Book of Genesis; especially, I suppose, that very touching one where Abraham is standing up by the side of his dead, in the presence of the sons of Herb, and begs from them for the first time a little piece of land that he could call his Own. He tells them that he is a stranger and a sojourner amongst them, and wants ‘the field and the cave that is therein’ in which to bury his dead. Or he may be thinking of the no less touching incident, when Jacob, in his extreme old age, tells the King of Egypt that the days of the years of his pilgrimage have been few and evil, not having attained to the years of his father. The writer points to these declarations, and reads into them what he was entitled to read into them, something more than a mere acceptance of the external facts of the speakers’ condition, as wanderers in the midst of a civilization to which they did not belong. He sees gleaming through the primary force of the words the further hope which the patriarchs cherished, though it was, as it wore, latent in the nearer hope of an earthly inheritance – viz., that of the city which hath foundations, and the country which they could call their own. Although the writer is not adducing those patriarchs as being patterns for us, but is only establishing his great thesis that they lived by faith in a future blessing, as we ought to do, still we may take the words of my text, with a permissible amount of violence, as appropriate to all of us who call ourselves Christians. ‘They who say such things do hereby declare plainly,’ and by their lives should declare more plainly still, ‘that they are seeking a country.’ I. Note, then, first of all, the remarkable representation here given of that future for which Christians look, as being their native land. The word of our text is very inadequately rendered in our Authorized Version as merely ‘a country.’ Fully and etymologically rendered, it would be ‘the fatherland.’ Whether we choose to adopt that somewhat un-English expression or no, at all events, the idea conveyed is that these men, having come out from Mesopotamia, and being wanderers, in their goat’s-hair tents, in the midst of the fenced cities of Canaan, were thereby seeking for a land which was their native land, their home, the place to which they felt that they belonged far more truly than to the land from which they came out, or to the land in which they were for the moment wandering. That is the idea that I would enforce as needful for all true and noble Christian living, the recognition that our true home, the country and the order with which we are connected by all our deepest and most real affinities, the land where, and where only, we shall feel at rest, and surrounded by familiar things and loved persons, is that land which lies beyond the flood. We do not belong, and should feel that we do not belong, to the place and order where we happen to stand to-day. This present and the order of things here should be for us either like that Aram Naharaim, ‘the Syria between the two rivers,’ the dust of which Abraham had shaken from off his feet; or it should be like that rotten though splendid civilization into the midst of which He came, and of which He sternly refused to enrol Himself as a citizen. Our home is where Jesus Christ is, and there is something pro- roundly wrong in us unless we feel that that, and not this, is our native soil, and that there, and not here, is the place to which we belong. Our colonists on the other side of the world, though they have never seen England, talk about ‘going home.’ And so we, inhabitants of this outlying colony of the great city, ought to look across the flood, and sometimes catch a sight of those bright realms beyond, and always feel that they are really our native land. ‘They that say such things declare plainly’ that they are not citizens here, but belong yonder. II. Then, mark again, the other parallel which may be drawn between these men’s attitude and ours, in that their whole career was a seeking the true Fatherland. Again, our translation is inadequate because it does not give the energetic force of the word that is rendered ‘seek.’ It was not a seeking, on the part of the patriarchs, in the sense of looking for an unseen thing, or searching about to find an undiscovered one. That was all done for them by God. They had not to seek in that unsatisfactory and disturbing sense, but they had to seek, in the sense of projecting their desires onwards to the blessing that God held out in His hand for them, and letting their faith grasp the promise and their thoughts expatiate in the future, which was as sure to them as the present, because God had made it. The word for seeking in the original is very emphatic. It implies the going out of longings and yearnings and thoughts to something which is there, to be grasped and laid hold of. Thank God we have not to seek our native soil as wanderers who may perchance fail in our quest, and die at last homeless. It is brought to us, and certified to us by the divine veracity, sealed to us by the divine faithfulness, reserved for us by the divine power, made possible for us by the divine forgiving mercy. But still we have to seek, letting our hearts go out towards that good land, letting our thoughts play about it and become familiar with it, letting our desires tend towards it, and ever, in all the dusty ways of daily life, and amidst all the distractions of monotonous and recurring duties, keeping our heads above the mist and looking into the clear blue, where we may see the vision of the certain future. The management and discipline of our thoughts is included in that seeking, and I am afraid that that is a part of Christian culture woefully neglected by the average Christian of this day. If we consider the comparative magnitude of the future and the present, and the certain issue of the present in the future, are our thoughts of it such as common-sense would make them? Is that ‘land that is very far off’ a frequent ordinary subject of contemplation by us, in the midst of the hurry and bustle of our daffy life? Or have we let the glasses of the telescope of hope get all dimmed and dirty; and when we do polish them up, do we use them to look at the stars with, or at the earth and its beauties? Whither do my anticipations of the future tend? Is my hope shortsighted or longsighted? Is it only able to see the things on this side the river, or can it catch any of the glories beyond? Our fault is not in not living enough in the future, but in the selection of the future in which we live. ‘We are saved by hope,’ if we rightly direct the hope. We are ruined by hopes when they are cribbed, cabined, and confined to this miserable present. Brother! do you seek your home by the cultivation of the contemplation of it and the desire for it, and so almost emulate the divine prerogative and call things that are not as though they were? Oh! how different our lives would be if we walked in the light of that great hope, and how different everything here would be if we regarded all here as auxiliary and subsidiary to that. Above all, if it were true of us, as it ought to be in accordance with our profession of being Christians, that we seek a country, should we think about death as we do? Should we drape it in such ugly forms? Should we shrink from it as most of us, I fear, do as a dread and an enemy and a disaster? No doubt there is, and there always will be. a natural shrinking; but the man who can say that to die is to be with Christ, and who sets that thought ever before him, will be helped over the dark gulf; and the shrinking will be turned, if not into desire at least into calm scorn of the last enemy, the encounter with whom does not diminish his longing to be with his Lord. These are heights, of Christian feeling so far above most of us that we are tempted to think them unreal and fantastic; but they are the heights to which we should naturally rise, if once we realised the greatness, the blessedness, the certainty of that hidden hope above. Dear friends, if we look onwards to our own end, are we only or chiefly conscious of a cold thrill of recoil and repulsion? Let us ask ourselves if our feeling corresponds to our profession that Christ is our life, and that where He is is our heaven and our hope. III. Lastly, notice the unmistakable witness of profession and life which we are to bear. ‘They declare plainly.’ They make it absolutely and unmistakably manifest, says the writer, that they seek a country. It did not need that Abraham should stand up before the sons of Heth and say, ‘I am a pilgrim and a sojourner amongst you.’ They all knew it. There was his tent outside the city walls, and a strange life that little tribe of people, he and his followers, lived, wandering up and down the land and refusing to settle ,themselves anywhere. They lived a life unlike that of the people among whom they dwelt, We know that in these early days there were fenced cities, outside the walls of which they dwelt, and there all the evidences of a highly developed and advanced civilization existing in the land. These patriarchs lived like gypsies in the country, roaming everywhere but rooted nowhere; and the reason they so lived was that they ‘looked for a city which hath foundations.’
‘Yes! the man, before the eyes of whose faith there is ever shining that permanent state of blessed union with Jesus Christ and of sweet society with all the good, can afford to recognise the things that are seen as transient, as they must be. He will be in no danger of mistaking the fleeting shows for eternal realities. If we are looking for the city we shall dwell in tabernacles; and the more our faith grasps the permanent realities beyond, the more will our experience realise the transitoriness of the things here by our sides. The very fact that men call themselves Christians is a declaration that they are seeking for a city. Do you act up to your declaration? Is your Christianity a matter of lip or of life? Have you pitched your tents outside the city to confirm your declaration that you do not belong to this community? And do you live as in it, but not of it? Our outward lives ought to make most distinctly manifest that we are citizens of the heavens, and that will be made manifest by abstinence from a great deal There are many things, right enough in themselves, which are not expedient, and therefore not right, for a Christian man to do, if they fasten him down to this present. And you will have to cut yourselves loose from a good deal to which otherwise it would he permissible for you to be attached, if you intend to rise towards God; and whatever we do like other people, we shall have to do from a manifestly different temper or spirit. Two men may engage in precisely the same occupation. For instance, there may be two tellers at one side of a bank counter, or two depositors on the other, doing exactly the same things, and yet one of them may do them so as to ‘declare plainly,’ even in that act, ‘that he is seeking a country,’ and that he is not wholly swallowed up in the love and high estimate of worldly wealth. The motive from which, the end towards which, the help by which, the accompanying thoughts with which, we do our daily, secular work, may hallow it, and make it express our heavenly-mindedness, as completely as if we went apart on the mountain, and held communion in prayer and praise with God. We do not want ‘plain’ declarations by so-called religious acts, still less by religious professions, half as much as we do plain declarations by an obviously Christian way of doing secular things, and living the daily life of men upon earth. Remember the illustration from the conduct of the very men of whom my text speaks. I said that they kept themselves aloof from the civilisation around them. That requires modification to be a full statement of the case. They threw themselves into it, when necessary, with all energy. Lot went down to Sodom because it offered good grazing land. He behaved just as many professing Christians handle the world, going down amongst the slime-pits and the scoundrels for the sake of making a little money out of them – whilst Abraham stopped on the. more barren pastures of the hills, with freedom, security, and holiness. When Lot got what he deserved, and was involved in the disaster of the city that he had made his home, Abraham did not say, ‘It is a very sad thing, but Lot must get himself out of the difficulty.’ He buckled on his sword and armed his followers, turning himself into a soldier for the time being, and promptly gave chase to the robbers, following them all through the night, along the whole length of the Holy Land, and pounced upon them, routing them, as they lay in fancied security, and liberating their prisoner, who was the captive of his own lust and covetousness much more sadly than of the Eastern marauders. And so, the detachment from the present, which is needful for Christian men, is to be combined with the most energetic discharge of the duties which we owe to ourselves and to those around us, and especially to be combined with the most diligent work for those who have fallen captive to the snares of the world which we, by His mercy, have been able to escape. And he will best manifest, and most plainly declare, that he seeks a country who seeks most earnestly to hallow all ordinary life, and to do the work, here and now, which God prescribes for him: There is an old story about a question being put to some good man who was fond of playing chess.
‘What would you do if, when you were at the chess-board, you were told that Jesus Christ was coming?’ ‘Finish the game’ was the wise answer. There is another story about a scene in the American House of Representatives in its early time. A great darkness came on during the sitting, and some timid souls began to think that the last day was at band. The President said, ‘Bring candles and let us go on with the debate.’ If the Master is coming, we are best found doing our work. Yes! Best doing our work, if it is His work. And all our work may be His if it is done for His sake and in His strength. Christian. men and women! see to it that there he no ambiguity about your position, no mistaking your nationality, and that in your life, without ostentation, without offensively forcing your religion upon peoples’ notice, you declare plainly that you, at any rate, seek your native home.
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
declare plainly. Greek. emphanizo. See Heb 9:24. App-106.
country = a (true) home. Greek. patris. Only here and seven times in the Gospels.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
14.] For (justification of the assertion, that it was that they ran and finished their course, by the inference from their own confession) they who say such things make manifest (so Act 23:15; where see examples in Wetst. The word in this sense is pure classical Greek: cf. Plato, Soph. p. 244, , , ; and p. 218, ) that they seek after (in , the preposition implies the direction of the wish or yearning) a home (our English word country, without some possessive pronoun, does not give the idea strongly enough. Even Bleek, who might have given it, dass sie ein Baterland suchen, has rendered, dass sie nach der Heimath suchen:- , , , , . Thdrt.).
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Heb 11:14. , show) A remarkable word. Isa 3:9, , they did not deny, they declared.-, they seek) Citizens of the world (Cosmopolit) do not call themselves strangers in the world (Cosmoxeni).
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
From the profession of these patriarchs, that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth, the apostle makes an inference from what is contained therein, which doth more expressly declare their faith than the words themselves which they were said to use.
Heb 11:14. .
Heb 11:14. For they that say such things, declare plainly that they seek a country.
For they that say such things; be they who they will that speak such things as. these sincerely. Or, these persons, in their circumstances, saying such things as they are recorded in the Scripture to have spoken and publicly avowed.
Declare plainly; they make it manifest and evident unto all: that is, there is this plain, open meaning and sense in their words. This is that which may easily be known to have been their mind, and what they designed in their words or expressions.
And this was, that they did seek a country, or a city for themselves, as the Syriac expresseth it; that they diligently inquired after it, as the word signifies, or sought it with diligence.
There is an entrance in these words on a train of evident consequences, one upon and from another, which he pursues in the next verses. For from their profession he concludes that they desired a country. And if they did so, it must be either that from whence they came, or some other. That from whence they came it could not be, for the reason he assigns. And if some other, it must be a better than either that from whence they came or where they were; which could be no other but a heavenly country, that is, heaven itself.
And some few things we may observe on this first inference of the apostle; as,
Obs. This is the genuine and proper way of the interpretation of the Scripture, when from the words themselves, considered with relation unto the persons speaking them, and all their circumstances, we declare what is their determinate mind and sense. Hereunto, on the due apprehension of the literal sense of the words themselves, the studious exercise of reason, in all proper ways of arguing, is required.
Some there are who deny all exposition of the Scripture; which is to say, that it ought not to be understood. Some are feigned to suppose that there is nothing needful hereunto but spiritual illumination. And some think there is no need of any such thing thereunto, but only the common use of our rational faculties, as in the understanding of other arts and sciences. The vanity of all which imaginations I have at large elsewhere discovered [10] and disproved.
[10] See vol. 4 of miscellaneous works, book 6, part 2 of Pneumatologia. Ed.
The inference of the apostle from these words of the patriarchs is so evident and uncontrollable, that he affirms themselves to declare plainly what he declares to be the sense contained in their words. And indeed, take the words precisely, without a consideration of the mind wherewith they were spoken, the circumstances in which, and the end for which they were spoken, and they do not express any peculiar act or fruit of faith; for the very heathen had an apprehension that this life is but a kind of pilgrimage. So speaks Cicero,
De Senectute, cap. 23. Ex vita ita discedo tanquam ex hospitio, non tanquam ex domo. Commorandi enim natura diversorium nobis, non habitandi locum dedit.
But under their circumstances, there must be another sense in the words For they speak them not as the common condition of mankind, but as their peculiar portion in the world, with respect unto the promises of God. And herein in general they declare a sense of want, of an indigent condition; that it is not with them as with others, who have their portion in this life. And whoever declares a sense of want, at the same time declares a desire of a suitable supply of that want; which is included in the sense of it. And the want which they so declared consisting in this, that in this world they were strangers and pilgrims, the only supply whereof is a country of their own for them to inhabit and enjoy, with all its rights and privileges, they declared plainly therein that they sought a country: that alone is wanting to any as they are strangers and pilgrims; that alone will cause them to cease so to be. Most men do meet with and are sensible of sundry wants, yet they are such as may be supplied in the place where they are in this world; and their great desire, with their utmost endeavor, is, that they may be here supplied. Such persons, be they never so poor, so indigent, so harbourless, are not pilgrims on the earth; this is their home, although they are but ordinarily provided for. Much less are they so who have an affluence of all things unto their satisfaction, though they sometimes meet with a pinch or loss. They only are so who live always in a sense of such wants as this world cannot supply.
Fuente: An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews
they seek: Heb 11:16, Heb 13:14, Rom 8:23-25, 2Co 4:18, 2Co 5:1-7, Phi 1:23
Reciprocal: Gen 12:9 – going on still Exo 2:22 – for he said Joh 14:2 – my Rom 3:25 – remission Rev 5:9 – and hast
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Heb 11:14. The faith described in the preceding verse implies a belief in some other country than was then visible.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Heb 11:14. For (they proved that they lived and died in faith) they who say of themselves that they are sojourners (Gen 23:4)of their life that it is a pilgrimage (Gen 47:9), a wandering in a foreign land, make it plain that it is a fatherland, a true home, they are seeking, and not the home they have left in the country of Terah, or elsewhere.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
As if the apostle had said, “They that say such things, namely, that they, even in the land of promise, are pilgrims and strangers, do declare plainly that they seek a country where they may rest and dwell, when this their pilgrimage on earth is ended.” Now this country was not Chaldea, but heaven; a glorious city, which God prepared for them, as an abundant recompence for their earthly country, which they left at God’s command.
Here note, 1. That heaven is the Christian’s proper country; they are born form heaven, their conversation is in heaven, their eternal habitation is there; their head and husband, their friends and kindred, are there: and it is theirs by a right of donation, by a right of purchase, by a right of possession, and by a right of conquest.
Note, 2. That this heavenly country is by far the better, yea, the best of countries; best in regard of the safety and security of it; best in regard of the order and government of it; best in regard of the company and society dwelling in it; all saints: best in regard of the immunities and privileges belonging to it, and in regard of the duration and continuance of it; a country that can never be invaded, never be conquered.
Note, 3. That sincere Christians have strong desires after, and vehement longings for, this better, this best of countries: Now they desire a better country: and God is not ashamed to be called their God–they that by their faith give glory to God in acknowledging his faithfulness in this life, he will never be ashamed of them, either in life or at death, or after death.
Learn, 1. That it is the privilege, honour, and advantage that any can be made partakers of, that God will hear the name and title of their God.
2. God’s owning of believers as his, and of himself to be their God, is an abundant recompence of all the hardships which they undergo in this their pilgrimage. The top and sun of all happiness, is to have the Lord for our God.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Heb 11:14-16. For they that say such things That speak of themselves as strangers and pilgrims; declare plainly that they seek a country Different from that in which they dwell. Or rather, that they seek their own, or their fathers country, as , the word here used, signifies. They show that they keep in view, and long for, their eternal home. And truly if they had been mindful of that country Ur, of the Chaldees; from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned From the call of Abraham to the death of Jacob there were two hundred years, so that they had time enough for a return if they had had a mind to it; there was no external difficulty in their way by force or opposition; the way was not so far, but that Abraham sent his servant thither out of Canaan, and Jacob went the same journey with his staff. The fact is, all love to, and desire after their native country, was so mortified in these holy men, by faith influencing them to act in obedience to the call of God, that no remembrance of their first enjoyments, no impressions from their native air and soil, no bonds of consanguinity among the people, nor difficulties they met with in their wanderings, could kindle in them any peculiar love and attachment of their native place. Abraham in particular considered the very thought of returning into Chaldea as a renunciation of his interest in the promises of God; and therefore he made his servant Eliezer swear, that on no pretence whatever would he carry Isaac into Chaldea, Gen 24:5-8. This absolute renunciation of Chaldea, notwithstanding God gave Abraham none inheritance in Canaan, no, not so much as to set his foot on, (Act 7:5,) is a strong proof of his knowledge of the true meaning of the promises, and of his faith in them. But now they desire Or desired, rather; , they strongly desired, they lounged after; a better country Than Chaldea; that is, a heavenly Which God hath promised to them. This is a full, convincing proof that the patriarchs had a revelation and promise of eternal life and felicity in heaven. Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God Which, speaking after the manner of men, he would have been, if he had provided nothing better for them than what he gave them to enjoy on earth. Or if they had been content with, and attached to, earthly things. But since by faith they sought after a better inheritance, on the possession of which they entered partly at death, and shall more fully enter when their bodies are conformed to Christs glorious body, therefore God counts it no disparagement to or reflection upon his greatness and majesty, to own himself to be a God in covenant with them, since he has provided eternal life, felicity, and glory for them. Or, as Macknight states the case, He might have been ashamed of the name [of their God] if Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to whom as their God he had promised Canaan, but who had died without receiving the possession of it, are not to be raised from the dead to enjoy the country promised under the emblem of Canaan. The reason is, in the sense which the name of God bears in the covenant, he cannot be the God of the dead; he can neither bestow the possession of Canaan, nor of the country prefigured by Canaan, on persons who are dead. But he is the God of the living; he can bestow that country on living persons who, by the reunion of soul and body, are capable of enjoying it. And that he can restore to Abraham and to his seed their bodies, to enable them to enjoy the [heavenly] Canaan, is undeniable; because all who now live in the body, live merely by his will and power; all live by him.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Verse 14
A country; another country; that is, a heavenly country, as explained in Hebrews 11:16.