By faith: the witnesses who looked beyond what they could see

The letter to the Hebrews does not name its author. Its closing chapter calls it a 'word of exhortation' (13:22), which suggests that it was first a sermon, sent on to its hearers with a few personal words at the end. Tradition in the early church was divided. Many in the East linked it to Paul, though they noticed that its Greek and style are unlike his letters. Origen in the third century is reported to have said that only God knows who wrote it. Tertullian proposed Barnabas and Martin Luther suggested Apollos. The letter itself says only that the author knew Timothy (13:23) and that 'those from Italy' send greetings (13:24), which may point to Rome as the place of writing or the place of the readers.

The date is also open. Most scholars place it in the 60s, before the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in AD 70, because the author speaks of priests and sacrifices as ongoing. Others argue he is only describing the tabernacle of Scripture, and place the letter later. The audience was a community of Christians, probably Jewish by background, who had once endured public abuse and the seizure of their property (10:32-34) and were now tempted to drift back, or to shrink back from open commitment to Christ. The author's answer is to show that Jesus is greater than angels, Moses, Joshua and the Levitical priests, and then to call the readers to endurance.

Chapter 11 stands at the hinge of that call. Chapter 10 ends with Habakkuk 2:4, the righteous one will live by faith, and a warning against shrinking back (10:38-39). Chapter 11 answers with a roll of people who lived by faith, and chapter 12 opens with the call to run the race while fixing our eyes on Jesus. The roll is proof, from Israel's own Scriptures, that faith always looks like waiting and trusting a promise not yet seen.

Hebrews 11 is a sermon in the form of a catalogue, a list of examples. A Jewish reader would have recognised the pattern from Psalms 78, 105 and 106 and Nehemiah 9. What is unusual here is the single refrain 'By faith' (Greek, pistei). It appears eighteen times, and the repetition is the structure. The author is not telling the stories for their own sake. He is reading each one as a witness to a single way of living before God.

Three principles guide the reading.

• First, the author reads the Old Testament in its Greek translation, the Septuagint, which his readers used. This explains small differences from the Hebrew text, such as Jacob leaning 'on the top of his staff' in verse 21, where the Septuagint of Genesis 47:31 reads 'staff' and the Hebrew vowel pointing reads 'bed'.
• Second, he selects. Many of the people he names did serious wrong, and he does not mention it. Jacob, Samson and Jephthah are praised for what they did in faith, not given a clean record.
• Third, he reads Israel's history as one story that is incomplete. This is why the chapter's last verses refuse to let the ancient witnesses finish alone.

Verses 1–3

'Now faith is the assurance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see.' This is a description, not a technical definition. The two Greek nouns are hypostasis and elenchos.

• The first can mean 'substance' or 'confidence'; it is the thing that stands under hope and holds it.
• The second means a proof or conviction. The sense is that faith treats God's promise as already solid, even though it is not yet visible. Verse 2 adds that the 'ancients' (literally, the elders) were 'commended', or borne witness to, by Scripture. Verse 3 begins with creation: the first thing faith grasps is that the visible world was made by a word. In Genesis 1, 'God said' stands behind every act of creation.

Verses 4–7

Abel offered a 'better' sacrifice than Cain (Genesis 4:3-5). The text of Genesis does not say why God accepted one and not the other. Hebrews says the difference was faith, and adds that 'by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead', which echoes Genesis 4:10, where his blood cries out from the ground. Enoch 'walked with God' and was taken (Genesis 5:21-24). Hebrews uses the Greek form of Genesis, 'he was not found, because God took him', and draws from it verse 6, the general principle that anyone who comes to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Noah, 'warned about things not yet seen', built the ark: faith is obedience to a word about the future. By contrast his faith 'condemned the world', and he became heir of 'the righteousness that comes by faith', close to Paul's language about Abraham in Romans 4.

Verses 8–12

Abraham receives the longest treatment, because he is the pattern. He obeyed the call of Genesis 12:1-4 'without knowing where he was going'. In the land he lived in tents as a stranger, 'looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God' (verse 10). The contrast between a tent and a city with foundations is deliberate. Sarah is also commended: 'she considered Him faithful who had promised'. Her laughter in Genesis 18:12 is not mentioned. The result was descendants as many as the stars (Genesis 15:5; 22:17).

Verses 13–16

These verses pause the list. The patriarchs died 'without having received the things they were promised', but they 'saw them and welcomed them from afar'. They called themselves 'strangers and exiles' (Genesis 23:4; Psalm 39:12). The author argues from their words: people who say this are seeking a homeland. They did not go back to Mesopotamia. They wanted 'a better country, a heavenly one'. Therefore, 'God is not ashamed to be called their God' (see Exodus 3:6), because he has prepared a city for them. The heavenly city returns in 12:22 and 13:14.

Verses 17–22

In the offering of Isaac (Genesis 22), Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and 'in a sense' received Isaac back from death. The Greek word, parabole, can mean 'as a figure'. The author sees in the near-sacrifice a picture of resurrection. Isaac's blessings, Jacob's blessing of Joseph's sons (Genesis 48) and Joseph's instruction about his bones (Genesis 50:24-25; Exodus 13:19) are deathbed acts that trust a promise the dying will not see fulfilled.

Verses 23–31

Moses' parents hid him in defiance of the king's edict (Exodus 2:2; 1:22). Moses refused the status of Pharaoh's household and chose 'to suffer oppression with God's people', counting 'disgrace for Christ' as greater wealth than Egypt's treasures. The phrase has been read as meaning that Moses bore in advance the reproach the Messiah would bear, or that God's people share their anointed one's suffering (compare Psalm 89:50-51). Either way, Moses' experience is linked with that of the readers. Verses 27 to 31 take in the exodus, Passover, Red Sea, the fall of Jericho (Joshua 6) and Rahab (Joshua 2), a Canaanite outsider who showed the faith many in Israel lacked.

Verses 32–38

The author says time is short and gives names in a rush: Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets. Then he lists acts: conquering kingdoms, shutting the mouths of lions (Daniel 6), quenching fire (Daniel 3), women receiving back their dead (1 Kings 17; 2 Kings 4). The tone shifts at verse 35: others were tortured, mocked, imprisoned, stoned and killed. Some scholars read the tortured who refuse release for a 'better resurrection' as an allusion to the Jewish martyrs under Antiochus IV in the second century BC. The author does not rank the two groups. Both lived by faith, and verse 38 gives the verdict: 'The world was not worthy of them.'

Verses 39–40

'These were all commended for their faith, yet they did not receive what was promised.' The chapter that opened by saying faith is certainty ends by saying the promise is still unfulfilled for them. God has planned 'something better for us, so that together with us they would be made perfect'. 'Made perfect' (teleiothosin) is the word Hebrews uses of the final completion that Christ's work brings (10:14; 12:23). The old witnesses wait, and the church's entry is bound up with theirs.

Hebrews 11 teaches that faith is the same in every period of God's dealings with his people. Before the law of Moses, Abel, Enoch and Noah live by faith; under the law, Moses and Rahab do. Paul makes a similar claim in Romans 4 and Galatians 3 about Abraham, who was counted righteous when he believed (Genesis 15:6). The Bible does not offer two ways of being right with God. Hebrews adds that faith is always aimed at a future promise: a land, a city, a son, a resurrection.

The chapter also gives a doctrine of the unity of the people of God across time. The patriarchs are not a different people from the church. They await a heavenly city, and the writer will describe that city as Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, in 12:22-24. The old covenant believers and the new are brought to completion together. Christians differ on how the Old Testament promises about the land and the nation of Israel relate to that one people.

Finally, the chapter treats suffering as compatible with faith. Deuteronomy 28 links obedience with blessing in the land, but Job, the lament psalms and Daniel complicate that. Hebrews places the final answer in resurrection (verses 19, 35). The God who spoke the world into being (verse 3) can be trusted with what he has promised and not yet shown.

The name of Christ does not appear as the object of faith in the roll itself, but the chapter is built to lead to him. Verse 26 says that Moses valued 'disgrace for Christ' above the treasures of Egypt. The pattern of suffering with God's people for a greater reward is the pattern fulfilled in Christ (see 13:12-13). The next verse, 12:2, calls Jesus the 'pioneer and perfecter' of faith. He is the one who goes first along the path of faith and brings it to its goal. The witnesses of chapter 11 run the same track.

The offering of Isaac is an echo. Abraham received his only son back 'as a figure' of resurrection (verse 19). Hebrews does not say that Isaac prefigures Christ, but the church has long heard in the story the Father's gift of his own Son (John 3:16; Romans 8:32), with verse 19 as the anchor.

Verses 39 and 40 show the central claim. The saints of the Old Testament did not receive the promise because the promise was Christ and what he accomplished. In Hebrews, Christ's death is a sacrifice that 'perfects' for all time those who are being made holy (10:14), and that perfection includes those who died before he came (9:15). The 'something better' in verse 40 is the new covenant in his blood. The faith described in this chapter looked forward to him, and the faith of Christians looks back at what he has done. Both are one faith in the one God who keeps his promises.