For Teaching

Hebrews 11: What the Passage Says

109 claims across 40 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Hebrews 11 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The writer defines faith as being sure of what is hoped for and certain of what is not seen, then lists people from Israel's history who acted on it. The list runs from creation and Abel through Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, the exodus, Jericho, and Rahab, then names judges, kings, and prophets. It ends with unnamed people who were rescued and others who were tortured and killed. All of them were commended for their faith, yet none received what was promised, because God planned something better that would include both them and the readers.

Claim by Claim

11:1
- Faith is the substance of things hoped for.
- Faith is the evidence of things not seen.
11:2
- By faith the elders of old were attested to.
11:3
- By faith we understand that the ages were framed by the word of God.
- What is seen was not made out of things that appear.
11:4
- By faith Abel offered God a greater sacrifice than Cain did.
- Through that sacrifice Abel was attested to be righteous.
- God testified concerning Abel's gifts.
- Through that faith Abel, though dead, still speaks.
11:5
- By faith Enoch was taken away so that he would not see death.
- Enoch was not found.
- God had taken him away.
- Before he was taken, Enoch was attested to have pleased God.
11:6
- Without faith it is impossible to please God.
- Whoever comes to God must believe that God exists.
- Whoever comes to God must believe that God rewards those who earnestly seek him.
11:7
- Noah was divinely warned about things not yet seen.
- Moved with reverent fear, Noah built an ark for the saving of his household.
- By that ark Noah condemned the world.
- Noah became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
11:8
- Abraham was called to go out to a place he was to receive as an inheritance.
- Abraham obeyed by faith.
- Abraham went out.
- Abraham did not know where he was going.
11:9
- By faith Abraham lived as a foreigner in the land of promise, as in a country not his own.
- Abraham dwelt in tents.
- Abraham dwelt there with Isaac and Jacob.
- Isaac and Jacob were fellow heirs with him of the same promise.
11:10
- Abraham was waiting for the city that has foundations.
- God is that city's designer and builder.
11:11
- By faith Sarah herself received power for the conceiving of offspring.
- Sarah bore a child when she was past the age for it.
- Sarah considered faithful the one who had promised.
11:12
- From one man came descendants.
- That one man was as good as dead.
- The descendants were as many as the stars of the sky in multitude.
- The descendants were as the innumerable sand by the seashore.
11:13
- All these died in faith.
- They did not receive the promises.
- They saw the promises from far off.
- They were persuaded of the promises.
- They greeted the promises.
- They confessed that they were strangers and sojourners on the earth.
11:14
- Those who say such things make plain that they are seeking a homeland.
11:15
- If they had been mindful of the country they left, they would have had opportunity to return.
11:16
- They desire a better country.
- That better country is a heavenly one.
- God is not ashamed to be called their God.
- God has prepared a city for them.
11:17
- By faith Abraham offered up Isaac when he was tested.
- Abraham had received the promises.
- Abraham offered up his only begotten son.
11:18
- It was said to Abraham that in Isaac his seed would be named.
11:19
- Abraham reckoned that God was able to raise even from the dead.
- Abraham received Isaac back in a figure.
11:20
- By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come.
11:21
- By faith Jacob, while dying, blessed each of Joseph's sons.
- Jacob worshipped, leaning on the top of his staff.
11:22
- By faith Joseph, at his end, spoke of the departure of the children of Israel.
- Joseph gave instructions concerning his bones.
11:23
- By faith Moses at birth was hidden three months by his parents.
- They hid him because they saw he was a beautiful child.
- They were not afraid of the king's decree.
11:24
- By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter.
11:25
- Moses chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to have the temporary enjoyment of sin.
11:26
- Moses considered the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.
- Moses looked to the reward.
11:27
- By faith Moses left Egypt.
- Moses did not fear the wrath of the king.
- Moses endured as though seeing him who is invisible.
11:28
- By faith Moses kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood.
- He did this so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch them.
11:29
- By faith they passed through the Red Sea as through dry land.
- The Egyptians, attempting the same, were drowned.
11:30
- By faith the walls of Jericho fell.
- The walls had been encircled for seven days.
11:31
- By faith Rahab the harlot did not perish with those who were disobedient.
- Rahab had received the spies in peace.
11:32
- The writer asks what more he should say.
- Time would fail him to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets.
11:33
- Through faith they subdued kingdoms.
- They worked righteousness.
- They obtained promises.
- They stopped the mouths of lions.
11:34
- They quenched the power of fire.
- They escaped the edge of the sword.
- Out of weakness they were made strong.
- They became mighty in war.
- They put foreign armies to flight.
11:35
- Women received their dead back by resurrection.
- Others were tortured.
- They did not accept release.
- They refused release so that they might obtain a better resurrection.
11:36
- Others experienced mockings and scourgings.
- Others experienced chains and imprisonment.
11:37
- They were stoned.
- They were sawn in two.
- They were tempted.
- They were killed with the sword.
- They went about in sheepskins and goatskins.
- They were destitute.
- They were afflicted.
- They were mistreated.
11:38
- The world was not worthy of them.
- They wandered in deserts and mountains and in caves and holes of the earth.
11:39
- All these were attested to through their faith.
- They did not receive the promise.
11:40
- God provided something better for us.
- God did so that they would not be made perfect apart from us.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

11:1: The Greek word behind "substance" can mean either a settled confidence about something or the underlying reality of the thing itself, so the sentence can be read as "faith is being sure of what we hope for" or as "faith is the reality of what we hope for." Translators have gone both ways. The word behind "evidence" likewise means either objective proof or inner conviction.
11:2: "The elders" means the ancestors, the earlier generations, not officers of a congregation. "Obtained a good report" means they were spoken well of or commended, the way a witness vouches for someone.
11:3: "The worlds" translates a Greek word meaning the ages, the whole span of time and everything in it. "Framed" means fitted together or set in order.
11:4: Abel and Cain were the first two sons of Adam and Eve (Genesis 4). Both brought offerings; Abel's was accepted and Cain's was not, and Cain then killed his brother. "He being dead yet speaketh" recalls God telling Cain that Abel's blood cried out from the ground.
11:5: In 1611 "translated" meant carried across from one place to another; it has nothing to do with languages. Enoch is the man of whom Genesis 5:24 says he walked with God and "was not, for God took him," with no account of his death.
11:6: "Believe that he is" is old English for believe that he exists.
11:7: An ark is simply a large box or chest, which is why the word is used for Noah's vessel: a floating container, not a ship with keel and sails (Genesis 6 to 9). "He condemned the world" means that his acting on the warning left everyone who ignored it without excuse, so his obedience functioned as a verdict on theirs.
11:8: Abraham was told to leave his home and travel to a land God would show him (Genesis 12:1-4). The force of "not knowing whither he went" is that the destination was not named when he set out.
11:9: "Tabernacles" here simply means tents, ordinary portable shelters, and not the tent sanctuary called the tabernacle elsewhere in the Old Testament. "Sojourned" means lived as a temporary resident, a foreigner holding no legal claim on the land. Isaac was Abraham's son and Jacob his grandson.
11:10: The contrast is with the tents of the previous verse: a foundation is what a permanent building has and a tent does not. "Builder and maker" renders two words, the first meaning a skilled designer or craftsman, the second the one who actually constructs.
11:11: Sara is the Greek spelling of Sarah, Abraham's wife. "Past age" means past the years of childbearing (Genesis 17 and 18). The Greek phrase rendered "received strength to conceive seed" is normally used of the father's part in conceiving, so some read the sentence as being about Abraham with Sarah named alongside him, while others read it as the KJV does. The grammar allows both.
11:12: "Him as good as dead" refers to Abraham's age, about a hundred when Isaac was born. The comparison to stars and sand repeats promises made to him in Genesis 15:5 and 22:17.
11:13: "Pilgrims" in 1611 did not mean religious travelers. The word means resident foreigners, people living in a country not their own and without the rights of citizens. "Strangers" carries the same sense.
11:16: "Not ashamed to be called their God" refers to the title God takes for himself over and over in the Old Testament: the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
11:17: "Tried" means tested, put to the proof. The episode is Genesis 22, where Abraham is told to sacrifice Isaac and is stopped before he does it. "Only begotten" translates a Greek word meaning one of a kind or unique; Abraham had another son, Ishmael, so the word marks Isaac as the single son through whom the promise ran.
11:18: A quotation of Genesis 21:12. "Seed" is the older English word for offspring, used as a collective for a whole line of descendants.
11:19: "In a figure" translates a Greek phrase that can mean as a symbol, in a manner of speaking, or as a foreshadowing of something later. Isaac did not actually die, so receiving him back was a return from death only in some figurative sense; which sense is meant is left open.
11:20: A father's deathbed blessing was a formal and binding pronouncement about his sons' futures and their share of the family inheritance, not a kind wish. Isaac's blessing of Jacob and Esau is Genesis 27.
11:21: The scene is Genesis 48. The detail about the staff follows the Greek Old Testament, which this letter quotes. In Hebrew the consonants for "staff" and for "bed" are identical, so the same text can be read either as bowing on the top of his staff or as bowing at the head of his bed, which is how the Hebrew Bible takes it.
11:22: "The departing" translates the Greek word exodos, a going out, meaning Israel's departure from Egypt. Joseph made his family swear to carry his bones out of Egypt when that happened (Genesis 50:24-25); Exodus 13:19 records that they did.
11:23: "Proper" in 1611 meant fine-looking or handsome; it has nothing to do with behaving properly. "The king's commandment" was Pharaoh's order that every newborn Hebrew boy be thrown into the Nile (Exodus 1:22).
11:24: Pharaoh's daughter found the infant Moses hidden in the river and raised him as her own, so he grew up inside the Egyptian royal household (Exodus 2:1-10). "Come to years" means reached adulthood.
11:26: "Christ" is a title rather than a name: the Greek for "anointed one," matching the Hebrew word Messiah. "The reproach of Christ" is compressed and has been read both as the kind of disgrace Christ suffered and as disgrace endured for the sake of the anointed one. "Recompence of the reward" is a doubled phrase meaning the payment that was coming to him.
11:27: Which departure is meant is disputed. Moses left Egypt twice: first fleeing to Midian after killing an Egyptian, where Exodus 2:14-15 says he was afraid, and later at the exodus itself. "Not fearing the wrath of the king" fits the second better, while the order of events in this chapter fits the first.
11:28: The Passover was the meal Israel ate on the night they left Egypt, eaten with lamb's blood brushed on the doorframes so that the destroyer moving through the country would pass over those houses and not kill the oldest son inside (Exodus 12). "He that destroyed the firstborn" names the agent of that last plague.
11:29: The crossing is Exodus 14. The Hebrew name of the sea means "sea of reeds," and exactly which body of water is meant is uncertain. "Assaying" is the old word for attempting.
11:30: Joshua 6. Israel marched around the walled city once a day for six days and seven times on the seventh, then shouted, and the walls collapsed. "Compassed about" means encircled.
11:31: Joshua 2. Rahab lived in the wall of Jericho and hid the two men Israel had sent to scout the city. "Them that believed not" translates a Greek word closer to refused to be persuaded, or disobeyed, than to simply lacked belief.
11:32: Gedeon and Jephthae are the Greek spellings of Gideon and Jephthah. They, with Barak and Samson, were military leaders during the period of the judges, before Israel had kings (the book of Judges). "The time would fail me" is a standard speaker's formula for cutting a list short.
11:33: "Wrought righteousness" means carried out justice, the work of a ruler or judge, rather than private moral goodness. "Stopped the mouths of lions" points to Daniel in the lion pit (Daniel 6).
11:34: "Quenched the violence of fire" points to the three men thrown into the furnace in Daniel 3. "Waxed valiant" means grew strong or brave; "waxed" meant to increase. "Aliens" here means foreigners, that is, enemy nations, with no modern sense attached.
11:35: Two mothers whose sons were restored to them are the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17) and the woman of Shunem (2 Kings 4). The Greek word behind "tortured" refers to being beaten while stretched over a frame. "Not accepting deliverance" means they turned down release that was offered on condition of giving way; refusals of that kind under Greek persecution are described in 2 Maccabees 6 and 7.
11:36: "Cruel mockings" means being publicly humiliated. "Scourgings" means floggings with a whip, often one with several knotted cords. "Bonds" means chains or shackles.
11:37: "Sawn asunder" means sawed in two, a method of execution; Jewish tradition says the prophet Isaiah died this way. "Were tempted" sits oddly among these deaths, and the manuscripts differ here: some leave the word out, and some have a similar-looking Greek word meaning "were burned." The word itself means tested or put to the proof more than enticed. Sheepskins and goatskins were the rough clothing associated with prophets such as Elijah, so the detail marks the wearers out as well as showing their poverty.
11:38: "Of whom the world was not worthy" is the writer breaking in with his own verdict, which is why the KJV puts it in brackets. "Dens" means pits or holes dug into the ground.
11:39: "Obtained a good report" repeats the phrase from verse 2 and means God testified in their favor.
11:40: "Made perfect" translates a Greek word meaning brought to completion or brought to the intended goal, like finishing a course. It does not mean made morally flawless.

Read Hebrews 11