Hebrews 6: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The writer urges his readers to move past the basic first teachings about Christ and grow toward maturity, and then warns that people who have once been enlightened and shared in these gifts and then fall away cannot be brought back to repentance. He compares this to land that drinks rain and either grows a useful crop or grows thorns. He tells the readers he expects better of them, points to Abraham as someone who waited patiently and received the promise, and says God backed his promise with an oath so that those who take hold of the hope have strong encouragement. The chapter closes with that hope pictured as an anchor reaching behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone ahead as a high priest forever in the order of Melchisedec.

Claim by Claim

1. 6:1
   • The writer calls for leaving behind the elementary teaching about Christ.
   • The writer urges going on to maturity.
   • The writer says not to lay again a foundation of repentance from dead works.
   • Faith toward God is part of that foundation.
2. 6:2
   • Teaching about baptisms is part of that foundation.
   • The laying on of hands is part of that foundation.
   • The resurrection of the dead is part of that foundation.
   • Eternal judgment is part of that foundation.
3. 6:3
   • The writer says they will do this.
   • The writer conditions this on God permitting it.
4. 6:4
   • It is impossible to do something in the case of certain people.
   • These people were once enlightened.
   • These people have tasted the heavenly gift.
   • These people were made sharers of the Holy Spirit.
5. 6:5
   • These people have tasted that the word of God is good.
   • These people have tasted the powers of the age to come.
6. 6:6
   • These people have fallen away.
   • It is impossible to renew such people again to repentance.
   • Such people crucify the Son of God again for themselves.
   • Such people expose him to public disgrace.
7. 6:7
   • Land drinks in the rain that falls on it.
   • The rain comes upon it often.
   • Such land produces vegetation useful to those for whom it is cultivated.
   • Such land receives blessing from God.
8. 6:8
   • Land that produces thorns and thistles is rejected as worthless.
   • Such land is near to being cursed.
   • The end of such land is burning.
9. 6:9
   • The writer addresses the readers as beloved.
   • The writer is persuaded of better things concerning the readers.
   • The writer is persuaded of things that accompany salvation in their case.
   • The writer says this even though he speaks in this way.
10. 6:10
    • God is not unrighteous.
    • God will not forget the readers' work.
    • God will not forget their labor of love.
    • The readers showed this love toward God's name.
    • The readers have ministered to the saints.
    • The readers still minister to the saints.
11. 6:11
    • The writer desires that each of the readers show the same diligence.
    • This diligence is toward the full assurance of hope.
    • This diligence is to be shown until the end.
12. 6:12
    • The purpose is that the readers not become sluggish.
    • The purpose is that the readers become imitators of certain people.
    • Those people inherit the promises through faith and patience.
13. 6:13
    • God made a promise to Abraham.
    • God had no one greater to swear by.
    • God swore by himself.
14. 6:14
    • God said he would surely bless Abraham.
    • God said he would surely multiply Abraham.
15. 6:15
    • Abraham endured patiently.
    • Abraham obtained the promise.
16. 6:16
    • Men swear by one greater than themselves.
    • An oath given as confirmation ends all dispute among them.
17. 6:17
    • God willed to show more abundantly to the heirs of the promise that his purpose is unchangeable.
    • God guaranteed it with an oath.
18. 6:18
    • There are two unchangeable things.
    • It is impossible for God to lie in these two things.
    • The purpose is that we might have strong encouragement.
    • We have fled for refuge to take hold of the hope set before us.
19. 6:19
    • We have this hope as an anchor of the soul.
    • This anchor is sure and steadfast.
    • This hope enters into the place within the veil.
20. 6:20
    • Jesus entered there as a forerunner on our behalf.
    • Jesus has become a high priest forever.
    • His priesthood is after the order of Melchizedek.

Words Worth Explaining

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

6:1

KJV "perfection" translates a word meaning completeness or full growth, the condition of a grown adult as against a child. It does not mean moral flawlessness. "Dead works" is this letter's phrase for deeds that do not lead to life; the writer never spells out exactly which deeds he has in mind, and readers have long disagreed about whether he means sins or religious observances.

6:2

"Baptisms" is plural here, and the Greek word is the ordinary one for ritual washings rather than the usual word for Christian baptism. Judaism in this period practiced many such washings, and a new convert would have needed them sorted out. "Laying on of hands" was the gesture of placing hands on someone's head: used to bless, to set a person apart for a task, to identify an animal with the offerer at a sacrifice, and in early Christian practice at healings and at the giving of the Spirit.

6:4

"Holy Ghost" is not a different being from the Holy Spirit; in 1611 "ghost" simply meant spirit. "Enlightened" means given light, an early Christian way of speaking about coming to know the message.

6:5

"The world to come" renders a Greek word meaning an age, a stretch of time, not a place. Jewish thought of the period divided history into the present age and the age to come, and "the powers" of that coming age means its forces already at work now.

6:6

Crucifixion was a public execution designed to humiliate: the victim hung exposed, naked, beside a road, for as long as it took to die. The verb behind "put him to an open shame" means to hold someone up to exactly that kind of public disgrace.

6:7

Three words have shifted since 1611. "Herbs" means plants or crops in general, not seasonings. "Meet" means suitable or useful. "Dressed" means farmed, tended, worked, as a field is dressed rather than a person.

6:8

"Nigh unto cursing" means close to being cursed. Burning off a field that had gone over to thorns was ordinary farming practice in the region, a way of clearing ground that had stopped paying for the labor put into it.

6:9

"We are persuaded" in 1611 English means we are convinced, a settled conclusion rather than the result of someone talking us into it.

6:10

"Saints" in the KJV does not mean a special class of exceptionally holy people. It translates a word meaning those set apart, and it is used throughout the New Testament for the ordinary members of a congregation. "Ministered" means served, and in this period usually meant practical help: food, money, lodging, care for prisoners. "Shewed" is the old spelling of showed.

6:11

"Hope" in this letter means confident expectation of something regarded as certain but not yet in hand. It does not carry the modern sense of wishing for something that may or may not happen.

6:12

"Followers" in 1611 English means imitators, people who copy someone's example, not supporters or adherents. "Slothful" means sluggish, slow to move.

6:13

The quotation is from Genesis 22:16 and 17. An oath worked by naming someone greater than yourself as witness and guarantor, so that breaking your word meant answering to that greater party. The argument here is that God, having no greater party available, named himself.

6:14

"Blessing I will bless" and "multiplying I will multiply" look strange in English because the KJV reproduces a Hebrew construction word for word: the verb is doubled to intensify it. The sense is "I will certainly bless you" and "I will certainly multiply you." To multiply someone, in this idiom, is to give them many descendants.

6:15

"Obtained the promise" means received the thing promised, not received the words of the promise. The same phrase in verse 12 is rendered "inherit the promises."

6:16

In the ancient world an oath was a legal instrument, not just strong language. Where a dispute could not be settled by evidence or witnesses, a sworn oath closed it; that is what "an end of all strife" means here.

6:17

"Counsel" means settled plan or purpose, not advice. "Immutability" means the quality of not changing. "Heirs of promise" are those in line to receive what was promised, the word carrying the ordinary legal sense of an heir.

6:18

The "two immutable things" are the promise itself and the oath that backs it, named in the two verses just before. "Fled for refuge to lay hold upon" pictures someone running to a place of asylum and seizing hold of it: in Israelite practice, a person who had killed someone accidentally could run to one of the designated cities of refuge, and a fugitive could grasp the horns of the altar and claim protection there. "Consolation" in 1611 is stronger than the modern word, closer to encouragement or bracing support than to sympathy.

6:19

The veil was the heavy curtain in the tabernacle, and later the temple, that closed off the innermost room, the Most Holy Place, from the rest of the sanctuary. Only the high priest passed through it, and only once a year. "Stedfast" is the old spelling of steadfast.

6:20

"Forerunner" translates a Greek word for a scout or advance runner who goes ahead of a party, and whose arrival means the rest are on their way. A high priest was the one chief priest who alone entered the Most Holy Place, once a year, on the Day of Atonement. Melchisedec, spelled Melchizedek elsewhere, appears in Genesis 14: king of Salem and priest of God Most High, he meets Abraham with bread and wine and receives a tenth of the spoil. Psalm 110:4 then speaks of a priest "for ever after the order of Melchisedec," and "after the order of" means belonging to that line or kind of priesthood rather than to the priesthood of Aaron. This letter takes the comparison up in detail in chapter 7.