Bible Gem 2157 – Of Whom The World Was Not Worthy (Hebrews 11:35-40)

But others were tortured, refusing to turn from God in order to be set free. They placed their hope in a better life after the resurrection. Some were jeered at, and their backs were cut open with whips. Others were chained in prisons. Some died by stoning, some were sawed in half, and others were killed with the sword. Some went about wearing skins of sheep and goats, destitute and oppressed and mistreated. They were too good for this world, wandering over deserts and mountains, hiding in caves and holes in the ground. All these people earned a good reputation because of their faith, yet none of them received all that God had promised. For God had something better in mind for us, so that they would not reach perfection without us.

Hebrews 11:35-40

It will be clear to you as you start this new Gem that either the LORD has spoken or some of you have spoken or both. A number of you have asked a few questions of clarification about who was sawn in two and the meaning “of whom the world was not worthy”. There was also a very astute question concerning the element related to “those who failed to receive the promise”. So I will add this one last Gem before we move on to Hebrews Chapter 12.

For those of you who want the morbid details here they are. For those of you who don’t simply skip this paragraph. The first verb in this list related to The Others is [tumpanizo] which could be translated by “beaten” or even “tortured” but it is more specific than that. It involves being stretched out on rack where the limbs were pulled and stretched from the torso and then the extremities beaten with clubs until death ensued. The assumption is that many were murdered in this way. Two other favourite methods were death by sword or death at the hands of wild animals while the spectators looked on. Many died by sword, usually by being beheaded. There is something inhumane somehow about being beheaded. Urijah was ordered to be beheaded by Jehoiakim and of course James, the son of Zebedee, was beheaded at the command of Agrippa I. Isaiah is reported to have been sawn in two at the command of Manasseh, recorded in the Ascension of Isaiah. Those who escaped death by the sword were David at the hand of Saul (and vice versa), Elijah at the command of Jezebel, Elisha in the time of Jehoram and Jeremiah in the time of Jehoiakim, among many others. Probably also worthy of mention were all those in the time of the revolt of the Maccabbees when Godly Jews fled from the uprising of Antiochus Epiphanes. They were either killed or forced to flee into the wilderness to starve to death or be killed by wild animals. I trust the two of you who wanted this detail are encouraged or more particularly have an example to follow if ever you are faced with a similar death. I will say again, it seems clear that the writer of Hebrews didn’t give us these names deliberately. Choosing rather to keep the names hidden and leave the list open ended in the hope that his readers themselves would come up with their own examples.

I too wondered about commenting on the fact that “none of the others received that which had been promised”. What struck me was that these others were in the same category as Abraham who also did not receive the promises. It is like this comment about Abraham and his immediate descendants Isaac and Jacob applies also to These Others, which somehow adds a dimension to the depth of their faith. Despite the fact that in their lifetime they didn’t see what was promised to them fulfilled, it still adds a stronger degree to their faith in that they continued to believe and hold on to the hope that they would live to see the fulfilment. That is certainly the case with These Others. Somehow their faith is seen to be that much deeper because they refused to give up believing they would see that which had been promised. Isn’t it that which lies at the heart of the promise of the Life of the Age to Come? Or put another way, on the other side of the Life of the Age to Come?

Now permit me to address the matter “of whom the world is not worthy“. Two of you have compared the translations for this verse and have come up with a question. Why does the Bible in Basic English (BBE) have “for whom the world was not good enough”. Doesn’t that change the meaning of this part? Yes, you are right, that appears to switch the meaning of this relative clause from the point of view of these others, who had these negative things happen to them, to the notion that the world or the world system was not deserving or good enough for them. That is that these others were too good for the world. All other translations record the world was not deserving of these good people, these outstanding people who acted by faith. It is not that these others considered the world not worthy of them. The Bible in Basic English is the only version that switches the relative pronoun to mean ‘for whom’, rather than ‘of whom’. The sense that you two who came up with the question queried is not the clear meaning of this passage. Here is a comparison across all the versions I have loaded into E-Sword.

• Of whom the world was not worthy; AFV, ASV, ESV, KJV, LITV, LSV, NENT, RV, TS2009, WEB, WEBA, YLT
• The world did not deserve these good people, CEV, GW
• The world was not worthy of them! CJB, CSB
• The world was not good enough for these great people. ERV
• The world was not good enough for them! GNB
• The world was not {wasn’t} worthy of them. HCSB, ISV, NET, TLV
• the world didn’t deserve them! MSG
• They were too good for this world, NLT
• Truly, the world was not even worthy of them, not realizing who they were. TPT

The clear sense of this relative clause is these others is not that they themselves thought themselves too good for the world, but that the world and the people who followed worldly ways were not deserving or worthy of people of such remarkable faith. It is true, as I wrote about in the Nugget I have referred you to, there are Christians who think these others are losers or failures because they didn’t prove to be successful. That is, they didn’t accomplish great things by faith. A strong resounding NO! That is most definitely NOT the sense of this biblical evaluation of these others. That is not God’s view of these most precious saints! It is most definitely not, as I wrote in A Puzzling Paradox # 30

They don’t belong in the Annuls of Super Heroes. Take them out of here. They are an embarrassment to the Faith. Stop! It is you who claim that they are an embarrassment to the Faith. My eyes have filled with tears at the thought of some of the ones I have told you about. The woman and her husband who were asked to leave a well known NZ Evangelical Church because he was suffering from dementia and it was an embarrassment to this church that after praying for them they were not healed. So they were blamed for their lack of faith, not the lack in the ones who prayed for them.

That attitude is an absolute travesty of Christian belief. That church ought to be struck off the list of Christian churches. That kind of attitude is not Christian. Just stop and evaluate the faith of these others for yourself. They are clearly of a different kind. When challenged to give up their faith and turn from following Jesus Christ as Messiah and confess another belief system, they all said “No”, by their actions they showed that they would rather die than forsake Christ.

These others referred to in Hebrews 11:35 onward were the ones who were willing to suffer torture or death rather than turn their back on Christ. They were not criticised by their fellow believers for their lack of faith because they were in prison, persecuted, tortured or suffering starvation. They were not rejected by their fellow believers because they had been cast out of the city and were made to wander in the wilderness, face wild animals or hide in the catacombs. These precious saints of God ‘earned a good reputation’ because of their willingness to trust Christ under the most extreme tests of their faith, despite the fact that they had not entered into the reality of the promises of God. Their willingness to stand against severe opposition placed them in a category that had no equal in terms of the standards by which we might measure their faith.

Paradoxically, God shows His perfection through both categories of heroes or heroines who live by faith. You need to be wise enough to realise that all of these examples of faith we have looked at in detail through Hebrews Chapter 11, show forth the perfection of God that the author of Hebrews was wanting the soon-to-be-persecuted-Jewish-Christians in the time of the onset of Nero’s persecution to realise. In the words of Paul the Apostle, “Whether we live or die having been persecuted for our faith we are examples of living by faith. I have the example of Dominggus Kenjam, a young 20 year old new believer in Jesus, to remind me to stand firm and cling on to my trust in Christ if ever I am asked to reject Christ or be slain for my faith. I will choose to allow my persecutors to take my life rather than forsake Christ. I will choose to give up my life for the sake of Christ and go to begin my new Life at that moment, fully convinced of the realities of the Life of the Age to Come. I believe in the reality of the promises in God’s Word because of the witness of these others who exemplify the ultimate realities of living by faith in Jesus Christ. The scars on the back of Dominggus’ neck are an ever present reminder to me of the reality of the resurrection life found only in Jesus Christ.

Trust and belief in Jesus is very personal. It is not something that occurs in a group. Every soul must work through their faith and decide for themselves whether they can trust Jesus or not.

Ian

The Christian faith is meant to be lived moment by moment. It is a long walk with a real Person.

Joni Eareckson Tada

Faith is to believe what we do not see, and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe.

St. Augustine

If being hurt by the church causes you to lose faith in God then your faith was in people not God.

Ian