18Pray for us, for our conscience is clear and we want to live honourably in everything we do. 19And especially pray that I will be able to come back to you soon. 20Now may the God of peace—who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood— 21may he equip you with all you need for doing his will. May he produce in you, through the power of Jesus Christ, every good thing that is pleasing to him. All glory to him forever and ever! Amen. 22I urge you, dear brothers and sisters, to pay attention to what I have written in this brief exhortation.
Hebrews 13:18-22
23I want you to know that our brother Timothy has been released [from jail]. If he comes here soon, I will bring him with me to see you. 24Greet all your leaders and all the believers there. The believers from Italy send you their greetings. 25May God’s grace be with you all.
Hebrews 13:23-25
This Gem marks the end of the gems on the Letter to the Hebrews. I smiled when I saw Ross’s comment on the previous Gem, wondering why the author didn’t put his name on the end of the letter. Yes, the fact that he didn’t disclose who he was has bugged many over the centuries. I am not about to reveal secret information I have come across which names the author of Hebrews. I have nothing more to add to Gem 2022 on matters of the authorship of this letter.
What we have in this closing segment is the most personal the author ever dared to get with his readers. There were clearly others involved with him, witnessed by the “pray for us” (plural) comment. That was likely to be the leaders of the Christians he refers to in the latter stages of the letter. The author has clearly been standing with them in their shared experience. Now at the end of the letter he longed to come back to them.
At that point he draws the letter to a close with some classic Christian closing thoughts.
Now may the God of peace
who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus,
the great Shepherd of the sheep,
and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood
may he equip you with all you need for doing his will.
May he produce in you,
through the power of Jesus Christ,
every good thing that is pleasing to him.
All glory to him forever and ever!
These typical Christian sentiments are in keeping with the tone of the letter. The author told us at the beginning of the letter it was God who had spoken in past times and in many different ways. Only now He has spoken definitively in [His] Son. These closing comments are in parallel with how he began the letter. God has spoken in His Son, whom he brought up from the dead, Jesus Messiah, the Great Shepherd of the sheep. Through Him, He (God) ratified the ETERNAL covenant with His Blood. (EMPHASIS added). He did it all so that He might equip you with everything you need to do His will. That He ultimately will produce in you every good thing that pleases Him, through the power that is in Jesus Christ. Namely that you will stand firm in the salvation that Christ has given you in order that you may gain eternal life.
Following that grand statement the author closes with some personal touches; well, as personal as he intended to get.
“I want you to know that our brother Timothy has been released from jail.”
Our brother in the LORD, Timothy. Having left naming this brother as he has without further qualification, it can only mean the Timothy we all know and love. [Although some commentators have pursued other alternatives.] If it was indeed Timothy, when was he ever in prison? There is no record of Timothy ever being in prison. Some translations specify that he was released from prison / jail. But that is not certain as ‘jail’ or ‘prison’ is not stated in the text. Rather all we have in the text is that Timothy was released [απολελυμενον] – the singular masculine perfect passive participle of the verb [ἀπολύω]. This verb has a wide range of meanings such as ‘to loose‘, ‘to release from a tie or burden‘, ‘to liberate‘, ‘to discharge‘, ‘to dismiss‘, ‘to allow to depart‘, ‘to send away‘ or ‘to permit to go‘. It is not absolutely certain that the Timothy we all know and love was released from prison. He could have gotten over a sickness or been allowed to depart after an obstacle was removed. As you can imagine, there is debate over what the use of [ἀπολύω] actually refers to. But whatever the circumstances, Timothy was likely to have accompanied the author if he got there in time.
“Greet all of your leaders for us, just as other believers in Italy send their greetings.” This is unlikely to mean all believers in the country of Italy send them greetings. Just the ones who have asked that their greetings be passed on to those suffering.
In closing, I would like to add something I read in Arnold Fruchtenbaum’s commentary which intrigued me. Arnold Fruchtenbaum has a ‘Postscript’ to his thoughts on Hebrews (page 201) related to how the readers responded to the exhortations, gleaned from three extra biblical sources:
- Josephus, the first century Jewish historian
- Heggisippus, a Jewish believer who lived in the second century
- Eusebius, the fourth century Church father.
According to these three sources, the readers received this letter and responded well to the exhortations therein. They made a complete break with Judaism once-and-for-all. When the First Jewish Revolt broke out in AD 66, the entire community of Jewish believers, numbering in tens of thousands, moved to the city of Pella, one of the ten cities of the Decapolis. Four years later in AD 70 when the Temple was destroyed and Jerusalem sacked, 1,100,000 Jews were killed in the conflict. But these three writers mentioned above, record that not one believer from this target group lost their lives because of their obedience to the exhortations of the writer of Hebrews. They all took encouragement from the writer of Hebrews and held on to their trust in Christ to save them. I thought that would be a fitting comment to end this series of Gems on Hebrews. Now go and do likewise should your life ever be threatened!
The next book I plan to gem is Revelation. It seems fitting that I should gem Revelation next. This may well be my final book to analyse in detail (Gem). As is my habit I will spend time reading this book over and over in the next seven weeks, to prepare myself for writing the Gems on Revelation. My suggestion to you is to read Hebrews again to take in the grandeur of that letter once again. It is up to you to decide if you do that simultaneously with the 163 Gems I have written on the letter to the Jewish Christians. The letter was written for Gentile Christians as well. Whether you read the Gems on Hebrews again is your choice, but a re-reading of the letter to the Hebrews is well worth doing, now that you have suffered through 163 Gems on Hebrews.
I also suggest you read the book of Revelation at least once in preparation for the coming Gem series and ask any questions or make any comments you like.
JESUS knew our name even before we were born. Not only does He know each of our names, He knows your address too. He knows your history and future. He even knows how many hairs are on your head at any given time. “Cast all your cares on Him for HE cares for you.”
Ian
The question is not whether your name will be remembered in future generations but will His Name be remembered because of you?
Ian
We may not know the name of the writer of Hebrews, but I am sure glad he (or she) wrote the book. It has blessed me immensely to analyse (gem) it in detail.
Ian
Do you know the names of the people who serve you in life? Whether you know them by name or not says more about you than it does about them.
Ian
There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.
Acts 4:12
Thank you, Ian.
I pray it was a blessing to you. I am not sure if you were responding to this last Gem on the letter to the Hebrews or to the whole series. How long have you been following? Either I am pleased it was helpful.