HERBREWS CHAPTER 11 Heb. 11 The nature of faith, and its acceptableness with God, set forth in the examples of many excellent persons of old time.

Now faith: the Holy Spirit proceeds in this chapter to strengthen the counsel he had given these Hebrews to continue stedfast in the faith of Christ, to the end that they may receive their reward, the salvation of their souls, Heb. 10:39, 1 Pet.

This is a proof of the first part of faith’s description, that it is the substance of things hoped for; for all the fathers were testified of to have this work of faith in realizing their hopes.

This proves the second part of faith’s description, Heb. 11:1, that it is the evidence of things not seen; for by it only we understand the creation, which no eye saw.

The Spirit beginneth here to illustrate his description of faith, by induction of instances throughout the former ages of the church to the time of these Hebrews; and he begins with believers in the old world before the flood.

By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death: by the Divine faith before described, that which reacheth home to God by Christ, Enoch, the seventh patriarch in a descent from Adam of the church’s line, Gen.

The Spirit here proveth that Enoch pleased God by faith, though it was not expressly written in his text by Moses, because of the impossibility of pleasing God without faith.

By faith Noah, being warned of God; by the same Divine faith Noah, the last example of it in the old world, and the father of the new world, being warned by an immediate revelation from God, Gen. 6:13, Gen.

Here begin instances of this Divine faith after the flood from Abraham to Moses’s time, Heb. 11:8–22. The first is the father of believers, so entitled by God, eminent in the exercise of this grace, of whose ancestry, and their descent from him, these Hebrews did greatly glory.

By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country; by the same Divine faith he passed from tent to tent, moving it from place to place, as God ordered; so as he rather sojourned than dwelt in any.

The reason of this contented pilgrimage was the excellent end of it, the place and state to which it brought him; he did really discern by the Spirit’s work in him, and promise to him, his title to it, and vehemently did desire and long for, and yet patiently waited for, a better place and state…

Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed; by the same Divine faith in Abraham and Sarah was brought forth the child of promise.

Because of this faith of Abraham and Sarah, and the fruit of it in conceiving and bringing forth Isaac, was laid the foundation of a numerous seed by God’s promise; from Abraham, a hundred, and Sarah, ninety years old, and barren, and both dead as to procreation, Rom.

These all died in faith; all these, Abragam, Sarah, Isaac, and Jacob, &c., who were heirs of the same promises, and who had opportunity to return to the same country from which they came forth, as Heb.

The reason of faith’s effect in their dying, is the bringing in view a better life, state, and place than any earthly one. For these believers, by word and life professing themselves to be strangers and pilgrims on this earth, and seeing God’s promises, and embracing them, declare and show plainly…

Though they were strangers in Canaan, yet they might seek an earthly country, even Ur of the Chaldees, from whence they came forth, and which was their native country, and so might be dearer to them than any other; but it was not that, but a better country, they were mindful of, which they viewed…

But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: having deserted this world, as strangers in it, they sought, desired, and hoped for with the greatest earnestness and fervency, a city in the country of heaven, Heb.

By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac; by the same excellent faith Abraham alone, and by himself considered, being tried by God, in a rare way, to give proof of the truth of his faith in and love to him above all, was to take his only son, his darling, and to offer him for a whole…

This did greaten Abraham’s trial, that unto him it was promised by God himself: That in this only begotten son Isaac, the eminently blessed and blessing Seed, with all his mystical body, should be called; that is, put in being, propagated and made known as by name in Isaac, Gal. 4:28.

Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead: faith put this into Abraham’s thoughts in his reasonings about this trial between the temptation and God’s power, and influenced him to conclude and determine under it.

Isaac is the next example instanced in of the same Divine faith, described, Heb. 11:1; only here exercised on the special revelation of God to him concerning his seed.

By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph: Jacob did not degenerate from his progenitors, but by the same excellent faith (being heir to the birthright and blessing, by God’s appointment, and his father’s confirmation, as Gen. 28:1, Gen.

By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel: Joseph, the first son of Jacob by Rachel, whom God preferred before his brethren, envied and sold by them, but advanced by him to be lord of Egypt, and a saviour to them, heir of the birthright, and of his…

By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents: the parents of Moses were as eminent in this faith as their progenitors; for by it Amram and Jochebed, both of them of the tribe of Levi, Ex.

Moses himself was as eminent a believer as his parents, and a mighty instance of Divine faith. He who was so named and saved by the enemies of the church, and adopted as a son to a notorious one of them, yet being great in age and stature, full forty, Ex.

Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God: the same faith influenced his will, the cause of his former renunciation; for being in the present fruition of all court favours, and under the offers of all worldly delights by Egypt, and of all worldly discontents by God, faith…

Esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: faith influenced and determined his former choice from the most excellent ground of it, the representation of these by the Divine inspired truth to him; it made him weigh and deliberate about the matters proposed, and then…

By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: by the same excellent faith, after his demand from Pharaoh of liberty for Israel to leave Egypt, and he had brought on him and his people the ten plagues God threatened them with, then he brake the bands of captivity, and took up Israel,…

Through faith he kept the Passover, and the sprinkling of blood: this Divine faith influenced him in all his work about God’s ordinances, receiving the law about them from God’s mouth, and obeying it. By it he made the Passover, i.e. as God’s instrument, he instituted it, and put it into being, Ex.

By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land: the same faith enabled Moses eminently, and those other believers, as Aaron, Caleb, Joshua, &c. for all Israel believed not, 1 Cor.

This Divine faith, exercised by Joshua and Israel after their entrance into the Land of Promise, (who did, on God’s word and command, compass the impregnable walls of Jericho once every day for six days together, and on the seventh day seven times, sounding with trumpets of rams’ horns, and at last…

By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not; by the same gospel faith Rahab, who, as the Jews read the word, Josh. 2:1, זונה; was an hostess, and kept a house of entertainment, and so came to lodge the spies; or, as the Septuagint read it, and the Holy Ghost confirms it here,…

And what shall I more say? Here the Spirit puts a period to the induction by an expostulation, as if he had said: Why do I speak of so many examples of faith? the Old Testament is full of them; but here is proof enough, I will say no more. For the time would fail me to tell, &c.

These, by the same gospel faith, subdued kingdoms, defeating the mighty enemies of the church; and eminently amongst them, David, who conquered Edom, Moab, Ammon, and the Syrian kingdoms, and extended his conquests to the Euphrates.

Quenched the violence of fire: by the same faith others of the prophets, Heb. 11:32, eminently acquainted with God, and partakers of his secret, who defying idolatry, and the threatenings of a tyrant, became confessors of the true God and his worship, and were adjudged to the fiery furnace, Dan.

Women received their dead raised to life again: through this Divine faith, both the prophets Elijah and Elisha did raise and restore, the one to the window of Sarepta, 1 Kings 17:22–23, the other to the Shunammite, 2 Kings 4:35–36, their sons from the dead; and these women and mothers did by faith…

And others had trial of cruel mockings; the same gospel faith enabled others than those mentioned before, prophets and saints, as Micaiah, 1 Kings 22:24, Elisha, 2 Kings 2:23, Isa.

They were stoned; by the same faith were several of the prophets and believing worthies of old carried through cruel deaths, the just punishment of malefactors, but the wicked tortures of these innocent saints, some being stoned to death, as Zechariah the son of Jehoiada, 2 Chron.

Of whom the world was not worthy: the Spirit intermixeth an account of what these persons were who were so treated, lest the reader or hearer of these things might be mistaken of them, judging them to be some heinous malefactors, who were thus hurried in and destroyed by the world.

The apostle returns in this verse to the proposition laid down in the second verse, which he had been proving by all these examples, and with it shuts up the history of them. And these all; all these elders, mentioned from Heb. 11:2 to this verse.

God having provided some better thing for us: the causes of their not receiving the promise, are summed up in this verse; the efficient of it is God’s providence unto believers before and after the incarnation of the Messiah.