Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

Hebrews XL 35-38. 553
all the Judges were heroes in battle, then Jonathan, David, etc.
KXivELv TTapeiJ,l3oXdg dXXoTpMv (aciem inclinare)—the reference is, here,
again, to Gideon and Jonathan.
In ver. 35 the author places over against each other two kinds
of manifestations of faith—the faith of those women (1 Kings
xvii. 17, seq. ; 2 Kings iv. 17, seq.) whose sons were restored to bodily
life by the prophets, and the still greater faith of the martyrs
(of the time of the Maccabees), who sacrificed the bodily life in
faith, and on account of faith, for the sake of the future resurrection
to the ^Zonj^ec? life. Hence he does not merely say: "Not
accepting deliverance that they might obtain a better deliverance;"
but, referring back to the first clause of the verse, he speaks of a
letter resurrection.— TvnTravi^eiv comes from Tvinxavov^ which signifies
originally a kettle-drum, 2 Mace. vi. 19 and 28, but occurs as the
designation of an instrument of torture (probably in the form of a
wheel), upon which the sufferers were stretched in order then to be
beaten to death. They accepted not the d-noXvrpwai^, ransom^ namely,
that deliverance which they might have bought at the price of denying
-their faith. At e^ dvaoTcioeug in the beginning of the verse, tf is so
to be explained as that dvdaraaic; denotes the act of risiag again.
They received them from the resurrection, ^. e., as those who had
*
just been raised up.
Ver. 36-38.—The writer returns in ver. 36 to the mention of less
violent sufferings, in order from these, to rise again in a new climax,
ver. 37, to the greatest tortures. Then, at the end of ver. 37 and
in ver. 38, he sets over against the cruel death of some martyrs, the
destitute life of others. Moclcings, and these of a public and most
abusive kind, were endured in the Maccabean persecutions (1 Mace.
ix. 26; 2 Mace. vii. 7); scourgings in the same persecutions (2 Mace,
vi. 30, vii. 1); imprisonments in the same persecutions (1 Mace,
xiii. 12), and also in the Old Testament (1 Kings xxii. 27; Jerem.
xxxvii. 18).—Death by stoning, 2 Chron. xxiv. 20, seq., comp. Matth.
xxiii. 35. The torture consisting in being bound between two
boards and sawn alive in two, is said, according to a tradition common
to Christians and Jews, consequently an old Jewish tradition,
to have been undergone by the prophet Jeremiah under Manasseh.
Now follows tTTetpdadrjcjav. The cursive manuscript 17 places this
word before tTrpiad'qaav'j it is omitted altogether in the Peshito,
^thiop., Eusebius, and Theophylact ; but these inconsiderable
deviations are easily to be accounted for by the internal difficulty
which lies in the word. For it is difficult to see what this jejune
and general expression, " they were tempted," can have to do in this
connexion,* and as sure as some word must have originally stood in
* Olsbausen thinks, that the temi^tation to apostatize from the faith is represented as
the acme of all the suffering that can befall the Christian.
to form the conclusion, and stand at the end of ver 38
But then eirEipdaOijaav ought