Hebrews 3:15 - Exposition

While it is said, Today , etc. Commentators have found unnecessary difficulty in determining the connection of ἐν τῷ λέγεσθαι . Many, taking the words as the beginning of a new sentence, have been at pains to discover the apodosis to them. Cbrysostom, Grotius, Rosenmuller, and others find it in φοβηθῶμεν οὖν , Hebrews 4:1 ; notwithstanding the οὖν , which seems evidently to introduce a new sentence, and the long parenthesis which, on this supposition, intervenes. Others find it in μὴ σκληρύνητε ("harden not your hearts"), in the middle of the citation of Hebrews 4:16 , as if the writer of the Epistle adopted these words as his own. Delitzsch finds it in Hebrews 4:16 , taken as an interrogation ( τίνες , not τινὲς : see below); thus: "When it is said, Today … harden not your hearts as in the provocation,… who did provoke? Nay, did not all?" The γὰρ after τίνες he accounts for by its idiomatic use found in such passages as Acts 8:31 ; Acts 19:35 , conveying the sense of the English, "Why, who did provoke?" But this use of γὰρ , obvious in the texts adduced as parallel, would be forced here; the structure of the sentence does not easily lend itself to it. Still, this is the view taken by Tholuck, Bleek, De Wette, Lunemann, and others, as well as Delitzsch. But, notwithstanding such weighty support, difficulties are surely best avoided by taking ἐν τῷ λέγεσθαι , not as commencing a new sentence, but in connection with Acts 19:14 preceding, as it seems most natural to take it in the absence of any connecting particle to mark a new proposition. In this case the translation of the A.V. gives a fully satisfactory sense: "If we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end, while it is still being said, Today," etc; i.e. (as in Acts 19:13 ) "so long as it is called Today." Ebrard, Alford, and others, taking the same view of the connection of the words, prefer the translation, "In that it is said." But the other seems more in accordance with the thought pervading the passage.