Hebrews 10:34 - Exposition

For ye had compassion on those who were in bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing that ye have for yourselves a better possession, and an abiding one. For τοῖς δεσμίοις , the Receptus has τοῖς δεσμοῖς μου , which the A.V., so as to avoid the impropriety of expressing sympathy with the bonds themselves, renders "me in my bonds." Even apart from manuscript authority, δεσμίοις is evidently to be preferred, both as suiting the verb συνεπαθήσατε and as being more likely to have been altered to the common Pauline expression, δεσμοῖς μου , than vice versa, especially on the supposition of the writer being St. Paul himself. Thus no evidence as to the authorship of the Epistle is hence deducible. The allusion is to persecutions of Christians, under which the Hebrews addressed had been plundered, and had succored others who were prisoners for the faith, as is intimated also in Hebrews 6:10 . More than one such persecution might be in the writer's view, including, perhaps, that after the stoning of Stephen ( Acts 8:1 ; Acts 11:19 ); that instituted by Herod Agrippa, under which James the elder suffered ( Acts 12:1-25 ); that which led to the martyrdom of James the Just (Josephus, 'Ant.,' 20.9. 1) and others.