Hebrews 13:9 - Exposition

Be not carried away (so, according to the best authorities, rather than carried about ) by divers and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, in which they that were occupied (literally, that walked ) were not profited. From the exhortation to imitate the faith of the departed leaders, the transition is natural to warnings against being carried away from it by new teachings. The faith, which was their faith, remains unchanged, as Jesus Christ remains unchanged; why, then, these doctrines, new and strange (of. 1 Corinthians 3:11 ; Galatians 1:6-10 )? What these doctrines were is not shown, except so far as is intimated by the word βρώμασιν ("meats"), which reminds us at once of similar warnings in St. Paul's Epistles (cf. Romans 14:2 , Romans 14:14 , Romans 14:21 ; Colossians 2:8 , Colossians 2:16 -723; 1 Timothy 4:3 ). These passages seem to refer in the first place to purely Jewish distinctions, still held to by Jewish Christians, between dean and unclean or polluted meats; and further to a new kind of asceticism, not found in the Old Testament, but based probably on notions of the impurity of matter, which led to entire abstention from flesh or wine, and also in some ( 1 Timothy 4:3 ) from marriage; also, as appears from the passage in Colossians, a false philosophy about angels and the spiritual world. We may perceive in these allusions the germs at least of later Gnostic heresies, such as found (as that of the Ebionites) their first congenial soil in Jewish circles; Oriental theosophy, or neo-Platonic philosophy, being supposed to have been engrafted on Jewish modes of thought. Some, misled by what is said in verse 10, see in the word βρώμασιν an allusion to those sacrifices of the Law which were eaten by the worshippers, against any fancied obligation to partake in which the readers are supposed to be warned. But the word is never so applied in the Old Testament or the New (see above, Hebrews 9:10 ; Le Hebrews 11:34 ; 1 Macc. 1:16; Romans 14:15 , Romans 14:20 , 31; 1 Corinthians 6:13 , 1 Corinthians 8:8 , 1 Corinthians 8:13 ); nor would such error be likely to be classed among "strange doctrines." The drift of the warning is that the religion of the gospel does not consist in any of these notions or observances, the supposed importance of meats being specially noted, and that to make them its essence is a misconception of its whole meaning, and a departure from the faith: "For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost" ( Romans 14:17 ).