Hebrews 12:1

1. Wherefore In view of the facts of the episode of chapter 11 the glories of faith and its champions. Let us resume the exhortation begun at Hebrews 10:19, interrupted by chap. 11, and from this point essentially continued through the remainder of the epistle.

We also The also connecting the we with the sublime roll of worthies. We, and not the Judaists, are in their line; our faith is their faith.

A cloud of witnesses Lunemann denies that the witnesses are represented to be spectators, and so the passage does not, as many think, picture to us a figurative race-course in the campus, with a crowd of departed saints watching us from their high seats while we run the race of faith in which they were our predecessors. Undoubtedly, after the manner of Paul, the word witness, as noun or verb, is, in its different meanings, a reigning word here. The Greek word, obscured in our English translation, appears in Hebrews 11:2; Hebrews 11:4-5; Hebrews 11:39, where the heroes of faith are witnessed or attested by God. Here the witnessed become witnesses; those who were testified to now testify, namely, to the grandeur of the faith. The additional meaning of spectators, namely, of our race, by which they become not only testifiers to the faith, but watchers of our career of faith, is derived from the position assigned them in the picture. So that, triply, they are the witnessed to of God, the witnesses for faith, and the watching witnesses of our faith -course. We run the heavenly race under the eye of the heroes who are attested of God as heroes of the true faith. The word cloud is often used by Greek writers to figure a crowd of men; here, with allusion to the elevated position of the spectators in the heavens, as in a high gallery, around and above the racers.

Every weight That would impede our fleetness. The Greek word ‘ Ογκος denotes a swelling, especially of superfluous flesh; and this the ancient racer removed by fasting and exercise. It, therefore, very strikingly expresses any impediment, intrinsic to the person, to a rapid race. As the Greek word is also applied to the swell of a bombastic style, Bengel interprets here of spiritual pride. The Greek medical writers used the term for all burdening and enfeebling obesity, and recommended gymnastics as its remedy.

So easily beset us The Greek adjective, ευπαριστατος , may signify either something standing around us, something placing itself around us, or something placed around us. It may figure sin as an enemy surrounding or meeting us whichever way we turn, or as a garment or personal appendage fitted about us. The ancient racer stripped himself of every unnecessary apparel. And so as weight refers to intrinsic and personal impediments, besetment may imply any extraneous surrounding hinderance. With (rather, through) patience Energetic persistence. We are told (Hebrews 10:3) of the need of patience as an accompaniment, but here it is the main means or method of running the successful race. We are to put forth all our inherent energy, incited by the divinest motives.

The race The whole heroic work of faith wrought by the heroes of chap. xi is here compressed into this one conception of race. The witnesses once ran the same race that we now run. Set (or, rather, Greek, lying) before us The solemn task of our earthly probation.