Hebrews 11:20-22 – Faith For the Future (Isaac, Jacob, Joseph)

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 01 Sep. 2019

Intro

ISAAC-first generation
v.20) With faith about impending things, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau.

JACOB-second generation
v.21) With faith, Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph and bowed himself over the tip of his staff.

JOSEPH-third generation
v.22) With faith, Joseph, when he was reaching the end, remembered about the emigration of the children of Israel and gave orders about his bones.



APPENDIX: Greek Text & English Versions of Hebrews 11:20-22A

Greek NT

NAW

KJV

20 Πίστει B περὶ μελλόντων εὐλόγησεν ᾿Ισαὰκ τὸν ᾿Ιακὼβ καὶ τὸν ᾿Ησαῦ.

20 With faith about impending things, Isaac bles­sed Jacob and Esau.

20 By faith Isaac bles­sed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come.

21 Πίστει ᾿Ιακὼβ ἀπο­θνῄσκων ἕκαστον τῶν υἱῶν ᾿Ιωσὴφ εὐλόγησε, καὶ προσ­εκύνησεν ἐπὶC τὸ ἄκρον τῆς ῥάβδου αὐτοῦD.

21 With faith, Jacob, when he was dying, bles­sed each of the sons of Joseph and bowed over the tip of his cane.

21 By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, bles­sed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.

22 Πίστει ᾿Ιωσὴφ τελευτῶν περὶ τῆς ἐξόδου τῶν υἱῶν ᾿Ισραὴλ ἐμνημόνευσεE καὶ περὶ τῶν ὀστέων αὐτοῦ ἐνετείλατο.

22 With faith, Joseph, when he was reach­ing the end, remembered about the emmigration of the children of Israel and gave orders about his bones.

22 By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the depart­ing of the children of Israel; and gave com­mandment concerning his bones.


1Under the universal rule of Jesus, the singular “seed” (as the Apostle Paul pointed out in Galatians 3), “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed,” and God’s promise to Isaac is fulfilled.

2Num. 13:20; Deut. 8:8; 32:13; 1 Chr. 4:40; Neh. 9:35; Ezek. 27:17

3Or perhaps he could have inferred it from God’s promise in Gen. 17:4 to Abraham the “father of many nations” in the sense of filial reverence from many branches of a family tree.

4Despite the similarities in phrase, there is no contradiction, because two different occasions are described. The cir­cum­stances of the one are not necessarily ascribed to the other in Scripture and therefore cannot logically be forced upon the other by interpreters.

5Although perhaps, as Hughes suggested, it is an allusion to the event where he bade them swear earlier, conflating the two anachronistically.

6Thus Matthew Henry “He did this leaning on the top of his staff... intimating to us his great natural weakness, that he was not able to support himself so far as to sit up in his bed without a staff, and yet that he would not make this an excuse for neglecting the worshipping of God; he would do it as well as he could with his body, as well as with his spirit, though he could not do it as well as he would. He showed thereby his dependence upon God, and testified his condition here as a pilgrim with his staff, and his weariness of the world, and willingness to be at rest.”

7cf. Chrysostom: “He was even so confident about the future things, as to show it also by his act. For inasmuch as another King was about to arise from Ephraim, therefore it is said, ‘And he bowed himself upon the top of his staff.’ That is, even though he was now an old man, ‘he bowed himself” to Joseph, showing the obeisance of the whole people which was to be [directed] to him. And this indeed had already taken place, when his brethren ‘bowed down’ to him: but it was afterwards to come to pass through the ten tribes.” cf. Calvin: “He was therefore led by faith to submit himself to his son.” cf. John Brown: “testified his firm confidence in the promise… by worshipping, bending over his staff, which was necessary to support his now enfeebled frame.”

8The LXX is the indicative verb ἀποθνῄσκω. Hebrews 11:22 uses a synonym in participle form τελευτῶν. The Hebrew of Gen. 50:24 uses a participle‎ מֵ֑ת, with a meaning closer to the Greek apothnesk-, but then when the same Hebrew verb is repeated (in vav consecutive imperfect form) in Gen. 50:26, the LXX renders it ἐτελεύτησεν.

9LXX ἀνάξει (“lead you up”)/ MT ‎ הֶעֱלָ֤ה (“cause you to go up”)/compare to Heb. 11:22 ἐξόδου (“way out/emmigration/exodus”)

10LXX= ὥρκισεν ("took oath"), MT = יַּשְׁבַּ֣ע ("Cause to swear") Compare to Heb. 11:22 ἐνετείλατο (“commanded”)

11"Joseph's coffin, the Jews say (T. Bab. Sota, fol. 13. 1), was put into the river Nile; and so says Patricides (Apud Hottinger. Smegma Oriental. l. 1. c. 8. p. 379), an Arabic writer: others say it was in the buryingplace of the kings, until it was taken up and removed by Moses." ~John Gill, AD 1766

AThe Greek is the Majority text, edited by myself to follow the majority of the earliest-known manuscripts only when the early manuscript evidence is practically unanimous. My original document includes notes on the NKJV, NASB, NIV, & ESV English translations, but since they are all copyrighted, I cannot include them in my online document. Underlined words in English versions indicate a standalone difference from all other English translations of a certain word. Strikeout usually indicates that the English translation is, in my opinion, too far outside the range of meaning of the original Greek word. The addition of an X indicates a Greek word left untranslated – or a plural Greek word translated as an English singular. [Brackets] indicate words added in English not in the Greek. Key words are colored consistently across the chart to show correlations.

BThree of the five first-millennium Greek manuscripts insert the conjunction kai here, as do another dozen Greek manuscripts in the second millennium, but the overall majority of Greek manuscripts do not have the conjunction, and I lean toward the traditional text without the conjunction, although, it makes no real difference in meaning, serving only to reinforce the beginning of a new sentence or to express similarity to the previous patriarch’s faith, and both of those concepts are already deducible from the context.

CThe Vulgate translation negligently omitted this preposition which is in all the Greek manuscripts, resulting in the practice of acts of obeisance to sticks! Speaking of which, P.E. Hughes in his 1977 commentary on Hebrews, mentioned a rabbinical tradition that this staff had been handed down from father to son since the time of Adam and was the same one Moses used.

DThe last phrase matches (with the omission of one word) a phrase from the LXX of Gen. 47:31, describing the attendant circumstances of an incident prior to the blessing of Joseph’s sons, where Jacob (called “Israel” in the LXX & in the Hebrew of Gen. 47:31) made Joseph swear not to bury his body in Egypt when he died. Perhaps that action was understood to be a posture he often took in his life and was assumed to be the position he took afterward as well when blessing Ephraim and Manasseh. The Masoretic text is different enough (“head” instead of “tip,” “couch” instead of “rod,” and the additional pronoun in the LXX referring to the staff) that the apostle seems to be quoting from the LXX rather than making his own version from the Hebrew, which readsוישׁתחו ישׂראל על־ראשׁ המטה׃. The last word in Hebrew, depending on its pointing could be translated either “couch/furniture/bed” or “staff/cane/rod/walking-stick.” Judges 6:21 also mentions the “tip” of a “staff” using the same Greek words, but that combination of words occurs nowhere else in the Greek Bible.

EGenesis 50 records Joseph giving orders concerning his bones after prophesying of the Exodus of the children of Israel.

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