Hebrews 4:3Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

"But we who have believed," he says, "enter the rest." Then he confirms this by adding: "As He said, I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter My rest," although His works had been finished from the foundation of the world. Since someone might say that these words show not that we will enter, but that they did not enter, what does the Apostle do? First he tries to show that, just as the first rest did not prevent another from being called rest, so neither does this one prevent the heavenly rest. Then he wishes to show that the Jews did not attain the rest. That he truly speaks this way is clear from what he adds next.

From where is it clear that we who have believed will enter the rest? From the fact that God said that those who did not believe would not enter. This becomes clear by contrast. Just as the recompense for their unbelief was that they did not enter the rest, so, conversely, we who have believed will receive as the reward for our faith that we shall enter. At first glance this speech may seem inconsistent, but in reality it is not so. It shows that no one can say David is speaking of the Sabbath rest. For how could he be speaking of it, when it had long since taken place, and when the world had been ordered from the beginning? It is clear that David is speaking of some other rest.

But we shall enter into that very rest, we who have believed in Christ and have been endowed with the gifts of His grace. They did not enter that rest, according to the oath which He gave through David, saying, "I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter My rest" (cf. Ps 94:11).

"For we who have believed enter the rest, as He said, I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter My rest." The Apostle intends to show three rests named in divine Scripture. The first is the seventh day, on which God completed creation. The second is the promised land. The third is the Heavenly Kingdom. He strives to show this from the prophetic testimony. For he says, "If there is in reality no other rest, why does God command those who had received the second rest not to harden their hearts? Why does He threaten punishment and make mention of those who neglected the second rest?" The Apostle lists them in order and begins with the first, the seventh day.

"For we who have believed enter the rest." So did Joshua and Caleb enter it. But from where is it clear that we who have believed also enter it? "As He said, I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter My rest" (Ps 94:11). This is clear from the fact that those who then did not believe God's words did not enter. If they did not enter, then it remains for someone to enter. Moreover, after so many years had passed after the believing ones entered the promised land, I mean Joshua, Caleb, and the children of those who believed, He would not have said through David: "Today. If you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation." Moreover, some would not have received the command not to do what those men did, if they did not wish to suffer what those men suffered.

"We who have believed enter the rest." In the Apostle, God's promise of rest extends to all times and to all people. What God has said once is said always and eternally, just as God Himself is eternal. Therefore, when He promises to bring someone into rest, He always brings him in. When He swears in wrath that someone will not enter His rest, that person will never enter it. On this the Apostle bases the mystery that believers even now will be brought, and indeed are entering, into God's rest. Conversely, unbelievers will be deprived of this right, whenever they may have lived. "They shall not enter My rest." Clearly the Apostle gives these words a special and higher meaning. It is the meaning that the Lord's rest was to have after He finished creating the world.

It is worthy of attention how the Apostle proves from the Old Testament Scripture that the rest of the promised land cannot be understood only in a literal sense. Nor can it be applied only to Moses' contemporaries. God's promise concerning this rest was awaiting its proper fulfillment already among the believing descendants of that ancient Israel. These are they who understand the Apostle and High Priest of the New Testament, the Lord Jesus Christ (Heb 4:3-9). For this purpose he compares two passages from the Old Testament Scripture where God's rest is mentioned. One is the eleventh verse of the ninety-fourth Psalm: "I," that is, the Lord, "swore in My wrath that they," the murmuring and unbelieving Hebrews under Moses, "shall not enter My rest."

Since Christians from among the Jews thought that the fulfillment of the messianic prophecies about the completion of God's kingdom was possible only in the people to whom they were given, the Apostle refutes this error with special insistence. He says that Christians themselves have received the proclamation of God's rest, into which they may enter. He asks his readers to take care that no one think it is already impossible for Christians to enter God's rest. Since the promise of entering God's rest still remains in force even now, καταλειπομένης επαγγελίας being a genitive absolute, no one should think that, by separating himself from his Jewish tribe through accepting Christianity, he has thereby lost hope of sharing in the divine rest.