Wherein God, meaning more abundantly to shew to the heirs of the promise the immutability of his counsel, interposed an oath:
εν ω περισσοτερον βουλομενος ο θεος επιδειξαι τοις κληρονομοις της επαγγελιας το αμεταθετον της βουλης αυτου εμεσιτευσεν ορκω
10 Church Fathers comment on this verse
God should have been believed even without an oath. But God, wishing more abundantly to show the heirs of the promise the immutability of His will, interposed an oath. Here the Apostle also means the believers. Therefore he mentions such a promise as applied to all of us generally. He interposed, he says, an oath. Again here he speaks of the Son, who is the Mediator between men and God.
That is, precisely because an oath gives men full assurance, God also swears. Or “therefore” means this: in that God swore by Himself, He abundantly proved to us that He will in every way and immutably fulfill what He promised. Although God ought to have been believed even without an oath, He condescends for our sake. He does not look to His own dignity, but, in order to persuade us, permits what is unworthy to be said of Himself. For we, the faithful, blessed in his seed, which is Christ, are heirs of the promise. See how even then he says that the Son is mediator between God and men. For by Himself, as by the Word, God the Father swore.
Therefore God also, desiring to show more abundantly to the heirs of the promise, that is, to the worthy descendants of righteous Abraham, the immutability and unchangeableness of His will for the salvation of men through Abraham’s Descendant, interposed an oath. Since God could swear by no one higher than Himself, He swore by Himself (Heb 6:13). Do you see, Orthodox Christians, what love the Lord shows toward us men, long before the appearance of the Savior in the world? He uses every means so that men may preserve faith in the promises He gave concerning the Savior. More than once He appeared to the righteous of the Old Testament. More than once He reminded them by a voice without visible appearance. Finally, He even swears. An oath on the lips of God is the final word assuring us of the immutability of the promises.
By this very oath God wished to show the heirs of the promise that His promise, because of His oath, is unchangeable. His irrevocable oath served as mediation between God, the Angel, and Abraham.
Therefore God added an oath to His word, wishing to show the truthfulness of the promise. He also showed that, after the oath, it is impossible for anything else to be established in the counsel of God.
In which means in the word of promise. In this promise, God, wishing to show the heirs of the promise more strongly the immutability of His promise, used an oath. He made it a guarantee of the unchangeable fulfillment of the promise, as was said above. The heir of the promise, in the sense grasped by the senses, was the ancient people. In the intelligible sense, it is the new people of the New Covenant. For Abraham's seed consists, on the one hand, of those bound to him by bodily kinship. On the other hand, it consists of those who are spiritually likened to him through the power of faith, as is said more fully in another epistle (Rom 9:7).
The heirs of the promise are the spiritual children of Abraham, that is, those who believed in Christ, the son of Abraham according to the flesh. “Those who are of faith are sons of Abraham” (Gal 3:7). The promise inherited by Abraham’s spiritual children is the blessing of Jesus Christ, which God promised Abraham when He said to him, “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 22:18). “Those who are of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham” (Gal 3:9). By that blessing the heirs of the promise become heirs of heavenly glory, “where Jesus has entered for us as Forerunner” (Heb 6:20).
The phrase “wherein” is used instead of “therefore.” Therefore, he says, because an oath ends every disputing unbelief and seals certainty, God, wishing “more abundantly to show,” that is, to prove more strongly to those who believe in Christ that His counsel is immutable and unchangeable, “interposed by an oath,” that is, He used an oath as an intermediary. Note that this stronger proof was not for Abraham, for he so believed the Word of God that his faith “was accounted to him as righteousness” (Gal 3:6). It was for the heirs of the promise, so that, later hearing that God had promised by oath to give them the blessing, they might believe and be assured of it.
In this section of chapter 6, the Apostle urges his readers to await the fulfillment of the divine promises with faith and longsuffering. As an example of constancy in hope, he sets forth Abraham, who "after he had patiently endured, obtained the promise" (v. 15).
He places the foundation of firm hope in the fact that God confirmed His promises by an oath, and that He cannot lie either in oath or in promise (v. 18). At the same time, the Apostle gives us the true understanding of an oath and of its lawful use.
"When God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself." By these words the Apostle points to what God said to Abraham after the sacrifice of Isaac: "By Myself I have sworn. Because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son, for My sake, blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your seed" (Gen 22:16-17).
"Men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of every dispute." By the greater, κατὰ τοῦ μείζονος, the Lord is meant here. This is why an oath has confirmatory force. This is why that force extends to every dispute among them, so that an oath removes every possibility of contradiction.
"Thus God, desiring to show the immutability of His counsel, interposed with an oath." To make these last words clearer, one must know that the Slavonic says a verb meaning "acted as mediator," while the Greek has ἐμεσίτευσεν, from "mediator," μεσίτης. Both mean that He became mediator through an oath.
A mediator is a person who strives to reconcile two hostile or disputing sides, or who helps negotiations between people divided by distance and mutual difference. When God mediated by an oath, it means that He placed Himself between man and Himself.
This idea is very proper to Scripture. According to its teaching, God is advocate, surety, and mediator between man and Himself. Thus Job cried out, turning to God: "Lay down a pledge for me with Yourself; who is there who will pledge himself for me?" (Job 17:3).
If God placed Himself as mediator in that unique oath when He swore by Himself, then clearly He appears as the same mediator and surety when He does not swear by Himself, but men swear by Him as the greater.
From this the true understanding of an oath becomes clear. It consists in this: when men assure one another, they call God as witness, mediator, and surety. They do this with the thought that He will help fulfill the promise and punish intentional violation or false assurance.
What impious or irreverent thing can be found in such an oath? God Himself swore, though He had no one by whom to swear except Himself. His promises, being incapable of falsehood, needed no confirmation by oath. Distrust of them would have been a crime on man's part.
Therefore an oath is all the more fitting among men. Human words can be true insofar as they are accompanied by thought of the Most High, the all-knowing God, who is the highest Truth and hates all who speak falsehood (Ps 5:6).
As soon as the remembrance of God leaves a man, his mouth and heart are filled with falsehood. Whoever in an oath calls God as mediator and surety of his promises or assurances thereby confesses a reverent remembrance of Him as the Knower of hearts.
He confesses Him as the One who knows that his words are sincere and that his promises contain no deceit. It is therefore understandable why, as the Apostle says, "an oath," used for confirmation, "ends every dispute" among men.
“For men swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is the end of every dispute among them” (Heb 6:16). But do men do well when they swear, and is an oath at all permissible? No, it is not permissible, some speculators answer; an oath is a sinful thing, as the Quakers, Count L. Tolstoy, and others say. But these speculations are refuted by the Apostle’s following words concerning God. Desiring to show more abundantly to the heirs of the promise the immutability of His will (Heb 6:17), for example, to Abraham, that he would become father of many nations, God interposed an oath. Since He could swear by no one higher, He swore by Himself, as said above (Heb 6:13).
The Apostle Paul does not here directly raise the question of the oath and therefore does not make a deliberate decision on it. By the words cited above he has in view only strengthening hope in the persecuted and suffering Hebrews to whom he writes his epistle. He wishes to dispose them to wait patiently for the fulfillment of God’s promises, because they are immutable. Nevertheless, in the Apostle’s words cited above there is undoubtedly an indirect decision on the question of the oath. If it were in no case permissible for men to use an oath, as something sinful, then the Lord would never have used it for them. He would not have assured Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob of anything by oath. Yet the Lord did this. Did not God the Father Himself swear, to assure men concerning the eternal high priesthood of His Son? Indeed: “The Lord has sworn and will not repent: You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Ps 109:4).
To move his readers still more toward longsuffering, the Apostle next shows that, as heirs of the promises given to Abraham, they must pay special attention to this: God swore to Abraham concerning the faithful fulfillment of these promises. And what is an oath? An oath has great significance. It puts an end to every contradiction and every dispute, finally confirming the truth of the words of the one who swears. On this basis God also, for the reassurance of all whom the promise concerned, swore according to human custom that He would fulfill it. Thus two things should reassure us: the promise itself, which as the word of the true God is already immutable in itself, and still more, the oath of God.
Passages read together with this verse.
Greek text, 18 words with lemma, transliteration and Strong’s number. Tap to expand.
THEOSIS