NOTES for Heb 4:1-11

Apparently, the mystical messianism that spread in circles around the Church after AD 70 had little or no relation to sacred history. Indeed, if the Kingdom is in no way connected with our world, if it triumphs in some other dimension, what relation can historical events have to that triumph, even if the history in question is the history of God's people? In such a context, the perception of Old Testament events inevitably had to change. Evidently, they began to be perceived as something unrelated to messianic history and completed long ago, long before the Savior's coming into the world. Something similar apparently happened with the image of the promised land, which in both Yahwist and early Jewish tradition was connected with the image of the messianic Kingdom: now it was perceived only as a purely historical reality, and the expression "to enter God's rest," which also had a messianic meaning, came to mean only the resettlement of the Jews in Palestine, where they settled and ceased to be a nomadic people.

The author of the epistle rightly points out that the rest of which Holy Scripture speaks does not mean merely settling on the land and ending wanderings, but that it concerns a qualitatively new spiritual state that is not achieved by conquering the land alone. That is why he is confident that the messianic meaning of the expression "to enter rest" has by no means been lost, and that one can enter it even now, when more than a millennium has passed since the Jews conquered the land promised by God. And he urges his readers not to lose this meaning, the central one for spiritual life (vv. 1-3).

For the author of the epistle, the history of salvation is by no means complete, as perhaps it seemed to the supporters of mystical messianism. In the Old Testament texts he finds indications of this incompleteness, indications all the more precious because they presupposed the triumph of the Kingdom here, in our world, a world being transformed but not yet transformed (vv. 4-7). The history of salvation has begun, but it is by no means finished, and those who did not manage to join it before can still become part of it. But time is short, and it is better not to delay: it may happen that the next call of God really does turn out to be the last (vv. 8-11). Thus the author of the epistle reminds his readers of the main thing: the Kingdom that has drawn near and is coming, coming not somewhere in other worlds, but here and now.