All these died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them from afar off and embraced [them], and confessed that they were strangers and sojourners on the earth.
Hebrews 11 pauses its roll-call to sum up how the patriarchs finished: they died still waiting. So how can a life count as a success when the promise never arrived?
Death here is not faith's defeat but its final act. Commentators point out that the wording is closer to "died according to faith."
Even when Abraham reached Canaan he had not reached the object of faith. He was as much a pilgrim in the land as he was on the journey to it. His whole life was a pilgrimage. He never owned what God had promised him... "These all died in faith," or, as the word is, "died according to faith." They died in line with what faith had laid hold of. By faith they saw the promises connected with the inheritance, but they did not receive them. Nature grew feeble. Its powers decayed, and they were laid in the grave. But they died in faith, clinging to the promises still far off — convinced of them, so that there was no uncertainty.
Their care over graves in Canaan was not sentiment. It was a claim on land God had promised them but they never owned.
The history strikingly illustrates this. They valued their dead bodies and the burial places that held them. While they lived, they were content to live in Canaan without owning so much as a foot of it. But "they died in faith." God's promise had given that land, that very land, to them, though they themselves would be gathered to their fathers (Gen. 15). This was the warrant for their dying in faith, in the sure and certain hope of a resurrection to enjoy it.
The verse moves through four steps of faith, and the last one is public.
Faith sees death as only a necessary step toward the fulfilment of the promise, so the patriarchs stayed calm and quiet in the face of death. First in our verse we see faith's long sight. Second, its firm, unshaken persuasion. Third, its embracing with the whole soul the preciousness of the truth of God. Fourth, its unhesitating confession before the world that earth is only a foreign land of pilgrimage. How full, real, and precious such a character is! Who would trade it for all the wealth, pleasure, power and popularity the world may offer for a brief span of years?
Some translations read "embraced" where the ESV has "greeted." The word points to affection, not just agreement. Bellett then asks what made these people strangers in the first place.
The first thing to do with a promise is to take hold of it — then to exercise faith about it — and then to receive it by the heart. They "embraced" them. Their hearts hugged them. How far has my heart hugged the promises?... But surely the closer we hug them the more blessed we will be as we consent to be strangers and pilgrims in this world. Did they speak of being strangers because they had left Mesopotamia? No; but because they had not reached heaven.
The ESV has "strangers and exiles"; the writers below quote the verse as "strangers and pilgrims." The pair is not repetition. Each word says something different about where a believer stands.
A fugitive is a man who has fled from home. A vagabond is a man who has no home. A stranger is a man who is absent from home. A pilgrim is a man who is on his way home.
Abraham's daily habits showed both words in action:
In Haran, where Abraham was delayed for a time, we read he "dwelt there." But once he arrived in the land, we read he "pitched his tent," as one who had no fixed dwelling place. What is more, we read that he "passed through the land." As a stranger he had only a tent in this world. As a pilgrim he was passing through to another world.
Commentators differ over the clause "and were persuaded of them." The ESV leaves it out. Some writers rest weight on it; others treat it as a later addition.
And so these all died in accordance with faith, just as they had lived. They looked forward to Messiah's day, when the promises would be made good. The addition of "and were persuaded" in the Received Text has very little support, and that support counts for nothing... It really weakens the truth. But the practical result is as weighty as it is undeniable: they confessed that they were strangers and sojourners on the earth.
- Saw — faith's long sight looked past what was visible and took in promises still far off. Death did not interrupt that sight.
- Welcomed — from far off they greeted the promises, still looking ahead to Messiah's day.
- Embraced — they did not just believe the promise; they loved it. Hearts that hugged it held the world loosely.
- Confessed — a stranger is away from home, a pilgrim is heading home; tents and burial plots said both out loud.
- Died — they died as they had lived, according to faith. They still owned nothing, and were still sure of a resurrection to enjoy it.
For they who say such things shew clearly that they seek [their] country.
Hebrews 11 has just described people who died still waiting for what God promised, and who called themselves foreigners on the earth. Verse 14 draws the conclusion: talk like that tells the world you are looking for a home somewhere else.
Older translations read "declare plainly" here, where the ESV has "make it clear." The declaration is not mainly a speech. One writer reads the phrase as the whole shape of a life, and points to Christ as the clearest example.
Notice that expression, "they declare it plainly." It is not that they always talked about it. The pilgrim's dress is our best witness. Not the clothes we wear, of course, but the whole pilgrim character. Did anyone ever question that the Lord Jesus was a stranger here? that He was not seeking wealth or a place here?... People can tell when a man is heavenly. They sense it when his character, his conversation, his whole life breathes an air that does not belong to earth... This is not something you can get by imitation. It comes by keeping company in spirit with Christ.
This is why the verse treats such people as evidence. Accepting the place of a stranger is what turns a believer into a public witness.
When we accept the path of the stranger, we will become witnesses for God on the earth... The man who declares plainly as a witness for God is the man who answers the call of God.
Older translations say they "seek a country." The homeland they wanted was not even the land God had promised them.
Even the land of promise was not their home. Still less was Chaldea, the country Abraham left at God's word. They looked higher — to heaven. Life and death alike bore witness that they were at home nowhere on earth. They lived in tents as pilgrims. They were strangers in the land of promise, a land not their own — yet theirs in a hope that puts no one to shame. All along they declared plainly that they were looking for a fatherland on high.
Abraham left his home country, reached the land God had promised him, and still would not settle in it. The tent he lived in said what his words said.
He set out "not knowing where he was going." He reached the land at last, the land "which he was to receive as an inheritance." Yet he lived there "as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise" (Heb. 11:8-10). In these words the Spirit points out that he left the glories of Ur for the land of promise, and then never enjoyed what he set out to have. He gave up any immediate or personal hold on it. As Genesis shows, he was content with a tent and an altar. So he declared himself still to be seeking a country.
Such a declaration could sound like a complaint about the present. One writer says the feeling pointed forward, not back.
Their sense of being strangers on earth did not come from regrets, but from hopes. They were dissatisfied with the present thing, not because of what was past but because of what was to come. The scene around them was a wilderness because of the power over them of the scene ahead, not of the one behind them.
Everyone admits in the end that life on earth is short. The difference is when a person admits it, and whether he says it freely.
Those who freely call themselves pilgrims show plainly that they are done with earth (verse 14). People admit late, only when they are forced to die, that human life is nothing but a journey full of change. They own up to a shared emptiness, and they do it unwillingly. But God's anointed ones never settled on the earth. They wandered all their days. They knew that flesh and blood could never enter the place where their hopes rested.
One writer turns the same confession into a test for the believer today.
The believer is "not of the world." His home and citizenship are in heaven. His walk down here on the earth should show a clear awareness, and a clear confession, that he "seeks a country" (Heb. 11:14). This is of the greatest importance.
- Confess — Calling yourself a stranger on earth is more than admitting that life is short. It is a claim to belong somewhere else.
- Declare — You make most of this claim without words. Your character, your conversation and your whole way of living carry the message.
- Seek — They wanted a homeland, and even the promised land was not it. Abraham and his family looked higher, to heaven.
- Renounce — Abraham's tent was his sermon. He reached the land and still refused to own it, and that refusal declared him a seeker.
- Hope — The pilgrim looks forward in desire, not backward in regret. He is done with earth by choice, not because death forced it out of him.