quenched [the] power of fire, escaped [the] edge of the sword, became strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, made [the] armies of strangers give way.
Hebrews 11 stops naming names and starts naming deeds: fire that could not burn, weakness turned into power, armies driven off the field. Is this what faith always does, or what faith did in one particular period?
The verse gives no names, but each deed has an owner in Israel's history.
We are reminded of Daniel in the lions' den, and of the faith of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who were thrown into the burning fiery furnace. Elijah and Elisha escaped the edge of the sword. Jeremiah was an instance of one made strong out of weakness.
The men in Nebuchadnezzar's furnace did not escape the flames — they walked in them. What they found in there was more than survival.
"Quenched the power of fire." There we see the Hebrew young men in the blazing furnace. The idol-worshipping king Nebuchadnezzar had thrown them in. Instead of destruction, they found their bonds loosened. They also found the company of One whom the king himself says is "like the Son of God."
Prophets were hunted and got away. But that escape was not a promise that God shields every believer from violence.
Faith has found, in modern as in ancient times, a refuge from the arm of violence in God. We may expect both treachery and violence in a world where our calling is to be as sheep for slaughter. But He who hid His prophets from the anger of man, when it pleased Him, is the preserver of His people's earthly lives, at His wise discretion.
The phrase does not describe strong men. It describes men who knew they had nothing, and who kept going anyway.
"Made strong out of weakness," like Gideon. He felt himself powerless, and would have excused himself from leading a band of three hundred against a great army. Then, after the great victory over the Midianites, he still kept chasing the fleeing army, so that the victory would be complete. You remember the words: "faint, yet pursuing."
Weakness is not a stage the believer grows out of. It lasts, and the strength that meets it comes from outside.
Weakness is always the saint's condition until by faith he looks to Jesus as his strength. Faith made the fathers brave in their conflicts, when huge armies of foreigners fled before a handful of brave men. They were God's soldiers, and He was their shield. Their valour and their strength were all from Him, who made them worthy of the Name that was their banner.
Verse 34 sits at a hinge. Up to here the chapter praises what faith achieved. After it, the chapter praises what faith endured with no rescue.
After verse 32 the names begin to disappear, and the chapter reverses its earlier order. Examples of the power of faith come first, in verses 33, 34, and the first clause of 35. From there on the chapter celebrates the patience of faith.
The deeds are real, and the chapter honours them. But one writer warns against reading them as the pattern for Christian life now.
It may be useful to note the energy of faith in subduing kingdoms, in being made strong in war, and in putting armies or camps of foreigners to flight. All that fitted the time before the gospel. But it is in no way the model of what the Christian is now called to... In ordinary Christian experience, "made strong out of weakness" applies quite differently from its meaning long ago here. The ground of our difference is plain. Grace is now revealed and reigns as it did not until Christ came, died, rose, and took His seat in heaven.
The fight has moved, but it has not been called off.
We are called to a warfare, but our fight is no longer against flesh and blood. What once won earthly kingdoms must now work in another struggle. It is a struggle against rulers and authorities, against the powers behind the darkness of this world, against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. By faith the Christian has to press his way into the enjoyment of the things that God in Christ declares to be his.
- Weakness first. Every victory here starts from nothing — Gideon with three hundred, Jeremiah, three men tied up and thrown in a furnace.
- Strength borrowed. The valour was real, but it was not theirs: they were God's soldiers, and He was their shield.
- Rescue on His terms. Deliverance came inside the flames, not around them; and God preserves His people's earthly lives at His own wise discretion.
- Power, then patience. The verse closes the list of what faith achieved. From the next verse on, the list turns to what faith bore with no rescue.
- Applied, not copied. Routing armies is not the Christian's calling now. The same borrowed strength now goes into a fight that is not against flesh and blood.
Women received their dead again by resurrection; and others were tortured, not having accepted deliverance, that they might get a better resurrection;
The same faith leads to two opposite outcomes here: some women get their children back alive, while others suffer torture and refuse release. Why does God record both, and what is the "better life" that made refusing rescue worth it?
The chapter has just listed faith's victories. At this verse the tone changes. One writer puts the two kinds of faith on the same level, and finds an honour in the suffering one.
Faith wins triumphs when it attacks sin and death with active energy. God marks with equal pleasure its gentle, steady endurance of undeserved sorrow and suffering... God has not always hidden His prophets. Sometimes He has honoured them by putting to their lips the cup that Jesus would later taste.
Another writer explains why rescue so often does not come.
Usually, though, God does not step in at once, and suffering follows... They endured. They did not accept the rescue that could have reached them if they had taken back their words or compromised. Faith suffered, but it carried them through.
Two mothers stand behind the first half of the verse. In one of them a writer sees a much older story repeated.
The Shunammite woman repeats, on a smaller scale, the story of Abraham and Sarah. The promised child was given to a woman with no natural hope of one, then taken away in death, and then raised again. We see something similar in the story of Elijah.
Should we expect such raisings today? One writer answers no, and points forward instead.
In these cases, to live was better than to die, because God was dealing with an earthly people. Faith has since learned that to depart and be with Christ is now far better than to stay on earth. So such displays of its power are no longer likely to be seen. Those who mourn will receive their dead back to life when God soon brings with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him (1 Thess. 4:14).
The release on offer was real, and so was the price of taking it.
These were not saved out of death. Their faith counted on the better resurrection. Not every martyr was rescued from the death that faced them... But they would not accept release at the price of loyalty to Him. He had called them to that better resurrection, and the eyes of their faith were fixed on it.
Believers long after the Old Testament faced the same terms.
They did not accept release, though it was offered to them if they would renounce Christ. Their faith triumphed in death, and they wait for the full victory in resurrection. "Of whom the world was not worthy" (Heb. 11:38) — that is God's estimate of every such faithful martyr.
Older translations, which these writers use, read "a better resurrection" where the ESV has "rise again to a better life". The word "better" points back to the first half of the verse: those sons came back to a life they would lose again.
A better resurrection means resurrection to life, not a return to this world. The Shunammite's son and the son of the widow of Zarephath only came back to this world.
Read the two halves together, and you see what these sufferers expected for their own bodies.
Compare and contrast the two statements, and it is hard to doubt the meaning. Some received their dead back from the grave, the well-known and much-loved body alive again. Others looked for their own bodies to be raised too, but in a different way and for a different end: never to die again, but to live for ever beyond death. A better resurrection indeed!
The verse names none of these sufferers. But heaven keeps their record.
The others who were tortured refused the release that men offered. They wait for a better resurrection still to come, and they are better known in heaven than on earth.
- Received. Faith once took children back out of death — a real gift, but a temporary one, since those raised would die again.
- Refused. Faith also turned down a genuine offer of release, because the price was loyalty to the One who had called them.
- Better. The better resurrection means life, not a return to this world. These bodies rise never to die again.
- Equal. God takes the same pleasure in quiet endurance as He does in faith's loudest victories.
- Remembered. Their names are missing from the page, but heaven knows them better than earth ever did.