Hebrews 12:27

“The sound of a trumpet” joins ēchos, a loud noise or roar (the same word can mean a rumour), with sálpinx, the trumpet used in war and in worship, or the blast it gives. The blast announced that God had come down on the mountain. “The voice of words” joins phōnḗ, a voice or articulate sound, with rhēma, a word or saying, which in the plural means speech. God himself spoke the Ten Commandments aloud in the people’s hearing.

“They that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more.” The verb paraitéomai means to beg off, to ask to be excused, to decline, and “the word”, lógos, is what God was saying to them. Exodus tells how the people saw the thunder, lightning and smoke, stood afar off, and asked Moses to speak to them in God’s place, because they feared they would die (Exodus 20:18–19). Moses recalls the same plea in Deuteronomy 5:22–27, and again in Deuteronomy 18:16, where the LORD answers it with the promise of a prophet like Moses. Their request was a cry for a mediator. It shows how sinful people feel when a holy God speaks to them directly.

The bounds around Sinai showed Israel that God is holy and that he is approached only on his own terms. Verse 20 opens a bracket that explains the people’s fear: “they could not endure that which was commanded”. Phérō means to bear or carry, and diastéllomai means to charge or enjoin, used here of God’s order to keep a boundary round the mountain.

“If so much as a beast touch the mountain” uses thēríon, a word diminutive in form that means a wild animal, or an animal of any kind. An animal has no grasp of God’s law, and still it was to die if it crossed the line. It was to be “stoned”, lithoboléō, “or thrust through with a dart”, katatoxeúō, to shoot down, with bolís, a dart or missile. However the boundary was broken, the end was death, and if this held for a beast, the command bore all the more heavily on the people.

These were literal, enforced boundaries, given to protect Israel from a holiness that would have consumed them. They also showed God’s faithfulness, because they came as he was making his covenant with Israel, and they pointed ahead to the mediator who would bring God’s people near. The holiness behind them is unchanged: “Be ye holy; for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16).

Moses’ fear was the right response of a finite man to the holiness and power of God. “So terrible was the sight” uses phoberós, frightful or formidable, a sight fearful in itself, and “the sight” is a form of phantazō, what was made to appear. Moses says, “I exceedingly fear and quake.” Ékphobos means frightened out of one’s wits, sore afraid, and éntromos means trembling, so his words cover both the terror within him and the shaking of his body.

Hebrews gives Moses’ words in a form found nowhere in the Old Testament account of Sinai. The nearest is Deuteronomy 9:19, where Moses says he was “afraid of the anger and hot displeasure” of the LORD. Moses knew God as closely as any man in the Old Testament, and if he trembled, the people needed a greater mediator than Moses. Isaiah’s cry, “Woe is me! for I am undone”, belongs with his, though Sinai was overwhelming in a way all its own.

The law given with such majesty was holy and good. Paul says it “was added because of transgressions”, was “ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator”, and became “our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ” (Galatians 3:19–25). He also says that the ministry given on the stone tablets came with glory, and that the ministry of the Spirit has a far greater glory (2 Corinthians 3:7–11).

“Ye are come” describes where believers stand now, by their union with Christ, while their bodies remain on earth. The perfect tense speaks of something done that holds good, and Paul says the same: God “hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6). “Our conversation is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20), and believers are “fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19). It is a present access and a present citizenship, and it is also a hope, because the full sight of the city is still to come.

The firstborn are all who belong to Christ, who in him hold the place a firstborn son held in Israel. Prōtótokos means first-born, and in Scripture the firstborn had preeminence, privilege and the first right to the inheritance. Believers are heirs of God’s promises through Christ, who is himself “the firstborn of every creature” (Colossians 1:15) and “the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18).

They are gathered in “the general assembly and church”. Panḗgyris is a mass meeting, a festive gathering of a whole people, built from pas, all, and a word related to agora, the place of assembly. “Church” is ekklesia, an assembly called together, and for Jewish readers it recalled the assembly of Yᵉhôvâh, the gathered congregation of Israel. Together the two words picture one joyful gathering of all God’s people, living and departed.

“Which are written in heaven” means their names stand in God’s own record, the book of life. Moses prayed, “blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou hast written” (Exodus 32:32), and a psalm asks that the wicked “be blotted out of the book of the living” (Psalm 69:28). Only “they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life” enter the holy city (Revelation 21:27), and “whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15). To be written in heaven is to be chosen by God and to have a citizenship and an inheritance that are secure.

God himself is at the center of the gathering as “the Judge of all”. The new covenant brings us near to him, and he remains holy and the final judge of every person. Hebrews has already said, “The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:30–31). We come before him with reverent awe, knowing him to be both just and gracious, because in Christ his grace has met the demands of his justice.

They are the saints who have died in faith, the Old Testament believers above all, together with everyone who has gone before into God’s presence. They are “just men” because their faith was counted to them for righteousness, as Abraham “believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). Teleióō means to complete, to bring to its intended end. These saints had their faults on earth, and now they have been brought to the completion God intended for them, free from sin and suffering.

Hebrews has said that “the law made nothing perfect” (Hebrews 7:19), and Christ, “the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2), has finished what the law only pointed toward. These are the “great cloud of witnesses” of Hebrews 12:1.

Jesus stands at the height of the list. Mesítēs, mediator, is one who stands between two parties to reconcile them. At Sinai the people asked Moses to stand between them and God, and now Jesus stands there for good. The covenant is “new”, néos, something fresh, and diathḗkē, covenant, means a disposition, a covenant or a will, the arrangement God has made for the salvation and fellowship of his people. God promised it through Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31–34), and Jesus “is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises” (Hebrews 8:6). He serves as “a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec” (Hebrews 7:17).

“The blood of sprinkling” joins haîma, blood, with rhantismós, sprinkling. When the old covenant was made at Sinai, “Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant” (Exodus 24:8). Under the law, sprinkled blood purified, consecrated and sealed a covenant. Christ entered the true holy place “by his own blood”, once for all, “having obtained eternal redemption for us”, and his blood purges the conscience to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:11–14). Peter writes of believers chosen “unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:2), and Paul says, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). That is why we may “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith”, by “a new and living way” (Hebrews 10:19–22).

Abel’s blood called out for justice against his murderer, and the blood of Jesus speaks mercy, forgiveness and peace. When Cain killed his brother, the LORD said, “the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground” (Genesis 4:10). The blood of Jesus declares that the penalty for sin has been paid in full by him, and it pleads for all who come to God through him. He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and in Revelation the Lamb is in the midst of the throne (Revelation 7:17), the King of the city we have come to.

God is the speaker in both places. “Him that spake on earth” is God giving his law at Sinai through angels and through Moses, and the next verse says it was his voice that shook the earth. “Him that speaketh from heaven” is the same God speaking his last word through his Son, for God “hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1–3). The Son is the Word who “was God” (John 1:1) and “was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), and he is now seated at God’s right hand.

Moses foretold the prophet the LORD would raise up, and the LORD said, “whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him” (Deuteronomy 18:18–19). At the transfiguration the Father said of Jesus, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him” (Matthew 17:5), and that command is the heart of this warning. Christ still speaks through his Spirit, who guides into all truth (John 16:13–14), and through his written word. To turn from him is to turn from God himself.

God will remove everything made that can be shaken, and his kingdom, with all that belongs to it, will remain. Verse 27 explains the prophet’s words: “this word, Yet once more, signifieth”. Dēlóō means to make plain or declare, and “Yet once more” marks this shaking as the last and decisive one. “The removing”, metáthesis, is a transposition, a change or removal, the setting aside of one order so that another may stand. “Those things that are shaken” uses saleúō again, and “things that are made” uses poiéō, the common verb to make or do. Whatever is shaken is shaken because it was made and is finite, and the God who made it is eternal.

The things removed include the present heavens and earth, and Hebrews has shown throughout the letter that the old covenant’s earthly sanctuary and rituals belong among the things that pass. “That those things which cannot be shaken may remain”: ménō means to stay, abide, endure. What remains is God’s kingdom, his promises, his unchanging character and the covenant made in Christ.

The shaking has a purpose. God clears away what is temporary so that what is permanent stands in full view. “God is our refuge and strength”, a psalm says, and so “will not we fear, though the earth be removed” (Psalm 46:1–3). Christ is the foundation of what remains: “other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11). He is the rock under the wise man’s house, which “fell not: for it was founded upon a rock” (Matthew 7:24–25). All things were made by him, “that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible” (Colossians 1:16), so the one who will shake creation is its Maker, and “of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1:33). For those in Christ the final shaking is a promise, the full arrival of his kingdom.

Reverence is humble modesty before God, and godly fear is the careful awe that his holiness calls for. Aidṓs, reverence, means modesty or bashfulness, and Strong’s ties it to the picture of downcast eyes. It is the humility that keeps a person from presuming on God or treating him casually. Eulábeia, godly fear, means caution, reverence or piety, the carefulness of someone who knows how holy and great God is, and it leads to devotion and obedience.

Together they describe a humble, respectful walk before the sovereign God. “Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling” (Psalm 2:11), and “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). Jesus showed this reverence perfectly, offering prayers “with strong crying and tears” and learning “obedience by the things which he suffered” (Hebrews 5:7–8). The fear at Sinai drove the people back from the mountain, while godly fear keeps us close to God and careful in his presence, in the same letter that bids us come boldly to his throne.

The fire describes a holy God who purifies his people and judges all that is evil. For those who reject him it means his just wrath, and for those in Christ it is a purifying, sanctifying presence that burns away sin. His love is a holy love, and it made a way for sinners to come near and live: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Jesus is “the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2:2), and he bore God’s judgment on the cross. So the fire that brought terror at Sinai now refines believers as they are “changed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18).