Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to explain, seeing you are dull of hearing.
All Commentaries on Hebrews 5:11 Go To Hebrews 5
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Of whom, i.e. of his high priesthood, according to the order of Melchisedech, we have mighty things to say, and very hard to be expounded or understood by you, at least many of you, who, though you ought to be masters after the gospel hath been so long preached, and even by the apostles of Christ, yet you are weak as to understanding it; (the Greek also signifies slothful and negligent) you stand in need of being taught the first elements and principles of the Christian faith, like children, who are rather to be fed with milk than with more solid meats. How many are there now in the like condition, who are for reading and expounding all the holy Scriptures according to their own way of thinking? (Witham) _ , metùens, in the vulgar Latin, for eulabetheis; and in Acts xxiii. 10. Tribunus timens, eulabetheis; but neither do these two examples show that in this place, where mention is made of our Saviour Christ, eulabeia can be properly and literally translated by fear, or that the sense is that Christ was heard so as to be delivered from his fear. For first, this exposition of fear and apprehension of death agrees not with the common exposition of the ancient Fathers, neither with St. Chrysostom and those who follow him, nor with the others, as I have shown already. Secondly, this translation agrees not with the Protestant translation in other places. As for the substantive, eulabeia, it is only found in one other place in the New Testament, to wit, Hebrews xii. 28., meta aidous, kai eulabeias, where the Protestant translation has with reverence and godly fear; and for the adjective, eulabes, where old Simeon is called eulabes in the common Greek copies, (Luke ii. 25.) they have translated, a devout man. In Acts viii. 2., the men that buried St. Stephen, andres eulabeis, are translated devout men, as also in Acts ii. 5. Thirdly, the ancient Arabic version signifies propter reverentiam ejus, and the Ethiopic ob justitiam ejus, as they are in the translations of Walton, which agree with the Latin Vulgate, but not with that sense in which the English Protestants have translated the Greek. In fine, it must be observed that apo here, according to these versions, bears the sense of ob or propter, and not of ab or ex, of which signification see many examples in Estius. (Witham)
