Hebrews 12:25

τὸν λαλοῦντα. Not Moses, as Chrysostom supposed, but God. The speaker is the same under both dispensations, different as they are. God spoke alike from Sinai and from heaven. The difference of the places whence they spoke involves the whole difference of their tone and revelations. Perhaps the writer regarded Christ as the speaker alike from Sinai as from Heaven, for even the Jews represented the Voice at Sinai as being the Voice of Michael, who was sometimes identified with “the Shechinah,” or the Angel of the Presence. The verb for “speaketh” is χρηματίζοντα, as in Hebrews 8:5; Hebrews 11:7.

οὐκ ἐξέφυγον. Hebrews 2:2-3; Hebrews 3:17; Hebrews 10:28-29.

παραιτησάμενοι τὸν χρηματίζοντα. The A. V. “who refused Him that spake” is in this, as in many thousands of instances, far less closely accurate to the exact sense of the original than the “when they refused Him that warned them” of the R. V. There are, however, instances in classical Greek as well as in N. T. where the participle without the article may be rendered as a relative in English, e.g. Luke 13:1.

πολὺ μᾶλλον. On this proportional method of statement, characteristic of the writer, as also of Philo, see Hebrews 1:4; Hebrews 3:3; Hebrews 7:20; Hebrews 8:6. Kuinöl mistakenly renders it multo minus, and connects it with ἐκφευξόμεθα instead of οὐκ ἐκφ.

οἱ�. Not “if we turn away from” (A. V.) but “who turn” (or “are turning”) “away from.”