Hebrews 12:27

τὸ δὲ Ἔτι ἅπαξ. The argument on the phrase “Again, yet once for all,” and the bringing it into connexion with the former shaking of the earth at Sinai, resembles the style of argument on the word “to-day” in Hebrews 3:7 to Hebrews 4:9; and on the word “new” in Hebrews 8:13.

μετάθεσιν. The rest of this verse may be punctuated “Signifies the removal of the things that are being shaken as of things which have been made, in order that things which cannot be shaken may remain.” The “things unshakeable” are God’s heavenly city and eternal kingdom (Daniel 2:44; Revelation 21:1, &c.). The material world—its shadows, symbols and all that belong to it—are quivering, unreal, evanescent (Psalms 102:25-26; 2 Peter 3:10; Revelation 20:11). It is only the Ideal which is endowed with eternal reality (Daniel 2:44; Daniel 7:13-14). This view, which the Alexandrian theology had learnt from the Ethnic inspiration of Plato, is the reverse of the view taken by materialists and sensualists. They only believe in what they can taste, and see, and “grasp with both hands”; but to the Christian idealist, who walks by faith and not by sight, the Unseen is visible (ὡς ὁρῶν τὸν Ἀόρατον (Hebrews 11:27), τὰ γὰρ� … νοούμενα καθορᾶται, Romans 1:20), and the material is only a perishing copy of an Eternal Archetype. The earthquake which dissolves and annihilates things sensible is powerless against the Things Invisible.

ἵνα. Bleek and De Wette make the ἵνα dependent on τὴν μετάθεσιν.

μείνῃ. The aor. shews the meaning to be that the threatened convulsion will at once test the quality of permanence of the things not to be shaken.