Hebrews 6:8

ἐκφέρουσα δὲ�. “But if it freely bear thorns,” Isaiah 5:6; Proverbs 24:31. This neglected land resembles converts who have fallen away.

τριβόλους. The Latin tribuli (τρεῖς, βολή). Genesis 3:18, &c. In N. T. only here, and Matthew 7:16.

ἀδόκιμος. The same word, in another metaphor, occurs in Jeremiah 6:30.

κατάρας ἐγγύς. Lit., “near a curse.” Doubtless there is a reference to Genesis 3:18. St Chrysostom sees in this expression a sign of mercy, because he only says “near a curse.” “He who has not yet fallen into a curse, but has got near it, will also be able to get afar from it”; so that we ought, he says, to cut up and burn the thorns, and then we shall be approved. And he might have added that the older “curse” of the land, to which he refers, was by God’s mercy over-ruled into a blessing.

ἡς τὸ τέλος εἰς καῦσιν. Lit., “whose end is for burning.” Comp. Matthew 13:30; Isaiah 44:15; “that it may be for burning.” It is probably a mistake to imagine that there is any reference to the supposed advantage of burning the surface of the soil (Virg. Georg. I. 84 sqq.; Pliny, H. N. XVIII. 39, 72), for we find no traces of such a procedure among the Jews. More probably the reference is to land like the Vale of Siddim, or “Burnt Phrygia,” or “the Solfatara,”—like that described in Genesis 19:24; Deuteronomy 29:23. Comp. Hebrews 10:27. And such a land Judea itself became within a very few years of this time, because the Jews would not “break up their fallow ground,” but still continued to “sow among thorns.” Obviously the “whose” refers to the “land,” not to the “curse.”