Hebrews 10:28

Hebrews 10:28. This awful destiny which awaits wilful apostates, judgment without mercy, is now illustrated and enforced from the law.

He that hath despised (literally, any one having despised) Moses' law dieth without mercy upon the testimony of (before) two or three witnesses not in every case; it is simply a general principle. Moses' Law attached to certain violations of it the doom of death. Some eleven kinds of sin were thus punished: wilful murder, obstinate disobedience to parents, blasphemy, idolatry, etc. (Deuteronomy 17:2-7). The phrases of this verse are taken from this last instance, and, as the sentence of death is said in that case to be carried out with unusual severity, ‘without mercy' no doubt refers to it. Idolatry was treason against Jehovah, and the idolater was an apostate from God. Apostasy from Christ answers to the wilful, deliberate idolatry of the Law, and is the sin condemned here with a condemnation proportioned to the fuller light and the greater privileges of the Gospel.