“so great a cloud of witnesses.” The “witnesses” in this context are dead people. We are familiar with this concept. For example, at funerals, we often speak of how the person who has just died is a good example for us to follow, and their lives are a witness to us of how a person can trust God, obey God, and endure adversity. Similarly, Hebrews 11 and 12 fit together to encourage us to obey God. To see how Hebrews 11 and 12 fit together, we have to know that the original text of the Bible had no chapters and verses. So the “therefore” of Hebrews 12:1 is connected to Hebrews 11 and is a conclusion and call to action based on the information presented in Hebrews chapter 11.
Hebrews 11 presents a number of people whose lives are witnesses that we can live by trust and God will reward us. Hebrews 11:1-2 mentions “people of old” who trusted and obeyed God. Then those verses are followed by an impressive list of people who trusted God, including Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab (the prostitute), Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and the prophets. Furthermore, Hebrews 11 comes to a close with, “all these...obtained a good testimony because of their trust” (Heb. 11:39). These people are a “cloud of witnesses” even though they are dead because their lives continue to be a witness. Hebrews 11:4 makes this very clear when it says, “By trust, Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice...and through it, though he is dead, he still speaks.” Abel is dead, but the witness of his life is still speaking, and the same is true for the other “greats” in the chapter. Then, based on the witness left us by all those people, Hebrews 12 encourages us with, “seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin that so easily entangles us, and let us also run with endurance the race that is set before us.” Like Abel, the people are dead, but the witness of their lives continues on after them and encourages us to stop sinning and live our lives with endurance so we can please God and be rewarded.
[For more on dead people being dead in every way and not alive in any form, see Appendix 3: “The Dead are Dead”]
“let us lay aside every weight.” This phrase brings the mind of the reader to the races that were held throughout the Roman world, especially when the bigger games, such as the Olympic Games, Isthmian Games, etc., were held. The runners ran nude and stripped themselves of all their clothing and anything else that might impede them or weigh them down. So here our lives are being compared to a race, and if we are going to finish, and finish well, we need to discover and set aside the things that entangle us and weigh us down such that we are not as effective in doing God’s will as we should be.
“easily entangles.” The Greek is euperistatos (#2139 εὐπερίστατος). It only occurs here, and Robertson notes that there are probably a dozen ways to translate it.a Here we have a word that only occurs one time and can be translated many different ways. Note the variations in translation: “clings so closely” (ESV); “so easily beset” (KJV); “so easily entangles” (NASB); “so prone to be ensnared” (God’s New Covenant); “easily hampering” (Lenski); “the sin which controls (us) so tightly” (Louw-Nida); “so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us” (Amplified). The context of the verse is that of a runner who needs to set aside everything that would slow him down. Thus he sets aside every weight. He also sets aside sin, which like the long robes that people wore, were taken off by the Greco-Roman runners. If left on, the robes would readily (even cleverly) cling to the runner and surround and entangle them, hindering them. This is exactly what sin does in the life of a believer. In this case, one could be tempted to conflate the translation as the Amplified Version does, but we have felt it best to go with “easily entangles.”
“let us also run.” Hebrews 12:1 begins with an initial kai humeis (“and us” or “us also”) that connects the modern-day believers to the great cloud of witnesses mentioned in Hebrews 11. The kai umeis goes with the verb of the sentence, let’s also run, and not with the participles “having” witnesses or “throwing” off sin. The point is, since these great men and women of faith persevered even though they have not yet received the promises (Heb. 11:39), let us also run with perseverance to the finish line where we will be “made perfect” together (Heb. 11:40). The point is not “we also have a great cloud of witnesses” (as though the saints in chapter 11 had great witnesses too), nor is it “let us also throw off sin” (as though the context of chapter 11 was about how the saints threw off sin, so we should too). Rather, the author is urging us also to run with perseverance as these great witnesses ran. Surprisingly, most of our versions get this wrong. The ESV, NASB, NRSV, NJB, and ASV make the latter mistake, and the KJV and HCSB make the former.
a)
Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, 5:432.
