Hebrews 10:35-37 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Therefore, having formerly behaved with such fortitude, cast not away your confidence As cowardly soldiers cast away their shields, and flee in the day of battle; but since God has supported you under, and brought you through all your sufferings hitherto, with much patience and joy maintain and improve your confidence and courage against all difficulties and dangers; which hath That is, will receive; great recompense of reward That is, a great reward, (namely, eternal glory,) by way of recompense for your obedience. For ye have need of patience Or, of perseverance, as υπομονης may be properly rendered; that is, ye have need of the continual exercise thereof in well-doing, and waiting for the accomplishment of the promises; that after ye have done the will of God Have conducted yourselves as it is God's will you should, by enduring whatsoever he is pleased to lay upon you; ye might receive the promise The promised reward of glory. For yet a little while Μικρον οσον οσον, a little, a very little time. And he that shall come Ο ερχομενος, he who is coming; the appellation given by the Jews to Messiah, Matthew 11:3, Art thou he, ο ερχομενος, who should come? will come As if he had said, Be patient, for it will not be long before he will take you hence by death, and release you from all your trials. Or rather, It will not be long before Christ will come to take vengeance on your persecutors, the unbelieving and obdurate Jews, and deliver you from all the sufferings to which you are exposed from them; and will not tarry Beyond the appointed time. It must be observed, though the apostle in this verse uses some words of the Prophet Habakkuk, (Habakkuk 2:3,) he doth not introduce them as a quotation from him, containing a prophecy of any coming of Christ. There is therefore no necessity of endeavouring to show that, as they stand in Habakkuk, they may be interpreted of Christ's coming to destroy Jerusalem. In the passage where they are found, the prophet exhorted the Jews to trust in God for deliverance from the Chaldeans, by putting them in mind of the faithfulness of God in performing his promises. Wherefore, as the faithfulness and power of God are a source of consolation to which good men, at all times, may have recourse in their distresses, the apostle might, with great propriety, apply Habakkuk's words, by way of accommodation, to Christ's coming to destroy Jerusalem and the Jewish state. Christ had promised to come for that purpose before the generation then living went off the stage; and as the believing Hebrews could entertain no doubt of his being faithful to his promise, the apostle, to encourage them to bear their afflictions with patience, very fifty put them in mind of that event in the words of this prophet, because it assured them that the power of their persecutors would soon be at an end.