Hebrews 11:37,38 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

They were stoned As Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, 2 Chronicles 24:21. See also Matthew 23:31; they were sawn asunder As, according to the tradition of the Jews, Isaiah was by Manasseh; were tempted With offers of deliverance; but remaining steadfast, were then slain with the sword As also were the eighty-five priests slain by Doeg, 1 Samuel 22:18; and the prophets, of whose slaughter by the sword Elijah complains, 1 Kings 19:10. Or, as επειρασθησαν may be rendered, they were tried, and that in every possible way; by threatenings, reproaches, tortures, the variety of which cannot be expressed: and again by promises and allurements. They wandered about in sheepskins and goat-skins Their outward condition was poor, mean, and contemptible; their clothing being no better than the unwrought skins of sheep and goats. Nothing is here intimated of their choosing mean clothing, as a testimony of mortification, but they were compelled by necessity to use such as they could find or obtain. Thus have the saints of God, in sundry seasons, been reduced to the utmost extremities of poverty and want. But there is such a satisfaction in the exercise of faith and obedience, and such internal consolation attending a state of suffering for the sake of truth and godliness, as quite overbalance all the outward evils that can be undergone for the profession of them: and there is a future state of eternal rewards and punishments, which will set all things right, to the glory of divine justice, and the everlasting honour of the sufferers. Being destitute That is, as Dr. Owen interprets it, of friends, and of all means of relief from them; afflicted Various ways; the former word declares what was absent, what they had not as to outward supplies and comforts; this declares what was present with them, the various evils and positive sufferings inflicted on them; tormented Κακουχουμενοι, malè habiti, or malè vexati, badly treated; that is, in their wandering condition they met with bad treatment continually, all sorts of persons taking occasion to vex and press them with various evils. Of whom Of whose society, example, prayers, instructions; the world was not worthy It did not deserve so great a blessing. The world thinks them not worthy of it, to live in it, or at least to enjoy any name or place among the men of it; but whatever they think, we know that this testimony of the apostle is true, and the world will one day confess it to be so. The design of the apostle is to obviate an objection, that these persons were justly cast out, as not worthy of the society of mankind, and this he does by a contrary assertion, that the world was not worthy of them; not worthy to have converse with them, or of those mercies and blessings which accompany this sort of persons, where they have a quiet habitation. They wandered in deserts, &c. Being driven from cities, towns, and villages, and all inhabited places, partly by law, and partly by force, these servants of the living God were compelled to wander in such as were solitary, wild, and desert, and to take up with dens and caves for their shelter. And instances of the same kind have been multiplied in the pagan and antichristian persecutions of the churches of the New Testament; but that no countenance is here given to an hermetical life, voluntarily chosen, much less to the horrible abuse of it under the papacy, is too evident to need being here insisted on.