Later text
All these people died in faith, without having received the things they were promised. However, they saw them and welcomed them from afar. And they acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
Intertextuality Pair
Hebrews 11:13 → Genesis 23:4
Allusion
Earlier text
Genesis 23:4BSB
"I am a foreigner and an outsider among you. Give me a burial site among you so that I can bury my dead."
Significance
Hebrews 11:13 names the patriarchs "strangers (ξένοι) and exiles (παρεπίδημοι) on the earth": παρεπίδημος is the LXX's Gen 23:4 / Ps 39:12 word (five occurrences in the whole Greek canon), while Hebrews swaps ξένος for the LXX's πάροικος — echoing the sojourner-confession Abraham voiced in Gen 23:4 at Sarah's burial. The author of Hebrews interprets the patriarchs' Genesis sojourner-confessions as eschatological faith: they were "seeking a homeland... a better country, that is, a heavenly one" (11:14-16). This is the NT's authoritative hermeneutic for the pilgrim-identity motif: what Abraham confessed situationally at Hebron was faith about a greater homeland. The shared παρεπίδημος makes the allusion unmistakable, and Heb 11:9-10 explicitly reads Abraham's Canaan sojourn as faith in "the city with foundations, whose designer and builder is God." This is the hinge text of the pilgrim-identity Longitudinal Theme: the patriarchal confession becomes normative paradigm for the church.
- Found via
- Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
- Reference Type
- Allusion
- Connection Method(s)
- Longitudinal Theme, Promise-Fulfillment
Linked Mentions 1