Powerful Solution

Watch Your Thoughts

Hebrews 4:12

For the word of God is quick] “Quick” is an old English expression for “living;” hence St Stephen speaks of Scripture as “the living oracles” (Act_7:38). The “word of God” is not here the personal Logos; a phrase not distinctly and demonstrably adopted by any of the sacred writers except St John, who in the prologue to his Gospel calls Christ “the Word,” and in the Apocalypse “the Word of God.” The reference is to the written and spoken word of God, of the force and almost personality of which the writer shews so strong a sense. To him it is no dead utterance of the past, but a living power for ever. At the same time the expressions of this verse could hardly have been used by any one who was not familiar with the personification of the Logos, and St Clemens of Rome applies the words “a searcher of the thoughts and desires” to God. The passage closely resembles several which are found in Philo, though it applies the expressions in a different manner (see Introduction).

powerful] Lit., effective, energetic. The vital power shews itself in acts.

sharper than any twoedged sword] The same comparison is used by Isaiah (Isa_49:2) and St Paul (Eph_6:17) and St john (Rev_2:16; Rev_19:15). See too Wis_18:15-16, “Thine Almighty Word leaped down from heaven … and brought thine unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword.” Philo compares the Logos to the flaming sword of Eden (Gen_3:24) and “the fire and knife” (μἁχαιραν) of Gen_22:6.

piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow] The meaning is not that the word of God divides the soul (the “natural” soul) by which we live from the spirit by which we reason and apprehend; but that it pierces not only the natural soul, but even to the Divine Spirit of man, and even to the joints and marrow (i.e. to the inmost depths) of these. Thus Euripides (Hippol. 527) speaks of the “marrow of the soul.” It is obvious that the writer does not mean anything very specific by each term of the enumeration, which produces its effect by the rhetorical fulness of the expressions. The ψυχὴ or animal soul is the sphere of that life which makes a man ψυχικὸς, i.e. carnal, unspiritual; he possesses this element of life (anima) in common with the beasts. It is only by virtue of his spirit (πνεῦμα) that he has affinity with God.

a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart] These words are a practical explanation of those which have preceded. The phraseology is an evident reminiscence of Philo. Philo compares the Word to the flaming sword of Paradise; and calls the Word “the cutter of all things,” and says that “when whetted to the utmost sharpness it is incessantly dividing all sensuous things” (see Quis Rer. Div. Haeres & § 27; Opp. ed. Mangey i. 491, 503, 506). By enthumηseis is meant (strictly) our moral imaginations and desires; by ennoiai our intellectual thoughts: but the distinction of meaning is hardly kept (Mat_9:4, &c).

Believer’s Bible Commentary (C. Christ Superior to Moses and Joshua (3:1–4:13))

Heb 4:12 The next two verses contain a solemn warning that unbelief never goes undetected. It is detected first by the word of God. (The term used here for word is logos, the familiar word used by John in the prologue to his Gospel. However, this verse refers, not to the Living Word, Jesus, but to the written word, the Bible.) This word of God is:living—constantly and actively alive.powerful—energizing.cutting—sharper than any two-edged sword.dividing—piercing the soul and spirit, the two invisible, nonmaterial parts of man. Piercing the joints and marrow, the joints permitting the outward movements and the marrow being the hidden but vital life of the bones.discerning—discriminating and judging with regard to the thoughts and intents of the heart. It is the word that judges us, not we who judge the word.

Hebrews 4:12

For — Such diligent striving (Heb_4:11) is incumbent on us FOR we have to do with a God whose “word” whereby we shall be judged, is heart-searching, and whose eyes are all-seeing (Heb_4:13). The qualities here attributed to the word of God, and the whole context, show that it is regarded in its JUDICIAL power, whereby it doomed the disobedient Israelites to exclusion from Canaan, and shall exclude unbelieving so-called Christians from the heavenly rest. The written Word of God is not the prominent thought here, though the passage is often quoted as if it were. Still the word of God (the same as that preached, Heb_4:2), used here in the broadest sense, but with special reference to its judicial power, INCLUDES the Word of God, the sword of the Spirit with double edge, one edge for convicting and converting some (Heb_4:2), and the other for condemning and destroying the unbelieving (Heb_4:14). Rev_19:15 similarly represents the Word’s judicial power as a sharp sword going out of Christ’s mouth to smite the nations. The same word which is saving to the faithful (Heb_4:2) is destroying to the disobedient (2Co_2:15, 2Co_2:16). The personal Word, to whom some refer the passage, is not here meant: for He is not the sword, but has the sword. Thus reference to Joshua appropriately follows in Heb_4:8.

quick — Greek, “living”; having living power, as “the rod of the mouth and the breath of the lips” of “the living God.”

powerful — Greek, “energetic”; not only living, but energetically efficacious.

sharper — “more cutting.”

two-edged — sharpened at both edge and back. Compare “sword of the Spirit ... word of God” (Eph_6:17). Its double power seems to be implied by its being “two-edged.” “It judges all that is in the heart, for there it passes through, at once punishing [unbelievers] and searching [both believers and unbelievers]” [Chrysostom]. Philo similarly speaks of “God passing between the parts of Abraham’s sacrifices (Gen_15:17, where, however, it is a ‘burning lamp’ that passed between the pieces) with His word, which is the cutter of all things: which sword, being sharpened to the utmost keenness, never ceases to divide all sensible things, and even things not perceptible to sense or physically divisible, but perceptible and divisible by the word.” Paul’s early training, both in the Greek schools of Tarsus and the Hebrew schools at Jerusalem, accounts fully for his acquaintance with Philo’s modes of thought, which were sure to be current among learned Jews everywhere, though Philo himself belonged to Alexandria, not Jerusalem. Addressing Jews, he by the Spirit sanctions what was true in their current literature, as he similarly did in addressing Gentiles (Act_17:28).

piercing — Greek, “coming through.”

even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit — that is, reaching through even to the separation of the animal soul, the lower part of man’s incorporeal nature, the seat of animal desires, which he has in common with the brutes; compare the same Greek, 1Co_2:14, “the natural [animal-souled] man” (Jud_1:19), from the spirit (the higher part of man, receptive of the Spirit of God, and allying him to heavenly beings).

and of the joints and marrow — rather, “(reaching even TO) both the joints (so as to divide them) and marrow.” Christ “knows what is in man” (Joh_2:25): so His word reaches as far as to the most intimate and accurate knowledge of man’s most hidden parts, feelings, and thoughts, dividing, that is, distinguishing what is spiritual from what is carnal and animal in him, the spirit from the soul: so Pro_20:27. As the knife of the Levitical priest reached to dividing parts, closely united as the joints of the limbs, and penetrated to the innermost parts, as the marrows (the Greek is plural); so the word of God divides the closely joined parts of man’s immaterial being, soul and spirit, and penetrates to the innermost parts of the spirit. The clause (reaching even to) “both the joints and marrow” is subordinate to the clause, “even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.” (In the oldest manuscripts as in English Version, there is no “both,” as there is in the clause “both the joints and ... which marks the latter to be subordinate). An image (appropriate in addressing Jews) from the literal dividing of joints, and penetrating to, so as to open out, the marrow, by the priest’s knife, illustrating the previously mentioned spiritual “dividing of soul from spirit,” whereby each (soul as well as spirit) is laid bare and “naked” before God; this view accords with Heb_4:13. Evidently “the dividing of the soul from the spirit” answers to the “joints” which the sword, when it reaches unto, divides asunder, as the “spirit” answers to the innermost “marrow.” “Moses forms the soul, Christ the spirit. The soul draws with it the body; the spirit draws with it both soul and body.” Alford’s interpretation is clumsy, by which he makes the soul itself, and the spirit itself, to be divided, instead of the soul from the spirit: so also he makes not only the joints to be divided asunder, but the marrow also to be divided (?). The Word’s dividing and far penetrating power has both a punitive and a healing effect.

discerner of the thoughts — Greek, “capable of judging the purposes.”

intents — rather, “conceptions” [Crellius]; “ideas” [Alford]. AS the Greek for “thoughts” refers to the mind and feelings, so that for “intents,” or rather “mental conceptions,” refers to the intellect.