Behold, his soul, as it ascends, is not upright within him,…. This sentence and the next describe two types of people with different attitudes towards the Messiah and the promise of his coming. Here, this refers to those who were ‘unbelievers’, as rendered in the Latin Vulgate; those who did not believe in his coming, and who mocked and scoffed at the promise of it; as well as those who did not believe in him when he came, even though he possessed all the characteristics of the Messiah; and damnation was the certain consequence of their unbelief. The scribes and Pharisees, proud and haughty, are clearly described here: their minds were puffed up with pride; their hearts were like bubbles, swollen, full of air; their souls overflowed with pride and vanity, and with a high opinion of themselves, of their merit and worth, of their holiness and their works of righteousness; and they treated those whom they regarded as inferior to themselves in these matters with the greatest disdain and contempt; and they relied on themselves and their own righteousness, greatly neglecting the true Messiah and his righteousness. The word translated as ‘exalted’ carries within it the meaning of a hill, a mountain, a fortress or a tower; see Isaiah 32:14, as Aben Ezra points out. This is how R. Moses Kimchi interprets the passage:
‘He whose soul is not upright within him takes refuge in a fortress or a tower, to rise high above the enemy, and does not return to God, nor seek deliverance from him; but the righteous man has no need to take refuge in a fortress, for he shall live by his faith. ’
Ophel formed part of the hill of Zion, upon which the Temple was built; and Cocceius considers that these words refer to Mount Moriah, upon which the Temple stood: and in this sense, these words apply perfectly to the Pharisees, who boasted of their Temple, took pride in it, and placed their trust in the worship and sacrifices performed there; and devoted themselves to the observance of rites and ceremonies, to the traditions of their forefathers, as well as to their moral works of righteousness, for their justification and salvation, which they regarded as their tower of safety and their place of defence; thus neglecting the Messiah, the Rock of salvation, the Rock of Israel, the fortress of rocks, the stronghold and the tower, where alone security and salvation are to be found. The apostle, following the Greek version, renders the word in Hebrews 10:38 as ‘if anyone turns away’,
etc., and God observes that this word, in Arabic, means to neglect or turn one’s mind away from a person or a thing; and that it may rightly be applied to those very people who have neglected Christ and the great salvation He brings; who have turned their faces away from Him; they would neither look upon him, nor converse with him, nor attend his ministry, nor allow others to do so; they distanced themselves from his apostles and ministers, as well as from the Christian churches, and persecuted them both in Judea and in the pagan world; and many Jews who had professed their faith and joined the Christian churches eventually separated from them; being carnal and devoid of the Spirit, they withdrew from their midst, never truly having been part of it, and abandoned the practice of gathering with them; it is to such people that the apostle applies the words of the aforementioned passage. Now, of each of these people, it may be said: ‘his soul is not upright within him’; that is, ‘within himself’, as the Latin version of the Vulgate and Kimchi put it; he is not a righteous man; he is not truly upright and virtuous, although he may believe himself to be so and others may regard him as such; yet he is not so in God’s eyes; his heart is not sincere; he does not possess within himself the truth of grace; a right spirit has not been created and renewed within him; he has never been convicted by the Spirit of God of his sin and of righteousness, otherwise he would not be so captivated by himself: his soul is not upright towards God; he seeks only himself and his own praise in all that he does, and not the honour and glory of God, nor the exaltation of His grace and goodness; he has no proper understanding of God’s righteousness and His holy law; nor of Christ, His person and His offices; nor even of himself. Or ‘his soul is not upright within him’; that is to say, in Christ, who was to come, nor when he did come; that is to say, he is not rightly, sincerely and wholeheartedly turned towards him; he has no true knowledge of Him, no real desire for Him, no sincere affection for Him, nor any faith in Him, nor any regard for Him, His Gospel and His ordinances; all this was very clearly true of the carnal Jews, and is true of all those who consider themselves righteous in their own eyes. The apostle, in Hebrews 10:38, seems to interpret this as referring to the mind of God, according to which He—or God Himself—was not attached to people of such character and nature, nor did He take pleasure in them; see Luke 14:11.
But the righteous shall live by faith; the ‘righteous’ man is the opposite of the former; he is the one who believed in the coming of Christ and who believed in him when he came; who does not have an excessive opinion of himself or of his own righteousness; nor does he rely on his own righteousness for his justification before God and his acceptance by Him; but on the righteousness of Christ imputed to him, from which he is called a righteous man: and such a man ‘shall live’, not merely a bodily life, for righteous men die just like others; nor an eternal life, although such people will live that life and already possess it in a sense, for that life is not apprehended by faith but by sight; but a spiritual life, which begins with regeneration and is sustained by the Spirit and the grace of God; such people lead a life of justification in Christ, of sanctification through him and of fellowship with him; they lead, joyfully, serenely and with delight, a life of peace, joy and comfort; which largely corresponds to the meaning of the word here, as in Psalm 22:26, and this is ‘by his faith’; their own faith, and not that of another; which, although of the same nature in all—a faith that is just as precious—is nevertheless, as regards its effects, unique to each individual and does not belong to another; or by the faith of God; that is to say, by that faith which is God’s gift, the fruit of his working, and which has God as its object; such people live by faith in a God who makes promises, and thus live in comfort; or by faith in Christ, whose coming is promised in the preceding verse (Hab_2:3); by that faith of which He is the object, the author, and the One who brings it to fulfilment: the righteous do not live by their own faith, but through it in Christ, as one crucified for them, as the bread of life, and as the Lord, their righteousness; and thus they find joy and peace in faith. There is a different emphasis in this clause. Some place the pause after ‘the righteous’ and read the words: ‘the righteous, by his faith, shall live’; that is to say, he who is a righteous man, in the evangelical sense, shall live by his faith, in the sense explained previously; not that he is a righteous man who lives virtuously and blamelessly before men; but one who leads a life of faith in Christ, and whose hope of eternal life does not rest on his own holy life and conduct, but on the righteousness of Christ, from which he draws sustenance through faith; for neither eternal life nor the hope thereof is to be attributed to faith in itself, but to its object. However, the most faithful Hebrew manuscripts link the words ‘by his faith’ to ‘the righteous man’ with the accent ‘mera’; and they must therefore be read as follows: ‘the righteous man, by his faith, shall live’; that is to say, the man who is righteous, not by the works of the law, but by faith in the righteousness of Christ, or by the righteousness of Christ received through faith; for it is not faith itself, nor the act of believing, that constitutes a man’s justifying righteousness, nor is it imputed to him as righteousness, nor does it designate him as righteous, but rather the righteousness of Christ to which he clings by faith; and such a man will live both spiritually and eternally. And this way of emphasising the words is endorsed by Wasmuth and by Reinbeck. Burkius, a recent commentator, considers that it would be more prudent to repeat the word at the centre of the controversy, and to read it as follows: ‘the righteous in’ or ‘by his faith’: ‘in’ or ‘by his faith, he shall live’; which encompasses both meanings, and each of which, if properly explained, may be accepted. Junius, with whom Van Till agrees, is of the opinion that this refers to the example of Abraham, as mentioned in Genesis 15:6: ‘he believed in the Lord’, and ‘it was credited to him as righteousness’; not his faith, but the object of that faith, or that in which he believed, namely the promised offspring. Thus, the Jews of antiquity compare this faith to that of Abraham; indeed, referring to the text of Genesis 15:6, they say,
‘This is the faith by which the Israelites inherit, of which Scripture says: “The righteous shall live by his faith.”’
They also have a saying according to which the Law, and all its precepts, given to Moses on Mount Sinai, are summarised by Habakkuk into a single one, namely this: ‘The righteous shall live by his faith’; which is true, if one understands it correctly; for the righteousness of Christ, by which the righteous man becomes such, and by which he lives through faith, corresponds to the whole Law. The Apostle quotes this passage three times to prove that the righteousness of Christ revealed in the Gospel is based on faith; that no man is justified by the Law in God’s sight; that the righteous shall live and not die; that he shall not turn back to perdition, but shall believe for the salvation of his soul (Romans 1:17), which shows that this pertains to the age and realities of the Gospel. The Targum for the whole passage is:
‘Behold, the wicked say that all these things “shall not be”, but the righteous shall abide in their truth.’
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John Gill (1697–1771)