What Does Hebrews 11:39 Mean?
And these all, having received witness through trust, did not bring home the promise.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise:THE KEY
A promise can remain unreceived while the trust holding it is already borne witness to.
THE MEANING
Your trust can be borne witness to even while what is promised remains outside your hands. Recognition and possession are separate: the promise’s delay does not erase the truth of the trust holding it. The verse speaks into the present gap between being affirmed and seeing what was promised.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that an unreceived promise proves your trust is false, unseen, or wasted.
THE ROOT
μαρτυρηθέντες
martyrēthentes
GROWS FROM
μαρτυρ-
martyr-
To bear witness, testify.
“having received witness” in this verse is martyrēthentes. The phrase “obtained a good report” carries the sense of having been testified to or commended. The same seed appears in words for witness and testimony, so recognition is already present even while the promise is not yet possessed.
ALSO GROWS
martys: Witness; one who bears testimony.
μάρτυς
The trust in this verse has a witness-bearing quality: it is recognized even before the promised thing arrives.
martyria: Testimony; a witness’s account.
μαρτυρία
It echoes the verse’s image of being commended, making testimony itself distinct from receiving the promise.
πίστις
pistis
GROWS FROM
πείθω
peithō
To persuade, bring to trust.
Here, faith is trust, leaning your full weight on what is promised. That trust can bear witness to something real while the promise remains unreceived.
ALSO GROWS
pisteuō: To trust, believe.
πιστεύω
It shows trust as an active relation to what is not yet in hand.
pistos: Firm, steady; trustworthy.
πιστός
Its sense of steadiness illuminates how trust can remain real across the gap between promise and possession.
ἐπαγγελία
epangelia
GROWS FROM
ἀγγελ-
angel-
To announce, tell.
The word for promise belongs to the family of announcing and making known. The verse holds that announcement alongside non-possession: what is promised can be known and trusted before it is received.
ALSO GROWS
epangellomai: To announce, promise, pledge.
ἐπαγγέλλομαι
It shows the promise as a declared commitment, not yet the same thing as its arrival.
angelos: Messenger.
ἄγγελος
The shared announcing family ties the promise to a message made known before its fulfillment is in hand.
THE PATTERN
Trust can bear witness to what is promised before the promised thing is received or seen.
For the vision is yet for the appointed time, and at the end it will breathe and not lie. Though it lingers, wait for it. Because it will surely come, it will not stay behind.For in hope we have been delivered; but hope that is seen is not hope, for why would anyone still hope for what he sees?In trust all these died, not having brought home the promises, but seeing them from far off, and embracing them, and saying together that they were strangers and those passing through on the earth.THE THREAD
In trust all these died, not having brought home the promises, but seeing them from far off, and embracing them, and saying together that they were strangers and those passing through on the earth.Hebrews 11:13 uses the same Greek word, πίστις (pistis), meaning trust, and says they died without receiving the promises, yet saw them from afar and embraced them. It shows what the witness in this verse looks like: trust remains present across the space between promise and possession.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us