What Does Hebrews 6:15 Mean?
And so, having been slow to heat, he reached 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 so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.THE KEY
The endurance before the promise is not empty delay: its Greek word pictures heat taking a long time to rise.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks into your interval between expectation and arrival: the promise can be ahead while patience marks the present. Receiving comes after the long-held stretch, and the verse names that sequence without calling the delay failure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the belief that a promise delayed is a promise withdrawn: here, receiving follows a long period of patience.
THE ROOT
μακροθυμήσας
makrothymēsas
GROWS FROM
μακρός + θυμός (Greek compound)
Long + heat or anger: to be slow to anger, patient over time.
“having been slow to heat” in this verse is makrothymēsas. The word joins a long stretch of time with heat that does not rise quickly. English endurance can sound like mere survival; this word also carries the sense of remaining slow to flare while the promise is still ahead.
ALSO GROWS
makrothymia: patience, forbearance
μακροθυμία
The related noun names the sustained patience present through the interval before receiving.
makrothymos: patient, slow to anger
μακρόθυμος
This related adjective describes someone whose heat rises slowly, clarifying the kind of endurance named here.
THE PATTERN
The time before a promised outcome is part of its path, with patience carried through to receiving.
Be stretched toward the LORD; hold fast, and he makes your heart firm; be stretched toward the LORD.Be slow to heat therefore, brethren, until the arrival of the LORD. Look, the one who works the soil waits for the costly fruit of the earth, and is slow to heat over it until he takes in the early and late rain.While making good, let us not give out, for in its own season we reap, if we do not go slack.THE THREAD
Be slow to heat therefore, brethren, until the arrival of the LORD. Look, the one who works the soil waits for the costly fruit of the earth, and is slow to heat over it until he takes in the early and late rain.James uses the same Greek verb, μακροθυμέω (makrothymeō), meaning to be patient or slow to anger. The farmer’s waiting shows that this patience can span the unseen interval before what is promised is received.
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