The two fatherlands.
I. THAT FROM WHICH THEY HAD COME. The writer of this Epistle has been a student of the recorded experiences and habitual feelings of his devout ancestors. Many of the descendants of Abraham had no devoutness in them. They cared nothing where they lived so long as they could get gain and their fill of the pleasures of life. Such were really not reckoned in the exceeding multitude at all. They that are of faith are the children of faithful Abraham. And few as they were probably out of the bulk of Abraham's descendants according to the flesh, nevertheless they may have been a great number, more than we have any idea of. The Lord's people, though far from being as many as they ought to be, are yet more numerous than we think. Remember Elijah's ignorance of the seven thousand who had not bowed to Baal. Such people must ever express their longings for something far beyond what any earthly locality can supply. And as the writer says, these longings are ever expressed in the spirit of faith. Looking away from earth, and from self, and from the present, they see what an abundance of promises is theirs. They dwell in Canaan as strangers and sojourners dwell in a land. They pass through it as seeking something which they do not expect to find in it. It is part of the necessary way; it does not contain the journey's end. All travelers have a choice; they can press forward into the unknown or they can go back. Israelites might have sought the home of Abraham, on the possibility that there might be found a peace and satisfaction not to be found in Canaan. There is something in the power of fatherland. Englishmen will go to live abroad for many years, but they like to come back for the last chapter of life. We all know the popular belief that people out of health may benefit by going to their native air.
II. THE HEAVENLY FATHERLAND. Our Father in heaven makes in heaven the satisfying provision for his children. All the meaning of the passage here is only to be apprehended by bearing in mind the fatherhood of God. Spiritual relations are more than natural ones; heavenly relations than earthly ones. Abraham left the land of his fathers because only by doing so could the seeds of a new, a better condition of things be sown. And then little by little it must have become clear that outward change was to make clear the need of something more—individual, inward change. Spiritual aspirations, strongly expressed because they are deeply felt, draw forth God's response of special interest in those who cherish such aspirations. God holds forth the heavenly land, the land of his full manifestation and his unobscured glory, before all believers. Prophecy is full of that which encourages faith in this respect. As to the nature of the heavenly state, the Lord's true people may have been in much ignorance; but as to the satisfying reality of it they were fully assured. God never asks for faith without giving something corresponding to cheer his people, to lift them above the attractions, the delusions, and the temptations of the present.—Y.