Hebrews 6:16
For men swear by one greater than themselves: and an oath for confirmation is the end of all their controversy.
Open Hebrews 6:16 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Homines enim per majorem sui jurant : et omnis controversiæ eorum finis, ad confirmationem, est juramentum.
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- ἄνθρωποι γὰρ κατὰ τοῦ μείζονος ὀμνύουσιν, καὶ πάσης αὐτοῖς ἀντιλογίας πέρας εἰς βεβαίωσιν ὁ ὅρκος·
The Fathers on this verse
Clement of Alexandria The Stromata, or Miscellanies, Chapter XXII. Plato’s Opinion, that the Chief Good Consists in Assimilation to God, and Its Agreement with Scripture
Further, Plato the philosopher says that the end is twofold: that which is communicable, and exists first in the ideal forms themselves, which he also calls “the good;” and that which partakes of it, and receives its likeness from it, as is the case in the men who appropriate virtue and true philosophy. Wherefore also Cleanthes, in the second book, On Pleasure , says that Socrates everywhere teaches that the just man and the happy are one and the same, and execrated the first man who separated the just from the useful, as having done an impious thing. For those are in truth impious who separate the useful from that which is right according to the law. Plato himself says that happiness ( εὐδαιμονία ) is to possess rightly the dæmon, and that the ruling faculty of the soul is called the dæmon; and he terms happiness ( εὐδαιμονία ) the most perfect and complete good. …
St Gregory of Nyssa On 'Not Three Gods.'
As, then, the golden staters are many, but the gold is one, so too those who are exhibited to us severally in the nature of man, as Peter, James, and John, are many, yet the man in them is one. And although Scripture extends the word according to the plural significance, where it says “men swear by the greater,” and “sons of men,” and in other phrases of the like sort, we must recognize that in using the custom of the prevailing form of speech, it does not lay down a law as to the propriety of using the words in one way or another, nor does it say these things by way of giving us instruction about phrases, but uses the word according to the prevailing custom, with a view only to this, that the word may be profitable to those who receive it, taking no minute care in its manner of speech about points where no harm can result from the phrases in respect of the way they are understood.