promise that the believer would never be forsaken, and in connection with

'what man shall do' unto us, not what we might inadvertently do ourselves.

Another word which occurs in Hebrews must be included in our

examination, and that is the word peira.  This occurs twice in Hebrews:

'By faith they passed through the Red sea as by dry land: which the

Egyptians assaying (making the attempt) to do were drowned' (11:29).

'Others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings' (11:36).

In neither passage can the idea of 'tempting' be discovered.  In the

first passage 'attempt' gives good English and incidentally reveals that, in

our own mother-tongue, the word 'tempt' means a 'trial' or 'attempt'.  The

other reference (Heb. 11:36) is but a variant of the word translated

'tempted', and needs no comment.

To complete the tale of occurrences of peirazo in Hebrews, one more

reference must be included.  In Hebrews 5:13 we find the negative, apeiros,

where it is translated 'unskilful', which accords with the classical

rendering 'untried' and 'inexperienced' and with the LXX usage:

'Surely they shall not see the land which I sware to their fathers; but

their children which are with Me here, as many as know not good or

evil, every inexperienced (apeiros) youth, to them will I give the

land' (Num. 14:23 LXX).

The reader will recognize the influence of this LXX rendering in

Hebrews 5:13,14, where the unskilful 'babe' is contrasted with the 'perfect',

who discerns 'good and evil'.

As they stand, the words, 'yet without sin', in chapter 4:15, suggest

to the English reader, 'yet without sinning', as if our Lord was actually

tempted to steal, to murder, to commit adultery, but resisted.  We only allow

ourselves to write this in order to bring this doctrine and its consequence

into the light, for there is no necessity so to translate or interpret the

words choris hamartias.  In his Lexicon choris is rendered by Dr. Bullinger

'apart; asunder'.  It comes from chorizo, 'to put asunder', 'to separate', as

in Matthew 19:6 and Romans 8:39.  In Hebrews itself we read, concerning the

Saviour, that He was 'holy, harmless, undefiled, separate (chorizo) from

sinners' (Heb. 7:26).

Dr. John Owen quotes the Syriac Version of Hebrews 4:15 as reading 'sin

being excepted'.  J. N. Darby and Rotherham read 'apart from sin'.

The positive witness of the epistle to the Hebrews as a whole, and of

this expression in particular, is that the temptation referred to in the

words 'tempted in all points' refers to the testings and trials of the

pilgrim on his journey through the wilderness of this world, as he presses on

to perfection; it does not refer to, or include, those temptations to sin

which are only possible to those who have within them the effects of the

For the present, let us rejoice that there is no trial that the

believer can experience in relation to his 'profession' as a pilgrim and

stranger, that his Lord does not fully know, with which He does not fully

sympathize, and for which there is not ample provision: