Passage

Hebrews 13.2

Book: Hebrews · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV

Let love of the brethren continue.

2. Forget not to show love unto strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; them that are ill-treated, as being yourselves also in the body. 4. Let marriage be had in honor among all, and let the bed be undefiled: for fornicators and adulterers God will judge. (Hebrews 13:1-4, ASV)

WEB

Let brotherly love continue.

2. Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for in doing so, some have entertained angels without knowing it.

Remember those who are in bonds, as bound with them; and those who are ill-treated, since you are also in the body. 4. Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the bed be undefiled: but God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterers. (Hebrews 13:1-4, WEB)

KJV

Let brotherly love continue.

2. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body. 4. Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge. (Hebrews 13:1-4, KJV)

YLT

Let brotherly love remain;

2. of the hospitality be not forgetful, for through this unawares certain did entertain messengers;

be mindful of those in bonds, as having been bound with them, of those maltreated, as also yourselves being in the body; 4. honourable [is] the marriage in all, and the bed undefiled, and whoremongers and adulterers God shall judge. (Hebrews 13:1-4, YLT)

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Setting

Speaker: the anonymous author of Hebrews. Pauline authorship was doubted in antiquity and Origen concluded that who wrote it, God knows
Audience: Jewish believers under pressure to fall back from Christ into the older covenant observances
Location: unknown; the closing greeting from those of Italy (13:24) points in two directions at once
Time period: most likely before AD 70, since the sacrificial system is discussed as still operating

Theological reading

Forget not to show love unto strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

The command is philoxenia, love of strangers, the direct opposite of xenophobia, and it is placed at the head of the letter's closing ethical instructions immediately after let love of the brethren continue. The order matters: hospitality to outsiders follows love within the family rather than replacing it.

The allusion is to Genesis 18, where Abraham receives three visitors at Mamre, and probably to Genesis 19 with Lot, and possibly to Judges 6 and 13. The force of unawares is that the hosts did not know. Hospitality was extended to apparent strangers and turned out to have been extended to messengers of God.

Two applications, and the second is the one usually skipped.

The motive is not calculation. The verse is not advice to be kind in case someone important is in disguise. That would make the stranger a lottery ticket. The point is that you cannot know who you are dealing with, so the practice must be unconditional to be the practice at all.

Hospitality was infrastructure. In a world without safe lodging, and for a persecuted movement whose travelling teachers depended on households, receiving strangers was how the church physically existed. Verse 3 extends it to prisoners, as bound with them. See Angels.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word; see Lexicon Roadmap.

No Strong's-tagged lexicon entry is curated for the key terms of this verse; the lexicon covers roughly 100 contested terms, not every word. See Lexicon Roadmap.

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

Argument from the Hospitality-Stranger Convergence

Concepts:

Guides:

Ris3n Arguments

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.