Biblion Bible Commentary
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Lest We Drift Away
Hebrews 2:1-4
1 Therefore we ought to pay greater attention to the things that were heard, lest perhaps we drift away. · WEB
The first of five warnings describes the danger as slipping rather than rebelling, and it is aimed at neglect.
Therefore we ought to pay greater attention to the things that were heard, lest perhaps we drift away.
The therefore attaches the warning to the whole of chapter 1. A greater speaker requires greater attention — the demand rises with the rank of the one speaking, which is the only inference the comparison was ever for.
And the danger is named with a word from seafaring. To drift away is what happens to a boat nobody is holding: no decision is made, no course is set against anything, and the distance opens by inattention. This is the first of five places where the argument breaks off into warning Hebrews 3:12 Hebrews 6:4 Hebrews 10:26 Hebrews 12:25, and it is the mildest — but the mildest describes the likeliest.
The first person is worth marking: we ought, lest we drift. The writer puts himself inside the risk rather than above it, and he does that in every warning passage in the book.
Verse 2 builds the comparison from the lesser case: if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just penalty. The law's giving is credited to angelic mediation, and its enforcement is conceded as reliable — steadfast and just are both granted.
Then the question, which is the whole warning: how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?
The verb is neglect, not reject. Nothing is said about denying anything or apostatizing; the failure contemplated is simply not attending to it — the same fault as drifting, stated a second way.
And the salvation's credentials are then set out in a chain: spoken through the Lord, confirmed to us by those who heard, and attested by God both by signs and wonders, by various works of power, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit.
That chain puts the writer in the second generation — he received it from hearers rather than as one. So the argument is not that his readers have a direct experience to fall back on. It is that the testimony reached them through witnesses and was underwritten by God, according to his own will.
settled What this mark means