The writer’s thought is generally clear, but the translator needs to look at the passage as a whole if he is to avoid difficulties later. The writer’s main interest is not in the “promised land” of Exodus or Joshua, but in the city with permanent foundations in heaven (verse 10). For this reason he gives more space to the patriarchs and Moses than to those who lived after the Exodus, and the patriarchs themselves are mentioned as heroes of faith rather than those who established the nation of Israel. So in verses 14-16 the movement is from the patriarchs’ starting point (Ur of the Chaldees, Gen 11.31), through a period of wandering, to the heavenly promised land. When the writer says in verse 33 that those who came after the Exodus received what God had promised, he means that they were given the land of Israel, the earthly promised land, or in a more general sense, God’s help in various struggles and difficulties.

The rendering of Those who say such things may need to be somewhat more specific: “Those who admit they are foreigners and refugees” or “Those who say they do not belong to that country.”

Make it clear that may be rendered as “say so clearly that” or “are really saying that.”

A country of their own: the writer describes the heavenly promised land as “a homeland” (Revised Standard Version). This usually means the country in which a person is born, but this idea must be avoided here. “Seeking a homeland” (Revised Standard Version) is awkward, since it may suggest “looking for a place in which to be born.” Good News Translation‘s a country of their own (also Barclay) gives the meaning well; other translations specify “their true homeland” (Phillips; similarly Jerusalem Bible). Looking for suggests, not something that has been lost, but something still to be obtained. Translations of they are looking for a country of their own must avoid any implication of “looking around for.” One may express the meaning as “they are expecting to possess a country that will belong to them.”

Verses 15-16 form a contrast, as Good News Translation‘s Instead shows. They did not keep thinking about the country they had left implies “When they called themselves foreigners and aliens, they did not mean that they had left their homeland in Chaldea, but that they had not yet reached the country of their own which God had promised to give them in heaven.” This involves taking “foreigners and aliens” as the key phrase of verses 14-16, and emphasizing by repetition or in some other way that verses 14-16 belong together. Phillips is a model in this respect:

• They freely admitted that they lived on this earth as exiles and foreigners. 14 Men who say that mean, of course, that their eyes are fixed upon their true homeland. 15 If they had meant the particular country they had left behind, they had ample opportunity to return. 16 No, the fact is that they longed for a better country altogether, nothing less than a heavenly one.

This seems to make stronger sense of the passage as a whole than Bijbel in Gewone Taal (similarly Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch), which translates verse 15 “If they had been homesick for the country they had left, they could easily have gone back”; but this translation is also possible.

Chance or “opportunity” (King James Version, Revised Standard Version, New English Bible) fits the context better than “time” (Moffatt, Traduction œcuménique de la Bible). It is not always necessary to specify “a chance” or “an opportunity,” since the meaning of they would have had the chance to return may very well be expressed as “they could have returned” or “there was nothing to stop them from returning.”

Instead, “but as it is,” or “but in fact” (Jerusalem Bible; not “now” King James Version) marks the contrast with verse 15 (as in 8.6). Longed for is a less common and stronger equivalent of the expression rendered keep thinking about in verse 15.

It may be necessary to expand the adversative conjunction Instead; for example, “Instead of longing for the country they had left, it was a better country they were longing for.”

The appositional phrase the heavenly country may be made more explicit as “that is to say, it was the country in heaven.” It is important to avoid a rendering of the heavenly country which would suggest a country on earth which is merely like heaven.

Call him their God may refer to “calling on God” in worship, but if so, this is not emphasized here. The last part of verse 16 serves only to summarize verses 13-15 and link them with verse 10.

The meaning of because is not very clear. The second half of verse 16 may be partly paraphrased: “God shows that he is not ashamed of them, by preparing a city for them.” But this is not the whole meaning. The writer does not use the word for “covenant,” which was so important in chapters 8–9. However, he has in mind the sentence which expressed the essential content of the covenants with Abraham (Gen 17–18) and Moses (Exo 29.45), and of the new covenant of which (Jeremiah 31.33; Heb 8.10) and (Ezekiel 11.20) had spoken: “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” In English the conjunction because wrongly suggests that the preparation of a city is directly related to people calling God their God. A more indirect causal relation may be expressed by the conjunction “for.” The basic idea of the last sentence of this section is that one may know that God is not ashamed to be called their God, since he has shown that fact by preparing a city for them. The two halves of the sentence belong so closely together that it would be possible to translate it “God is not ashamed to acknowledge them as his people, and so he has prepared a city for them,” or even “… and this is shown by the fact that he has prepared a city for them to live in.”

Quoted with permission from Ellingworth, Paul and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The Letter of the Hebrews. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1983. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .