The book of Hebrews was written to a group of believers from a Jewish background. Both they and the author were incredibly well-versed in Jewish history and Scriptures. The author didn’t include much background information because he knew he didn’t need to! However, if we want to understand the book like the original recipients, we will need to regain this background knowledge.
This aid is targeted towards those that have a good, basic understanding of the major people and events of both the Old and New Testaments. If you would like to grow in this area, some good places to start are to watch some videos by The Bible Project and to talk with a believing friend or a pastor. You can also email me at [email protected] and I will do what I can to help you get plugged in.
In any case, one of the salient features of Hebrews is that it contains many cross references! This study guide helps you to read the Book of Hebrews more like the original readers did: with familiarity of the referenced passages. Reading the book with this context should help you to understand and appreciate it at a deeper level. You can read an example of how this works on my Details page.
Another feature of this study aid is that you can easily do it in any Bible translation and language listed at BibleGateway.com! You can also have parallel translations.
For each chapter, this aid contains a link to a series of Scripture passages. First, the chapter in Hebrews will appear. Then, for each reference to the Old Testament, the corresponding passage will be given in the Old Testament, in the context of the chapter that it appears in. Finally, the same chapter of Hebrews will be given again, so that you can review the author’s point while the referenced passages are fresh in your memory.
Before continuing, I encourage you to watch this excellent introduction to the book of Hebrews by The Bible Project.
The links below will pull up all of the Old Testament verses referenced in the book of Hebrews, without their wider context. First, highlight these so that when you read them in their wider context, you will know that it is the portion that appears again in Hebrews.
To highlight, follow these instructions (or click here if you just want to “sample” chapter 1) :
- Sign in or create an account* at biblegateway.com/login
- Click on this link for the first half:
- Pick the translation you want to read in- highlights don’t transfer across translations.
- Using a color that you haven’t used before, select and highlight all of the passages. You don’t need to read them yet. This will take a few minutes, and I don’t recommend using laptop trackpad- a large touchscreen seems to work best!
- Repeat steps 2 through 4 for the second half:
- Now you are ready to begin in earnest! A careful study of Hebrews using this technique should take at least two weeks, if not much longer. On average, each chapter of Hebrews contains 3.5 passages from the Old Testament, but can contain as many as nine passages, as in chapter 10! There are a total of 35 passages referenced 45 times, as found in the footnotes of the NIV.
- To begin reading, please click on “Links” below:
Alternative “Sample” Instructions (Hebrews chapter 1 only) :
- Sign in or create an account* at biblegateway.com/login
- Click on this link:
- Pick the translation you want to read in- highlights don’t transfer across translations.
- Using a color that you haven’t used before, select and highlight all of the passages. You don’t need to read them yet. This will take a minute, and I don’t recommend using laptop trackpad- a large touchscreen seems to work best!
- Scroll up to number 6 to finish reading the introduction.
*Note, you can still use Bible Gateway without an account- you just won’t be able to take advantage of any of the highlighting features.
