Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Hebrews 11:15

"And if indeed they had been mindful of that [country] from which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return." — Hebrews 11:15 (ASV)

To acknowledge the things stated in v.13 has further implications; namely, that the kind of people spoken of are looking for “a country of their own.” If they had regarded themselves only as earthlings, they would not have retained the vision of faith with their attention squarely fixed on what is beyond this earth. The patriarchs could have gone back to Mesopotamia, had they so chosen. There was nothing physical to stop them. But their attitude excluded the possibility.

The Bedouin still live in tents as nomads, just as Abraham did in the land to which God called him (vv.8–9).

When Abraham wanted a wife for Isaac, he wanted her to be from his homeland. But he did not go back there himself. Instead, he sent a servant to get the bride and said to him, “Make sure that you do not take my son back there” (Genesis 24:6). After Jacob had spent twenty years in Mesopotamia, he still regarded Canaan as “my own homeland” (Genesis 30:25); and he heard God say, “Go back to the land of your fathers” (Genesis 31:3). Abraham buried Sarah in Canaan, not Mesopotamia, and in due course he was buried there himself (Genesis 23:19; 25:9– 10), as were Isaac (Genesis 35:27–29) and Jacob (Genesis 49:29–33; Genesis 50:13), Jacob being brought up from Egypt for the purpose. Joseph commanded that the same be done for him (Genesis 50:24–26; cf. Exodus 13:19; Joshua 24:32). All these men wholeheartedly accepted God’s word. Since they were not earthly minded, they set their hearts by faith on a heavenly home, and they did not go back to an earthly homeland.