Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Hebrews 12:26

"whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more will I make to tremble not the earth only, but also the heaven." — Hebrews 12:26 (ASV)

The solemnity of Sinai is recalled. Repeatedly we are told that then the earth shook (Exodus 19:18; Exodus 77:18; 114:4, 7). The writer has already spoken of the awe-inspiring nature of what happened when the law was given. Now the reference to the shaking of the earth brings it all back. At the same time it enables him to go on to speak of a promise that involved a further shaking, the one recorded in Hag 2:6. The prophet looked forward to something much grander than Sinai, a day when God would shake “not only the earth but also the heavens.” The reference to heaven and earth may hint at the concept of the new heaven and the new earth (Isaiah 66:22). At any rate, it points to the decisive intervention that God will make at the last time.