¹³ These people all died controlled and sustained by their faith, but not having received the tangible fulfillment of [God’s] promises, only having seen it and greeted it from a great distance by faith, and all the while acknowledging and confessing that they were strangers and temporary residents and exiles upon the earth.^(A)

¹⁴ Now those people who talk as they did show plainly that they are in search of a fatherland (their own country).

¹⁵ If they had been thinking with [homesick] remembrance of that country from which they were emigrants, they would have found constant opportunity to return to it.

¹⁶ But the truth is that they were yearning for and aspiring to a better and more desirable country, that is, a heavenly [one]. For that reason God is not ashamed to be called their God [even to be surnamed their God—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob], for He has prepared a city for them.^(B)

¹⁷ By faith Abraham, when he was put to the test [while the testing of his faith was ^[a]still in progress], ^[b]had already brought Isaac for an offering; he who had gladly received and welcomed [God’s] promises was ready to sacrifice his only son,^(C)

¹⁸ Of whom it was said, Through Isaac shall your descendants be reckoned.^(D)

¹⁹ For he reasoned that God was able to raise [him] up even from among the dead. Indeed in the sense that Isaac was figuratively dead [potentially sacrificed], he did [actually] receive him back from the dead.

²⁰ [With eyes of] faith Isaac, looking far into the future, invoked blessings upon Jacob and Esau.^(E)