The world was not good enough for them!: at this tremendous climax the writer throws in a quiet aside, literally translated in Revised Standard Version, which is easy to translate in itself, but difficult to relate to the rest of the passage. common language translations and other modern translations (New English Bible, New American Bible, Barclay, Translator’s New Testament) make it a separate sentence and are thus in danger of making the rest of verse 38 an anticlimax. To link the first part of this verse with the rest is worse; for example, Jerusalem Bible has “They were too good for the world and they went out to live in deserts and mountains and in caves and ravines.” On the other hand, a common language translation must keep its sentences as short and light as possible. In some languages the best solution may be to link verse 38a with 37: “… poor, persecuted, tormented—people who were too good for this world.” Though the Greek text says literally “the world was not worthy of them” or “… was not good enough for them,” the meaning may often be expressed more effectively as “These people were too good for this world,” “These people were so good that the world was not worthy of them,” or “… the world did not deserve to have such people.”
Like refugees is not expressed in the Greek text but fits better here than does refugees in verse 13. This phrase is intended to summarize the wandering of such people and their living in caves and holes. Rather than saying They wandered like refugees in the deserts and hills, it may be better to say “Like refugees they wandered about in desert regions and hilly country.”
The basic difference between caves and holes is that a cave would normally be entered horizontally, while a hole would be entered vertically. In other words, a hole would be below the surface of the ground, and a cave might simply be an opening in the hillside or cliff.
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 .