Verse 14, like verse 4, has two functions: it sums up the message of the previous passage, and it prepares for what is to come. Looking back, spirits who serve God recalls the reference to angels in verse 7. Winds (verse 7) and spirits translate the same Greek word. Looking forward, the words those who are to receive salvation show that the writer is moving on to the consequences for the human race of what Christ has done. This theme was suggested in 1.3, forgiveness for the sins of mankind, but in 2.1-4 it will become central for the first time.
In its form, verse 14 is another rhetorical question, which in Revised Standard Version expects the answer “Yes, they are ministering spirits.” Some translations replace the question by a strong statement (Phillips “surely,” Barclay “clearly,” Jerusalem Bible “the truth is”). Good News Translation introduces the statement with a short nonrhetorical question, What are the angels, then?
Though the question What are the angels, then? is a reference to their function, it may be necessary in a number of languages to translate this as “Who, then, are the angels?” However, since the function is an important element in the response, it may be more appropriate to render the question as “What, then, do the angels do?” or “What, then, is the purpose of the angels?”
To translate the term spirits, it is important to use essentially the same expression which is used in the expression “Holy Spirit.” However, in a number of languages the term for “Holy Spirit” is so closely related to the personality of God (for example, “the breath of God”) that one cannot employ the same terminology. Therefore it may be necessary to translate spirits as “beings.” In some languages it may even be necessary to translate They are the spirits who serve God as “They are those who serve God” or simply “They serve God.”
Good News Translation distinguishes more clearly than Revised Standard Version between the two “serving” functions of the angels, which are expressed in Greek by two different terms: (a) they serve God, and (b) God sends them to help human beings. The word translated serve may be translated “worship,” as in Heb. 1.6. In other contexts it can mean “serve the community.”
A change of emphasis is reflected by the writer’s use of the Greek word translated receive (New English Bible “inherit”) in a new way, by comparison with verses 2 and 4. The meaning of the verb is basically to receive something as a gift from God. Here, however, it is no longer the Son but believers who receive. The meaning “inherit” is not yet explicit, as it will be in 9.15-20, but are to receive suggests that it may already be in the writer’s mind, and New English Bible, Phillips, and other modern translations, as well as King James Version, use “heirs” or “inherit.” See the discussion on Heb. 1.2.
Salvation is a fairly common term in this letter. It normally includes the idea of escaping from some danger (2.3), whether destruction (6.9; compare 6.8; 11.7) or death (5.9; compare 5.7), or sin and judgment (9.28; compare 9.26, 27; 7.25). Translators may wish to avoid words such as salvation if they are used only or mainly in “church language.”
Receive salvation is a kind of substitute passive. That is to say, these are “persons who are to be saved” or, in the active form, “those whom God will save.”
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 .