Berean Standard Bible
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, for God has said: “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.”
King James Version
Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.
About this verse
Here is the odd thing about this verse: the Bible's strongest never-leave promise is attached not to danger or death but to money. "Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, for God has said: 'Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.'" The logic underneath is a diagnosis — greed is fear of abandonment wearing a financial costume. We accumulate because we suspect no one is coming for us. The answer to the love of money is not a budget; it is a presence.
Hebrews is an early sermon-letter, its author unnamed, written to Jewish Christians under real pressure — earlier in the letter we learn some had already had property confiscated for their faith. To them, contentment was not a theory. The quoted promise gathers up God's words to Israel and to Joshua at the edge of the promised land: the same pledge, still in force.
For the reader with financial anxiety, the verse relocates security. Contentment does not come from finally having enough; the amount called "enough" famously recedes. It comes from having someone — one who has put his refusal to leave on record, twice over, in a single sentence.
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