Hope, longing, and sustaining joy

Meaning

The patriarchs' longing is directed toward the heavenly stone, Jesus Christ, and toward God's promised bodily and visible manifestation of him. The same paragraph distinguishes this expectation from already knowing and attaining him in the spirit. Such spiritual knowledge is said to sustain them amid danger and give delight throughout life. Hope here is therefore not simple absence of possession: anticipated visibility and present sustaining knowledge coexist. The English “awaited with great longing” combines the prospective force of hoped-for fulfilment with the desire named in the German.