The saints of Hebrews 11 who surround the Christian in his race. Hebrews 12:1: wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. The Greek marturon (witnesses) plays on the double sense of those who have testified by faithful endurance (the figures of ch. 11) and those who watch the race. Whether they observe the church's ongoing struggle in any conscious sense is debated; what is not debated is that their endurance is the precedent for ours. Abraham, Moses, Rahab, David, the prophets, the unnamed martyrs — all bore witness that faith in the unseen God pays out. We run the same race they ran, with their record as evidence of its end.