Hebrews 13:2
Don't forget to show hospitality to strangers, for in doing so, some have entertained angels without knowing it.
WEB
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
KJV
What Hebrews 13:2 means
As the letter to the Hebrews winds down into practical instructions, it tells a scattered, pressured community to keep welcoming strangers. The reason it gives is startling: do this, and you may find you have hosted an angel without ever realizing who sat at your table.
Hebrews 13 is the closing chapter, where the long argument of the letter turns into a list of ordinary duties. Keep loving one another. Remember prisoners as if you were in prison with them. Honor marriage. Right in the middle sits this line about hospitality to strangers.
The word behind “hospitality” is literally love of the stranger, and it is set beside the love of brothers and sisters one verse earlier. The point is that the circle of care is not supposed to stop at people you already know. For the first readers this was concrete and costly. They were a minority under suspicion, and taking in a traveler meant food, a bed, and real risk in a world with no hotels for people like them.
The promise about angels reaches back to the oldest stories. Abraham looked up and saw three men at the entrance of his tent, ran to feed them, and only afterward understood he had been speaking with the Lord. Lot took two travelers in for the night and learned the same thing. The verse assumes a failure of recognition built into every act of welcome. You do not know, when you open the door, who is standing on the other side. The instruction is to open it anyway, because the worth of the stranger was never something your eyes could measure.