D. The Faith Of The People Of Old (11:1-40)
V. COVENANT, SANCTUARY, AND SACRIFICE (8:1-10:18)
A. PRIESTHOOD AND PROMISE (8:1-7)
1 This is the sum of our argument thus far: t this is the kind of high priest we have---one who has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven,2
2 a minister of the sanctuary,3 that is, of the true tent, pitched by the Lord,4 not by any human hand.
3 Every high priest is appointed5 to offer gifts and sacrifices; 6 therefore this one also must have had an offering to make.
4 Now if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all, seeing that according to the law there are already those who offer8 the (prescribed) gifts.
5 The place where they minister is a shadow and copy of the heavenly reality, as the oracle said to Moses9 when he was about to erect10 the tent: "See to it, " said God, "that you make everything according to the pattern which was shown you on the mountain. "l t
6 But as it is, Christ has received12 a better ministry,13 inasmuch as he is mediator of a better covenant, enacted14 on the basis of better promises.
7 For if the first covenant had been faultless, no place would have been sought for a second one.15
1-2 Having established the superiority of the high priesthood of Christ, our author now proceeds to relate his high priesthood to the themes of covenant, sanctuary, and sacrifice, with which the Aaronic priesthood was closely bound up. As the Aaronic priesthood gives place to the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek, so the old covenant gives place to the new, the earthly sanctuary gives place to the heavenly, and sacrifices which were but temporary tokens give place to one which is effective and of eternal validity. "To crown the argument," then, the great high priest whom Christians have is one who is enthroned at the right hand of God, who discharges his ministry in no earthly shrine but in the heavenly dwelling-place of God, a tabernacle pitched by no human hands.16 By contrast with all material sanctuaries, this one is called the true or "real17 sanctuary" (NEB), the only one which is not an imitation of something better than itself, the only one whose durability comes anywhere near to matching the eternity of the living and true God whose dwelling-place it is. This "real sanctuary" belongs to the same order of being as the saints' everlasting rest of chs. 3 and 4, the better country and well-founded city of 11:10, 16, the unshakable kingdom of 12:28. What its essential character is will appear more clearly in the course of our exposition.18
3 But if Jesus ministers as high priest in this authentic sanctuary, what is the nature of his ministry? A high priest, as has been said before (5:1), is appointed to present "gifts and sacrifices for sins";19 therefore this high priest must also have something to offer. The nature of his offering, however, is not stated until 9:14 (although it has been mentioned already in 7:27), because in the meantime there are further points of contrast between the old order of worship and the new which have to be elucidated. In passing we may note that it is not implied that Jesus is continually or repeatedly presenting his offering; this is excluded by 7:27, which contrasts the daily sacrifices of the Aaronic high priests with the offering which the Christians' high priest has already presented once for all. The tense and mood of the Greek verb "to offer" in this clause also exclude the idea of a continual offering;20 indeed, the NEB suggests in a footnote a rendering which would make the situation completely unambiguous: "this one too must have had something to offer."21 It is a pity that the nuance of meaning here should be obscured in a wellknown and generally admirable private version which renders the passage: "It follows, therefore, that in these holy places this man has something that he is offering."22
4 That Jesus' high-priestly ministry must be exercised in the heavenly sanctuary is further shown by the fact that there would be no room for him to exercise it in the earthly sanctuary. In the earthly sanctuary, whether we think of the earlier tent-shrine or the later temple in Jerusalem, the high priesthood was confined to one family; and far from belonging to that family, Jesus did not even belong to the tribe from which it came.23 On earth Jesus was a layman, excluded by the law from all priestly functions. The "Rightful Teacher" of the Qumran community was a priest,24 even if for one reason or another he was excluded from performing priestly functions in the Jerusalem temple; but the founder of Christianity was not, and the Essenes would no more have looked upon him as a priest than the Jerusalem hierarchy did. But to our author, this simply emphasizes the dignity of Jesus' high priesthood; for a high priesthood exercised in any earthly shrine is far inferior to that heavenly high priesthood which depends for its exercise on a perfect sacrifice offered once for all and consequent admission to the sanctuary above.
5 For the earthly sanctuary from the outset was designed to be nothing more than a "copy25 and shadow"26 of the heavenly reality. This is how our author understands the divine injunction to Moses, regarding the details of the tabernacle in the wilderness: "And see that you make them after the pattern for them,27 which is being shown you on the mountain" (Ex. 25:40). This "pattern" (referred to also in Ex. 25:9; 26:30; 27:8) was something visible;28 it did not consist merely of the verbal directions of Ex. 25-30. It may have been a model for which the verbal directions served as a commentary; it may have been the heavenly dwelling-place of God which Moses was permitted to The tabernacle was intended to serve as a dwelling-place for God in the midst of his people on earth, and it would be completely in keeping with current practice that such an earthly dwelling-place should be a replica of God's heavenly dwelling-place.30 This, of course, is how our author understands the situation. The high priests of Aaron's line ministered31 in the earthly sanctuary; Jesus exercises his high-priestly ministry in the heavenly sanctuary, of which the earthly one was but a replica. There is indeed some affinity with Platonic idealism here, but it is our author's language, and not his essential thought, that exhibits such affinity. For him, the relation between the two sanctuaries is basically a temporal one. If the earthly sanctuary is a "shadow" of the heavenly, it is because the whole Levitical order foreshadowed the spiritual order of the new age. Here as in 10:1 the old order has "a shadow of the good things to come."32
How the pattern which Moses saw on Mount Sinai could be handled by a thoroughgoing Platonist is seen in Philo's treatment of the Exodus passage: Moses "saw with the soul's eye the immaterial forms ('ideas') of the material objects which were about to be made, and in accordance with these forms copies perceptible to the senses had to be reproduced, as from an archetypal drawing and patterns conceived in the mind."33 Moses, in other words, was enabled to grasp with his mind the invisible "ideas" laid up eternally in the "place above the heavens"34 (much as Plato envisaged a pattern of his republic laid up in heaven, so that it was a matter of minor importance whether an earthly copy of it ever came into existence or not),35 and commanded to give material expression to these "ideas" in a tabernacle on earth.
6 It is, then, in no earthly replica of the heavenly dwelling-place of God that Jesus ministers as his people's high priest, but in the heavenly dwelling-place itself; his ministry accordingly is far superior to any earthly ministry. And it is superior besides because of the superiority of the covenant in the power of which it is exercised-the covenant of which Jesus is himself the Mediator. He has already been called, in passing, the "guarantor of a better covenant" (7:22); the present description of him as "mediator of a better covenant" (repeated with variations in 9:15; 12:24) "presents an instance," as E. K. Simpson says,36 "of the profound enhancement conferred on expressions already in vogue by the Christian revelation." For, he continues, the Greek word translated "mediator"37 is shown by the papyri to have been a common business term "in the sense of arbitrator or gobetween.... The somewhat wider usage for any internuntius occasionally met with prepared the way for its loftiest connotation. Thus Moses is styled in Philo as well as by St. Paul mesites, the `middleman' of the old covenant. But Christ is the Mediator par excellence, not with that merely metaphysical application by which Plutarch (Mor. 369) alludes to Mithras as the mesites between Ormuzd and Ahriman in Persian theosophy, but in its su preme ethical significance, typified in the `reconciling rainbow' encircling the throne, or in the ladder of Jacob's vision conjoining sundered heaven and earth-one, to borrow a fine coinage of Tyndale, who is the perfect Atonemaker, conserving the interests of both parties for whom He acts. Intensely zealous that God's honour should contract no stain, this ideal Mediator, having secured that supreme end, will with equal zeal seek the offender's rescue and reclamation. Such an unique Intermediary evangelical faith recognizes in her beloved Lord."38
38. Cf. pp. 173-75 (on 7:25). See also R. H. Nash, "The Notion of Mediator in Alexandrian Judaism and the Epistle to the Hebrews," WTJ 40 (1977-78), pp. 89-115.
What the better promises are on which this better covenant is established will appear in the quotation from Jer. 31:31-34 which follows in vv. 8-12. For the better covenant of which our Lord is Mediator is the new covenant foretold by Jeremiah. From the words of the quotation, too, it will be possible to gather something of the meaning which the term "covenant" has in this epistle.
7 But indeed, the covenant of which Jesus is Mediator may be inferred to be a better covenant from the simple fact that it is a new covenant. If the old covenant had been perfect, it would not have needed to be superseded by a new one. And the new one must be better, for there would have been no point in replacing the old covenant by another no better than itself.
B. THE OLD COVENANT SUPERSEDED (8:8-13)
8 But God, finding fault with the people, says, 39
39. Jer. 31:31-34 (LXX 38:31-34).
40. LXX bra h aoµar ("I will covenant") is replaced here by ouvreaeo o ("I will accomplish"); in v. 10 below (as in 10:16) it is retained. In Jer. 34:8, 15 (LXX 41:8, 15) wvrekeiv bLat}ilxrly is used of a covenant made under Zedekiah, by which Hebrew slaves were to be set free. In all these places, whatever the Greek rendering may be, the Hebrew idiom karat berIt (lit. "to cut a covenant") is used (cf. p. 222, n. 124).
41. LXX wly6 hVikrlaa airtty as against Heb. we'anokI ba'alti bam, "although I was a husband unto them"-or perhaps "although I was their master" (H. L. Ellison, "The Prophecy of Jeremiah," EQ 37 [1965], p. 23). The LXX may presuppose ga'altf ("I rejected") for ba'alti. The Peshitta follows the LXX; the Vg. follows the MT.
43. Gk. emyp&Vw ("I will inscribe"), for which p46 B rY have the simple verb yp&Vw ("I will write").
46. A D and the bulk of later manuscripts, followed by the TR, insert xai twv aVOt Lwv ainiuv after uuv aµaptuuv ainiuv (cf. AV/KJV "their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more"), following the homiletic expansion of 10:17.
13 Now, in saying "A new covenant, " he has made the first one old. And that which is growing old and aging will soon disappear.
8-12 The speaker in this oracle of the new covenant is God: it is to him that the repeated pronouns of the first person singular-I, me, my-refer. The oracle itself is punctuated by the phrase "oracle of Yahweh" (here rendered "says the Lord"). So our author, as is his custom, ignores the fact that it was delivered through Jeremiah; the divine authorship is all that he is concerned with. "He says" in the sentence which introduces the quotation means "God says" (cf. 10:15, where the same oracle is introduced as the Holy Spirit's witness); "finding fault with the people" refers to the terms in which the oracle itself charges the Israelites with breaking God's earlier covenant.
The new covenant foretold by Jeremiah is set in contrast with the covenant which Yahweh made with the people of Israel when he delivered them from the land of Egypt. The ratification of that earlier covenant is recorded in Ex. 24:1-8, a passage to which specific reference is made in 9:1820.47 At that time, as Jeremiah on a previous occasion reminded his hearers, the essence of God's covenant with Israel was: "Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you" (Jer. 7:23). But his commandment was disregarded; _link_ his charge against his people, reiterated in Jeremiah's day, was: "But they did not obey or incline their ear, but walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil heart,48 and went backward and not forward. From the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets, day after day; yet they did not listen to me, or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck. They did worse than their fathers" (Jer. 7:24-26).
Prophet after prophet came to Israel and Judah, recalling the people to their covenant loyalty; Jeremiah himself was no exception. "Hear the words of this covenant, and do them," was his call (Jer. 11:6); and with that call went the assurance that the blessings attached to the keeping of the covenant would still be theirs if they were obedient, while persistent disobedience to it would bring a curse upon them as it had done upon their fathers.
The covenant theme was all the more topical in Jeremiah's day because of the solemn covenant which had been made by the king and the leaders of the nation in the eighteenth year of Josiah. The discovery by Hilkiah the priest of "the book of the law"-probably the law of Deuteronomy49-in the temple in that year (621 B.C.) was followed by a solemn act of national repentance and rededication. The newly discovered lawbook was read at a great gathering in the temple, "and the king stood by the pillar and made a covenant before Yahweh, to walk after Yahweh and to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book: and all the people joined in the covenant" (2 Kings 23:3).
The king's repentance and covenant were genuine enough; but the others who took part in this ceremony and in the accompanying reformation of national religion did so largely by way of conforming to the royal will. Jeremiah was quick to perceive this, and to recognize that there was no ground for expecting this covenant to be kept any more than the covenant of Deut. 29:1 of which it was essentially a reaffirmation. Jeremiah's attitude and relation to King Josiah's covenant and reformation have often been discussed;50 but there is very little in his recorded words that can be interpreted as a direct reference to these events, apart from the damning indictment of Jer. 3:10, where a divine oracle, explicitly uttered "in the days of Josiah the king," reprobates the kingdom of Judah for not taking warning from the fate of its sister-nation Israel: "for all this her false sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but in pretence, says Yahweh." "I do not doubt," says H. L. Ellison, "that the first impulse of Jeremiah's heart was to leap with joy, when the news of a clean sweep of all heathenism was first received. But as a prophet, viewing it from God's standpoint, he could see that it never had any chance of success. It was not that it stayed superficial; there never was any question of its being anything else."51 No reaffirmation of the Deuteronomic covenant, or even of that earlier covenant made on the morrow of the Israelites' escape from Egypt, could meet the situation. A new covenant, new in character as well as in time, was called for, and such a new covenant Jeremiah proclaimed.
We do not stay to argue that the oracle of the new covenant is an authentic utterance of Jeremiah52-although, to be sure, the identity of the prophet through whom these words of God were spoken would probably have been a matter of small importance to the author of this epistle. It is precisely in Jeremiah's prophetic ministry that the oracle finds its proper life-setting. The days were dark; national life was in collapse; it was "the time of Jacob's trouble" (Jer. 30:7).53 But the people's life would be reconstituted on a new basis, and a new relationship between them and their God would be brought into being. This new relationship would involve three things in particular: (a) the implanting of God's law54 in their hearts; (b) the knowledge of God as a matter of personal experience; (c) the blotting out of their sins.
(a) The implanting of God's law in their hearts means much more than their committing of it to memory. Ample provision for memorizing it had already been made in the prescriptions of Deuteronomy: "these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. And you shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. And you shall write them on the door-posts of your house and on your gates" (Deut. 6:6-9). Even the memorizing of the law of God does not guarantee the performance of what has been memorized. Jeremiah's words imply the receiving of a new heart by the people-as is expressly promised in the parallel prophecy of his younger contemporary Ezekiel: "I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God" (Ezek. 11: 19f.; cf. 36:26f.). When first they heard the covenant-law they said: "All that Yahweh has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient" (Ex. 24:7). But they did not have the moral power to match their good intention. Hence the necessity arose of repeatedly returning to their God and his covenant, only to turn aside to their own ways once again. The defect did not lie in the covenant-law; it was good in itself but, to borrow Paul's language, "it was weakened by the flesh" (Rom. 8:3)by the inadequacy of the human material which it had to work upon. What was needed was a new nature, a heart liberated from its bondage to sin, a heart which not only spontaneously knew and loved the will of God but had the power to do it.
The new covenant was a new one in that it could impart this new heart. It was not new in regard to its own substance: "I will be their God, and they shall be my people," quoted here from Jer. 31:33, was the substance of the covenant of Moses' day. "I will take you for my people, and I will be your God" was God's promise to the Israelites while they were still in Egypt (Ex. 6:7); "I ._ will be your God, and you shall be my people" was his promise to them when he had given them his law in the wilderness (Lev. 26:12), a promise taken up and applied in apostolic days to the people of the new covenant (2 Cor. 6:16).55 And in the New Testament Apocalypse, when a new heaven and earth come into being, and God's dwelling-place is established with his people, the ancient covenant-promise is repeated: "they shall be his peoples,56 and God himself shall be with them [and be their God]" (Rev. 21:3). But while the "formula" of the covenant remains the same from age to age, it is capable of being filled with fresh meaning to a point where it can be described as a new covenant. "I will be your God" acquires fuller meaning with every further revelation of the character of God; "you shall be my people" acquires deeper significance as the will of God for his people is more completely known.
(b) The knowledge of God as a matter of personal experience is evidently regarded in Jeremiah's oracle as something beyond what the old covenant provided. There was a sense in which the people of Israel knew their God, because he had revealed himself to them, by contrast with the nations which did not know him; but even Israel tended to forget him.57 Thus, when the generation which entered Canaan under Joshua died out, "there arose another generation after them, who did not know Yahweh, nor yet the work which he had done for Israel" (Judg. 2:10). At a later date, the prophet Hosea lamented the fact that there was no "knowledge of God in the land" of Israel and that disaster was fast overtaking the people on this account (Hos. 4:1, 6); "knowledge of God," which was closely coupled with covenantloyalty, was the one thing needful, more desirable in God's sight than the costliest burnt offerings (Hos. 6:6). Jeremiah himself, in his tribute to King Josiah as one who did "justice and righteousness" and "judged the cause of the poor and needy," equates such behavior with the knowledge of God (Jer. 22:15f.). Josiah was a king, that is to say, who was mindful of his covenanted obligations. But now it is not simply a national acknowledgment of God and his covenant that is envisaged, nor yet such acknowledgment on the part of those in positions of high responsibility. It is a personal knowledge of God such as marked Jeremiah himself, a personal knowledge of God to be possessed by each individual member of the covenant community, because of the new heart received by each. Such knowledge of him by whom they are known, increasing until it attains its consummation in knowing even as they are known,58 is of the essence of that "perfection" to which our author invites his readers to press forward.
(c) The blotting out of his people's sins is essential to this new relationship into which God calls them with himself.59 This indeed was not a novel idea when Jeremiah proclaimed it: the God of Israel was incomparably a pardoning God, passing over transgression, unwilling to retain his anger, delighting in loving-kindness, treading his people's iniquities underfoot, casting all their sins into the depths of the sea.60 These are the words of Micah, a century and more before the time of Jeremiah; but the idea was not original with Micah. When the God of Israel proclaimed his "name" in the ears of Moses, this note of forgiveness was emphasized, alongside the note of retribution for the impenitent: "Yahweh, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; keeping lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation" (Ex. 34:6f.). But now the assurance of forgiveness of sins is written into the very terms of the covenant in the most unqualified fashion: "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." For the Hebrew, "remembering" was more than a mental effort; it carried with it the thought of doing something to the advantage, or disadvantage, of the person remembered.61 When Cornelius's prayers and alms ascended as a memorial before God, God took action to Cornelius's advantage and sent his servant to him with a message which brought salvation to him and his household (Acts 10:4, 31; 11:13f.). When, on the other hand, "Babylon the great was remembered in the sight of God," it was "to make her drain the wine-cup of the fury of his wrath" (Rev. 16:19; cf. 18:5). If people's sins are remembered by God, his holiness must take action against them; if they are not remembered, it is because his grace has determined to forgive them-not in spite of his holiness, but in harmony with it. Under the old sacrificial system, there was "an annual reminder of sins" (Heb. 10:3); if there is no such recalling of sins to mind under the new covenant, it is because of a sacrifice offered up once for all (7:27).
Here, then, are the "better promises" on which the new covenant is established: (a) "I will put my laws in their mind"; (b) "they will all know me"; (c) "I will remember their sins no more." The covenant at Sinai involved divine promises, but not promises like these. The fulfilment of such promises gives a new meaning to the ancient covenant-words: "I will be their God, and they shall be my people." It has, indeed, been maintained more than once that the covenant concept, with its suggestion of a contractual obligation, is inadequate to convey the religious relationship subsisting between God and his people. This, however, is to concentrate on the form to the exclusion of the substance. It is true, no doubt, that as far as its form is concerned the early biblical covenant has close affinities with the treaties which bound vassalstates to their imperial overlords in the second millennium B.C. But it makes all the difference in the world to the substance of the covenant when it is God who takes the initiative in his grace, bestowing his promises freely on those whom he has called to be his people, and binding them to himself with bands of love.62 When analogies are drawn from human life to illustrate God's covenant with his people, it is from the family circle and not from the field of international politics that they are drawn-from the relation between husband and wife, or that between a father and his children.63
We know of at least one community of Israelites which, in the second century B.C., endeavored to realize the promise of the new covenant. The members of the Qumran community are described as "entering the new covenant in the land of Damascus"64-the "land of Damascus" being possibly their wilderness retreat on the shores of the Dead Sea.65 They were to constitute "a holy house for Israel, a most holy assembly for Aaron ... the foundation of a holy spirit according to eternal truth, to make atonement for the guilt of rebellion and for sinful disloyalty, and to obtain favor for the land apart from the flesh of burnt-offerings and the fat of sacrifice."66 But our author would not have recognized in this community the fulfilment of Jeremiah's oracle. The men of Qumran might regard their obedience and endurance as an acceptable substitute for the sacrificial ritual while the temple and its services were polluted by an unworthy priesthood; but they looked forward to a new age which would revive the highest ideals of the old age; they looked forward to a renovated temple which would still be a temple made with hands, to a pure sacrificial worship which would still involve the slaughter of bulls and goats, to a worthy priesthood which would still be confined to the family of Aaron-or, more precisely, to the family of Zadok, which had ministered in the Jerusalem temple from its foundation in Solomon's day to 171 B.C. To our author, the new covenant involves the abolition67 of the old sacrificial order because of a perfect and unrepeatable sacri fice, and a high-priestly ministry discharged in the heavenly, no longer in an earthly, sanctuary on the basis of that sacrifice by a priest of a different line from Aaron's. True worship, "in spirit and in truth," 68 is thus released from dependence on the externalities of religion.
When Jesus, on the night in which he was betrayed, gave his disciples the cup and said, "This is my blood of the covenant, shed for many" 69 (Mark 14:24, NEB), the paschal context of the incident would surely have made them link his words with "the blood of the covenant" which God established with his people Israel in the days of Moses on the basis of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 24:8). Nor can we doubt that Jesus' intention was to announce that now at length that earlier covenant was to be replaced by the "new covenant" foretold by Jeremiah midway between Moses' day and his own.70 Whether, in fact, the sacrifice of Jesus has had the effect which Jeremiah said the new covenant would have, let those tell who have proved its saving power. Or let one tell for all: "What the law could never do, because our lower nature robbed it of all potency, God has done: by sending his own Son in a form like that of our own sinful nature, and as a sacrifice for sin, he has passed judgment against sin within that very nature, so that the commandment of the law may find fulfilment in us, whose conduct, no longer under the control of our lower nature, is directed by the Spirit" (Rom. 8:3f., NEB).71
In Jeremiah's oracle the new covenant is to be made "with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah." In the New Testament fulfilment it is not confined to them, but extends to all believers of every nation-and indeed, in the Old Testament itself indications are not lacking that it was to have this all-embracing character.72 Whether Jeremiah consciously en visaged the wider extension of the new covenant or not, its wider extension is really implicit in his prophecy: national origin and racial descent must also be included among those externalities from whose control true religion is released by the new covenant. "It is one thing to say that Jeremiah was not given to see what the new covenant would mean for the world, it is entirely another to say that by Israel and Judah he really meant the Church.... On the other hand, we must not fall into the opposite error of supposing that the new covenant will mean something else for `all Israel' than it does for the Church, that saved Israel will be saved in some other way than is the Church. God does not abolish physical Israel, but in saving it transcends it, just as He does not scrap this earth but renews it."73
13 The very words "a new covenant" antiquate the previous one. In saying this our author does not go beyond Jeremiah, who explicitly contrasts the new covenant of the future with the covenant made at the time of the Exodus, and implies that when it comes, the new covenant will supersede that earlier one. The moral of the situation had been appreciated already by Paul, who speaks of himself and his colleagues as "ministers of a new covenant; not in a written code, but in the Spirit"; and by contrast with this new covenant refers to that associated with Moses as "the old covenant" (2 Cor. 3:6, 14).74 And if the covenant of Moses' day is antiquated, our author further implies, so must be the Aaronic priesthood, the earthly sanctuary, and the Levitical sacrifices, which were all established under that covenant. The age of the law and the prophets is past; the age of the Son is here, and here to stay.75
But, our author goes on, if the earlier covenant, with all that accompanied it, is antiquated, it is ready to vanish away: "anything that is growing old and ageing will shortly disappear" (NEB). It cannot be proved from these words that the Jerusalem temple was still standing and its sacrificial ritual still being carried on. They could simply mean that by predicting the inauguration of a new covenant Jeremiah in effect announced the impending dissolution of the old order. They do indeed have that meaning. But if in fact the Jerusalem temple was still standing, if the priests of Aaron's line were still discharging their sacrificial duties there, then our author's words would be all the more telling. Jesus,76 and shortly after him Stephen,77 had foretold the downfall of the temple. Thirty years and more had elapsed since then, and it might have been thought that the event had belied their prediction. But now that prediction is taken up by another Christian, who in many respects stands within the tradition of Stephen,78 and shown to be logically involved in Old Testament prophecy. If the end of the temple and its ministry had been imminent thirty years before, it was the more imminent now that the forty years of probation79 were more than three-quarters of the way toward their end.
HEBREWS 9
C. THE SANCTUARY UNDER THE OLD COVENANT (9:1-5)
1 Now the first covenant [also] had ordinances' for worship2 and a sanctuary of this world.3
2 A tent was set up--the first one, called the holy place4-in which were the lampstand,5 the table, and the showbread.6
3 Then behind the second curtain was the tent called the holy of holies,?
4 which had a golden incense-altar, and the ark of the covenant overlaid all around with gold. In the ark was the golden urn with manna, together with Aaron's rod which budded and the tablets of the testimony,
5 while above it were the cherubim8 of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. It is not possible here and now to deal with these things one by one.9
1 The inadequacy of the old order as compared with the new is now set forth with reference first to the arrangements of the sanctuary under the old covenant and then to the sacrificial ritual associated with that sanctuary. Provision was made under the old covenant for the people of God to worship him, but the sanctuary erected for this worship was a material one. The particular sanctuary which our author has in mind is plainly the wilderness tent described in detail in the book of Exodus. The fact that he makes the tent the basis of his argument here and not the Jerusalem temple may suggest that neither he nor his readers belonged to Jerusalem, but it cannot be treated as proof of this. Neither can it be treated as proof that the temple was no longer standing, nor yet that the readers were not Jews at all. What it does prove is that our author's argument is biblical through and through. Even Solomon's temple is not so apposite to his purpose as the Mosaic tabernacle, which is introduced (in Ex. 25:1ff.) immediately after the inauguration of the covenant (Ex. 24). It is not suggested here, as it is in Stephen's speech (Acts 7:44-50), that the mobile tabernacle of the wilderness wanderings was a more suitable shrine for a pilgrim people than the permanent house which Solomon built.10 Our author's point is different: the sanctuary of the old covenant, in its very furnishings and sacrificial arrangements, proclaimed its own temporary character; and while this is shown with more special reference to the tabernacle, the principle holds good equally for the temple, whether Solomon's or Herod's.
2 The wilderness tent-shrine consisted of the court, the outer compartment, and the inner compartment. Although the successive temples which superseded it were much more elaborate, they preserved the same ground plan; the courts might be multiplied in number, but the holy house itself, standing toward the west side of the inmost court, consisted of the two essential compartments-the outer ("the holy place") and the inner ("the holy of holies"). Here each of the compartments of the wilderness sanctuary is called a "tent" or "tabernacle." The outer compartment was twenty cubits long, (approximately) ten cubits wide, and ten cubits high; here it is described simply in terms of its furniture. The "Iampstand" was placed at the south side of the holy place; it was made of gold, with three branches springing from either side of the main stem; the main stem and all six branches each supported a flower-shaped lampholder (Ex. 25:31-39; 37:17-24). The sevenbranched lampstands of the later sanctuaries appear to have been more elaborate than that prescribed for the wilderness tabernacle; some idea of their appearance may be obtained from representations on Hasmonaean coins and in a well-known relief on the Arch of Titus in "The table, and the showbread" (a hendiadys for "the table of showbread") stood on the north side of the holy place. The table was made of acacia wood overlaid with gold; it was two cubits long, one cubit broad, and one and a half cubits high, and was equipped with golden plates, spoons, flagons, and bowls (Ex. 25:23-30; 37:10-16). The "showbread" (lit. "the setting forth of the loaves")12 consisted of twelve cakes, baked of fine flour, placed fresh upon the table every Sabbath day (Lev. 24:5-8); the old cakes, which were removed when the new cakes were placed on the table, became the perquisite of the priests, who ate them in the holy place; no layman might eat them, because they were "most holy" (Lev. 24:9).13
3 At the west end of the holy place hung a curtain of embroidered linen, suspended under the clasps which coupled together the two sets of linen curtains draped over the tabernacle framework (Ex. 26:3 1; 36:35f.). This curtain (Heb. parokheth) is here called "the second curtain"14 to distinguish it from the linen screen through which one entered from the court into the holy place (Ex. 26:36f.; 36:37f.). Beyond the "second curtain" lay the inner compartment, the "holy of holies," which formed a cube on a side of ten cubits.
4 Two pieces of furniture are mentioned in connection with the holy of holies: the golden incense-altar and the ark of the covenant.
The mention of the incense-altar raises two questions: (a) whether the reference actually is to the incense-altar and not rather to a "censer" (AV/KJV) or incense-shovel; (b) if the incense-altar is meant, how this statement relates to the Old Testament indications that the incense-altar stood in the holy place, not in the holy of holies.
(a) The Greek word thymiaterion, which our author employs here, is used in the Septuagint with the meaning "censer" but never with the meaning "incense-altar."15 This fact, however, is not decisive for its meaning here. The word in itself simply means "a place where incense is put" or "a vessel for burning incense" and was used not only in the sense of "censer," but also in the general sense of "incense-altar"16 and more particularly, by Philo17 and Josephus,18 of the incense-altar in the Israelite tabernacle or temple. We should expect some reference to the incense-altar here, along with the references to other articles of tabernacle furniture; there is no reason to expect a reference to a censer, since there is no mention of such an instrument in all the prescriptions for the construction and furnishing of the tabernacle in Ex. 25:1-31:11 or 35:1-40:33.19 There was only one incense-altar, but there were several censers; and though it might be argued that the special reference here is to Aaron's censer, which he used on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:12; cf. Num. 16:46), this censer was scarcely distinctive enough to be mentioned separately; further, we are not told where it was kept, but since Aaron used it to carry fire into the holy of holies, to burn incense on it there, it is unlikely that it was kept in the holy of holies.20 On the whole, it is more probable that the ARV is right (with the RSV and the NEB) in preferring "altar of incense" as the rendering here to "censer" of the AV/KJV and the ERV texts.21
(b) If that is so, the question of the location of the incense-altar arises. According to Ex. 30:6, it was to be put "before the veil that is by the ark of the testimony, before the mercy-seat that is over the testimony."22 This does not make it altogether clear on which side of the veil dividing the holy place from the holy of holies the incense-altar stood, but the phrase "before the veil" does rather suggest that it stood in the holy place, not in the holy of holies.23 This seems to be confirmed by Lev. 16:12, 18, where "the altar before Yahweh"24 is on the outer side of the curtain (unless those are right who maintain that "the altar before Yahweh" of Lev. 16 is not the special incense-altar of Ex. 30:1-10 but the one altar of Ex. 27:1-8, as may be implied by Lev. 16:20). On the other hand, the incense-altar in Solomon's temple is described as "the whole altar that belonged to the inner sanctuary" (1 Kings 6:22).25 It smacks of special pleading to argue that our author does not say that the incense-altar was situated in the holy of holies, but only speaks of the holy of holies as "having a golden altar of incense."26 The participle "having" should naturally mean the same thing with reference to the incense-altar as with reference to the ark of the covenant. There was, however, a special con nection between the incense-altar and the holy of holies, no matter on which side of the veil the altar stood. On the one day in the year when the holy of holies was entered the incense-altar played a significant part; not only was the holy of holies never entered without incense from the incense-altar (Lev. 16:12f.), but the blood of the sin offering on the Day of Atonement was sprinkled on the horns of the incense-altar as well as on the mercy-seat (Ex. 30:10; Lev. 16:15).27
In any case, our author does not stay to answer the questions which his passing reference to the incense-altar may raise in his readers' minds; this is not the feature of the tabernacle to which he wishes to draw their attention more particularly, any more than the contents of the ark of the covenant, which he also passes over quickly.
The ark of the covenant was the principal, if not the only, article of furniture in the holy of holies in the tabernacle and in Solomon's temple. No more is heard of it after the destruction of the first temple by the Chaldaeans in 587 B.C. (although legend is more than willing to supply the lack of historical evidence);28 it was not replaced in the postexilic temple, in which the holy of holies was completely empty, as Pompey found to his surprise when he insisted on forcing his way into it in 63 B.C.29 The ark was a box of acacia wood plated with gold; it was called "the ark of the covenant" or "the ark of the testimony" (Ex. 25:22, etc.) because the covenant-terms, engraved on two stone tablets, were placed inside it (Ex. 25:16, 21).30 When, at a later time, it was placed in the holy of holies in Solomon's temple, "there was nothing in the ark except the two tables of stone which Moses put there at Horeb, when Yahweh made a covenant with the people of Israel, when they came out of the land of Egypt" (1 Kings 8:9). "The very terms of this statement," according to Franz Delitzsch, "may almost seem to imply that other things had been there formerly."31 By the "other things" he means more particularly the jar of manna and Aaron's rod, which the Old Testament does not place inside the ark. According to Ex. 16:33f. Moses commanded Aaron to put an omer of manna (about four pints, one-tenth of an ephah) in a jar,32 "and place it before Yahweh, to be kept throughout your generations"; and Aaron accordingly "placed it before the testimony, to be kept." Similarly, when twelve rods or sceptres, one for each tribe of Israel, had been laid up "in the tent of meeting before the testimony," Aaron's rod, the rod of the tribe of Levi, was found the next day to have put forth buds, blossoms, and ripe almonds-a token that Aaron was the man whom God had chosen for the priesthood (Num. 17:1-10). Moses was then directed to "put back the rod of Aaron before the testimony, to be kept as a sign for the rebels" (Num. 17:10).33 Does the phrase "before the testimony" imply that these objects were placed inside the ark, or simply that they were laid in front of it? Delitzsch thinks that the former "is a natural conclusion" from the phrases "before Yahweh" and "before the testimony";34 this is by no means clear, especially as regards the phrase "before Yahweh," for this phrase is used of other installations in the tabernacle, which were certainly not inside the ark.35 On the other hand, it will not do to say that the antecedent of "wherein" is not "the ark" but "the tent called the holy of holies" (v. 3);36 this puts an intolerable strain on the natural construction of the sentence by the distance which it places between the relative and its antecedent. It is not to be doubted that our author represents the jar of manna and the rod as having been inside the ark along with the tables of the law. Since the Old Testament has noth ing to say of the jar of manna outside Ex. 16:33f., and nothing to say of Aaron's rod after it was used to strike the rock in Kadesh (Num. 20:8-11), it is open to anyone to surmise that, even if they were not originally in the ark, they were put there subsequently for safekeeping, and to surmise further that they were lost when the ark was captured by the Philistines (1 Sam. 4:116:16).37 But this would simply be calling upon imagination to take the place of evidence, and on a par with rabbinical speculation about the disappearance of the ark and the objects which accompanied it when the first temple fell.
5 The lid of the ark was a golden slab called the "mercy seat" or place of atonement,38 viewed by our author as the earthly counterpart of the "throne of grace" to which he has already exhorted his readers to draw near for help in the hour of need (4:16). It was given this name because of the part it played in the sacrificial ritual of the Day of Atonement; the blood both of the bullock which was offered to make atonement for the high priest and his family, and of the goat which was killed as a sin offering for the whole nation, was sprinkled on the mercy seat and in front of it, while the God of Israel undertook to "appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat" (Lev. 16:2; cf. vv. 14f.). The "cherubim of glory" were two gold figures of composite creatures which overshadowed the mercy seat (Ex. 25:18-22; 37:7-9) and served to support the invisible presence of Israel's God, who accordingly is repeatedly described as the one "who is enthroned on the cherubim" (1 Sam. 4:4, etc.). It was because of this function that they were called "cherubim of glory"; the glory is the shekhinah, the radiant presence of God dwelling in the midst of his people.39 Originally the cherubim appear to have symbolized the storm winds,40 on which the God of Israel was pictured as riding through the sky; thus in the theophany of Ps. 18:10 "he rode on a cherub, and flew; he came swiftly upon the wings of the wind" (cf. Deut. 33:26). Some idea of their composite character may be gained from Ezek. 10:10-14 (supplemented by 1:5-13), where they are portrayed as the supporters of the chariot-throne of God, which is not tied to his earthly shrine, but is capable of moving in any direction at will.41 If it be asked why the golden cherubim did not come under the ban imposed by the Second Commandment on the making of images (as contrasted, for example, with the golden bull-calves of Dan and Bethel), the answer may lie in their symbolic nature;42 they were not the "likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth" (Ex. 20:4; cf. Deut. 5:8).43
What our author would have had to say about the parabolic significance of the cherubim and the other installations which he mentions we can only imagine; when he says that he cannot now "deal with these things one by one," he leaves us with the impression that he could have enlarged at some length on their symbolism had he chosen so to do.44 What he does proceed to enlarge upon is the use which was made of the ancient sanctuary on the annual Day of Atonement.
D. A TEMPORARY RITUAL (9:6-10)
8 In this way the Holy Spirit shows47 that, while the first tent still stands,48 the way into the holy place has not yet been opened up.
9 This is a parable with a bearing on the present time: according to this49 order of worship gifts and sacrifices50 are offered which can never make the worshiper5l perfect as regards the conscience.
10 Those gifts and sacrifices, in addition to matters of food and drink and various ablutions, are material ordinances52 imposed until the time of reformation.
6 In the tabernacle and in the temples which replaced it, the outer compartment, the holy place, was in continual use. Day by day, morning and evening, the appointed priests entered it to trim the lamps on the lampstand (Ex. 27:20f.) and at the same time to burn incense on the incense-altar (Ex. 30:7f.). The day on which the priest Zechariah was chosen by lot from among his fellow-priests of the course of Abijah to burn incense in the holy place (Luke 1:8-22) would have been in any case the most outstanding day in the whole of his priestly career; but the angelic vision and annunciation granted to him beside the incense-altar made the occasion more notable still. Again, week by week the appointed priests entered the holy place to put fresh loaves on the table of showbread (Lev. 24:8f.). These were the principal services which were discharged in "the first tent," and any member of the priesthood could discharge them.
7 But none except the high priest was permitted to enter "the second tent," the holy of holies; and even he was permitted to enter it only once a year, on the Day of Atonement, and the conditions of his entering it were strictly prescribed. These conditions are set out most fully in Lev. 16, where the holy of holies is called "the holy place within the veil" (v. 2). Aaron (and that means each successive high priest of Israel) might enter the holy of holies only on the tenth day of the seventh month (Tishri) in each year (around the time of the autumnal equinox). Attired not in his violet robe and its accessories,53 but in vestments of white linen which were reserved for special sacrificial occasions,54 he entered the holy of holies twice. On the first occasion he carried the blood of the bullock which had been sacrificed as a sin offering for himself and his household,55 and sprinkled it on the front of the mercy-seat and before the mercy-seat, which all the time was shrouded in the cloud arising from the incense which burned on the golden altar. Then, when a goat had been slaughtered as a sin offering for the people at large, he brought its blood too into the holy of holies and sprinkled it on and before the mercyseat. Having thus accomplished this part of the atoning ritual, he came out of the sanctuary and confessed the national sins over the head of the second goat, assigned by lot to "Azazel," which was then driven from the haunts of men into a "solitary land." In our author's typological application of the ritual of the Day of Atonement, however, no mention is made of this second goat;56 he is concerned only with that part of the ritual which was associated with the sanctuary. And in this connection he emphasizes three points: (i) except on this annual occasion, the way into the throne room of God was barred for all Israelites, even for the high priest himself;57 (ii) when the high priest did receive permission to enter, his entry was safeguarded by sacrificial blood; (iii) this sacrificial blood was not finally efficacious, for fresh blood had to be shed and a fresh entry made into the holy of holies year by year.
8 In the record of the tabernacle arrangements and the Levitical offerings the Holy Spirit had a lesson to teach, as in the other parts of Hebrew scripture. What lesson, then, does he teach in the prescriptions for the Day of Atonement? This, that throughout the age of the old covenant there was no direct access to God. "The way into the holy place" here means "the way into the holy of holies," which was barred by the inner veil. The use of "holy place" in the sense of "holy of holies" (recurring below in vv. 12, 24, 25) is probably based on the similar usage of Lev. 16:2 (where ambiguity is excluded by the added words "within the veil, before the mercy-seat"), 3, 16, 17, 20, 23, 27.58 It is further to be noted that, whereas hitherto our author has used "the first tent" of the outer compartment of the sanctuary, here he uses it apparently to mean the sanctuary of "the first covenant," comprising the holy place and the holy of holies together.59 And by "the first tabernacle" here we are to understand not merely the Mosaic tabernacle, but the other structures which replaced it from time to time, down to and including Herod's temple. The phrase "while the first tabernacle still stands" sheds no light, however, on the question whether or not Herod's temple was still in being when the epistle was written (AV/KJV renders the genitive absolute by the past tense: "while as the first tabernacle was yet standing"). The phrase is part of a lengthy periodic sentence whose principal clause is "the priests go in continually into the first tabernacle ... but into the second the high priest alone, once in the year." The present tense in this principal clause is a historic present, indicating primarily the procedure laid down by the Levitical law rather than the procedure which was still being enacted at Jerusalem while the author was writing, although the latter is not excluded. What he means is that unimpeded access to the presence of God was not granted until Christ came to accomplish his sacrificial ministry.
9 This state of affairs-the prohibition of general entry into the holy of holies-is parenthetically described as a parable or figure "for the time present" (ARV).60 There is an ambiguity in these words: is "the present time" to be understood as "the time then present" (AV/KJV) or "the time now present" (ERV;.cf. RSV, NEB)? If the former, then our author's meaning is that the presence of the veil was an "outward and visible sign" of the spiritual conditions then prevailing: the way to God had not yet been opened up. If the latter, then the veil, together with its significance, constituted "a parable bearing on the present crisis,"61 emphasizing the contrast between the free access to God now guaranteed through Christ and the strictly limited access permitted by the structure and ceremonial of the earthly sanctuary. In the earthly sanctuary sacrifices were indeed offered, but their efficacy was sadly restricted; they could not bring "perfection" to the worshiper because they did not affect his conscience.62 Now we see what our author wishes to teach his readers. The really effective barrier to a man or woman's free access to God is an inward and not a material one; it exists in the conscience. It is only when the conscience is purified that one is set free to approach God without reservation and offer him acceptable service and worship. And the sacrificial blood of bulls and goats is useless in this regard.63 Animal sacrifice and other material ordinances which accompanied it could effect at best a ceremonial and symbolical removal of pollution.
10 What had regulations concerning food and drink and a variety of ritual washings to do with one's relation to God? The reference to "food and drink" probably has to do with the food-laws of Lev. 11.64 Much more is said there about solid food than about drink; as far as drink goes, there is the direction that water may not be drunk from a vessel into which a dead animal has fallen (Lev. 11:34)-a sound hygienic direction, as no doubt were many of the food-laws, but having little enough to do with heart-religion. There were also the libations which accompanied several of the sacrificial offerings (cf. Num. 6:15, 17; 28:7f.). But for our author, as for Paul, these things were but "a shadow of the things to come" (Col. 2:17). As regards the "various ablutions," not only had the high priest to "bathe his body in water" after performing the ritual of the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:24), but similar purifications were prescribed for a great variety of actual or ceremonial defilements.65 Again, these purifications undoubtedly had great hygienic value, but when they were given religious value there was always the danger that those who practiced them might be tempted to think of religious duty exclu sively, or at least excessively, in terms of externalities. But all these things were "outward ordinances" (NEB), "regulations for the body" (RSV), not for the conscience, with a temporary and limited validity until the "time of reformation." By the rendering "reformation"66 we might understand "reformation" in the sense of "reconstruction"; the coming of Christ involved a complete reshaping of the structure of Israel's religion. The old covenant was now to give way to the new, the shadow to the substance,67 the outward and earthly copy to the inward and heavenly reality.
E. CHRIST'S ETERNAL REDEMPTION (9:11-14)
11 But now Christ has appeared as high priest of the good things which have come to pass.68 Through the greater and more perfect tent not made with hands-that is to say, not belonging to this creation-
12 and by virtue of his own blood, not the blood of goats and calves, he has entered the holy place once for all, having procured eternal redemption.
13 For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who have been defiled have sanctifying power as far as bodily cleansing is concerned,
14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit69 offered himself to God as an unblemished sacrifice, cleanse70 our71 conscience from dead works so as to worship the living72 God?
11 But now the time of reformation has arrived; what used to be "the good things to come" are now "the good things that have come" (RSV), "the good things already in being" (NEB). For Christ has appeared, and in him the shadows have given way to the perfect and abiding reality. And his appearance is properly announced with a triumphant trumpet-flourish; his entrance into the presence of God is not a day of soul-affliction and fasting,73 like the Day of Atonement under the old legislation, but a day of gladness and song, the day when Christians celebrate the accession of their Priest-King.
The New Year, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles74 originally belonged to one festal complex at which the kingship of the God of Israel was annually celebrated. What part was played in this celebration by the king of Israel, God's vicegerent over his people, is a debated question.75 But in the New Testament antitype of this festal complex the divine PriestKing fills the central and decisive role; by virtue of his perfect self-sacrifice he has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God, and reigns forevermore from the heavenly Zion, high priest of the new and eternal order. The sanctuary in which he ministers is the true tabernacle of which the Mosaic shrine was but a material copy; it is a sanctuary not made with hands, not belonging to the earthly creation.76 The "greater and more perfect tent" through which he has passed to enter the heavenly holy of holies comprises "the heavens" of 4:14, the counterpart of the outer compartment in the earthly sanctuary. The idea of a sanctuary not made with hands goes back to the earliest forms of Christian teaching. Our Lord himself spoke of the time when the Jerusalem temple would be replaced by a temple "made without hands"77 (Mark 14:58; cf. John 2:19-22), and Stephen and Paul insisted that no building "made with hands" could accommodate the Most High (Acts 7:48; 17:24).78 What then is the nature of the spiritual temple in which God dwells? When Stephen maintained that "the Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands," he confirmed his statement by quoting Isa. 66:1f. But in that same prophetic context God declares that in preference to any material temple he chooses one "that is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word." And this means that he prefers to make his dwelling with people of that character, as is shown by the similar words of Isa. 57:15: "For thus says the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, and with him also who is of a contrite and humble spirit." Our author stands right in this prophetic tradition when he affirms that the people of God are the house of God, "if we maintain our confidence and the hope in which we boast" (3:6). But how can the Son of God, who has "passed through the heavens" (4:14), be regarded as dwelling among his people? Because, as he has entered the heavenly sanctuary "by virtue of his own blood" (v. 12), his people, by virtue of that same blood, also enter it as "perfected" worshipers (10:19). Where he is, there are they.
12 Whereas Aaron and his successors went into the earthly holy of holies on the Day of Atonement by virtue of animal-sacrifices-"through the blood of goats and calves"79-Christ has entered the heavenly sanctuary "by virtue of80 his own blood." It is unfortunate that the RSV says that he entered "taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood." Aaron certainly carried the sacrificial blood into the holy of holies,81 but our author deliberately avoids saying that Christ carried his own blood into the heavenly sanctuary. Even as a symbolic expression this is open to objection. There have been expositors who, pressing the analogy of the Day of Atonement beyond the limits observed by our author, have argued that the expiatory work of Christ was not completed on the cross-not completed, indeed, until he ascended from earth and "made atonement `for us' in the heavenly holy of holies by the presentation of his efficacious blood."82 But while it was necessary under the old covenant for the sacrificial blood first to be shed in the court and then to be brought into the holy of holies, no such division of our Lord's sacrifice into two phases is envisaged under the new covenant. When on the cross he offered up his life to God as a sacrifice for his people's sin, he accomplished in reality what Aaron and his successors performed in type by the twofold act of slaying the victim and presenting its blood in the holy of holies. The title of the Anglican Article XXXI speaks rightly "of the one oblation of Christ finished upon the cross." And then "through his own blood"-that is, by virtue of the infinitely acceptable oblation of his lifehe could appear before God, not on sufferance but by right, as his people's prevailing representative and high priest. The Aaronic high priests had to present themselves before God repeatedly, because such redemption as their ministry procured bore but a token and temporary character; but Christ entered in once for all,83 to be enthroned there in perpetuity, because the redemption procured by him is perfect in nature and eternal in effect.84
13 The blood of slaughtered animals under the old order did possess a certain efficacy, but it was an outward efficacy for the removal of ceremonial pollution. "The blood of goats and bulls" is a general term covering not only the sacrifices of the Day of Atonement but other sacrifices as well (we may compare the ironical question of Ps. 50:13, "Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?"). The sin offerings presented on the Day of Atonement, or at any other time, had no effect on the consciences of those on whose behalf they were brought; they served merely in an external and symbolical manner to counteract the defilement of sin. Along with these offerings our author mentions "the ashes of a heifer85 sprinkled on those who have been defiled." This is a reference to a ritual prescribed in Num. 19, for the removal of ceremonial impurity. A perfect red heifer, which had never borne the yoke, was to be slaughtered outside the camp of Israel in the presence of Eleazar the priest (representing his father Aaron, the high priest), who was then to sprinkle its blood seven times in front of the tabernacle. The body of the heifer was then to be completely incinerated; Eleazar was to throw cedar wood, hyssop (marjoram), and scarlet thread into the burning fire. When all was consumed, the ashes were to be gathered up and stored outside the camp to be used as occasion required for the preparation of me niddah, "water for (the removal of) impurity." Anyone who contracted ceremonial defilement through touching or approaching a dead body was to be cleansed by being sprinkled with water containing some of the ashes of the heifer. Hence the allusion here to "the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who have been defiled" so as to "sanctify"86 them in respect of "bodily cleansing"87 (NEB, "to hallow those who have been defiled and restore their external purity"). The me niddah could be used for other purificatory purposes; according to Num. 31:21ff., metal vessels captured among the spoils of war could be cleansed from idolatrous contamination by being passed through fire and then sprinkled with this water. But while the water cleansed those who had incurred ceremonial defilement, it had the curious effect of rendering others who touched it (especially those who administered it) ceremonially unclean until sundown. The ritual of the red heifer is appropriately mentioned by our author at this point because, like the sacrifices on the Day of Atonement, "it is a sin offering" (Num. 19:9).88 In course of time a closer connection seems to have developed between the red heifer ceremony and the Day of Atonement than the written law prescribed: according to MaimonideS89 (who presumably had some traditional basis for his information) the high priest was sprinkled with the ashes of a heifer twice during the seven days90 for which he was kept isolated in the temple before the Day of Atonement, in case he had inadvertently contracted ceremonial defilement.
Just how the blood of sacrificed animals or the ashes of the red heifer effected a ceremonial cleansing our author does not explain; it was sufficient for him, and no doubt for his readers, that the Old Testament ascribed this efficacy to them.
14 But it is no mere ceremonial cleansing that is effected by the sacrifice of Christ. Here our author presents us with one of the most impressive instances of his favorite "how much more" argument. Those earlier rituals might effect external purification, but the blood of Christ91-his offering up of himself to God-cleanses the conscience; it does the very thing that they could not do, since we have just been told that they could not, "as regards the conscience, make the worshiper perfect" (v. 9). They could restore him to formal communion with God and with his fellow-worshipers; but if it was an inward sense of guilt that kept him in heart at a distance from God, how could they possibly deal with that condition?
Those earlier sacrifices were but token sacrifices; the sacrifice of Christ was a real self-offering, accomplished on the moral and spiritual plane. It was "through the eternal Spirit" that he offered himself to God. The phrase "through eternal spirit" (as it is literally, whether the substantive be spelled with a capital "S" or not) is extremely difficult to interpret with satisfactory precision. As regards the variant rendering of the ARV margin, "through his eternal spirit," it may be said that if our author had meant this, he could have said so quite simply. That our Lord's self-sacrifice is described as being "a spiritual and eternal sacrifice" (NEB) is clear, but perhaps even more is intended.93 Behind our author's thinking lies the portrayal of the Isaianic Servant of the Lord, who yields up his life to God as a guilt offering for many, bearing their sin and procuring their justification. When this Servant is introduced for the first time, God says: "I have put my Spirit upon him" (Isa. 42:1). It is in the power of the Divine Spirit, accordingly, that the Servant accomplishes every phase of his ministry, including the crowning phase in which he accepts death for the transgression of his people, filling the twofold role of priest and victim, as Christ does in this epistle.94 So, "in Christ's sacrifice we see the final revelation of what God is, that behind which there is nothing in God, so that the religion which rests on that sacrifice rests on the ultimate truth of the divine nature, and can never be shaken."95
The animals used for sacrifice in earlier days were required to be physically unblemished; the life which Christ presented to God on the cross was a life free from inward blemish; like the Servant of the Lord, "he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth" (Isa. 53:9).96 Our Lord's complete holiness, his "active obedience" to God, is essential to the efficacy of his sacrifice. "Only one who knew no sin could take any responsibility in regard to it which would create a new situation for sinners.... Christ's offering of Himself without spot to God had an absolute or ideal character; it was something beyond which nothing could be, or could be conceived to be, as a response to God's mind and requirements in relation to sin. It was the final response, a spiritual response, to the divine necessities of the situation.... His sacrifice was rational and voluntary,97 an intelligent and loving response to the holy and gracious will of God, and to the terrible situation of man."98 How this particular response, and nothing else, could satisfy both the divine will and the human predicament becomes clearer in 10:5-10, where our author interprets the work of Christ in terms of Ps. 40:6-8.
It is not contact with a dead body, or anything of a material and external nature, that conveys real defilement or interrupts true communion with God. Our Lord made it plain on a memorable occasion that no one is defiled by anything outside himself; "but the things which come out of a man are what defile him.... For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, etc.... All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man" (Mark 7:15, 21, 23). It is an inward and spiritual purification that is required if heartcommunion with God is to be enjoyed. And therefore the "dead works" from which the conscience must be cleansed cannot be, as some commentators have held,99 the unavailing ceremonial of Judaism; they must be things which convey inward and spiritual defilement. As in Heb. 6:1 (where "repentance from dead works" belongs to the rudiments of Christian teaching), they are those practices and attitudes which belong to the way of death, which pollute the soul and erect a barrier between it and God. But their pollution is removed from the conscience by the work of Christ, so that men and women, emancipated from inward bondage, can worship God in spirit and in truth. This is the "perfection" which the ancient ceremonial was unable to achieve.
F. THE MEDIATOR OF THE NEW COVENANT (9:15-22)
15 For this reason, too, he is mediator of a new covenant, so that, now that there has been a death effective for the redemption of the trans gressions committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of their eternal inheritance.
where there is a covenant-in this case, a testamentary covenant10°-it is necessary that the testator's death should be registered.101
17 A testament is valid only when death has taken place; 102 has it ever103 any force as long as the testator remains alive?104
even the first covenant-or testament-has not been ratifiedt05 without blood.
19 For when every commandment106 had been recited by Moses to all the people, in accordance with the law,107 he took the blood of the calves [and goats], 108 with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people,
20 saying, "This is the blood of the covenant which God has enjoined on
21 In the same way, too, he sprinkled with the blood the tent and all the vessels of divine service.
22 According to the law almost' 10 everything is cleansed with blood, and there is no forgiveness apart from the shedding of blood.
15 That Jesus is "mediator of a better covenant"-the new covenant foretold by Jeremiah-has already been stated in 8:6. But now the basis of his mediatorship is made plain; that basis is his sacrificial death. By virtue of his death redemption has been provided for those who had broken the law of God; the life of Christ was the costly price paid to liberate them from their sins."' The first covenant provided a measure of atonement and remission for sins committed under it, but it was incapable of providing "eternal redemption"; this was a blessing which had to await the inauguration of the new covenant, which embodies God's promise to his people: "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more" (Jer. 31:34). The basing of the new covenant on the death of Christ is a New Testament doctrine not peculiar to our author; it finds clearest expression in the words of institution spoken by our Lord over the cup: "This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many" (Mark 14:24) or, in their earliest recorded form, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood" (1 Cor. 11:25).112 And now that this redemptive death has taken place, the "promise of their eternal inheritance" has been made good to those "who have been called"; the new covenant, and everything that the grace of God provides under it, is forever theirs. Christians have already been described in Heb. 6:17 as "the heirs of the promise"; the fulfilment of the promise is the "eternal inheritance" into which they have entered. "Eternal" is an adjective which our author associates especially with the new covenant; that covenant itself is eternal (13:20), and so the redemption which it provides and the inheritance into which it brings the people of God are likewise eternal (vv. 12, 15); the Mediator of this covenant, having offered himself up to God as "a spiritual and eternal sacrifice" (v. 14, NEB), has become to all who obey him the "source of eternal salvation" (5:9).113 The eternal inheritance of grace and glory both here and hereafter is for those who "have been called"-for those who have already been designated "partakers of a heavenly calling" (3:1). The close connection between God's effectual calling of his people and the heritage which is theirs as his sons and heirs, joint-heirs with Christ, is set out more fully by Paul in Rom. 8:14-30.
16-17 But why was the Mediator's death necessary for the ratification of the covenant? It is not easy to follow the argument here in an English version, because we are almost bound to use two different English words114 to represent two different aspects of the meaning of one Greek word, whereas our author's argument depends on his use of the same Greek word throughout. The Greek word is diatheke, which has the comprehensive sense of As used elsewhere in the epistle, the particular kind of settlement which diatheke denotes is a covenant graciously bestowed by God upon his people, by which he brings them into a special relationship with himself;116 in other words, it is used, as it had been used by the Greek translators of the Old Testament, as the equivalent of the Hebrew berith.117 But in vv. 16 and 17 of our present chapter it is used of another kind of settlement, a last will and testament, in which property is bequeathed by the owner to various other persons on the understanding that they have no title to it until There are, in fact, some scholars who have maintained that "testa ment" is the sense of diatheke throughout this epistle,119 if not indeed throughout the Greek Bible.120 "Testament" is certainly the predominant sense of the word in Hellenistic Greek;121 but in the Greek Bible it usually takes its meaning from the Old Testament Hebrew word berith, which does not have the sense of "testament."122 On the other hand, there have been exegetes who have endeavored to retain the meaning "covenant" even in Heb. 9:16f.; among these B. F. Westcott is outstanding. 123 But it simply is not true that "where a covenant is, there must of necessity be the death of him that made it"-nor of necessity the death of anyone else. Westcott takes "him that made it" to point to the covenant victim,124 with whom the maker of the covenant is representatively identified. But not only is this a straining of the natural force of the words here used; it is not always true that the maker of the covenant is identified with the covenant victim so that "in the death of the victim his death is presented symbolically."125 In the covenant made with Abraham in Gen. 15:1-18, and in that made with Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai in Ex. 24:3-8, covenant victims were slaughtered, but there is no suggestion that God, the covenant maker on both occasions, was represented by them; neither did they represent Abraham and Israel, the respective recipients of those divine covenants. "The death of him that made it" is, as the AV/KJV and the NEB simply and rightly put it, "the death of the testator";126 a testament is the only kind of diatheke which depends for its ratification on the death of the person who makes it.
"J. H. Moulton,127 after embracing Westcott's conclusion, felt himself obliged to `capitulate,' as he phrases it, to the dual version of the Authorized Version and Revised Version,128 inconsistent as he deems it to be. But is that the case? If we revert to the teaching of the old theology (Turrettin, Witsius, Hodge), the covenant of redemption, viewed as the undertaking of the Son, will rank as the prior phase of the covenant of grace. By fulfilling that divine counsel of peace the heavenly Covenanter has met all the claims of outraged righteousness. His `obedience unto death' fills up the breach with heaven as nothing else could do; and the covenant of grace in his hands at this stage assumes the aspect of a bequest accruing to His brethren through the death of the Testator, who in this unique transaction lives again to be the Administrator of His own mediatorial work" (E. K. Simpson).129
It is quite likely that the testamentary idea suggested itself to our author's mind because of his reference to the "eternal inheritance" at the end of v. 15. Nairne finds a difficulty in that "the mediator of a will would hardly be the testator, but what would now be called the executor, and his death would not come into the matter."130 But all analogies from ordinary life must be defective when they are applied to him who rose from the dead and is thus able personally to secure for his people the benefits which he died to procure for them. He is testator and executor in one, surety and mediator alike. "There is no more possibility or feasibility of interference with the effective application of the blessings of the covenant than there is of interfering with a testamentary disponement once the testator has died. This use of the testamentary provision of Roman law to illustrate the inviolable security accruing from the sacrificial death of Christ serves to underline the unilateral character of the new covenant" (J. Murray).131 Christ, says our author, is the Mediator of the new diatheke, and there is one kind of diatheke which serves particularly well to illustrate this aspect of his ministry-namely, the testamentary diatheke which does not come into effect before the death of the person who makes It is well known that this kind of settlement cannot be ratified as long as its author lives. And so it is with the new diatheke; its validity depends upon the fact that its author has died.133
18 For the matter of that, he goes on, the earlier diatheke also required death for its ratification-not, in that case, the death of the one who made it, but death nonetheless. And he recalls the incident of Ex. 24:3-8, the inauguration of the covenant of Moses' day at the foot of Mount Sinai.
19-20 According to Ex. 24:3-8, "Moses came and told the people all the words of Yahweh and all the ordinances: and all the people answered with one voice, and said, `All the words which Yahweh has spoken we will do.' And Moses wrote all the words of Yahweh. And he rose early in the morning, and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to Yahweh. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the book of the covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, `All that Yahweh has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.' And Moses took the blood and threw it upon the people, and said, `Behold the blood of the covenant which Yahweh has made with you in accordance with all these words."'
Verses 19 and 20 of Heb. 9 present what is for the most part a summary of these words from Exodus, but the summary includes certain features which do not appear in the Exodus narrative. The reference to goats in v. 19 is probably a later addition to the text of Hebrews;134 in that case, this passage agrees with the Septuagint of Ex. 24:5 in specifying calves as the sacrificial animals used on this occasion.135 But whereas in the Exodus narrative Moses sprinkles part of the sacrificial blood on the altar (as representing God, the Author of the covenant) and part on the people (who are thus brought into God's covenant), here he sprinkles it on the book and on the people.136 The book indeed, containing the divine commandments which constituted the basis of the covenant, might represent God in this act as fittingly as would the altar. Again, whereas the Exodus narrative describes Moses as sprinkling nothing but blood, here the blood is accompanied by water, scarlet wool, and hyssop. We have no evidence for the origin of these variations on the Exodus narrative; for them as for some of the details of the tabernacle furniture in v. 4 (the position of the incense-altar and the contents of the ark) our author may well have drawn upon some source which is no longer extant. 137
The hyssop, or marjoram, is probably envisaged as the means by which the blood was sprinkled on this occasion, just as hyssop was used to sprinkle the blood of the paschal lamb around the doorway of each Israelite house in Egypt (Ex. 12:22), to sprinkle blood (and water) on the cured leper or on the house which had been cleared of a "leprous" infection (Lev. 14:4-7, 49-53), and (most significantly) to sprinkle me niddah on persons or objects which had become ceremonially defiled by contact with the dead (Num. 19:18).138 The water and scarlet wool which our author mentions along with the sacrificial blood are also reminiscent of the ritual of the red heifer in Num. 19; it looks as if features of that ritual are here associated with the ratification of the ancient covenant. The two passages are linked by their common interest in ritual aspersion. A further link has been suggested in terms of the triennial synagogue lectionary, in which Ex. 24 and Num. 19 would have been read around the same season of the year in the second and third years respectively. 139
21 Nor was the ratification of the covenant the only occasion on which similar purification by the sprinkling of blood was carried out under the old order. The tabernacle itself and the vessels of divine service were similarly sprinkled. In the Pentateuchal prescriptions the horns of the altar of burnt offering were to be smeared with the blood of the bullock which was sacrificed as a sin offering at the consecration of Aaron and his sons for their priestly service (Ex. 29:12; cf. Lev. 8:15); and on the Day of Atonement the mercy-seat and the horns of the altar of burnt offering were to be sprinkled with the blood of the bullock presented as a sin offering for Aaron and his house and of the goat which was killed as a sin offering for the people. Thus atonement was made for the "holy place," that is, the inner sanctuary (Lev. 16:14-19). That all the vessels of divine service were thus purified by the sprinkling of blood is not expressly stated in the Pentateuch; what is so stated is that the tabernacle and all its furnishings, inside and outside, were hallowed by being anointed with oil (Ex. 40:9-11; Lev. 8:10f.; Num. 7:1). But as Aaron and his sons were hallowed with the blood of the ram of consecration as well as with the oil of anointing when they were installed in their sacred office (Lev. 8:23f., 30), it might be inferred that the tabernacle and its furnishings, which were hallowed at the same time, were sprinkled with the blood in addition to being anointed with the oil. Josephus, to the same effect, says that Moses spent seven daysl40 purifying the priests and their vestments, "as also the tabernacle and its vessels, both with oil ... and with the blood of bulls and rams."tai
22 Indeed, our author goes on, "almost everything" which requires to be ceremonially cleansed under the Old Testament law must be cleansed by means of blood. "Almost everything" but not absolutely everything; there are certain exceptions. For example, an impoverished Israelite might bring a tenth of an ephah (four pints) of fine flour to the priest as his sin offering instead of a lamb or even instead of two turtledoves or young pigeons (Lev. 5:11). In Num. 16:46 atonement was made for the congregation of Israel, after the de struction of Korah and his company, by means of incense; in Num. 31:22f. metal objects captured in war were to be purified by fire and me niddah;142 in Num. 31:50 the Israelite commanders in the fighting against Midian brought the gold objects which they had captured "to make atonement for ourselves before Yahweh." But such exceptions were rare; the general rule was that ceremonial cleansing or atonement had to be effected by means of blood: "apart from the shedding of blood143 there is no forgiveness." 144
G. THE PERFECT SACRIFICE (9:23-28)
23 If, then, the copies of the heavenly realities are cleansed by these means, the heavenly realities themselves are necessarily cleansed by better sacrifices than these.
24 For it is not into a holy place made with hands, a copy of the true one, that Christ has entered, but into heaven itself, to appear for us now in the presence of God.
25 Nor has he entered there in order to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters annually into the holy place145 with blood not his own,
26 for in that case he would have had to suffer146 repeatedly since the world's foundation. But as it is, he has been manifested once for all at the consummation of the ages to do away with sin147 by his own sacrifice.
27 Moreover, since it is laid up in store for human beings to die once (after which comes judgment),
23 With the blood of sacrificial animals, then, the material sanctuary and its accessories were cleansed from defilement and hallowed for the worship of God. Our author does not deny that such ritual cleansing was real and effective as far as it went. What he does deny is that cleansing of this kind could be of any use for the removal of inward and spiritual defilement. The various installations which were cleansed and fitted for the worship of God by the blood of animal sacrifices were but copies149 of the spiritual realities; where the spiritual realities themselves are concerned, a superior sacrifice150 and more effective cleansing must be forthcoming. It has frequently been asked in what sense "the heavenly realities" 151 needed to be cleansed; but our author has provided the answer in the context. What needed to be cleansed was the defiled conscience of men and women; this is a cleansing which belongs to the spiritual sphere. The argument of v. 23 might be paraphrased by saying that while ritual purification is adequate for the material order, which is but an earthly copy of the spiritual order, a better kind of sacrifice is necessary to effect purification in the spiritual order. If we envisage the heavenly dwelling-place of God in something like material terms (and, surrounded as we are by the material universe, it is difficult to avoid doing so), we shall find ourselves trying to explain the necessity for its cleansing in ways which are far from our author's intention. 152 But we have already had reason to emphasize that the people of God are the house of God, that his dwelling-place is in their midst.153 It is they who need inward cleansing, not only that their approach to God may be free from defilement, but that they may be a fit habitation for him. Just as the tabernacle in the wilderness, together with its furniture, had to be anointed and sanctified so that God might manifest his presence there among his people and they might serve him there, so the people of God themselves need to be cleansed and hallowed in order to become "a dwelling place of God in the Spirit" (Eph. 2:22). The same essential teaching recurs in 1 Pet. 2:5, where believers in Christ are described as being "built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." But in order to be a spiritual house of this kind they must have experienced regeneration and cleansing by "sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ" (1 Pet. 1:2, 9, 22f.).
24 It is not into any material sanctuary that Christ has gone as his people's high priest, but into the presence of God in heaven. One who is personally "holy, free from guile and defilement" (7:26) is at home and acceptable in the presence of God. But he appears now in the presence of God not only on his own behalf but on behalf of others, and those others are sinners. If sinners are to appear before God, even by proxy, through the representation of a sinless high priest, they must be cleansed from sin, or else the very presence of God would be polluted. And this cleansing Christ has effected, so that he can minister on his people's behalf in "the true tabernacle" which no human hands have erected.155 The earthly sanctuary and the priestly ministry associated with it were but faint foreshadowings156 of the spiritual and heavenly order in which Christ exercises his perpetual priesthood as his people's representative with God.
25 Moreover, when Christ entered into the heavenly sanctuary, he entered once for all. His entrance into the presence of God on his people's behalf, by virtue of his own blood, is set in sharp contrast to the entrance of Israel's high priest into the material holy of holies on the Day of Atonement. Having entered in to present the sacrificial blood ("blood not his own"), Israel's high priest had to come out again immediately, to enter in and repeat the same ceremony the following year, and the year after that, and so on indefinitely. But the sacrifice of Christ, being a real sacrifice and not a token one, is perpetually effective and therefore calls for no repetition.
26 If his sacrifice did call for repetition, then he would have to endure suffering and death times without number throughout the ages of world history.157 But that involves a patent absurdity: "it is appointed for human beings to die once," and the Son of Man, who became "like his brothers" in all things, cannot and must not die more than once. To talk about his sacrifice as "the eternal sacrifice" can therefore be misleading. If it means that his sacrifice is the historical expression of the eternal mercy of God, or that its efficacy is eternal, no exception can be taken to the term; but if it means (as it does for many who use it) that he is eternally offering himself in heaven (with the corollary that in the Eucharist his sacrifice is repeatedly reenacted on earth), then it is in plain contradiction to the emphatic teaching of this epistle. He appears eternally in heaven for his people on the basis of "his own sacrifice," presented and accepted once for all.
As it is,158 Christ has been manifested on earth "once for all"159 at the time of fulfilment, in order to deal conclusively with sin. The phrase "the end of the ages" or "the consummation of the ages"160 (as the ARV mg. has it) is not found in this precise form elsewhere in the New Testament, although it closely resembles the Matthaean "consummation of the age,"161 the Pauline "ends of the ages,"162 and the Petrine "end of the times,"163 being practically synonymous with the last two. It is not that Christ happened to come at the time of fulfilment but that his coming made that time the time of fulfilment. The purpose of his coming is stated to be the removal or cancellation of sin; the same substantive164 is used here as in Heb. 7:18, where we are told that the announcement of the Melchizedek priesthood in Ps. 110:4 constitutes the "disannulling" or abrogation of the earlier law which set up the Aaronic priesthood. In the present context the word, says E. K. Simpson, "seems to imply effacement. "165 The statement of the purpose of the coming of Christ has a close parallel in 1 John 3:5: "you know that he was manifested to take awayl66 sins." "His own sacrifice," like "his own blood" in v. 12, is emphatic, marking once more the contrast between his priestly action and that of Aaron and his successors, who made expiation with the blood of others, namely of sacrificial animals. In what "his own sacrifice" consisted is shortly to be explained.167
27-28 Men and women die once, by divine appointment, and in their case death is followed by judgment.168 Christ died once, by divine appoint ment, and his death is followed by salvation for all his people. This is so because in his death he bore169 "the sins of many," offering up his life to God as an atonement on their behalf. The language here is a plain echo of the fourth Servant Song-more especially of Isa. 53:12, "he bore the sin of many," but also of vv. 10, "he makes himself an offering for sin,"170 and 11, "by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear171 their iniquities." 172 His bearing of sin implies the removing of sin from others, and the consequent liberation of those who enter into the benefits of his self-oblation.
The Israelites who watched their high priest enter the sanctuary for them waited expectantly for his reappearance; that was a welcome sign that he and the sacrifice which he presented had been accepted by God. His reappearance from the holy of holies on the Day of Atonement was an especially welcome sight. Ben Sira celebrates the joy with which the people saw the high priest Simon the Just emerge from the "house of the veil" after completing this sacred ministry:
So our author thinks of Jesus as going into the heavenly holy of holies, to reappear one day in order to confirm finally to his people the salvation173 which his perfect offering has procured for them. Meanwhile they wait expectantly for his parousia. This presentation of the return of Christ in terms of the high priest's emergence from the sanctuary was in Frances Ridley Havergal's mind when she wrote:
But when he appears the second time to those who expect him, it will not be to deal with sin once more. Sin was dealt with decisively at his first appearing. All the blessings which he won for his people at his first appearing will be theirs to enjoy in perpetual fulness at his second appearing. Therefore, let them not grow faint and weary but persevere in patience and faith.
HEBREWS 10
H. THE OLD ORDER A SHADOW OF THE REALITY (10:1-4)
1 The law had a shadow of the good things which were to come, but not the exact image' of those things. Therefore, with the same sacrifices2 which they offer without end year by year the law can3 never bring to perfection4 those who approach God.
2 Otherwise-5 they would have ceased to be offered, would they not? If the worshipers had been cleansed once for all, they would no longer have any conscience of sins.
3 But in those sacrifices there is an annual reminder of sins.
4 It is impossible, in fact, for the blood of bulls and goats6 to take away sins.
1 Both Paul and our author speak of the law as "a shadow"; but whereas Paul in Col. 2:17 has in mind the legal restrictions of Old Testament times (food-laws and regulations about special days),7 our author is thinking more especially of the law prescribing matters of priesthood and sacrifice in relation to the wilderness tabernacle and the Jerusalem temple. In both places, however, "shadow" is used not so much in the Platonic sense of a copy of the heavenly and eternal "idea" as in the sense of foreshadowing. For Paul, the legal restrictions to which he refers are "a shadow of the things to come"; for our author, the sacrificial law of Israel provides "a shadow of the good things to come"; both writers think of Christ and his new order as the perfect reality to which the earlier ordinances pointed forward.
The "good things which were to come" have now come (9:11); they embrace the unrepeatable sacrifice of Christ and his present high-priestly ministry, which carry with them eternal redemption and uninhibited access to worship the living God. They are the only absolutely "good" things, because they comprise the "perfection" which the old order was incapable of supplying.
What now is the distinction which our author draws between "shadow" and "image"-unless we are to adopt the improbable reading of our oldest manuscript which equates the two and says that the law had only the "shadow and image" of the coming reality?8 The shadow is but a shadow; the "image" (eikon) -especially "the very image"-is an exact replica, "not an imperfect, partial reproduction, but a manifestation adequate to the reality itself."9 The "image" is thus something superior to the "copies" or "patterns" of 9:23f. Platonic and Philonic antecedents for this use of eikon can be readily adduced;10 but within the New Testament itself we have Paul's repeated description of Christ as the eikon of God (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15) and his statement of the divine purpose that believers should be conformed to the eikon of the Son of God (Rom. 8:29; cf. 2 Cor. 3:18; Col. 3:10).
In any case, the old order could never bring those who worshiped under it to a state of perfection; this was plain enough from the fact that, as circling time moved round and year succeeded year, the same sacrifices had to be re pealed over and over again. The sacrifice which is uppermost in our author's mind is still the annual sacrifice on the Day of Atonement.
2 If the old order had been able to bring "perfection"-access to God without the constant necessity of removing the barrier of freshly accumulated sin-then surely the sacrifices which belonged to it would have come to an end. The natural implication of the question "Otherwise would they not have ceased to be offered?" is that the sacrificial ritual was still practiced in the temple at It might be argued that our author, writing after A.D. 70, means that if perfection were attainable under the Levitical economy, its sacrificial system would have come to an end long before it did-even within the Old Testament period. But that is a much less natural interpretation of his words; it is simplest to regard them as an incidental pointer to the dating of the epistle before A.D. 70.12
If the old sacrificial order had possessed true cleansing efficacy-that is to say, if it had been able to cleanse the conscience-then the worshipers would have enjoyed unrestricted communion with God. It is the presence of sin in the conscience that hinders such communion; "if I had cherished iniquity in my heart," said the psalmist, "the Lord would not have listened" (Ps. 66:18). The implication of our author's argument is that the true inward cleansing is permanently effective and therefore unrepeatable. When he speaks of the worshipers as having been "cleansed once for all," he emphasizes this by his use of the perfect tense. The sense is much the same as that of our Lord's words to Peter in John 13:10: "He that is bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but he is clean all over."13 This cleansing marks the beginning of the Christian life: Peter referred to it when he reminded the Council of Jerusalem how God, in giving the Holy Spirit to the Gentile believers just as he had done to the Jewish disciples, "made no distinction between us and them, but cleansed their hearts by faith" (Acts 15:9).14 But such a cleansing as this, which means that those who receive it are thenceforward "clean" without requiring any repetition of the cleansing, was unknown to the Levitical law.
3 As it is, the annually recurring ritual of the Day of Atonement in volved a "reminder"15 of sins year by year. This reminder (as regularly in biblical usage) is more than a calling to mind; it involves some appropriate form of action. The remembrance of sins may involve repentance for them,16 or it may involve persistence in them.17 But the remembrance of sins in the sight of God involves appropriate action on his part, either pardon or retribution.18 A pardon which has to be bestowed repeatedly-as far at least as its ceremonial expression is concerned-cannot convey the same peace of conscience as a pardon bestowed once for all. And there is a manifest contrast, to our author's mind, between the old order in which "there is an annual reminder of sins"19 and the new covenant which embodies God's promise to his people: "I will remember their sins no more" (8:12).
It would not have occurred to an observant Jew under the Mosaic covenant to say that the Day of Atonement involved an annual "reminder" of sins; he would have said, rather, that there was an annual removal of sins. Our author might have replied, truly enough, that the ritual designed to effect the removal of sins necessarily involves their remembrance; but he is influenced chiefly by the promise that under the new covenant God will remember his people's sins no more. Since the new covenant is contrasted with the old, the implication is that there was no such absolute wiping out of sins from the divine record under the sacrificial law.
It has been suggested that even in some forms of Christian liturgy a "remembrance" is made repeatedly of sins to a point where the Christian's sense of being constantly welcome in the presence of God for Christ's sake is seriously threatened.20 There is a difference between the humble and contrite confession of sins to God and a morbid dwelling on sins already confessed and forgiven which might well call forth the Pauline reminder that "the Spirit you have received is not a spirit of slavery leading you back into a life of fear, but a Spirit that makes us sons, enabling us to cry `Abba! Father!"' (Rom. 8:15, NEB).
4 But this condition of spiritual imperfection was inevitable as long as people's ideas of God and forgiveness were bound up with a sacrificial cultus like that of early Israel. "It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins." This impossibility has only to be stated plainly like this for its truth to be obvious. Moral defilement cannot be removed by material means. Such spiritual value as the sacrificial ritual might have lay in its being a material foreshadowing or object-lesson of a moral and spiritual reality. The writer to the Hebrews was not the first man to appreciate this; the truth had been grasped centuries earlier, as by the penitent psalmist who prayed:
And he was only one among other psalmists and prophets who made substantially the same affirmation. In the closing years of the Second Temple, there were many pious Jews who, while paying lip-service to the sacrificial cultus and indeed participating in it according to the law, yet realized that this was not the means by which sin could be removed.22 The members of the Qumran community believed that when their strict interpretation of the divine commandments was carried out perfectly, "then the oblation of the lips according to right judgment shall be as a.sweet savor of righteousness, and the perfectness of one's ways as an acceptable freewill offering."23 A Pharisee might have criticized the uncompromising manner in which our author here dismisses animal sacrifice, "but there is no reason for thinking that he would have rejected a more guarded statement of the truth. The relatively easy adaptation of the Palestinian synagogue to the new conditions after the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D. shows that the principle of the insufficiency of animal sacrifice had been widely grasped."24 Yet the Pharisees took part in the sacrificial cultus as long as it endured, and when it disappeared they had to give serious thought to the question how sin was now to be expiated.25 The seriousness of this question must be appreciated by all who understand the "exceeding sinfulness" of sin. Our author understood it well enough; but he could bid farewell to the sacrificial cultus the more cheerfully because he knew of a sacrifice, presented on quite another plane, which effectively dealt with sin as the old cultus could not.
1. THE NEW ORDER THE REALITY (10:5-10)
5 That is why Christ says at his coming into the world,
27 p46 and D* (but not d) add yap ("for").
28. Quoted from Ps. 40:6-8 (MT 40:7-9; LXX 39:6-8).
9 then he has said, "See, I have come to do your will. "30 He does away with the first order so as to establish the second.
10 And by his "will" we have been sanctified once for all through the offering of the body31 of Jesus Christ.
5-7 For a biblical statement of the sacrifice which could take away sins our author goes back to the Psalter, and in Ps. 40:6-8 he finds a prophetic utterance which he recognizes as appropriate to the Son of God at the time of his incarnation. The title of this psalm marks it as Davidic (in Masoretic and Septuagint texts alike); he may have argued (as Peter did with regard to Ps. 16 on the Day of Pentecost)32 that the words of the psalm could not refer to David in propria persona (since David did offer sacrifices), and that therefore they should be understood as referring to "great David's greater Son." However that _link_ may be, _link_ the appropriateness _link_ of his application of them is undeniable. He quotes them in the Septuagint version,33 in which the Masoretic reading "ears hast thou digged for me" is replaced by the clause "you have fashioned a body for me." The Greek version cannot well be explained as representing a variant or corrupted Hebrew reading;34 it is rather an interpretative paraphrase of the Hebrew text. The Greek translator evidently regarded the Hebrew wording as an instance of pars pro toto; the "digging" or hollowing out of the ears is part of the total work of fashioning a human body.35 Accordingly he rendered it in terms which express totum pro parte. The body which was "fashioned" for the speaker by God is given back to God as a "living sacrifice," to be employed in obedient service to him.
But if our author had preferred the Hebrew wording, it would have served his purpose almost as well, for in addition to reminding him and his readers of the psalm from which it was taken, it might have reminded them also of the Isaianic Servant's language in the third Servant Song: "The Lord Yahweh . . . wakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. The Lord Yahweh has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I turned not backward" (Isa. 50:4f.).
It is probable that the four terms which the psalmist uses for sacrifice are intended to cover all the main types of offering prescribed in the Leviti cal ritual.37 "Sacrifice" (Heb. zebah), while capable of referring to any kind of animal sacrifice, is used in the Old Testament with more special reference to the peace offering;38 "offering" (Heb. minhah), while used in a general sense,39 is restricted in the Levitical terminology to the "cereal offering";40 while the burnt offering (Heb. `61ah)41 and sin offering (Heb. hata'ah)42 are specifically provided for by name in the Levitical legislation. The spiritual principles which underlay these various types of sacrifice are fulfilled and transcended in the perfect self-offering of Christ. Our author's contrast is not between sacrifice and obedience, but between the involuntary sacrifice of dumb animals and "sacrifice into which obedience enters, the sacrifice of a rational and spiritual being, which is not passive in death, but in dying makes the will of God its own."43
The Septuagint reading, "you have fashioned a body for me," suggests to our author the incarnation of the Son of God, and the whole passage from Ps. 40 is understood as spoken by him "at his coming into the world." His incarnation itself is viewed as an act of submission to God's will and, as such, an anticipation of his supreme submission to that will in death. The psalmist's words, "I have come to do your will, 0 God," sum up the whole tenor of our Lord's life and ministry, and express the essence of that true sacrifice which God desires. But what of the parenthetic clause: "as it is written of me in the scroll of the book"?44 Its meaning is clarified by the clause which immediately follows the clauses which are quoted here: "Your law is within my heart."45 The "scroll of the book" is the written torah of God;46 what was written there the speaker recognized to be written concerning him, to be God's prescription for him. His life would accordingly be the active counterpart of the written law; the will of God, which was set down in the "scroll of the book," would be equally manifested in his obedience. It may be that for our author, as he applies these words to Jesus, the "scroll of the book" was enlarged to include all that God had said in earlier days "to the fathers by the prophets"; we recall how our Lord was led off to trial and death with the words on his lips: "Let the scriptures be fulfilled" (Mark 14:49). Yet it was not simply that he found his duty set down plainly in the written record and set himself to carry it out: it was at the same time the dearest desire of his heart to fulfil that special service which was his Father's will for him. While it was indeed his Father's will, it was also his own spontaneous choice. And therefore his undertaking and fulfilling it constituted a sacrifice utterly acceptable to God.
8-9 In these words of Ps. 40, then, interpreted as our Lord's declaration at his entry into the world, our author sees the abrogation of the old sacrificial cultus announced. The sacrifices in which God is said to take no pleasure are the sacrifices prescribed by the ancient cultic law of Israel; now that cultic law is to be superseded by a new order, inaugurated by Christ's perfect obedience to the will of God. The declaration falls into two parts: in the first part (which is said "above")47 the old order is abolished; in the second the new is estab lished.48 The terms of the new covenant include the provision that God's law will henceforth be engraved in his people's hearts; and it was supremely fitting that this should be preeminently true of him through whose obedience and blood the new covenant has been ratified. "I have come to do your will" is written over the whole record of our Lord's life; this was his attitude from first to last.
10 And it is by his fulfilling the will of God49 to the uttermost that he has "sanctified" his people and provided the "perfection" which was unattainable on the basis of the ancient sacrifices. His fulfilment of God's will to the uttermost involved the "offering" once for all of his body-that body prepared for him at his incarnation. "It is the Atonement which explains the Incarnation: the Incarnation takes place in order that the sin of the world may be put away by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ."50 The offering of his body is simply the offering of himself; if here sanctification and access to God are made available through his body, in vv. 19 and 29 they are made available through his blood.51 Whether our author speaks of his body or his blood, it is his incarnate life that is meant, yielded to God in an obedience which was maintained even to death. So perfect a sacrifice was our Lord's presentation of his life to God that no repetition of it is either necessary or possible: it was offered "once for all."52 The sanctification which his people receive in consequence is their inward cleansing from sin and their being made fit for the presence of God, so that henceforth they can offer him acceptable worship. It is a sanctification which has taken place once for all;53 in this sense it is as unrepeatable as the sacrifice which effects it.
J. THE ENTHRONED HIGH PRIEST (10:11-18)
11 Every priest54 stands ministering day by day and repeatedly55 offering the same sacrifices, which can never remove sins;56
12 but this high priest offered one sacrifice for sins, one effective for evermore,57 and then took his seat at God's right hand,
13 waiting thenceforward for his enemies to be placed as a footstool for his feet.
14 For by one offering he has brought those who are sanctified58 to perfection for evermore.
15 The Holy Spirit also assures us of this: after saying,
60. Gk. btaNooµat, "I will covenant" (see p. 186, n. 40).
61. Jer. 31:33a. The whole context is quoted in Heb. 8:8-12 (see pp. 186f.).
62. These words, which in the authentic text are left to be understood, are supplied by several later manuscripts and versions, in the form {iotepov l,iyet (69 1739 etc., with the Harclean Syriac, Armenian, and Sahidic Coptic), or in the form tote E'iprjxEv (1611).
18 Now where these are forgiven,64 there is no sin offering any longer.
11-12 The unrepeatable character of the sacrifice of Christ, by contrast with the sacrifices of the old order, is underlined by an appeal to the language of Ps. 110. The introductory oracle of this psalm, in which the Mes siah is _link_ invited by _link_ God to sit at his right hand, has already been quoted by our author (Heb. 1:13) and has influenced his phraseology in 1:3; 8:1; but only now does he draw out its full significance.65 The Aaronic priests never sat down in the sanctuary; they remained standing throughout the whole performance of their sacred duties. In this our author sees a token of the fact that their sacred duties were never done, that their sacrifices had always to be repeated. In v. 1 the repetition of the ritual of the Day of Atonement "year by year" was mentioned; here, as in 7:27, the reference is to those sacrifices which were offered "day by day."66 But whether the repetition was annual or daily, the main point is that repetition was necessary; not one of these sacrifices could remove sin or cleanse the conscience with permanent effect. The completion of one sacrifice meant only that a similar one would have to be offered in due course, and so on indefinitely; it was in keeping with this that the priests of the old order never sat down in the presence of God when a sacrifice had been presented to him.
Translations and commentaries differ on the construction of the phrase "for evermore" in v. 12; syntactically it might refer either to the preceding clause "this high priest offered one sacrifice for sins" or to the following words "took his seat . . ."; and as far as the sense is concerned, it would be equally appropriate either way. On the whole, however, it seems that the familiar English versions are right in taking it with the preceding clause.68
Christ, then, has taken his seat in token that his sacrificial work is finished; but more, the worth of his sacrifice and the dignity of his person are further indicated in that he has taken his seat not merely in the presence of God but at "God's right hand."69 From the shame of the cross he has been exalted to the place of highest glory. With the more confidence, therefore, may his people avail themselves of his high-priestly aid, assured that in him they have access to all the grace and power of God. To all who are uncertain of their acceptance with God comes the voice which brought encouragement to the soul of John Bunyan: "Sinner, thou thinkest that because of thy sins and infirmities I cannot save thy soul, but behold my Son is by me, and upon him I look, and not on thee, and will deal with thee according as I am pleased with him."7°
13 Our author continues to give the substance of Ps. 110:1 by adding the words: "waiting thenceforward for his enemies to be placed as a footstool for his feet." He offers no exegesis of these words, but if he had attached no significance to them in the present context he could easily have omitted them altogether, as he does in every other place (apart from the direct quotation of Ps. 110:1 in Heb. 1:13) where he speaks of Christ as enthroned at God's right hand. In the light of the solemn admonition which follows in vv. 26-31, there may be an implied warning here to his readers not to let themselves be numbered among the enemies of the exalted Christ, but rather to be reckoned as his friends and companions by preserving their fidelity to the end (cf. 3:14). Paul has more to say about the eventual subjection of all the enemies of Christ ("principalities and powers") beneath his feet in 1 Cor. 15:24-28, where he gives a combined exegesis of Ps. 110:1 and Ps. 8:6.7' But Paul has in mind here not the high-priestly ministry of Christ but his enthronement as mediatorial king: as such "he is destined to reign until God has put all enemies under his feet; and the last enemy to be abolished is death" (1 Cor. 15:25f., NEB).
14 Christ, then, by his self-oblation has accomplished once for all what generations of Levitical sacrifices had never done. After hundreds of years those sacrifices were no nearer the attainment of their aim than they had been at the beginning. Nor can this contrast between them and the death of Christ be dismissed as an apt conceit of our author's, elaborated here for apologetic purposes. Its force was tacitly acknowledged in Christian practice. Many, probably most, of the early converts to Christianity had been accustomed to a form of worship in which animal sacrifices played a part; this was so whether they had previously been Jews or Gentiles. That their new form of worship had no place for such sacrifices was in itself a recognition that they had been rendered forever obsolete by the death of Christ. "Those who looked upon this death as a sacrifice soon ceased to offer God any bloodsacrifice at all."72 They might not all have used the language of the Epistle to the Hebrews, but the logic of its argument was implicit in their most elementary understanding of the gospel. The sacrifice of Christ has purified his people from the moral defilement of sin, and assured them of permanent maintenance in a right relation with God. "For by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are thus consecrated" (NEB).
In v. 10 the statement that "we have been sanctified" is made in the perfect tense; here, as in 2:11, the present passive participle is used. In v. 10 the emphasis lay on the unrepeatable nature of the death of Christ as the sacrifice by which his people have been set apart for the worship and service of God; here their character as the people thus set apart is simply indicated in timeless73 terms, because emphasis is being laid on the fact that by that same sacrifice those who have been cleansed and "perfected" are now eternally constituted God's holy people. Three outstanding effects are thus ascribed to the sacrifice of Christ: by it his people have had their conscience cleansed from guilt; by it they have been fitted to approach God as accepted worshipers; and by it they have experienced the fulfilment of what was promised in earlier days, being brought into the perfect relation to God which is involved in the new covenant.74
15-18 That the "perfection" of which our author speaks is bound up with the new covenant is made plain by his repetition of the words of Jer. 31:33f. and his application of them to the effect of the sacrifice of Christ. These words, spoken by the prophet under inspiration, are naturally quoted as the words of the Holy Spirit,75 and they are viewed as the Holy Spirit's confirmation of the conclusion to which our author's argument has just led him. The new covenant, according to Jeremiah's prophecy, not only involved the implanting of God's laws, together with the will and power to carry them out, in the hearts of his people; it also conveyed the assurance that their past sins and iniquities would be eternally blotted out from God's record, never to be brought up in evidence against them. Here is something far beyond what the sacrificial law of Old Testament times could provide: in that law there was an annual "reminder of sins" (cf. v. 3), whereas in the new covenant there is no more remembrance of them. Repeated remembrance of sins and repeated sin offerings went inevitably together; therefore, the irrevocable erasing of sins from the divine record implies that no further sin offering is called for. The finality of the sacrifice of Christ is thus confirmed.76
In Heb. 8 the oracle of Jer. 31:31-34 was quoted in order to prove the obsolescence of the old economy; now it is quoted again in order to establish the permanence of the era of "perfection" inaugurated under the new covenant. "God has spoken in his Son"; and he has no word to speak beyond him.
A. ACCESS TO GOD THROUGH THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST (10:19-25)
19 So, my brothers, we have freedom of access into the holy place by Jesus' blood,
20 along the new77 and living way which he has dedicated for us through the curtain, that is to say, his flesh;
21 and we have a great priest over God's house.
22 Let us therefore approach God78 with a true heart, in faith's full assurance, since our hearts have been sprinkled clean from an evil conscience79 and our bodies have been washed with pure water.
23 Let us maintain without wavering the confession of our80 hope, for he who has given us his promises is trustworthy.
24 Let us at the same time cultivate mutual consideration, stimulating one another81 to love and good works.
25 Let us not abandon our meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing; let us rather encourage one another, and all the more so, as you see the Day approaching.
The practical implications of the foregoing argument are now summed up in this sustained exhortation (one sentence in Greek), which might well have formed the conclusion of the homily, had not our author judged it wise to expand and apply in greater detail the points made here, for the further encouragement and strengthening of his readers. In view of all that has been accomplished for us by Christ, he says, let us confidently approach God in worship, let us maintain our Christian confession and hope, let us help one another by meeting together regularly for mutual encouragement, because the day which we await will soon be here.
19 The "boldness" which believers in Christ have to enter the heavenly sanctuary through him is set in contrast with the restrictions which hedged about the privilege of symbolic entry into the presence of God in Israel's earthly sanctuary. In it not all the people could exercise this privilege, but the high priest only, as their representative; and even he could not exercise the privilege any time he chose, but at fixed times and under fixed conditions. But those who have been cleansed within, consecrated and made perfect by the sacrifice of Christ, have received a free right of access into the holy presence; and our author urges his readers to avail themselves fully of this free right. As regularly in the New Testament, the parrhesia enjoyed by Christians is "based on the revelation of God in Jesus Christ who restored the relation betweeen God and man."82 The invitation to "approach the throne of grace with confidence" has already been issued in this epistle (4:16); on that occasion the invitation was based on the assurance that the high priest who has passed through the heavens is one whose own experiences of temptation enable him to sympathize with his people in their trials. Now a further assurance is given: the way by which this high priest has entered into the presence of God is a way which remains open for his people to follow him there.
The AV/KJV describes this free right of access as "boldness to enter into the holiest83 by the blood of Jesus." The Greek text, indeed, does not use the superlative expression here which distinguishes the holy of holies from the holy place; but in 9:8 we have already seen the more general term "the holy place" used with reference to the earthly sanctuary where the inner compartment was actually meant. So here, as is indicated by the words "through the curtain," it is to the very throne of God that believers in Christ have free entry-not to the material symbol of his throne where, as in the preexilic holy of holies, his invisible presence was upbome by the cherubim; but to his true and spiritual dwelling. Believers have no need to ask "Who shall ascend into heaven?" when it is a question of their approaching God; here upon earth they may enter his heavenly abode and know direct communion with him "by Jesus' blood."84 He who, "by virtue of his own blood, entered the holy place once for all" (9:12) has procured for his people equal right of entry there by means of that same blood-that is, on the ground of his accepted sacrifice.
20 The way by which they enter the presence of God is a new way, which did not exist until he opened it up85 and entered thereby himself. It is thus a new way; it is also a "living way." For in effect the ever-living Christ himself, as his people's sacrifice and priest, is the way to God; the present passage is our author's counterpart to the affirmation of John 14:6: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me."86 It is a way which (to continue the symbolism of the tabernacle and temple) leads "through the curtain" into the holy of holies.
It can scarcely be doubted that the "curtain" or "veil" of which our author is thinking is the inner veil which separated the holy place from the holy of holies, the "second curtain" of 9:3,87 through the heavenly archetype of which Jesus has already passed as his people's forerunner (6:19f.). Here it is natural to ask whether these words contain an implicit allusion to the rending of the temple veil from top to bottom at the moment of Jesus' death (Mark 15:38; cf. Matt. 27:5 1; Luke 23:45). For the veil which was then rent in two was also probably the inner veil,88 and its rending is recorded not as a natural portent89 but as an event of theological significance: in the death of Jesus, we are to understand, God himself is unveiled to us and the way of access to him is thrown wide open. The teaching of the Synoptic passion narratives is thus to the same effect as that of our epistle; in both instances the teaching is given a cultic form, which is expressed realistically in the Gospels and symbolically by our author.90 If our author knew about the rent veil, its significance was patent to him. But even if he did not know about it, his language here drives home the same lesson as the rending of the veil did.
A still more important question is raised by the following clause, "that is to say, his flesh."91 Do these words qualify "the curtain" or the "new and living way"?92 The Greek affords no more help in answering this question than the English does. The ERV/ARV render the passage in such a way as to preserve the ambiguity; the AV/KJV probably, and the RSV certainly ("through the curtain, that is, through his flesh"), identify "his flesh" with "the veil" ("the curtain"); the NEB comes down unambiguously on the side of the other alternative-"the new, living way which he has opened for us through the curtain, the way of his flesh" (the variant rendering, "through the curtain of his flesh," is relegated to a footnote).
In favor of taking "that is to say, his flesh" as epexegetic of "the veil" is, first, the word order; it is rather awkward to relate the clause closely to the words "new and living way" in view of the intervention of the phrase "through the veil." Nor is there any difficulty in supposing that our author could explain the veil as being our Lord's "flesh"; like "the body of Jesus Christ" in v. 10 and "the blood of Jesus" in v. 19, "his flesh" here could mean his human life, offered up in sacrifice to God. It is by his sacrifice that the way of approach to God has been opened up.93 The veil which, from one point of view, kept God and mankind apart, can be thought of, from another point of view, as bringing them together; for it was one and the same veil which on one side was in contact with the glory of God and on the other side with the need of men and women. So in our Lord Godhead and manhood were brought together; he is the true "daysman" or umpire who can lay his hand upon both because he shares the nature of both. And by his death, it could be added, the "veil" of his flesh was rent asunder and the new way consecrated through it by which human beings may come to God. "This beautiful allegorizing of the veil cannot, of course, be made part of a consistent and complete typology. It is not meant for this. But as the veil stood locally before the holiest in the Mosaic Tabernacle, the way into which lay through it, so Christ's life in the flesh stood between Him and His entrance before God, and His flesh had to be rent ere He could enter. This is the fact and the history which suggest the figure. But under this fact lie principles in the mind of God, and in the public law of the universe, and in the heart and mind of man, the object to be awakened and touched, which give to through a deeper sense, and in this sense for us also the way lies through His flesh" (A. B. Davidson).94
The protagonist for the interpretation "the way of his flesh" is B. F. Westcott. He found the equation of "veil" with "flesh" unsatisfactory because one would not expect to find the "flesh" of Christ "treated in any way as a veil, an obstacle, to the vision of God in a place where stress is laid on His humanity" and because one would expect a complete parallelism to be pre served "between the description of the approach of Christ to God and the approach of the believer to God."95 On the former score, it should suffice to remember, in J. Moffatt's words, that the expression here "is a daring, poetical touch, and the parallelism is not to be prosaically pressed into any suggestion that the human nature in Jesus hid God from men `in the days of his flesh,' or that he ceased to be truly human when he sacrificed himself."96 On the latter score, if our Lord's "flesh" and his "blood" alike denote his human life offered up in sacrifice, then he who entered into the heavenly sanctuary "by virtue of his own blood" (9:12) may equally well be thought of as entering there through his "flesh." Since Westcott's objections to the usual rendering and interpretation do not appear to carry as much weight as he assigned to them, it is better on the whole to take the line more naturally suggested by the word-order and conclude that our author looked upon the veil as symbolizing our Lord's human life, presented to God when he "suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God" (1 Pet. 3:18).
21 Their confidence in entering the presence of God should be enhanced by the fact that there Jesus fulfils his ministry as "a great priest over God's house." The expression "great priest" is the literal rendering of the most common Hebrew title for the high priest; "great" has here comparative or superlative force, denoting "the priest that is great above [i.e., greater than] his brethren" (according to the more literal rendering of Lev. 21:10).97 "God's house" over which he exercises his high priesthood is, of course, the community of God's people (cf. Heb. 3:6).98
22 "Let us draw near," our author repeats99-near to God, that is. No longer is the privilege of access to him carefully fenced about by conditions like those laid down for the high priest when he made his annual entrance into the holy of holies on the Day of Atonement; the "better hope" of 7:19, "through which we draw near100 to God," has now been realized. Naturally such an approach can be made only with sincerity of heart-it is the pure in heart who will see God-and the "full assurance"101 which faith in God's word begets. It is of faith like this that our author speaks a little later when he says that "one who approaches God must believe that he exists, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him out" (11:6). But those who have experienced the inward cleansing that Christ's self-offering has effected may well be marked by sincerity of heart and "faith's full assurance"; this is what our author means when he speaks of himself and his readers as "having had our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water." The punctuation of the TR and the ARV, which makes a heavy stop between these two participial phrases, attaching the sprinkling of the heart closely to the preceding exhortation "let us approach" and the washing of the body closely to the following exhortation "let us may be due to the feeling that there is something incongruous in correlating the figurative sprinkling of the heart and the literal washing of the body. The same sense of incongruity has led some expositors to maintain that the washing of the body is as figurative as the sprinkling of the heart, and to deny that it refers to baptism.103
That the sprinkling of the heart denotes an inward and spiritual cleansing is obvious; it is equally obvious that our author has in mind the counterpart under the new order of the old ritual cleansing with the "water for impurity," the water prepared with the ashes of the red heifer.104 He has made this plain by his rhetorical question in 9:13f.: ". . . the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who have been defiled have sanctifying power as far as bodily cleansing is concerned, how much more will the blood of Christ, who ... offered himself to God as an unblemished sacrifice, cleanse our conscience from dead works so as to worship the living God?" Those who make bold to enter the heavenly sanctuary by the blood of Jesus are by that same blood purified and made fit for the divine presence; the cleansing of the conscience removes the barrier which prevented their free access. It is not so clear that the washing of the body with pure water is thought of as having a similar analogue in the Old Testament ceremonial, simply because our author does not stress an analogue to this as he does stress the ritual of the red heifer. He may, however, have thought of the requirement that the priest on the Day of Atonement should "bathe his body in water" (Lev. 16:4) before putting on the linen vestments in which he was to approach God in the holy of holies.105 But the present reality which he has in mind is most probably Christian baptism-consisting, of course, not merely in the outward application of water, but in the outward application of water as the visible sign of the inward and spiritual cleansing wrought by God in those who come to him through Christ. As we are told again in 1 Pet. 3:21, the baptismal water is not intended to remove bodily impurity but to express "a pledge to God proceeding from a clear conscience."106
There is no impossible incongruity here in the collocation of the cleansing which is inward and spiritual ("since our hearts have been sprinkled clean from an evil conscience") with its outward and visible sign ("since our bodies have been washed with pure water").107 A similar collocation of the outward and inward cleansing may be recognized in the Qumran texts. The Qumran community attached great importance to ritual bathing, and there are recurring references in their literature to the "water for impurity."108 But a merely external sprinkling or cleansing with water will do a person no good if he cherishes an impenitent and apostate heart. Such a person "cannot be purified by atonement or cleansed with water for impurity. He cannot be sanctified in seas or rivers, or cleansed with any lustral water.... It is through an upright and humble spirit that a man's sin will be expiated, and through his self-submission to all God's ordinances that his flesh will be cleansed, so that he may have water for impurity sprinkled on him and be sanctified by means of cleansing water."109 Behind this passage from the Qumran Rule of the Community, as indeed behind the thought of the writer to the Hebrews and other New Testament writers, we may discern such an Old Testament prophecy as that of Ezek. 36:25f., where the terminology of the ancient ritual ablutions is used to describe God's inward cleansing of his people in the age of restoration: "I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean.... A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you."110 Those who have received this inward cleansing from God may well enjoy that spiritual nearness to him which is impossible for a polluted conscience.
23 The exhortation is threefold: "let us approach ... let us maintain ... let us cultivate mutual consideration." The importance of holding fast the Christian confession has already been emphasized: it is only "if we maintain our confidence and the hope in which we boast" that we are the house of God (3:6); it is only "if we maintain the beginning of our steadfastness firm to the end" that we are partakers or companions of Christ (3:14). The powerful incentive which the knowledge of Christ's high priesthood provides for firmly maintaining the confession of him has also been stressed (4:14);111 here it is repeated together with the other incentives which are bound up with his high priesthood, including above all the faithfulness of God whose promises, embodied and fulfilled in Christ, are set forth in the gospel for the encouragement and support of his people. "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope," say ERV/ARV, "that it waver not"-doing justice to the Greek construction in which the adjective "unwavering" agrees with but if the confession wavers it is because the confessors waver, and this is brought out by the RSV ("Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering") and the NEB ("Let us be firm and unswerving in the confession of our hope"). Our hope is based on the unfailing promise of God; why should we not cherish it confidently and confess it boldly?
24 The readers will be the more apt to confess their hope courageously and unhesitatingly if they encourage one another. Christian faith and witness will flourish the more vigorously in an atmosphere of Christian fellowship. "We ought to see how each of us may best arouse others to love and active goodness" (NEB). The word "stimulate" (AV/KJV, ERV/ARV "provoke"; RSV "stir up"; NEB "arouse") is a strong it appears in one other place in the New Testament, and there in a very different way, of the "sharp contention" that broke out between Paul and Barnabas when they could not agree on taking Mark with them on a second apostolic visit to Cyprus and South Galatia (Acts 15:39). Perhaps this Greek word paroxysmos, like our English "provocation," is more commonly used in the unfavorable sense of irritation than in the more pleasant sense used here by our author. It is the former sense that Paul has in mind in 1 Cor. 13:5 when, using the cognate verb paroxyno, he says that love "is not provoked."114 But here love is provoked in the sense of being stimulated in the lives of Christians by the considerateness and example of other members of their fellowship.
We may find a clue in the word translated "meeting together." Basically this is the word which we know in its English form "synagogue," but here it carries the prefix epi, which in this place may conceivably have the force "in addition," as though the word were to be translated "episynagogue."116 If this meaning were accepted, then we might think of a group of Jewish believers in Jesus who had not yet severed their connection with the synagogue in which they had been brought up, but who in addition to their synagogue services had special meetings of their own in a "Christian appendage to the Jewish synagogue," as William Manson puts it.117 In that case, our author fears that the discontinuance of their special Christian meetings will mean their complete merging in the life of the larger Jewish community with the loss of their distinctive Christian faith and outlook. What he would really like to see would be their decisive separation from the synagogue-this is what he means by "let us go out" or "let us come out" in 13:13-but if they are not ready for that, let them, as they value their lives, maintain their common meetings as believers in Jesus and so encourage one another in their common hope.
It may be pointed out, however, that there is no evidence elsewhere for the use of "episynagogue" in a different sense from "synagogue" or "meeting";118 and our author may simply be urging his readers not to give up attending the general meeting of the church, as some were doing. 119 Under the various pressures which were being brought to bear upon them, to withdraw from the society of their fellow-believers was to court spiritual defeat; only by remaining united could they preserve their faith and witness.
Instead of growing slack in the practice of their Christian fellowship, they are bidden to encourage one another-"and all the more so, as you see the Day approaching." It is plain from the closing verses of this chapter that the apparent postponement of the parousia was having its effect on their minds; at least the sense of tension created by the knowledge that they were living in the end-time was weakening.120 Not only for them, but for their fellow Christians in many other places, the necessity of coming to terms with the church's continued existence in history as a community completely separated from Judaism involved an "agonizing reappraisal." The first generation of believers was passing away; a new generation was growing up. At this point in time other shocks were in store for them: the rather sudden hostility of the imperial power121 (with which the church had henceforth to live for two and a half centuries) and the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem.
Before A.D. 70 those Christians who remembered and took seriously Jesus' prophecy of the destruction of the temple were scarcely in a position to keep it distinct in their minds from the final coming of the Son of Man and the ingathering of his elect, which he also foretold. Only after the events of A.D. 70 was it possible to appreciate clearly that two separate epochs were involved in the twofold question of the disciples in the form given to it in Matt. 24:3: "(a) When will this [the destruction of the temple] be? (b) and what will be the sign of your parousia, and of the consummation of the age?" It may be that our author, writing (as we think) before A.D. 70, had the impending fall of Jerusalem and dissolution of the old order in mind when he spoke of "the Day" as approaching.122 The words "you see the Day approaching" suggest that signs of the impending catastrophe in Judaea were already visible to men and women of discernment; and the fulfilment of that phase of Jesus' prediction pointed on to the fulfilment of the final phase. Yet for our author, as for the other New Testament writers, "the Day" is primarily the final phase, the day of Christ's parousia. Whatever was implied by the church's adaptation in her thought and life to the conditions of a second and further generations of Christian existence in the world, her teachers continued, long after A.D. 70, to emphasize the certainty, and indeed the nearness, of the parousia. The period between the first advent of Christ and his parousia is the end-time, the "last days." Whatever the duration of the period may be, for faith "the time is near" (Rev. 1:3). Each successive Christian generation is called upon to live as the generation of the endtime, if it is to live as a Christian generation. This being so, "the question is: How can the tension between the eschatological and historical existence of faith be retained over a period of time?" 123 The most satisfactory answer is the Pauline answer which, while given in the first Christian generation, is equally ap plicable to every Christian generation: "If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit" (Gal. 5:25)-for the Spirit is the pledge and the firstfruits of the heritage of glory to be entered by believers at the parousia of Christ (cf. Rom. 8:23; Eph. 1:13f.). In keeping with this answer, our author insists that since Christ appeared once for all, "at the end of the ages," to offer himself to God as the perfect sacrifice for his people's sin, those who acknowledge him as apostle and high priest have already experienced "mighty works of the coming age" and receive the "kingdom which is unshakable" (Heb. 6:5; 12:27f.). Thus they anticipate here and now the consummation for which they hope; let them hold this hope fast by unswerving loyalty to Christ.
B. FOURTH ADMONITION: THE WILFUL SIN OF APOSTASY (10:26-31)
26 For if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, no further sacrifice for sins124 is left for us-
27 nothing but a fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation125 which is about to consume God's adversaries.
28 Any one who has violated Moses' law dies without mercy126 "on the testimony of two or three witnesses. "127
29 How much more severe do you think will be the penalty deemed fit for one who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, treated as something common the covenant blood128 with which he was sanctified, 129 and outraged the Spirit of grace?
30 We know the one who said,
31 It is fearful to fall into the hands of the living God.
26-29 This passage was destined to have repercussions in Christian history beyond what our author could have foreseen. By "sin deliberately" he means something like that sinning "with a high hand"132 for which no pardon was provided by the Old Testament law of atonement. He has already emphasized that despising the saving message spoken by the Son of God must carry with it penalties even more severe than the sanctions attached to the law of Moses, "the word spoken through angels" (2:2); and he repeats the same argument here. The context suggests that something much more serious is in his mind than what Paul calls being "overtaken in any trespass"133-after all, he has pointed out more than once that in Jesus Christians have a high priest who can succor them when they are tempted, sympathize with them in their infirmities, and bear gently with them when they stray from the path through ignorance.134 What he has in mind is rather that "deserting the living God" of which he spoke in 3:12, that renunciation of Christianity against which he warned his readers in 6:4-8. To have received the knowledge of the truth135 and then reject it is to give up the only way of salvation. "No further sacrifice for sins is left" which can avail for those who have deliberately abandoned reliance on the perfect sacrifice of Christ. That outright apostasy is intended here seems plain from the language of v. 29; the man who has committed this wilful sin is described as having "spurned the Son of God, and profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace" (RSV).
Our author is not given to wild exaggeration, and when he uses language like this, he chooses his words with his customary care. To spurn the Son of God, to trample him underfoot (as the word literally means), "denotes contempt of the most flagrant kind";136 to treat the covenant blood of Christ, by which alone his people are sanctified, cleansed, and brought to God,137 as no better than the most common138 death is to repudiate decisively both his sacrifice and all the blessings which flow from it; to outrage the Spirit of grace139 is, in the words of Jesus, to be "guilty of an eternal sin" (Mark 3:29).140 Anyone who was convicted, on adequate testimony, of a deliberate breach of Israel's covenant law was liable to the death penalty: "your eye shall not pity him," so ran the inexorable sentence.141 But that was the penalty of physical death; the spiritual death which lies in store for the apostate under the new order is a "much sorer punishment."
We shall not properly understand the anxiety which this problem caused unless we realize that the kind of sin which in practice aroused greatest concern was sexual irregularity. It was precisely here that the ordinary canons of everyday behavior differed most between Christians and pagans. We may think today that equal attention ought to be paid to the other six deadly sins; the fact remains that this was the one which involved the greatest heart-searching in the Christian community. The writer to the Hebrews, indeed, did not dwell particularly on offenses of this character;143 and perhaps it was not sufficiently considered that sexual irregularity often lacks that element of premeditated policy which he condemns most severely. But experience showed that it was in this realm that postbaptismal sin was most prone to occur. Hermas, knowing in his heart how liable human nature is to yield to this form of temptation, even if it be confined to the thought-life,144 and having received the assurance of divine forgiveness himself, taught (on the basis of a revelation imparted to him) that a second repentance was possible, but no more. According to him, baptism in Christ's name wipes out all previous sins, and baptized persons who keep the law of Christ consistently need not fear the last judgment.145 But anyone who sinned once after baptism could, after due repentance, receive forgiveness once more, and be assured of ultimate salvation if he did not fall again. t46 This curious concession shows that Hermas and those who thought like him had really failed to grasp the real principle at stake, although they must be given credit for treating sin in believers as a very serious matter. The logic of the argument, however, left something to be desired, for if forgiveness was available once for postbaptismal sin properly repented of, why might it not be available twice or more often still? A rigorist like Tertullian appreciated the logic of the situation, and condemned Hermas for a concession which, as he saw it, was the thin end of a very dangerous wedge.147 Others, less rigorist than Tertullian, also appreciated the logic of the situation, and extended Hermas's concession indefinitely, making it an essential element of the institution of penance. According to this institution, every baptized person is required periodically to seek, by confession and penance, absolu tion for sins committed to date.148 The writer to the Hebrews might well have considered that this institution differed but little in principle from the Old Testament institution of the Day of Atonement, in which "there is an annual reminder of sins" (10:3). What he urges his readers to do is to avail themselves continuously of the intercessory offices of their enthroned high priest, who appears in God's presence on their behalf by virtue of his perfect self-offering presented and accepted once for all. He would probably have thought it preposterous that his stern words of warning should in due course give rise to a penitential procedure so similar to that which he dismisses as forever superseded.
30 He drives his warning home with two quotations from the Song of Moses in Deut. 32. The Song of Moses furnished the early Christians with a remarkable number of testimonia-largely, but not exclusively, on the subject of Jewish unbelief.149 The later writers of anti-Judaic apologies regarded it as a strong point in support of their argument that in this Song Moses himself (or God through the mouth of Moses) testifies against Israel.150 It is God through the mouth of Moses in this Song who says, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay"-so our author quotes Deut. 32:35 in a version, attested in the Targums, which is followed also by Paul in Rom. 12:19.151 Our author's application of the words is not inconsistent with their original context: God's own people are not exempt from his law that men and women reap what they sow.152 And this is confirmed in the next verse of the Song (Deut. 32:36): "Yahweh will judge his people." This certainly means that he will execute judgment on their behalf, vindicating their cause against their enemies, but it carries with it the corollary that, on the same principles of impartial righteousness, he will execute judgment against them when they forsake his covenant. The privileges which Israel enjoyed as God's covenant people meant that their responsibilities were the greater and that retribution would be the more severe in their case if they gave themselves up to unrighteousness: "You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will visit upon you all your iniquities" (Amos 3:2). What was true then remains true for God's dealings with his people now.
31 Our author has a deep conviction of the awesome holiness of the divine majesty, "It is fearful," he says, "to fall into the hands of the living God." These words have no doubt been used frequently as a warning to the ungodly of what lies in store for them unless they amend their ways; but their primary application is to the people of God. "It is a splendid, but it is an awful thing to say, `We know that we are of God. '11153 This is what Isaiah meant when he said, after God had acted so signally in his people's behalf by removing the Assyrian menace from Jerusalem: "Who among us can dwell with the devouring fire? who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?"154 (Isa. 33:14). T'.-,e revelation of the consuming righteousness of God which they had just witnessed spoke more loudly to them than it did to Sennacherib's warriors who had fallen before it; in that hour of judgment Israel learned something new about the character of the God who dwelt constantly in her midst.155 Yet, when the question must be faced, into whose hands would any one of the people of God more readily fall than into his? When King David was commanded to choose between three forms of judgment after his numbering of the people, his wise reply was the fruit of his previous experience of God: "let us fall into the hand of Yahweh; for his mercy is great" (2 Sam. 24:14). Perhaps this very passage was in our author's mind and suggested the form of words he chose: "to fall into the hands of the living God."156 For "the living God" appears repeatedly in the Bible as a synonym of Yahweh.157 And if our author were asked why it is so fearful to fall into his hands, he might well reply: "Because he is the living God."
"It is a fearful thing," said the translators of the AV/KJV in the peroration of their preface,158 "to fall into the hands of the living God; but a blessed thing it is, and will bring us to everlasting blessedness in the end, when God speaketh unto us, to hearken; when he setteth his word before us, to read it; when he stretcheth out his hand and calleth, to answer, Here am I, here we are to do thy will, 0 God. The Lord work a care and conscience in us to know him and serve him that we may be acknowledged of him at the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with the Holy Ghost be all praise and thanksgiving. Amen."
C. CALL TO PERSEVERANCE (10:32-39)
32 But remember your earlier days,159 when after your enlightenment you endured a hard struggle with sufferings.
33 You were either exposed to public shame1b0 with insults and persecutions, or else you became partners with those who were so treated.
34 Indeed, you manifested your sympathy with those who were impris oned,161 and you put up cheerfully with the plundering of your property, for you knew that you yourselvesl62 had a better possession,163 a permanent one.
35 So then, do not throw away your confidence, for it carries a great reward with it.
36 What you need is patience, so that, when you have done God's will, you may receive what he has promised.
166. Hab. 2:3f. (see pp. 272-75).
39 We, however, are not in the ranks of those who draw back and perish; we belong to those who believe167 and thus gain our lives.
The identification of this earlier test, even if any independent informa tion survives _link_ about it, _link_ must be _link_ precarious as _link_ long as we are uncertain of the place where the addressees of this epistle lived. The identification, however, is made a little easier if we link with the present passage the words of 12:4: "In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood" (RSV/NEB).169 It is a reasonable inference from these words that, while the people addressed had undergone persecution, none of them had thus far suffered martyrdom. This appears to rule out, for example, the church of Jerusalem. Members of that church had suffered death in the persecution which broke out immediately after Stephen's execution about A.D. 33,170 as also in A.D. 43, under Herod Agrippa I, when James the son of Zebedee was beheaded,171 and in A.D. 62, when James the Just was stoned at the instance of the high priest Annas 11172 (if indeed the last-named incident had taken place by the writing of this epistle). It might also be thought to rule out any of the communities established through the witness of Hellenistic refugees from Jerusalem in A.D. 33 and the following years, though this would be by no means a conclusive inference.
Again, others have compared the language of our author here with the descriptions by Tacitus and Clement of the indignities inflicted on the Christians of Rome under Nero in the aftermath of the great fire of A.D. 64. "Their death," says Tacitus, "was made a matter of sport: they were covered in wild beasts' skins and torn to pieces by dogs; or were fastened to crosses and set on fire in order to serve as torches by night when daylight failed."173 Clement tells how Christian women had to "enact the parts of Dirce and the daughters of Danaus."174 But in spite of the correspondence between these descriptions and our author's reminder that some of his readers had been "abused and tormented to make a public show" (NEB), it could never have been said to Roman Christians after A.D. 65 that "in their struggle against sin they had not yet resisted to the point of shedding their blood"; that is precisely what they had done, and right nobly. While those Roman Christians had literally been made "a public show," our author may use the term somewhat more figuratively, rather as Paul does in 1 Cor. 4:9 when he compares himself and his fellow-apostles to "men condemned to death in the arena, a spectacle to the whole universe" (NEB).175
If, however, our author is addressing a group of Roman Christians before A.D. 65, we may recall another occasion which could satisfy his terms. Shortly after Claudius became emperor in A.D. 41, he imposed certain restrictions on the Jewish colony in Rome.176 These restrictions evidently did not accomplish the purpose for which they were imposed, so some eight years later he took the more drastic step of expelling them from the capital. According to the well-known account of Suetonius, he expelled them because "they were constantly indulging in riots at the instigation of Chrestus."177 The common inference from Suetonius's account-that these riots resulted from the recent introduction of Christianity into the Jewish colony in Rome-is supported by the fact that two of the expelled Jews, Priscilla and Aquila (who settled in Corinth where Paul made their acquaintance in A.D. 50), were Christians at the time. 178 A large-scale eviction of this nature would inevitably have been attended by widespread looting by the city proletariat, together with many other kinds of insults and indignities. We have a vivid account in Philo of what happened in Alexandria in A.D. 38 when the Jews of that city were forced to leave their homes in four of its five wards and be herded together in one ward. "Their enemies overran the houses now left empty and began to loot them, dividing up the contents like spoils of war."179 The looting was accompanied by other acts of public outrage and violence. While there is no reason to suppose that the Roman Jews in A.D. 49 suffered anything like the extremes of brutality suffered by the Alexandrian Jews eleven years earlier, their experiences would very probably have been such as to merit our author's description here.
That these words could reasonably be interpreted with reference to the circumstances attendant on Claudius's expulsion of the Jews of Rome does not, of course, exclude the possibility, and indeed the high probability, that from time to time Jewish communities in other cities (not excluding those members of such communities who were disciples of Jesus) had to endure persecution of much the same kind. After the outbreak of the Jewish revolt against Rome in A.D. 66 the Jewish communities of many cities throughout Syria and Palestine were the victims of riot and massacre,180 and Jewish Christians would be in no way exempt from such assaults. But since most of these in volved wholesale slaughter, they are excluded from consideration here. Besides, the statement that the readers suffered these things in their early Christian days, after they were "enlightened," may suggest that they suffered them on account of their adherence to the gospel. This could be said, no doubt, of the Jewish believers of Rome in A.D. 49, who may even have had some persecution to endure at the hands of the synagogue authorities in addition to the hostile attentions of the pagan population; it would not be as applicable to those occasions on which Jewish communities were attacked simply because they were Jewish. This, for example, rules out the events in Alexandria in A.D. 38, because in them the Jews were attacked as Jews (it is nowhere implied that Christianity had anything to do with that trouble);181 in addition, many of the Alexandrian Jews lost their lives in the pogroms of that year.182
In short, the events of A.D. 49 at Rome could be referred to here; it is perfectly conceivable that events at some other time or place could be referred to,183 but on these we are even less well informed than we are about the events at Rome.
At any rate, the readers had at one time "endured a hard struggle with sufferings," as our author puts it, using an athletic metaphor.184 They had met the challenge of those sufferings as good athletes of Christ, and stood firm. Those of them who had not been personally exposed to suffering showed their solidarity with those who were directly attacked, and so shared the public scorn. When some of their number were imprisoned, the others did not shrink from visiting them, although in this way they ran the risk of being imprisoned themselves. They thus secured a place for themselves among those to whom the Son of Man says: "I was in prison, and you came to me" (Matt. 25:36). Prisoners who had no means of their own were liable to starve unless their friends brought them food and whatever other form of help they required; throughout the whole age of imperial persecution of the church the visiting of their friends who were in prison was a regular, though dangerous, duty of Christian charity.185
They had accepted this persecution, too, in a spirit of Christian cheerfulness. "Blessed are you," their Master had said, "when men hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy; for behold, your reward is great in heaven" (Luke 6:22f.). It was exactly in the sense of this exhortation that these Hebrew Christians took the plundering of their property not merely in a spirit of equanimity but joyfully; it was for such as they, as well as for himself, that Paul spoke when he said, "we rejoice in our sufferings" (Rom. 5:3).186 The eternal inheritance laid up for them was so real in their eyes that they could lightheartedly bid farewell to material possessions, which were short-lived in any case. This attitude of mind is precisely that "faith" of which our author goes on to speak. They manifested it in those earlier days, and that is why he is so confident that they will continue to manifest it, although the trials which confront them now are different from those which they faced then, and more subtle in character.
35 You showed your courage in those days, he says; do not abandon it now.187 The word he uses (Gk. parrhesia) has appeared three times already in this letter. In 4:16;10:19 it is used of the confidence with which Christians may approach the throne of God since Christ is there as their prevailing high priest; in 3:6 it is used more generally of the courageous confession which Christians should maintain without fail. It is in this last sense that it is used here, with special reference to steadfastness in adverse and disheartening circumstances: "it is, so to say, the content of the Christian attitude in the world, the security of God's salvation and the open confession amidst ... opposition."188 We may think of the "boldness" of Peter and John which made such an impression on the Sanhedrin (Acts 4:13); the forthrightness of their language evinced an inner confidence of heart and life. So it had been with these "Hebrews"; preserve that former confidence of yours, says our author, for it carries a great reward with it (using a word which is peculiar to him among biblical writers, and which is not known before his time).189 This is the "reward" of which Jesus spoke in the words quoted above from Luke 6:23; it is the realization of the promise in the good of which people of faith already live.190
36 What they need is patience.191 God will certainly fulfil his promise; they will enter into the utmost enjoyment of it; but in the meantime they must remain loyal, and not give up doing God's will. Their Master came expressly to do the will of God, as they have been told already (10:7, 9f.), although the doing of that will involved suffering and death for him; his servants can expect no easier path as they in their turn do the will of God and await the promised bliss. Sometimes the promised bliss seemed close at hand, as they saw "the Day approaching";192 but at other times it looked as though it would never come, and they had to be reassured, like people to whom another New Testament letter was sent, that "the Lord is not slow about his promise" (2 Pet. 3:9). Let their hearts take courage, as they wait for their Lord.
Here it is not simply for the fulfilment of the vision that the prophet is told to wait, but for a person, presumably an expected deliverer. When this deliverer appears, he will vindicate the righteousness of God and put down the oppressor; if, however, he draws back, that will indicate that he is not God's chosen agent. But if he does not draw back, but shows himself to be indeed God's chosen agent, his "righteous one," then by his faithfulness he will win his life. The deliverer in question is not called "the Lord's anointed" in so many words, but the Septuagint interpretation of this passage is essentially messianic.
Our author, then, is but dotting the i's and crossing the is of the Septuagint interpretation when he applies Hab. 2:3b to the second coming of Christ. The clause with which he introduces the quotation ("for yet a very little while")197 is not taken from any otherwise attested text of Hab. 2:3, but it may be a reminiscence of the Septuagint version of Isa. 26:20 ("a little moment"). Then the identity of the expected deliverer is made clearer. In the Septuagint "he will surely come" is literally "coming he will come" (an imitation in Greek of a common Hebrew idiom).198 Our author places the def finite article before the participle "coming" so as to yield the messianic title "The Coming One"-the title used, for example, by John the Baptist199 when he sent his disciples to Jesus with the question: "Are you the Coming One, or are we to expect someone else?" (Matt. 11:3//Luke 7:19). "The Coming One will come; he will not delay."200
In his quotation of Hab. 2:4 our author inverts the two parts of the verse: "my righteous one shall live by faith" is applied to the Christian believer, tempted to wonder if Christ will ever return in accordance with his promise; and the warning about the divine displeasure which will rest upon anyone who draws back is applied to him who yields to the temptation to relapse from his Christian profession into his earlier way of life. The reason for the inversion is not hard to determine: by this means "my righteous one" becomes the subject of both parts of the verse.201 If he perseveres in faith he will gain his life; if he shrinks back he will prove himself reprobate.
The clause "the righteous shall live by [his] faith" is twice quoted by Paul (Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11) in a context which suggests that he gave it the meaning: "it is the one who is righteous by faith that will live." Indeed, this clause might well be regarded as the "text" of the Epistle to the Romans, and along with Gen. 15:6 it forms a principal testimonium for the doctrine of justification by faith. There is no fundamental difference in this respect between Paul and the author of Hebrews;202 but our author, reproducing this clause together with part of its context, emphasizes the forward-looking character of saving faith, and in fact includes in "faith" not only what Paul means by the word but also what Paul more often expresses by the companion word "hope."203 If Paul speaks about being "saved through faith" (e.g., Eph. 2:8), he also speaks of the "hope" in which "we were saved" (Rom. 8:24).204 And we remember our Lord's words to his disciples when he warned them of coming days which would test their faith severely: "By your endurance you will gain your lives" (Luke 21:19).205 It is patient endurance of this kind that our author desires his readers to show, and he is persuaded, for all his solemn warnings, that they will indeed show it, and gain true life thereby.
39 For, says he, in a further affirmation of his essential confidence in them, and including himself among them, "we are not in the ranks of those who draw back and perish; we belong to those who believe and thus gain our lives."206 They had begun their Christian career in that carefree spirit which accepts without questioning the assurance of Christ that "whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it" (Mark 8:35). Let them maintain that spirit of faith to the end, and they would certainly gain their souls and "take hold of the life which is life indeed."207 That this will prove true with our author and his readers alike is his firm assurance.208
HEBREWS 11
D. THE FAITH OF THE PEOPLE OF OLD (11:1-40)
1. Prologue: The Nature of Faith (11:1-3)
1 Now faith is the firm foundation' of what we hope for; it is a conviction regarding things which are not seen.
2 It is by faith that the men and women of old established their record.
3 It is by faith that we understand the universe2 to have been fashioned by God's utterance, so that what is seen has not come into being from things which are visible.
1 Our author might well have proceeded from 10:39 to the exhortation to "run with steadfast endurance the race for which we are entered" (12:1); but first he encourages his readers further by reminding them of examples of faith in earlier days. In Old Testament times, he points out, there were many men and women who had nothing but the promises of God to rest upon, without any visible evidence that these promises would ever be fulfilled; yet so much did these promises mean to them that they regulated the whole course of their lives in their light. The promises related to a state of affairs belonging to the future; but these people acted as if that state of affairs were already present, so convinced were they that God could and would fulfil what he had promised. In other words, they were men and women of faith. Their faith consisted simply in taking God at his word and directing their lives accordingly; things yet future as far as their experience went were thus present to faith, and things outwardly unseen were visible to the inward eye. It is in these terms that our author now describes the faith of which he has been speaking. It is, he says, the hypostasis of things that are hoped for.3 This word hypostasis has appeared twice already in the epistle. In 1:3 the Son was stated to be the very image of God's hypostasis; in 3:14 believers are said to be Christ's associates if they hold fast the beginning of their hypostasis firm to the end. In the former place it has the objective sense of "substance" or "real essence" (as opposed to what merely seems to be so).4 In the latter place it has the subjective sense of "confidence" or "assurance."5 Here it is natural to take it in the same subjective sense as it bears in 3:14, and so the ERV/ARV and the RSV render it "assurance."6 There is, however, something to be said for the objective meaning, represented by the AV/KJV ("faith is the substance of things hoped for") and the NEB ("faith gives substance to our hopes") .7 That is to say, things which in themselves have no existence as yet become real and substantial by the exercise of faith. But on the whole the subjective meaning "assurance" is the more probable, especially as this meaning chimes in well with the companion word "conviction." From another use of the word attested in the Hellenistic papyri Moulton and Milligan "venture to suggest the translation `Faith is the title-deed of things hoped for.' 118 In the instances which they cite from the papyri this meaning is indicated by the context. It might no doubt be said that if we adopt this meaning here, we have something comparable to Paul's language about the Holy Spirit as the "firstfruits" or "earnest" of the coming inheritance of believers;9 but one would require stronger evidence from the present context before adopting it here. Our author is making much the same point as Paul makes in Rom. 8:24f.: "hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."10
The word rendered "conviction" (Gk. elenchos) has the same twofold sense as the English word. In 2 Tim. 3:16 it occurs as a variant reading for the cognate elegmos to denote the "conviction" or "refutation" of error which Holy Scripture provides; here it means "conviction" in much the same sense as "assurance" in the preceding phrase. Physical eyesight produces conviction or evidence of visible things; faith is the organ which enables people (like Moses in v. 27) to see the invisible order.11 Philo similarly links "faith towards God" with "apprehension of the unseen."12
2 It was for faith of this kind that men and women of old13 received the divine commendation, and this has been placed on permanent record as an example to their descendants. The record is surveyed in vv. 4-38. This catalogue of spiritual heroism belongs to the same literary category as "The Praise of the Elders" in Sir. 44:1-50:21, beginning: "Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us."14 Ben Sira celebrates at length all the commendable qualities of the men of God whom he commemorates; our author, more concisely, confines himself to those features of his heroes' careers which illustrate their faith in God, for the encouragement of those who come after them. In some ways a better parallel is presented by the last words of Mattathias, father of Judas Maccabaeus and his brothers, in which he stimulates the zeal of his sons by reminding them of the faithfulness under testing of Abraham, Joseph, Phinehas, Joshua, Caleb, David, Elijah, the three Hebrews who were saved from Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace, and Daniel (1 Macc. 2:51-60).15 Indeed, the literary genre is by no means confined to the Judaeo-Christian tradition; it shares many characteristics with the diatribe of Stoic-influenced rhetoric, which was given to the accumulation of historical or legendary examples of the particular quality under discussion.16 Our author, however, does not only accumulate a series of examples; he sets them in historical sequence so as to provide an outline of the redemptive purpose of God, advancing through the age of promise until at last in Jesus, faith's "pioneer and perfecter," 17 the age of fulfilment is inaugurated.
3 Before he proceeds to celebrate the faith of the elders, however, he illustrates in another way his statement that faith is a conviction or proof of things not seen. The visible universe, he says, was not made out of equally visible raw material; it was called into being by divine power. "By faith'8 we understand19 that the worlds have been framed by the word of God" (ERV/ARV). Here, as in 1:2, the "worlds" are the aiones (lit. "ages"); in both places the universe of space and time is meant.20 There God is said to have made the universe by the agency of the Son; here he is said to have fashioned it by his word. It is unlikely that "God's utterance" here is hypostatized as in John 1:1-3, so as to be practically synonymous with "the Son of God"; for one thing, the Greek substantive translated "utterance" here is not logos (as in John 1:1-14) but rhema, referring to the utterance by which God summoned into existence what had no existence before.21 Our author is thinking of the creative command "Let there be light" (Gen. 1:3), interpreting it and the following commands after the fashion of the psalmist: