Hebrews 8

CHAPTER VIII

THE FIFTH MAIN PART

The Sacrificial Work of Jesus: In Six Great Comparisons, 8:1–10:18

The Preamble: the Main Point, v. 1, 2.

Hebrews 8:1

1 The two Ministries Compared;

Hebrews 8:2

2 No Jewish high priest ever sat when he was executing his office. He was not a king who may sit in state, and his office permitted no sitting. Our exalted High Priest is both King and Priest and thus sits at the right of the throne of Majesty “as ministrant of the Holy Place and of the true Tabernacle.” Throne and Sanctuary are not in conflict, nor is sitting as a ministrant. Λειτουργός is used in the LXX to designate the incumbent of a public office of various kinds; compare our remarks on this word in Phil. 2:25. Some think that because it is here and elsewhere used as a designation for priests that therefore the word itself has a priestly meaning; but the priestly meaning is derived only from the context.

Τὰἅγια is a technical term and = “the Holy Place”; its use is similar to that of ἡσκηνή, “the Tabernacle,” which constitutes “the Sanctuary” where the presence of God dwells. In 9:3, etc., the Tabernacle of Moses is described with its two places, the Holy and the Holy of Holies. In heaven the two are one, and there is no veil between them; and it is of the heavenly “Holy” that our passage speaks. We may accept the translation “Sanctuary” in our versions as being correct in substance although the word used is not ὁναός; but we cancel the marginal rendering of both: “holy things.”

“Of the true Tabernacle” is added because the writer, as already noted, has in mind only the Tabernacle that was built by Moses in the wilderness and not the later Temples of Solomon, Ezra, Herod; the writer deals only with the original and with what Moses says about that. Here he speaks of the heavenly architype: “the Holy Place and the true Tabernacle, which the Lord (Yahweh) erected, not man.” The word “true” modifies only “the Tabernacle” and not also “the Holy Place.”

The relative clause indicates in what sense ἀληθινή, “true,” is to be understood, namely, “erected by the Lord.” The earthly counterpart or copy was not “true,” for it was erected only by man, namely by Moses (v. 5). The latter is only a copy (representation) and a shadow; the former is the genuine original which is indescribable in its holiness and heavenliness with its eternal presence of God.

We dismiss all our earthly conceptions of space when we are thinking of heaven as if God’s throne of majesty stands somewhere in the space of heaven, as if this true Tabernacle also stands in some part of this space. Time and space do not exist in the other world. Only because we are unable to think and to speak of heaven in terms other than those of time and of space do the Scriptures condescend to do the same. But note what Rev. 21:16 says of heaven when it calls heaven the city of God and describes it as a cube! Read all of Rev. 21:9–27 and note that there is no Temple in this city (v. 22). In our verse we are facing what is infinite, and to reason finitely with finite ideas of time or of space is folly.

Yes, God built heaven which is his throne, which is this Tabernacle where Christ is, where we are to be with him. Like the word “Tabernacle,” so also the word “erected” is human language because the very idea of a heavenly “Tabernacle” (literally, “tent”) is not that God should dwell there alone, but that it should open the fullest communion and union with him to his people.

In his Parables of our Lord, chapter II, Trench says of the lovers of truth: “To them the things on earth are copies of the things in heaven. They know that the earthly Tabernacle is made after the pattern of the things seen in the Mount (Exod. 25:40; 1 Chron. 28:11, 12), and the question suggested by the angel in Milton is often forced upon their meditations—

‘What if earth

Be but the shadow of heaven, and things therein

Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?’”

The idea that the earth should be anthropocentric staggers many. What will they say when they find that heaven itself is so? Delitzsch defines τὰἅγια thus: “in brief the uncreated heaven of the divine glory,” “above all space and time and filling all things is not comprehended by any.” It is called both “the Holy Place” and “the Tabernacle” for our sakes; wherefore also Jesus is the High Priest and λειτουργός of this Sanctuary.

Philo indulged in the speculation that the world is the Holy and heaven the Holy of Holies, and that both are symbolized in the Jewish Tabernacle; but this view does not aid us in understanding our epistle. Even in their religious poetry the later Jews have the Old Testament idea of a connection between the Jerusalem above and that below. They are not thinking of God, the Messiah, or the church when they speak of the heavenly Temple but rather of the place of the blessed spirits. The writer of Hebrews says far more.

Some of the ancient commentators refer to ἐσκήνωσεν, “he tented among us,” in John 1:14 and other passages and thus think of the heavenly Σκηνή or “Tabernacle” as being Christ’s body. Verse 5 eliminates this idea: Moses did not see the body of Jesus on the Mount as the pattern according to which he was to construct the Tabernacle in the wilderness. In 9:12 “he entered in once for all into the Holy Place,” certainly not into his body. When the Jewish ναός or “Sanctuary” appears as a type of Jesus’ body in John 2:19–21, this does not make the body of Jesus identical with heaven as the heavenly Tabernacle.

The Two Ministries Compared, v. 3–6.

Hebrews 8:3

3 With γάρ the writer introduces the first explanatory elaboration of “the main thing” (v. 1) which he intends to present fully to his readers. If we compare the ministry of Jesus with that of the Jewish high priests and note the vast superiority of his ministry we shall see at once that it cannot be exercised in the earthly Tabernacle or Sanctuary as that of the Jewish priests was. Only this much is offered to begin with; more will follow at length.

For every high priest is appointed for the offering of both gifts and sacrifices; hence it is necessary that also this One have something which he may offer.

This general statement is basic for what follows and should, of course, not be separated from it and read by itself. It will then not be regarded as superfluous or as a digression. What pertains to every high priest because of the very nature of his office of necessity pertains also to “this One.” If any high priest, including Jesus, has no offering to bring to God he is no high priest. To bring an offering is the very object (εἰςτό) of his appointment to his office.

On ὃπροσενέγκῃ (subjunctive whereas the classics use the future) see B.-D. 368; it is a mixture of a relative and an indirect deliberative question: “what he has to offer” and “what has he to offer?” This aorist subjunctive is as future in meaning as a present subjunctive would be. The only difference is this: the aorist is punctiliar and thus fits the one act of offering on Jesus’ part; a present subjunctive would be iterative and would refer to repeated offerings. But repeated offerings cannot be ascribed to Jesus.

In the first clause εἰςτὸπροσφέρειν is properly an iterative present infinitive, for every ordinary Jewish high priest brought offerings annually and never finished this task as the years went on. The change to the aorist in the case of “this One” excludes such iteration on the part of Jesus. So also τιὅ marks a difference. The ordinary Jewish high priest iteratively offers “gifts as well as sacrifices,” two plurals; “this One” must, indeed, bring an offering, but only “something which,” for the present leaving unsaid what this may be; we shall hear all about it in due time. In fact, this one offering of Jesus, made “once for all,” has been mentioned already in 7:27: “this he made once for all by offering up himself” (aorist).

This ought to show that the discussion as to whether to supply ἐστί or ἦν in the second clause has no justification. The whole of v. 3 is general; the second clause is a deduction from the first, both have no particular reference to time.

Hebrews 8:4

4 There is an implication in this necessity that every high priest must bring an offering, namely that he must also have the proper sanctuary for bringing such an offering. This is the point to be noted here, as v. 2 already shows. Jesus cannot, however, bring his offering in the sanctuary here on earth; it debars him from being even a priest, to say nothing of a high priest. Now if he were on earth he would not (even) be a priest—εἰ with the imperfect, then the imperfect with ἄν; both protasis and apodosis make this sentence one of present unreality. The μὲνοὖν merely advances to a point that is quite obvious: there being (= since there are) those who offer the gifts according to law, a law which debars Jesus because he is descended from the tribe of Judah (7:13–14), to say nothing of the kind of δῶρον or “gift” that Jesus has to offer (“himself,” 7:27). The wording is most exact: it keeps the general form in the condition of present unreality, the iterative offering of the priests (προσφερόντων), the general idea of “gifts (shortened from “both gifts and sacrifices” in v. 3), and again does not mention what “gift” Jesus may have to offer. The writer’s thought is straight and exact: Jesus cannot be regarded as a priest among these priests.

Hebrews 8:5

5 The main point is introduced by the qualitative, half-causal οἵτινες: they (being) such as serve a sketch and shadow of the heavenly (originals) even as Moses, when about to construct the Tabernacle, received divine direction, namely (γάρ): See to it, says he, thou shalt make everything according to the type shown to thee in the Mount!

This is the main feature of the reason as to why Jesus cannot be regarded as one among the Jewish priests and high priests who do their service according to a certain “law” (v. 4), who are thus bound by such “law” to do their service in a sanctuary that is not “the true Tabernacle” (v. 1) but only “a sketch and shadow” of it as we see so plainly from Exod. 25:40 (Acts 7:44), the divine direction given to Moses when he was about to construct the Tabernacle (ἐπιτελεῖν, herrichten). If Jesus were to join the Jewish high priests in such a sanctuary and under such a law pertaining to such a sanctuary, it would mean that he, too, never gets beyond “sketch and shadow,” never rises to “the true or real Tabernacle” (v. 2), to the completeness and the finality (τελείωσις, 7:11) without which he cannot actually save us (σώζεινεἰςτὸπαντελές, 7:25), without which even all that the sketch and shadow promised as to the substance and reality cannot be attained.

What is said about the Tabernacle as being the place for priestly service is auxiliary to the priestly service and no more. The full contrast regarding this place is reserved for 9:1–15. The point is here the ministry or service, that of the Jewish high priests being as inferior as their sanctuary, that of Jesus as superior as the heavenly sanctuary and all that is connected with it.

A ὑπόδειγμα is a sketch, tracing, outline, or adumbration; hence “shadow” is added in order to bring out the full idea. The ἐπουράνια are the heavenly original which Moses was shown in the Mount. It is asked whether this original is the actuality, “the Holy Place and Tabernacle” where Jesus is the ministrant (v. 2), or a representation of it which was offered to Moses on the Mount, such as he could more easily see and comprehend and thus copy in earthly material. Who can tell? We regard the perfect κεχρημάτισται as aoristic (see R. 898, etc.). Others take the perfect to mean that we still have the divine directions in the Pentateuch. The passive of this verb means “to be given a divine oracle.” Ὅρα, in asyndeton with the imperative future ποιήσεις, is thus used only to make the command stronger (R. 949).

Hebrews 8:6

6 The logical νυνὶδέ draws the conclusion. Now, however, he has obtained a more excellent ministration by as much as he is Mediator also of a better testament, one of a kind that has been given legal force on the score of better promises.

Why should any of the readers turn from Jesus for the mere reason that he is not and can never be a high priest like those of their nation who served only in the sketch and shadow of the true Tabernacle and not perceive that this inability means that “he has obtained a more excellent ministration (λειτουργία matches λειτουργός used in v. 2, which see) by so much (more excellent) as he is a Mediator also of a better testament,” this being so much better “as being one that has been given legal force on the score of better promises”?

“He has obtained” and ever holds this more excellent ministration; τέτυχε is the Hellenistic form of the perfect when it is followed by a genitive, B.-D. 101. In 7:22 we have “surety of a better testament,” God’s guarantor to us that the testamentary promises will be duly bestowed upon us, the heirs; here we have “Mediator of a better testament,” God’s agent who “by offering up himself once for all” (7:27) actually makes the testament and all its testamentary promises effective. “Mediator,” μεσίτης from μέσος, appears in our epistle for the first time. This term means “middleman,” one who steps or stands in the middle between two; the context always indicates in what capacity or for what purpose he does this. Comparing 9:15; 12:24, we see at once that in this passage the word cannot signify “umpire” as it does in Job 9:33 (A. V. margin, also papyri); nor “peacemaker,” one who helps two hostile parties to make up their difference and establish peace as when some neutral government (king or president) offers its good offices to bring two warring nations back to peace by the signing of a peace treaty. We doubt that the word was ever used in the sense of Buerge, ἔγγυος, “surety,” although 7:22 states that Jesus is also this for the better testament.

In Gal. 3:19 “mediator” is used with reference to Moses, but he is such in the sense of being Israel’s representative who receives the law from God and brings it to Israel; he is a mediator only in this way (see the author’s exposition of Gal. 3:19, 20). Some think that in our passage Jesus is presented as being such a mediator as Moses was and not such as the Jewish high priests were. But Jesus is not our representative to bring God’s testament and its promises down to us. This “better testament” is the old testament which God made with Abraham, which is now carried into execution because it is now sealed with Jesus’ blood. The law brought to Israel by Moses is also called a testament and as such is also sealed with blood (9:15–20), but only with the blood of calves and goats. This law-testament was temporal and came to an end. The law came in 430 years after the testament that was made for Abraham (Gal. 3:17); and Israel lost its promises because of transgression so that this law-testament came to an end.

Jesus is the Mediator of a better testament in a far higher and different sense than Moses was a mediator, the law was given to Israel only ἐνχειρὶμεσίτου, “at the hand of a mediator” (Israel’s representative). The mediatorship of Jesus consists in this that he offered up “himself once for all” (v. 27). He is the one Mediator “who gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:5, 6). He stepped in the middle and by his blood made the better testament better indeed and effective according to this testament’s own provisions. The testamentary promises could not be fulfilled without his blood.

Since the testament is entirely one-sided, made for us by God, when Jesus serves as the Mediator he acts for God. We only receive the testament and the blood that seals it and makes it effective. Only in this sense is he “our” Mediator. We may say that all of the prophetic work of Jesus belongs to his mediatorship (1:1, etc.; 2:3), for the preaching of Jesus reveals him as the Mediator. So also the active obedience of Jesus, which is inseparable from the passive, belongs to his mediation. But the supreme point is the High-priestly sacrifice of himself by which he entered into the Holy of Holies in heaven to become our Mediator forever.

Moses was not a high priest; Moses did not go behind the veil with blood on the Day of Atonement. This Aaron and his successors did so that they are the types of Jesus in this his mediatorship.

Note that we have νενομοθέτηταιἐπί exactly as we did in 7:11, and there is a difference only in the subjects: in 7:11 the people are subjected to law on the score of the Levitical priesthood, here the better testament which is “of a kind (ἥτις) that has been subjected to law, i. e., has been legalized and given legal force on the score of better promises.” It is the sacrifice of Jesus that gave the testament legal force “on the score of better promises” as is explained in 9:16, 17.

One might think that a testament needs no mediator, that it and the promises it contains are automatically in force. Yet this view forgets the fact that death alone puts a testament into force. God cannot die, but Jesus, God’s Son, can and did, and thus the testament of God stands legally in force (perfect tense to indicate continuance) “on the score of (ἐπί as in 7:11) its better promises,” nothing stands in the way of fulfilling every one of them for us in this life and in the life to come. The promises are not better in substance compared with the promises that were made to Abraham but in the fact that we no longer need to wait for the Mediator as Abraham had to wait for him. They are, of course, better than the promises that were attached to the law-testament which was brought in 430 years after Abraham as is now shown at length in v. 7–13.

The Two Testaments Compared, v. 7–13.

Hebrews 8:7

7 The Mosaic testament is compared with the better testament of which Jesus is the Mediator and not the testament which God gave to Abraham; v. 9 states this. Since we have a quotation from Jer. 31:31–34 we might, according to the original Hebrew berith, translate διαθήκη, “covenant” instead of “testament”; we should, however, keep in mind the reason the LXX chose διαθήκη when they were making their Greek translation (see 7:22), it will then make little difference as to how we translate into English. The point is to be remembered throughout that, like a testament, the covenant is wholly one-sided, is only bestowed on Israel, is only received. The readers must not for one moment imagine that what God gave to Moses is final and thus turn back from Jesus to Moses. “For” takes up the matter of the testament and explains how God himself supplanted that which had been given to Israel by the hand of Moses.

For if that first one (i. e., testament) were faultless, a place would not be sought for a second one. For faulting them he says:

Lo, days are coming, says the Lord

And I will consummate a new testament in regard to the house of Israel and in regard to the house of Judah,

Not like the testament which I made for their fathers

In the day of my taking them by their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt,

Seeing that they themselves did not remain in my testament,

And I myself neglected them, says the Lord, etc.

We have a present unreality in both the protasis and the apodosis exactly as we did in v. 4; present because the matter is stated in the form of a general, timeless proposition. Our versions translate this sentence as a past unreality because they apparently thought that the statement should be historical. The present unreality is most pertinent for the readers, some of whom were at that very time thinking of returning to that former testament which they regarded as faultless and final, were thinking that their having accepted Christianity was a mistake. The reverse is true. It is not true that that testament is faultless, otherwise a place would not be sought for a new one (objective genitive).

Hebrews 8:8

8 The fact that a new one is in place is not the writer’s deduction or claim but God’s own assertion which was made already in the days of Jeremiah. “Faulting them” for whom that first testament was made, God himself says that he will make a new one. Whether we prefer the reading αὐτούς or αὐτοῖς, the pronoun is to be construed with the participle; the dative could not be construed with λέγει: “he says to them,” because its position before the verb would give it excessive emphasis. We see that the fault does not lie in some imperfection in this old testament but in the people for whom it was made. Although it was good and holy in itself it could not and did not bring life to its recipients as Paul explains so lucidly in Rom. 7:7–12. The idea is not that God did not know this when he gave Moses that testament; Rom. 3:20b and Gal. 3:19 show why this law-testament was made for Israel; the latter passage states how long it was to stand. Thus it comes about that God made his statement already through Jeremiah.

The writer himself uses λέγει‚ a common way of introducing God as the speaker, and retains “says the Lord (Yahweh)” in v. 8–10 just as Jeremiah declares that he is repeating Yahweh’s own words. This is both revelation and inspiration, and verbal at that. The prophet speaks as though he is repeating a dictation. If you were in his place would you dare to do anything else? Call this being “mechanical” if you will and repudiate verbal inspiration; such a view changes nothing regarding the genuine transmission which is four times vouched for: “λέγει‚ (God) says—the Lord says—the Lord says—the Lord says.”

“Lo!” calls for attention to the Lord’s communication. Hear and believe! Jeremiah writes “days are coming” four times (30:3; 31:27; 31:31; 7:32). Daechsel and others find chiliasm in these “days” and make Christ’s mediatorial work preliminary to these millennial “days” of which the Lord speaks. But this view is untenable, for the final testament is made and consummated in Jesus and his mediatorial work, these “days” refer to the time of that work so that there cannot be a testament that is to come during a millennial era.

Now there follows the great promise which is to claim our attention: “And I will consummate a new testament in regard to (ἐπί, upon) the house of Israel and in regard to the house of Judah,” etc. Hear Jesus as he institutes the Lord’s Supper: “This cup is the new testament in my blood,” Luke 22:20. For some reason the writer of Hebrews changes the LXX’s διαθήσομαιδιαθήκην with its two datives, which is an exact translation of the Hebrew, to συντελέσωδιαθήκην with two ἐπί phrases. This is not inadvertence; there must be a reason. “I will consummate a new testament,” i. e., bring it to its goal or finality, seems to revert to the τελείωσις (7:11) and τετελειωμένον (7:28) as if to interpret what the Lord means, namely not only to issue a new testament but to issue one with finality, one in the issuing of which its consummation will be included. For this consummation crowned the issuing when with his blood, shed on Calvary, Jesus entered into the Holy of Holies in heaven as our eternal High Priest (see v. 1, 2).

The prophecy speaks of the new testament as being for “the house of Israel and the house of Judah,” yet we know that it is not intended for Jews only. Being intended for them, it is most certainly intended for all men. The writer is dealing with former Jews and thus does not stop to bring out the universality of this final testament. “House” pictures both kingdoms, Israel and Judah, as families, each dwelling in its house. The two ἐπί distinguish Israel, the northern kingdom, from Judah, the southern, although the former had already been swept away when Jeremiah received the Lord’s message.

Chiliasts stress this double mention which runs through all the prophecies of the Messianic deliverance and make it a national conversion of Jews at the dawn of their millennium or during the millennium. But what about the northern kingdom, the lost ten tribes? Swept into exile, they disappeared and were amalgamated with the Gentiles. Right here we have the universality of the new testament. Lost among the Gentiles and turned Gentile, the gospel goes out to all nations to bring the new testament in Christ’s blood to all.

Hebrews 8:9

9 The comparison is now made: “not like (according to) the testament which I made for their fathers (not with, our versions) in the day of my taking them by their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt,” etc. This dates the former testament, but it does much more: it indicates its promise. God led those fathers out of Egypt, willed them Canaan as a national home where they were to live as God’s people. As a father takes a son by his hand in order to support and to hold him in difficult places, so God did with these fathers when he led them out of Egypt. We have a genitive absolute modifying a noun, a problem to the grammarians since genitive absolutes regularly stand by themselves (B.-D. 423, 5); R. 1123 offers a different construction, one that is rather questionable.

We regard ὅτι as consecutivum: “not according … seeing that” or “inasmuch as that” (R. 1001); the ὅτι clause states the outcome of this testamentary promise as the reason for making the new testament entirely different. The A. V. has ὅτι = “because”; the R. V., “for.” “Ὅτι is neither; it is clearly consecutive. “They themselves did not remain in my testament,” did not prove to be true heirs of what God intended that they should inherit, namely the land of Canaan flowing with milk and honey, where they were to live in perpetuity under God’s richest blessings.

We have been told how they acted in the wilderness (3:7–11), and the writer makes that a warning for his readers. Here there is a still more earnest warning although it is not a formal warning. They acted thus, God says: “and I myself (strong ἐγώ) neglected or ceased my care for them.” What else could God do? He cannot carry out testamentary provisions and bestow testamentary promises on heirs who repudiate the testament. The Hebrew seems to signify: “although I was a husband to them” (Luther: und ich sie zwingen musste); how the LXX render as they do has not been made clear.

Why the Israelites did not remain in the Lord’s testament is not told here. It was because of their wicked heart of unbelief (3:12). This became so bad already in the wilderness that God swore his judgment oath (3:11; 4:3, 5); again so bad that the northern kingdom was entirely wiped out, that also Judah was sent into seventy years of exile in Babylonia. We know what was impending at the time when this epistle was being written: the Jews were losing Palestine and their national existence forever.

The forfeiting of the testament does not mean that the Jews were unable to fulfill the laws of Moses, and that only by perfectly fulfilling them could they be saved, that, therefore, God substituted the gospel for the law in the new testament. The Sinaitic testament was full of gospel, full of Levitical sacrifices to remove sins. In its new testament form the gospel still binds us to live a holy life. The fault of the Jews under that old testament was their hardness of heart (3:8, etc.; Acts 7:51–53; Isa. 5:1–7), it was thus that, as Acts 7:53 says, they kept not the law. In Matt. 5:20, etc., Jesus makes this plain; read his denunciations in Matt. 23:13–39 which plainly end with the final, permanent loss of the testamentary promise: “Behold your house is left unto you desolate”—land, nation, Temple, everything are gone going on 2, 000 years.

Hebrews 8:10

10 We again have consecutive ὅτι to indicate the result of the previous result:

So that this (is) the testament which I will draw up for the house of Israel

After those days, says the Lord:

I will give my laws upon their mind,

And on their heart will I inscribe them;

And I will be their God,

And they shall be my people.

And they shall not each one teach his fellow citizen,

And each one his brother, saying: Know the Lord!

Because all shall be acquainted with me,

From their small to (their) great;

Because I will be merciful to their unrighteousness,

And their sins will I not remember any longer.

Here we have the inwardness of the new testament which God promised to draw up for the house of Israel (dative of advantage; not “with the house” as in our versions). Only Israel needs to be mentioned when the author repeats God’s statement. It will be a testament without ceremonial, ritual, civil, and formal laws. All outward regulations will be discarded. “After those days” refers to the day promised in v. 8 and means after they set in.

The lone participle διδούς disturbs the grammarians. The most instructive discussion on this point is found in Moulton, Einleitung 352, etc. The participle is used as a finite verb and is not to be construed with what precedes but is parallel to “I will inscribe.” The LXX has διδοὺςδώσω, some LXX copies omit δώσω. A large number of papyri use the participle in place of a finite verb in the same way. So we translate: “I will give my laws into their mind, and on their heart will I inscribe them.” These are two synonymous lines, and the phrases are placed chiastically.

The διάνοια is the whole thinking power of man which directs his acts from inside of him and not from outside like some imposed code or legal force. The καρδία is the very seat of the personality with all its power of thinking, feeling, and willing, where all thoughts, words, and deeds have their secret origin. God’s testament promise is that he will give as a gift to our mind and engrave as this gift on our heart his laws which will no longer be “set before” us (Jer. 9:13; Deut. 4:8; 11:32; etc.) as the engraved tables of stone and other Mosaic legal codes were.

The result is expressed by means of two additional lines: “And I will be their God, and they shall be my people,” the two εἰς with predicates (R. 481, etc.) and λαός as a designation of God’s chosen nation or people.

This is the beautiful ideal of sanctification which God will realize. It is the fruit of justification as v. 12 does not fail to state. It is mediated by true enlightenment as v. 11 states. No longer does the law hedge in one particular nation and shut it off from others with a high wall of legal restrictions. The law is no longer the stern παιδαγωγός to watch the boy on his way to and from school. All scaffolding is removed. In the Christian Church the unchanging moral features of God’s law which define the holiness without which no man shall see God are directly implanted in the hearts of believers by the Spirit and the Word and thus constrain them to walk in God’s ways.

We use the law as our Regel or rule, yet not in its multifarious legislative details that have temporary use and purpose only but as an aid to guide and to express our will to do God’s will for Jesus’ sake. God’s true children of the Old Testament experienced the same thing but were ever weighted down with regulations and restrictions which the Pharisees even multiplied by adding their “commandments of men” with the result that on the whole the people “did not remain in God’s testament” (v. 9).

Hebrews 8:11

11 The second superior mark of the new testament is the fact that in it “they shall not each one teach his fellow citizen, and each one his brother, saying: ‘Know the Lord!’” This teaching is evidently regarded as a mark of inferiority of the old testament. In the new “all shall be acquainted with me, from their small to their great,” i. e., this constant dependence for information shall cease. The form εἰδήσουσι is future (B.-D. 101) and not future perfect (R. 906).

It is open to question whether the difference between the two verbs γνῶθι and εἰδήσουσι should be stressed. The former indicates the relation of the subject to the object: Erkenne den Herrn! the latter only the relation of the object to the subject: sie werden mich kennen; the one stresses personal, appropriating knowledge cum affectu et effectu, the latter the knowledge which may not go to that length. The verb seems to be changed in these two poetical lines only for the sake of variation: all will have the right, appropriative knowledge of Yahweh. This knowledge is the basis of the holiness in their hearts (v. 10).

The difference between the two testaments that is here brought out seems unclear to some interpreters. Some think that in the New Testament times the Old Testament prophets and priests will have disappeared; but “each one his fellow citizen” and “each one his brother” say nothing about prophets and priests teaching the people, and to this day we still have preachers and teachers for the members of the church.

Others tread upon questionable ground. Langsdorff states: “Each person comes to the right knowledge by his own efforts, from within.” This is, however, the claim of fanatics who repudiate the written Word as God’s means of enlightenment and imagine that the Spirit speaks to their hearts immediately, without, beyond, above the Word of Scripture. Still others think that the Israelites had no personal experience of the Lord while we Christians have this experience. But the whole Book of Psalms, to mention only this, is full of the truest, deepest spiritual experience, cf. Ps. 23; Ps. 32; Ps. 103.

The difference lies in the revelation itself. Revelation was incomplete throughout the days of that old testament. From the time of Moses prophet after prophet appeared who brought message after message. Jeremiah, who is quoted, is one of them. This explains why one citizen and brother had to inform another. A prophet appeared, perhaps in the Temple, and before a smaller or a larger company spoke the Lord’s message which he had received.

Then those who heard it passed it on to others, one taught another. Take the message quoted. When Jeremiah first uttered it, when he also used symbolic acts as he did in 19:1; 24:1; 27:2, how did all the people learn what he said and what he did? One had to tell another. Even the words and the deeds of Jesus were at first communicated in this manner. To be sure, there were also written records in the Old Testament times, yet overlook not 2 Chron. 34:14; and, in the case of Jeremiah’s time, Jer. 36:32.

After the return from Babylon there was the compilation of the whole Old Testament canon and the reading of these Old Testament Scriptures in the synagogues which then sprang up everywhere. But all this written revelation was still far from being in the state in which it is today.

Note what our writer says in 1:1, 2. The complete revelation came in Jesus, God’s Son. After Pentecost the Spirit spread it far and wide. Although it was at first transmitted in the old, imperfect way this complete revelation was soon fixed for all time in a final canon to which all have full and free access. We are no longer dependent on merely what one may hear from another. No new prophets appear with new messages.

We have all of God’s Word; and each has it in his own hand. We can by it even test those who stand up to preach and to teach it. “From their small up to their great” is correct: from our children and our catechumens up to our great theologians; God’s saving revelation, complete at last, is accessible to all alike. It is the fulfillment of the prophecy of Jeremiah and of Isa. 54:13; 11:9; Hab. 2:14; Joel 2:28; cf., John 6:45; 1 John 2:20, 27.

Hebrews 8:12

12 The third great mark of the new testament is the forgiveness it bestows on all who are placed under it: “Because I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins will I not remember any longer.” The Hebrew word which is translated “unrighteousness” signifies “guilt,” “guiltiness.” This deserves full punishment, yet God says that he will be ἵλεως, “merciful,” and will thus not punish. The synonymous line says still more, namely that God will no longer remember the sins. They will be blotted from his mind and his memory as if he had never known them. The idea is not that God arbitrarily forgives and forgets any man’s sins. “Blessed is he … whose sin is covered,” Ps. 32:1. “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us,” Ps. 103:12. “Thou wilt cast all our sins into the depths of the sea,” Micah 7:19. It is the expiating power of Jesus’ blood that covers, removes, and casts into the depths our sins; then they are, indeed, erased from the memory of God. This is divine forgiveness, the greatest mark of the new testament.

The Sinaitic testament should not be conceived as a mere set of laws that resulted in transgressions while the new testament is gospel and thus filled with pardon. Then the old would really be no testament at all. If it is claimed that the Jews had to keep the law in order to be saved, then none were saved before Jesus came. The Sinaitic laws of ritual are full of forgiveness. “Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah,” Ps. 32:5. “Who forgiveth all thine iniquities,” Ps. 103:3. “If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared,” Ps. 130:3, 4.

The difference does not lie along this line. Christ’s expiation on the cross was just as effective for contrite sinners who lived before Calvary as it is for those who live after Calvary, before Christ entered the Holy of Holies in heaven as well as after he entered it (v. 1, 2).

The difference lies in this fact: the old testament was given to a nation. It was thus that the bulk of this nation ever and again proved obdurate; “they did not remain in my testament” (v. 9). When this old Mosaic testament was brought to them because of their transgressions (Gal. 3:17, 19), they did not let even its threats and its judgments halt them and keep them true. The new testament is not intended for a nation. All that is national, temporal, preparatory, as far as preserving one nation as God’s people is concerned, has disappeared. The new testament is intended for all men, no matter in what nation they may be found, who by contrition, repentance, faith, and holy obedience do remain in this testament and thus do obtain all that its testamentary provisions convey: enlightenment (v. 11), holiness (v. 10), and above all forgiveness (v. 12). As v. 8 states it with the word συντελεῖν, the new testament is actually consummated or accomplished, brought to its goal.

Hebrews 8:13

13 Yet it is not the universality or any other of the many great things contained in the word of God quoted from Jeremiah that the writer wishes to stress. For his readers, who are thinking of throwing away the new testament and its Mediator in the heavenly Holy of Holies and going back to the old national testament, the writer selects only this one decisive point from the quotation: In saying a new one he has declared the first one old. Now the thing declared old and becoming aged (is) near to vanishing away.

Do the readers intend to go back to such a thing? The writer lays his finger on just the one word “καινήν” which was used in v. 8. This one word is all-decisive for his readers: God himself has declared the first testament old when about 600 B. C. he said “a new one.” Jesus did not make it old. It was old when God spoke centuries ago and certainly has not grown younger during all the following centuries.

Δέ is not “but” (adversative); it merely adds the point of God’s having declared the first testament old centuries ago: “Now the thing declared old and becoming aged is near to vanishing away.” This is a self-evident general statement; it is, therefore, worded with the neuter: τό with participles; not with the feminine, not following the gender of τὴνπρώτην. We regard παλαιούμενον as a passive and thus matching the active “God has declared.” Some prefer to regard it as the middle: “the thing becoming old,” because the next participle γηράσκον is not a passive. Both participles follow one article, both are also in the present tense which describes the thing, but that fact does not make both participles intransitive. The first: “the thing declared old,” is not declared only so by God; it is secondly “becoming aged,” actually weak, tottering with senility. Thus it is “near to vanishing away” like an old, old man who is sinking into his grave. To such a thing the readers would go back if they again became Jews.

“Near to vanishing away,” like the descriptive present participles, does not refer merely to the present time of writing but to anything that at any time is in such a condition of decrepitude. When it is applied to the old testament this decrepit condition and the imminence of fading out completely existed already in Jeremiah’s time. There is thus no particular reference to the condition of Judaism at the time of the writing of this epistle, the imminence of the destruction of the nation, Jerusalem, and the Temple. We cannot refer to this verse when dating the epistle. It contains nothing to warrant the assumption that the Temple was already destroyed. This vanishing away pertains only to the old testament of Moses.

Whether the Temple and its rituals continue or not is in no way pertinent to what the writer says. We know that at the time of the death of Jesus its inner veil was rent from top to bottom (Matt. 27:51), a fact which leaves little to be desired.

R. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, by A. T. Robertson, 4th ed.

B.-D. Friedrich Blass’ Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, vierte, voellig neugearbeitete Auflage, besorgt von Albert Debrunner.