ee od 
 
 ὁχεέν για ἐψ, errs 
 
 means Ἶ : 
 Tee ἘΣ τ ττωΣ 
 
 ᾿ ὑπο συσ σας τη 
 re + τῷ 
 ror) a! 
 
 ah a λτὺν 
 see 
 ALES 
 ‘ Tin τ veo 
 
 ey SRR glee eek 
 5 at DS 
 one ee 
 
 ss 
 
 cm erineahs 
 a 
 pean 
 
 Maan e Sanaa oat 
 
ARY 
 OF 
 PRING 
 FE 
 TQ 
 
 ik 
 γ 
 
 A 
 4 
 ἔθ] 
 LOGIC; 
 Al 
 SE 
 cS 
 
CLARKS 
 
 FOREIGN 
 
 THEOLOGICAL LIBRARY. 
 
 FOURTH SERIES. 
 
 WO) XOGVT Dk 
 
 Delitssch’s Commentary on the Bebrews. 
 
 VOL. 11, 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 T. AND T. CLARK, 38, GEORGE STREET 
 
 MDCCCLXXII. 
 
PRINTED BY MURRAY AND GIBB, 
 FOR 
 
 T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. 
 
 LONDON, . . . .« HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. 
 DUBLIN, . . . »« JOHN ROBERTSON AND CO. 
 
 NEW YORK, . . . OC. SCRIBNER AND CO. 
 
COMMENTARY 
 
 ON THE 
 
 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 BY 
 
 FRANZ DELITZSOCH, D.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY, LEIPSIG, 
 
 Cranslated from the German 
 BY 
 
 DHOMAS, sl: KINGSBURY, M.A: 
 VOL. hE 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 T. & T. CLARK, 38, GEORGE STREET, 
 MDCCCLXXII. 
 
‘HULELAL IS 
 SVE A LOWE δ ΝΕ A. 
 TAA ION a 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SECOND PART OF THE EPISTLE—Continued. 
 (CHAP. vil. 1—x. 18.) 
 
 SECOND SECTION. 
 
 THE HIGH-PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST GREATER THAN, AND ANTI- 
 
 TYPICAL OF, THAT OF AARON. 
 PAGE 
 
 Such an high priest (after the order of Melchizedek) it was 
 meet that we should have; One, namely, who, having 
 offered up Himself in sinless purity once for all, is royally 
 enthroned at God’s right hand, and who, being raised as 
 Mediator of the new covenant infinitely above the Aaronic 
 priesthood and their ministries in the earthly tabernacle, is 
 working now for us in the archetypal sanctuary, into which 
 He has once entered with His own blood, accomplishing 
 thereby an eternal redemption (Chap. vii. 26-ix. 12), : 1 
 
 THIRD SECTION 
 
 THE ETERNAL AND ABSOLUTE HIGH-PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST AND 
 ITS FINAL OPERATION SUPERSEDING ALL THE TYPES AND 
 SHADOWS OF THE Law. 
 
 The self-sacrifice of Christ cleanses the hearts to which its 
 blood is applied, and so prepares them for the living service 
 of the living God; His death is the consecration of a new 
 covenant, and of the things in heaven; His entrance into 
 the eternal sanctuary is the seal of the absolute remission of 
 sin, beyond which nothing more remains in prospect but His 
 ultimate return to manifest our salvation. In contrast with 
 the oft-repeated sacrifices of the law, Christ by His one 
 self-offering has fully accomplished the will of God, and 
 obtained a perfect sanctification for us; henceforth He sits 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 enthroned expecting final victory : the new covenant is now 
 established, and needs no other sacrifice than His, being 
 based on the absolute forgiveness of sins procured thereby 
 (Chap. ix. 13-x. 18), : : 5 5 A 90 
 
 THIRD PART OF THE EPISTLE (Cur. x. 19—x!I1.). 
 
 Tur Disposition oF MIND AND MANNER OF LIFE REQUIRED OF US 
 IN THIS TIME OF WAITING BETWEEN THE CoMMENCEMENT AND 
 THE PERFECTING OF THE WORK OF OUR SALVATION. 
 
 Exhortation to approach the newly opened heavenly sanc- 
 tuary with full assurance of faith ; to hold fast the confes- 
 sion of our well-assured hope ; to exercise mutual vigilance 
 over one another, in expectation of the inevitable day of 
 judgment which will overtake with its penalties all those 
 who wilfully apostatize from the once received truth ; and 
 to abide in the stedfastness of former days of trial, so as 
 not finally to lose the recompense of reward which that day 
 will bring to those who live by faith (Chap. x. 19-39), - 168 
 
 Faith, a firm, unhesitating assurance of the future and the 
 unseen, was, as the sacred history shows, from the begin- 
 ning the essential characteristic of every God-accepted life, 
 the condition of every divine blessing and success, the 
 strength of every spiritually heroic action or suffering ; 
 faith, namely, in the divine promises, whose fulfilment the 
 fathers hailed only afar off, that having been reserved for 
 us, so that they without us could not be made perfect 
 (Chap. xi.), . : Ξ . : : 202 
 
 Exhortation and encouragement, in view of such ἃ cloud of 
 witnesses, and of the leadership and example of the Lord 
 Jesus Himself, who in the way of suffering has attained to 
 glory, not to grow faint in the conflict with sin, and not 
 to be unmindful of that fatherly love from which the dis- 
 cipline of suffering comes, nor of those peaceable fruits of 
 righteousness which they will gather who submit them- 
 selves to it (Chap. xii. 1-11), : : : ς 204 
 
 Further exhortation to rouse themselves to courageous perse- 
 verance in their Christian course, and, following peace and 
 holiness, not to suffer any impurity to spring up among 
 them, lest any, like Esau, might discover, too late, how 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 miserably they had forfeited the promised blessing (Chap. 
 xii, 12-17), . : : 
 
 Renewed warning against apostasy: By how much more 
 glorious the revelation of the New Testament (which places 
 us in living communion with the world to come) is than 
 the revelation made to Israel on Mount Sinai, and by how 
 much the kingdom which cannot be moved bestowed on us 
 excels in glory the terrors of the shaken earth at the giving 
 of the law, by so much greater will be our punishment if 
 found unfaithful and disobedient ; seeing that the God of 
 the New Testament, as of the Old, is a consuming fire 
 (Chap. xii. 18-29), . : : : 
 
 Divers admonitions to Christian virtues, especially to an imi- 
 tation of the faith of their departed leaders; and also, in 
 contrast to the Levitical legal prescriptions and the Levi- 
 tical divine service, both now done away with, exhortations 
 to a faithful holding fast to Jesus Christ eternally the same; 
 who offered Himself up without the gate of Jerusalem in 
 order to direct our views away from the earthly Jérusalem 
 to the heavenly and abiding city (Chap. xiii. 1-17), . 
 
 Conclusion (Chap. xiii. 18-25), : : Ξ 
 
 DISSERTATIONS. 
 
 I. As Τὸ THE AUTHOR OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 . 
 
 II. ON THE SURE SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL Doc- 
 
 TRINE OF VICARIOUS SATISFACTION, . Ξ : Ὁ 
 APPENDIX. 
 I. Tue ΠΙΤΌΑΙ, or THE DAY OF ATONEMENT, . Ξ ° 
 
 II. ON THE SACRIFICIAL CHARACTER OF THE Lorp’s SUPPER, 
 
 NOTES, . : 
 
 ©9 
 ©9 
 a 
 
 368 
 395 
 
 409 
 
 418 
 
 464 
 482 
 
 486 
 
| | bs 
 Song μιν nal ἘΠῚ ide ta 
 an Rae an” ἢ! ay ti ae ον ἢ “| 438 a 
 ἐν τ φρο ν iO: A λυ δεν Pa θοὸν 
 Bivins (k! ROK 06) ep λους UNE Rimi i 
 banat ὕπο sabia Sor tA ἃ ney ec hee 
 Fa‘ nice Soiree ΚΣ Ἔλα Ae Lea Batt ἈΦ Ὰ 
 i} dl ee Ἧι os if af ρον ΠΣ al 
 A a μὴν Ore 8 4 (Cy Nk tN 
 ie Sig. Where) oh om ak iid tale 
 | “aaa ΤΩΝ 2. Rig 188 Malte dst seit Mea 
 ‘i Aa b, ae ἡ ὯΝ «ΝΙΝ ΠΡ Ἢ gen. 
 ny Γ δὺς ἊΝ bat ἱ dk Ὁ ἢ Ὁ ᾿ 
 sf ἯΝ oe fey : iat vite it ἐπ} τς Ate Re et ey ΧΩ eo A 
 my oe: i's pe aes Me ofl, ii Egil i “We a aid lh rye 
 rach ft Aya ane ον ΡΥ ΠῚ ἣν ΤΩΝ, 
 i eet ΠΝ τον a San an nie 4 sit be pri 
 a ee ane ay dart hatin " ἤν ἀν, ΕἾΝ ΜΡ VX ὦ νι 
 PW het “δ᾽ Oy gly 9: Gia DP sg ΠΝ νῷ ἄπ py , 
 ἜΝ ἘΠ ἡ hw ᾿" τ τὰ ie 4 te Sah : Tah fe : a 
 4 arid has wd } enh ty Daw ΠΝ, Ly eg Bi es 
 
 A oa i eae " 
 
 ’ 
 x ne 
 “Ἢ 
 
 Pan OT ee) raat! aa, 
 
 i (lhe ὌΝ 
 
 ΤΌ ἀπ μιν! ἢ φῇ ie Ue ew Cae “Ae ΠΝ 
 ΝΡ Ἢ μιν mi WMP HHL TE BA οὐ τ αν γἡ ht 
 
 τῶν Gy: δ ae oe * nena tneae SO ASF Ὁ iti 
 
 Dus: a ogi pte Thee 7 δ. 
 Τὰ oe are Τὴ hae ij 
 
 + 
 
 ; ie ἴα ph (neti eau eit ἡγε τι egy hn 1: 
 Like ue ἡ earns pac pci Py Avert Ὦ 
 
 εν 
 » 
 
 "δ 
 ‘ , oni 
 MiG a Peles, 
 
 ve | ως i b 
 
 At 
 
SECOND PART OF THE EPISTLE. 
 
 ——@—_—_ 
 
 SECOND SECTION. 
 
 THE HIGH-PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST GREATER THAN, AND 
 ANTITYPICAL OF, THAT OF AARON. 
 
 Caap. vit. 26-1x. 12. Such an high priest (after the order 
 of Melchizedek) it was meet that we should have; One, 
 namely, who, having offered up Himself in sinless purity 
 once for all, is royally enthroned at God’s right hand, 
 and who, being. raised as Mediator of the new covenant 
 infinitely above the Aaronic priesthood and their ministries 
 in the earthly tabernacle, is working now for us in the 
 archetypal sanctuary, into which He has once entered with 
 
 flis own blood, accomplishing thereby an eternal redemp- 
 tion. 
 
 @A7A LTH one glance backwards [in τοιοῦτος γάρ] at the 
 |. Melchizedekean nature of our Lord’s priesthood 
 expounded in the former section (vii. 1-25), and 
 more especially at what was there said (in ver. 25) 
 of Him as “ ever-living,” and so able perfectly to save and 
 perpetually to mediate for us, the sacred writer thus con- 
 tinues : 
 
 Ver. 26. For such an high priest was also meet for us, holy, 
 innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher 
 than the heavens. 
 
 The particle γάρ marks here a connection not loose and 
 VOL. IT. A 
 
2 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 accidental, as Tholuck assumes, but as close and intimate as 
 possible. The whole following paragraph (vers. 26-28) is 
 an expansion of the opening words: “ for such an High Priest 
 was meet also for us.” This is evident from the circum- 
 stance that the series of five attributes in ver. 26 closes 
 with “ made higher than the heavens,” and’ that this is again 
 taken up at vili. 1, and made the starting-point of a fresh 
 development. Τοιοῦτος refers back to the Melchizedek cha- 
 racter of our Lord’s priesthood just set forth (vii. 1-25), 
 with which the sacred writer now combines its super- 
 Aaronical and high-priestly character, as already intimated 
 in a previous section (ch. v. 1-10), and (in a preparatory 
 way) still earlier (ii. 17, 18, and iii. 1). "Επρεπεν, used 
 before (ii. 10) to designate that which was meet or fitting 
 for God to do on our behalf, is here repeated to designate 
 what was meet and fitting for us to have in Him who should 
 carry out the divine purpose,—a purpose which nothing less 
 could satisfy than our transcendent inward and heavenly 
 perfection. Καί (rightly inserted in the texts of Griesbach, 
 Lachmann, and Tischendorf, before ἔπρεπεν) is intensive, 
 and not to be rendered by a mere “ even,” as by Winer 
 (“ for such an high priest was even the fitting one for us :” 
 Gr. ὃ 53, p. 889 Germ., p. 458 Eng. tr.). Much more is 
 contained in it than that; the thought being: “ We have 
 such an high priest provided for us; and further, just such 
 an one we stood in need of.” 
 
 The five attributes which follow are not a mere expansion 
 of the τοιοῦτος (Schlichting); nor, on the other hand, are 
 they indefinite additions to its meaning (Liinemann, Bleek, 
 De Wette, etc.) ; but are selected to characterize Him who is 
 both a priest ‘“ after the order of Melchizedek,” and (beyond 
 the type of Melchizedek) a “ high priest,” the antitype of 
 Aaron. 
 
 And (1.) He is styled, in reference to His relation to God 
 the Father, ὅσιος (sanctus), godly-minded, saintly, so as on 
 the one hand to be well-pleasing to God, and on the other 
 to inspire reverence in us. In the citation [twice made from 
 
 1 [The Codex Sinaiticus omits it.—Tr. ] 
 
CHAP. VII. 26. 3 
 
 the sixteenth Psalm at] Acts ii. 27 and xiii. 35, τὸν ὅσιόν 
 σου is regarded as an appellation of Christ. It is there the 
 rendering of the Hebrew ὙΠ [thy pious, or favoured one]. 
 The Septuagint renders wp uniformly by ἅγιος, never by 
 ὅσιος, and 7pm and the like adjectives always by ὅσιος, 
 never by ἅγιος. The distinction between the two words is 
 made by Hofmann to consist in ἅγιος denoting the antithesis 
 of that which is out of or does not pertain to God, ὅσιος 
 of that which is ungodlike and contrary to the divine will ; 
 while Ebrard regards ὅσιος as antithetical to “ sinful,” ἅγιος 
 to “ profane.” The two distinctions are easily reconciled, 
 and both are accurate. “Ἅγιος and ὅσιος are related to each 
 other much as our adjectives “holy” and “ religious.” 
 “Ἅγιος, when applied to a person, denotes a sacred, divinely 
 dedicated, and guarded being; ὅσιος a godlike, divinely 
 guided, and enlightened disposition. 
 
 (2.) The second attribute of our High Priest is ἄκακος : 
 this He is in relation to men, being without guile, malice, or 
 unkindness of any sort, unreservedly good and gracious to 
 all. “Axaxos is here equivalent to the Hebrew 0"; whereas 
 at Rom. xvi. 18, τῶν ἀκάκων (the simple ones) would have to 
 be rendered by ΝΠ." 
 
 (3.) With reference to His perfect and perpetual fitness for 
 the discharge of His priestly office, our Lord is styled ἀμίαντος 
 (immaculate), as being both undefiled in fact and incapable 
 of defilement. The first condition of lawful entrance into 
 the Levitical sanctuary, and of service there, was corporeal 
 purity (Lev. xv. 31). Priests, before performing divine 
 service, and especially the high priest on the day of atone- 
 ment (Ley. xvi. 4), were obliged to wash or bathe. But of 
 Christ it is said, not only that He is actually free from every 
 kind of uncleanness, but also incapable of contracting such : 
 ἀμίαντος, from μιαίνεσθαι, the Septuagint rendering of 8DYT 
 (to make unclean). He is like the element of fire, which 
 purifies other things, without itself contracting any impurity. 
 Nor can aught unclean approach Him even outwardly now, 
 
 1 See Note A at the end of this volume. 
 2 See Note A. 
 
4 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 to disturb the pure serenity of His heavenly mode of being. 
 Therefore, 
 
 (4.) With reference to His present dwelling-place, He is 
 spoken of as κεχωρισμένος ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτωλῶν, that is, so 
 separated from evil men (D'NDn or Dw) as to be hence- 
 forth unassailable by them (St. John vii. 32-36),—“ taken 
 away” (as Isaiah’ expresses it) “ from the vexation” or “ op- 
 pression’ (of their presence), and from their ungodly “ judg- 
 ment,” whereby He was once condemned to a malefactor’s 
 death. The meaning of κεχωρισμένος ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτωλῶν 
 is not (as Ebrard assumes) that our Lord, in all His dealings 
 with sinners, remains free from any inward sympathy with 
 their sinfulness, nor (as Hofmann? and others put it) that 
 He has nothing in common with sinners, whereby He could 
 ever become like-minded with them; but simply, that in 
 virtue of His exaltation He is now for evermore withdrawn 
 from all perturbing contact with evil men. [The “ contra- 
 diction of sinners” vexes Him no more] (Bengel, Tholuck, 
 Bleek, De Wette, Liinemann). And even that is not all. He 
 is also, 
 
 (5.) In respect to His present mode of existence, “ become 
 higher than the heavens” (ὑψηλότερος τῶν οὐρανῶν γενόμενος) ; 
 1.6. He is now uplifted above all created heavens into the 
 eternal realm of true life, or (as might be scripturally said) 
 into the uncreated heaven itself of the divine nature, so that 
 He is now become, strictly speaking, as to His mode of 
 being, supra-mundane. Hofmann observes, quite correctly 
 (Schrifibeweis, il. 1, 388): “ Whenever it is only meant to say 
 
 1 158. 1111. 8. [Comp. Apoc. xii. 5, ἡρπάσθη τὸ τέκνον αὐτῆς πρὸς τὸν 
 
 Θεόν. Isaac Watts expresses the same thought finely in a communion 
 hymn ; 
 
 "Ὁ With joy we tell the scofling age, 
 He that was dead has left His tomb ; 
 He lives above their utmost rage, 
 And we are waiting till He come.” 
 Book iii. Hymn 19.] 
 5 Schriftbeweis, ii. 1, 404. The correct interpretation of κεχωρισμένος 
 is, however, assumed at pp. 82 and 286 of the same volume,—that, namely, 
 which makes it express not so much a moral as a quasi-local separation. 
 
CHAP. VII. 27. 5 
 
 of the glorified Jesus that He has departed from the world 
 of humanity and is returned to the Father, the term εἰς τὸν 
 οὐρανόν is quite sufficient. But it is not so when the purpose 
 is to deny His inclusion within any sensible limitations that 
 might avail to separate Him from the supra-mundane God- 
 head. In such case we have the expression ὑπεράνω πάν- 
 Tov τῶν οὐρανῶν (‘ far above all the heavens’), Eph. iv. 10, 
 and the like.” [Comp. Heb. iv. 14.] Moreover, we certainly 
 do not misrepresent the sacred writer’s thought when we say, 
 that while the first three of these attributes [ὅσιος, ἄκακος, 
 ἀμίαντος] describe our Lord, in His high-priestly character, 
 as the antitype of Aaron, and in His venerable, gracious, 
 and immaculate humanity, the two last [keywp. ἀπ. τ. ἅμαρτ. 
 and ὑψηλοτ. τ. ovp. γενομ.} express the super-celestial exal- 
 tation of His royal priesthood, in which He is the antitype of 
 Melchizedek, and has not only all enemies, but the heavenly 
 world itself, nay, “ all the heavens,” beneath His feet. In 
 this exaltation He is also raised above the typical high 
 priests of the Old Testament in yet another particular : 
 His great atoning sacrifice has been once offered in the past, 
 and once for all." 
 
 Ver. 27. Who hath not daily need, like the high priests, to 
 offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins, and then for those of 
 the people, for this he did once for all, when he offered up 
 himself. 
 
 ᾿Ανάγκειν ἔχειν with following infinitive is a phrase familiar 
 to St. Luke (xiv. 18, xxiii. 17); but in the Gospel and the 
 Acts he uses προσφέρειν, not ἀναφέρειν, in this sense of offer- 
 ing sacrifice. IIpoogépewv, which is likewise of ordinary 
 occurrence in our epistle, is the usual Septuagint rendering 
 of 29pn (837) ; while ἀναφέρειν stands for ndyn, and in the 
 Pentateuch still more frequently for ΡΠ in combination 
 with mn, the complete phrase being ἀναφέρειν ἐπὶ τὸ 
 θυσιαστήριον (comp. Jas. 11. 21). ᾿Αναφέρειν, which is used 
 in the Septuagint in connection with the ee (Lev. 
 iv. 10, 31) as well as with the burnt-offering (AD 9), 1 is pur- 
 
 1 See Note B at the end of this volume. 
 
6 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 posely chosen by the sacred writer here to express that lift- 
 ing up of Christ upon the altar of the cross (ἐπὶ τὸ ξύλον) 
 which he seems to have mainly in view.’ The expression 
 ἀναφέρειν θυσίας ὑπὲρ ἁμαρτιῶν leads us to think specially 
 of the sin-offerings under the law (ΠΝ ὉΠ) ; and the more so, 
 because the additional phrases, πρότερον ὑπὲρ τῶν ἰδίων 
 ἁμαρτιῶν, ἔπειτα τῶν τοῦ λαοῦ, contain an evident reference 
 to the ritual of the day of atonement, as was the case with 
 the similar passage in ch. v. 3.7. That presentation, however, 
 first of a sin-offering for himself and his house, and then of 
 another sin-offering for the whole congregation, was per- 
 formed by the Levitical high priest only once a year (κατ᾽ 
 ἐνιαυτόν, ix. 25); whereas here the sacred writer appears 
 to affirm this of the high priests, as being a part of their 
 daily service (καθ᾽ ἡμέραν),---ἃ difficulty which has from 
 the first severely exercised the ingenuity of interpreters. 
 Various solutions have been proposed: 1. Some take καθ᾽ 
 ἡμέραν to signify, “ on some one definite day in the course 
 of the twelvemonth,”* or more generally, “on recurring 
 days,” “again and again;”* so Ebrard, with Bengel, 
 would render καθ᾽ ἡμέραν by “ one day after another.” 
 He supposes the sacred writer looking back through the 
 centuries to fix his eye merely on the series of successive 
 days of atonement, on which the high priests of the law 
 had again and again presented the same sacrifices. But 
 this insertion of supposed yearly intervals would completely 
 invert the proper meaning of καθ᾽ ἡμέραν, which would 
 likewise be the worst possible equivalent for διαπαντός that 
 
 1 Compare 1 Pet. ii. 24 with Heb. ix. 28 [and Heb. xiii. 10 with the 
 note there]. In the Hebrew sacrificial word pbym (to make go up or 
 
 ascend), the notions of sending up the sacrifice to heaven by fire, and of 
 bringing it up to the altar (narn-by or M211D2), appear to be combined, 
 nor is it easy to say which of the two should be regarded as the more 
 prominent. 
 
 2 καθὼς περὶ τοῦ λαοῦ οὕτως καὶ περὶ ἑαυτοῦ προσφέρειν περὶ ἁμαρτιῶν, 
 where the περὶ &w. refers to the sin-offerings still more evidently than 
 the ὑπὲρ au. here. 
 
 3 So Schlichting, and others after him. 
 
 4 Grotius, Bohme, De Wette. 
 
CHAP. VII. 27. 7 
 
 an author so rich and so accurate in his phraseology could 
 have chosen ; whereas the proper expression for “ every year 
 on some fixed day” would be τακτῇ ἡμέρᾳ, or καθ᾽ ἡμέραν 
 μετὰ τὸν ἐνιαυτόν, or Kat ἐνιαυτόν ἐν TH αὐτῇ ἡμέρᾳ, or 
 something similar. We must therefore approve the attempt 
 made by most modern interpreters” to find other ways of 
 maintaining the accuracy of this assertion, that the high 
 priests had need daily to offer, first for their own sins, and 
 then for those of the people. To accomplish this, it is assumed 
 —2. That the sacred writer is here consciously combining or 
 confusing the special service of the high priest once a year 
 on the day of atonement, with the part which he took in 
 the daily sacrifices. We are consequently referred (a) to 
 the daily morning and evening sacrifice, the Zhamid, con- 
 sisting of one lamb (and on the Sabbath of two lambs) on 
 each occasion. But the high priest did not necessarily take 
 part in this offering: he officiated only when it pleased him- 
 self to do so;*® or, as Josephus says,’ on Sabbaths, new 
 moons, and other solemn occasions. The ἀνάγκην ἔχει, 
 therefore, of our passage, would not be a suitable expression. 
 Moreover, the πρότερον and ἔπειτα, the “ first for himself ” 
 and the “then for the people,” would have no proper sig- 
 nificance in reference to the daily offering of the Thamid, 
 which was intended to be mainly symbolical of the aca ll 
 adoration due from Israel to his God, and was consequently 
 presented at the beginning and close of each succeeding day, 
 in the name not first of the high priest and then of the people, 
 but of the whole congregation as an indivisible unity, while 
 they in their turn were said to pray “ before the Thamidim ” 
 (7'19N 333), 1.6. in the presence of these their daily or perpetual 
 sacrifices. Reference has indeed been made to a passage in 
 
 1 Dr. Biesenthal ingeniously suggests that καθ ἡμέρων is here an 
 erroneous rendering of what he assumes to have been the reading of the 
 Hebrew original text of the epistle—y) NDYY—~7.e. “‘ every day of atone- 
 ment.” [The Jews call the day of atonement sp), ‘‘ the day,” ze. the 
 day κατ᾽ eZoxnv.—TR. ] 
 
 2 With exception of Ebrard, as above, and of De Wette. 
 
 3 So Thamid vii. 3, ΝΥ) jora, “at such time as pleases him.” 
 * Jos. Bell. v. 5, 7. 
 
8 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 Philo (i. 497, 26), according to which there were two kinds 
 of Thamidim,'—one a daily offering made by the priests for 
 themselves, and the other that made by them on behalf of the 
 people. This is true; but by the Thamid offered for the 
 people Philo understands, as he says himself expressly, the 
 offering of the two lambs; and by the other or priestly Tha- 
 <a S he carefully distinguishes from this as (διὰ) τῆς 
 σεμιδάλεως ---ἶΘ simply means Bie daily sacerdotal Minchah, 
 which had nothing to do with the Thamid proper, and must 
 be carefully distinguished likewise from the people’s Minchah, 
 which formed a part or appendage of their Thamid, as of 
 every other burnt-offering. This sacerdotal Minchah, about 
 which most interpreters of our epistle seem much in the dark,” 
 may be supposed to have been in the author’s mind when using 
 the expression καθ᾽ ἡμέραν, and so lead us (Ὁ) to another and 
 more satisfactory interpretation of it. The facts of the case 
 are these. We read at Lev. vi. 13-16° of a Ton ΠῚ (“a 
 meat-offering perpetual”) which the high priest, from the 
 day of his anointing onwards, had to offer daily, half in the 
 morning and half at even, This Minchah, like every meat- 
 offering for the priest, was to be “wholly burnt.” It was 
 therefore a daily vegetable holocaust (quite independent of 
 any other sacrifice) which the high priest had to offer for 
 himself, not for the people, as a daily renewed consecration 
 to his office. We have nothing here to do with the question 
 whether this precept bound the ordinary priests as well as 
 the high priest ; it is enough for our purpose to know that 
 the latter had’to present this Minchah on the day of his 
 consecration, and was bound by the letter of the law to 
 repeat it daily ever afterwards. As a sacrifice of initiation 
 it was called 73370212 (the Mincha of dedication), and in 
 its daily repetition pAan nn (the Minchah of pan-baked 
 flour-cakes). There is a brief but express allusion to it in 
 Kcclus. xlv. 14: His* (the high priest’s) sacrifices shall be 
 
 1 Philo calls them αἱ ἐνδελεχεῖς θυσίαι. 
 
 See Note C at the end of this volume. 
 
 3 In the English version, vers. 20-23. 
 
 * θυσίαι αὐτοῦ. [So also the Vulgate, Sacrificia IPsius consumpta sunt 
 
CHAP. VII. 27. 9 
 
 wholly consumed, every day (καθ᾽ ἡμέραν) twice, perpetually 
 (ἐνδελεχῶς). Josephus also describes it, Ant. 111. 10, 1. 
 After mentioning the loaves of shew-bread provided at the 
 public expense, and placed on the holy table every Sabbath- 
 day as an offering for the people, he proceeds: “ The (high) 
 priest also, at his own expense, offers a sacrifice (θύει), and 
 that twice every day, consisting of flour mingled with oil, 
 and gently baked, in quantity a tenth deal of flour. Half 
 of this offering he brings to the fire in the morning, the 
 other half at even.” ‘This daily sacerdotal Minchah, though 
 offered under the second temple by a priest-vicar on behalf 
 _ of the high priest, and not by the pontiff himself, was still 
 provided, as Josephus correctly observes, at his expense : 
 the high priest therefore remained the proper ἀναφέρων. 
 Origen refers to this offering when he says (Hom. iv. in 
 Levit.): “In ceteris quidem preceptis pontifex in offerendis 
 sacrificus populo prebet ofjicium, in hoc vero mandato que 
 propria sunt curat et quod ad se spectat exequitur.” Philo 
 must also be alluding to the same sacrifice (@vc/a),' when he 
 says (il. 321, 38) of the high priest, that as the kinsman of 
 the whole nation he is “daily engaged in making for them 
 prayers and sacrifices,” and imploring the best blessings on 
 their behalf, as for those who are his brethren, his parents, 
 and his children, that so the whole people of all ages and 
 degrees may be joined together in one body, and the pursuit 
 of unity and peace.” We have in this probably the substance 
 of the high priest’s prayer pronounced over his daily Minchah 
 (pman nni2)—his ἐνδελεχὴς θυσία, as Philo elsewhere calls 
 it whenever the office was borne by one rightly sensible of 
 its great and central significance. It would seem therefore 
 most natural to suppose, with the venerable Lundius (Jiidische 
 
 igne quotidie. Our English version reads, THEIR sacrifices shall be wholly 
 consumed, as if our translators had read αὐτῶν, or thought that ought 
 to be the reading. 
 
 1 So called, as we have seen, by the son of Sirach (Keclus. xlv. 14), 
 with which also the θύει of Josephus, cited above, corresponds, 
 
 2 εὐχὸς καὶ θυσίως τελῶν καθ᾽ ἑκάστην ἡμέοαν. 
 
 ® See Note D. 
 
10 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 Fleiligthiimer, iii. 9, ss. 19) and (among moderns) with 
 Thalhofer (Unblutiges Opfer, p. 119), that the καθ᾽ ἡμέραν 
 of our text must be referred to the then well-known and 
 oft-mentioned pontifical Minchah of Ley. vi. But, neverthe- 
 less, I cannot convince myself that this could have been our 
 author’s real meaning. For (1) although, as we have seen, 
 the high priest’s Minchah might not incorrectly be called a 
 sacrifice (θυσία), and although our author (as is plain from 
 v. 1) designates all sacrificial offering (even that of the 
 meat-offerings, mini or δῶρα, properly so called) as having 
 the removal of sin for its ultimate object, and therefore made 
 ὑπὲρ ἁμαρτιῶν, yet I cannot think it probable that he would 
 have spoken of the high priest’s Minchah simply by itself as 
 a θυσία ὑπὲρ ἁμαρτιῶν ; and the less so, inasmuch as the yet 
 more definite expression περὶ ἁμαρτιῶν in ch. v. 3 leads us 
 to think of a sin-offering proper, a N82 which the high 
 priest had to make (περὶ ἑαυτοῦ) on his own behalf. And 
 again, (2) the natural inference from the text in accordance 
 with this interpretation—namely, that the high priests were 
 wont to make daily offerings first for their own sins, and 
 then for those of the people—would have nothing really cor- 
 responding to it in the actual liturgy of the temple services. 
 For (a) even though the daily offering of the “ flour-cakes ” 
 (")3N) was vicariously made on the high priest’s behalf, and 
 might therefore be correctly designated even under the second 
 temple as his sacrifice, this could not in any way be main- 
 tained in respect to the Thamid, consisting of the two lambs, 
 which were also offered by ordinary priests as representa- 
 tives and on behalf of the people, and not in any respect 
 by them as representatives or on behalf of the high priest. 
 The high priest therefore could not be correctly said, in any 
 sense, to offer the daily Thamid. And, further, (8) there 
 is no precept in the Thorah which would justify the appli- 
 cation of the term πρότερον to the presentation of the high 
 priest’s Minchah, and then of ἔπειτα to that of the people’s 
 Thamid. The order of presentation of these sacrifices in 
 our author’s time appears to have been as follows: First 
 the people’s Thamid was offered, i.e. the lamb ; then. its 
 
CHAP. VII. 27. jal 
 
 appendage the daily Thamid-Minchah; then the high priest’s 
 Minchah (of which so much has been said, and which is also 
 called in Lev. vi. a ὙΠ AND); and finally, the drink-offer- 
 ing, which was an additional appendage to the Lamb-Thamid.’ 
 On all these considerations, therefore, the interpretation offered 
 by Lundius and Thalhofer must be abandoned. 
 
 But if we reject this interpretation, what other is there 
 that we can propose in its stead? Not, surely, that very in- 
 genious and peculiar one offered by von Gerlach, who would 
 evade the difficulty by assuming that all the daily sacrifices 
 might be ascribed to the high priest, as being one whose 
 official dignity concentrated all the functions of the priest- 
 hood in his own individual person. This solution would have 
 seemed more admissible if the reading in the text had been 
 ὁ ᾿ΑΔαρών, and not ὁ ἀρχιερεύς. The real solution, however, 
 must have a less artificial character. Taking, then, for 
 granted that “the offering first for his own sins, and then 
 for those of the people,” refers to the Mosaic ritual of the 
 day of atonement, and to transactions which occurred (as the 
 author himself remarks elsewhere) only once a year (κατ᾽ 
 ἐνιαυτόν), the meaning of this sentence must be, that Christ 
 has no need to do that daily which the high priest does 
 annually, and which, if needing to be repeated at all, must be 
 repeated continually every day, in order to effect a complete 
 atonement for continually emergent cases of sin. The cor- 
 rectness of this solution is supported by the delicately chosen 
 position of the καθ᾽ ἡμέραν before ἀνάγκην, and by the plural 
 ὥσπερ οἱ ἀρχιερεῖς. Christ does not need (the writer would 
 say) to offer sacrifices every day first for His own sins, and 
 then for those of His church, in order to accomplish in His 
 own person, and in the virtue of His own exclusive and 
 eternal priesthood, that which all other high priests of all 
 former ages had been endeavouring to do. [His own intrinsic 
 perfection renders any repetition of His atoning acts unne- 
 cessary. Once done, they have eternal validity.] This solu- 
 tion agrees with that of Hofmann (Schriftbew. ii. 1, 287): 
 “ The comparison here is not between what Christ might have 
 
 1 More on this point will be found in Lundius, v. 1, 2. 
 
12 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 had to do and what the high priests actually have to do daily, 
 but between what the high priests have to do [at certain fixed 
 times| and what Christ might have had to do daily: [if it had 
 been necessary for Him to repeat His atoning acts at all,] 7¢ 
 would then have been necessary for Him to do that again and 
 again, and day by day, which He has now done once and for 
 ever.” This is perfectly true, but with what follows I cannot 
 at all agree. 
 
 Hofmann proceeds to maintain that our Lord’s atoning 
 action (τοῦτο ἐποίησεν) is here represented as analogous not 
 only to what the high priests did for the people, but also to 
 what they first did for themselves in offering up sacrifices on 
 their own behalf. This view—according to which our Lord’s 
 supplication in Gethsemane to be delivered from death, had 
 in it, as an expression of human, albeit sinless infirmity, some- 
 thing analogous to the Levitical high priest’s sin-offering for 
 himself (περὶ éavtod)—has been already combated by us (see 
 notes on ch. v. 7, 8). It may be said here to pass judgment 
 on itself. For if we refer the τοῦτο ἐποίησεν to both the 
 kinds of sacrifice mentioned in the clause preceding, we shall 
 make the sacred writer say, and that more than indirectly, 
 that Christ’s self-offering once for all was ὑπὲρ τῶν ἰδίων 
 ἁμαρτιῶν as well as ὑπὲρ τῶν τοῦ λαοῦ. But such an inter- 
 pretation would be (1) a blasphemy. (2.) It would make the 
 sacred writer contradict himself, and his own denial that 
 there was any ἁμαρτία in Christ, iv. 15. (.) It would also 
 contradict the fundamental idea of the sin-offering, according 
 to which the only possible atonement for the sinful is that 
 made by the Sinless: an ἀναφέρειν ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἰδίων 
 ἁμαρτιῶν is, according to all the scriptural notions of sacrifice, 
 a self-contradiction. The reader must not indeed infer from 
 all this, that Hofmann’s view has anything in common with 
 that doctrine of Menken* and Irving, according to which 
 there was in the Lord’s flesh, though held in absolute re- 
 straint by the power of the Spirit, a certain latent prava con- 
 cupiscentia. This view is rejected by Hofmann with the 
 utmost decision ; but we feel bound also to maintain against 
 
 1 See Note D at the end of this volume. 
 
CHAP. VII. 27. 19 
 
 him, that the sacred writer’s mode of expressing himself here 
 does not even admit of the question being raised, whether 
 in the once-made self-oblation of our Lord there is so much 
 as a distant analogy to the offering of the high priest περὶ 
 ἑαυτοῦ. ‘The very attributes ὅσιος, ἄκακος, and ἀμίαντος in 
 the preceding verse are enough to show that our Lord needed 
 not any offering in the slightest degree similar to that of the 
 high priest ὑπὲρ τῶν ἰδίων ἁμαρτιῶν ; for those attributes, 
 though:employed to characterize Him in the state of glory, 
 are inseparably inherent in Him both in nature and person. 
 Τοῦτο, therefore, must be referred back (with Bleek, De 
 Wette, Liinemann, and many others) to the high priest θυσίας 
 ἀναφέρειν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν τοῦ λαοῦ, and not merely (with 
 Bengel and Ebrard) to the θυσίας ἀναφέρειν in general: for 
 it is the whole relation in which Christ stands to the Aaroni- 
 cal high priest which is here under discussion ; and we have 
 seen that it belonged to the prerogatives of the latter, after 
 qualifying himself by a sin-offering on his own behalf, to 
 present sacrifices not only for single acts of sin, but also for 
 all the sins of the whole congregation when gathered to- 
 gether on the day of atonement. Such an atonement for the 
 whole congregation our High Priest has also accomplished 
 éddrra€,' at one time, “once for all,” and by the offering up 
 of Himself.’ 
 
 “Ἑαυτὸν ἀνενέγκας.. This is the first place in which the 
 thought that Christ is not only our High Priest, but also 
 the sacrifice for our sins, is quite clearly expressed (comp. 
 avevéyxas here with mpocevéyxas at v. 7); but the note once 
 struck is continually sounded again. It is at the same time 
 evident that the sacred writer regards the self-sacrifice of 
 Christ as a great high-priestly action, in which His high- 
 priesthood is manifested as the antitype and antithesis of that 
 
 1 ᾿Εφάπαξ is stronger and fuller than ἅπαξ. Comp. Rom. vi. 10. 
 
 * Luther, before 1527, rendered the last clause of ver. 27 thus: 
 Gethan, da er einmal sich selbst opfert [this He did when He once 
 offered Himself] ; but in later revisions of his version he followed the 
 correct interpunctuation of the printed Greek texts which lay before 
 him. 
 
14 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 of Aaron. This great act of sacrifice performed here below 
 is the basis of His heavenly priesthood, or, as we are now 
 warranted in saying, His heavenly high-priesthood after the 
 order of Melchizedek. For (so he continues, ver. 28, setting 
 forth the contrast between the type and the antitype)— 
 
 Ver. 28. For the law setteth up as high priests men having 
 infirmity ; but the word of the oath-taking, which is after the 
 law, [doth this with] the Son having been perfected for ever- 
 more. 
 
 But (such is the question which here presents itself) has 
 not Christ then entered into fellowship with all human in- 
 firmity, sin only excepted (iv. 5)? Has not this apostolic 
 writer been already careful to show that the καὶ αὐτὸς περί- 
 κειται ἀσθένειαν, as being one of the main requisites for the 
 high-priesthood, is applicable to Christ as well as to Aaron, 
 and that without it He would have been wanting in perfect 
 sympathy with us (ch. v. 1-10)? ‘The answer is: So far 
 is this from being overlooked here, that it is even implied 
 and assumed in the τετελειωμένον (with which compare the 
 τελειωθείς of v. 9); and the difficulty vanishes if we remark 
 that the contrast here drawn between our Lord and the high 
 priests of the law is not between Him and them as He was 
 in the days of His flesh, but as He is now in the state of 
 glory. To “the law” (νόμος) is here opposed “the word 
 of the oath-taking” (in Ps. ex.)—o λόγος τῆς ὁρκωμοσίας--- 
 “which is after the law” (τῆς μετὰ τὸν νόμον), not only as 
 being subsequent to it in time, but as rendering it obsolete. 
 The sacred author lays stress on the oath-taking (τῆς ὁρκω- 
 μοσίας), not simply on the word (ὁ λόγος), and therefore 
 writes, not ὁ μετὰ τὸν νόμον, but τῆς μετὰ τὸν νόμον. The 
 divine oath in Ps. cx. outweighs the peiy npn of the law 
 (Thorah) concerning Aaron’s priesthood. Now the subject 
 of that oath is the Melchizedekean priest of the future, who 
 cannot act as priest without at the same time being en- 
 throned as king: it is therefore Christ Himself, and only 
 Christ in the state of exaltation, to whom that oath refers. 
 The doctrine of the whole passage is briefly this: Our Lord 
 
CHAP. VIII. 1, 2. 19 
 
 having made Himself like to the high priests of the law, by 
 partaking as they did of human infirmity, not indeed like 
 them to offer animal sacrifices (a bullock as sin-offering for 
 Himself, and a goat as sin-offering for the people), but in 
 order to be able to yield up His life in dying for us, is now 
 for evermore exalted above them all. That final offering up 
 of Himself at the end of His life of suffering here, formed 
 His transition to a life of glory and of heavenly perfectness. 
 The servant-form of human infirmity is now exchanged for 
 that of kingly exaltation. 
 
 Observe in this verse the strong antithesis between ἀνθρώ- 
 mous as applied to the high priests of the law, and υἱός 
 (without the article, as at i. 1) as designation of our Lord. 
 It is another argument against the validity of Hofmann’s 
 position, that the name vids designates our Lord only in His 
 human and historical manifestation, and not in His divine 
 and eternal (or, so to speak, metaphysical) relation to the 
 Father. As at ch. v. 8 it was said that καίπερ ὧν υἱός (ie. 
 although standing as a Son in such an intimate relation to 
 God as might seem to exclude the possibility of learning 
 obedience and of suffering), Christ had nevertheless vouch- 
 safed to enter the same school with us creatures; so here He 
 is contrasted with mere men having infirmity as the all-per- 
 fected υἱός, the one and only Son. Perfect in Himself, He 
 became for our sakes weak and mortal as we are, in order, 
 as a man sharing our infirmity, to reach the goal of ultimate 
 perfection, as the reward of obedience and the result of suf- 
 ferings undergone for the accomplishment of the purposes of 
 the Father’s redeeming love." 
 
 The subject started in ver. 26 (Such an high priest ... 
 made higher than the heavens) is a theme far from being yet 
 exhausted. The following chapter therefore opens with the 
 highest and most important of the things which can be said 
 concerning this at once Melchizedekean and antitypical or 
 super-Aaronical priesthood of our Lord. 
 
 Ch. viii. 1, 2. Now the main point in regard to the things 
 1 See Note E. 
 
16 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 here spoken of (is this): Such an high priest we have, who is 
 set down on the right hand of the throne of Majesty in the 
 heavens, (being) a minister of the holies, and of the true taber- 
 nacle, which the Lord pitched, and not a man. 
 
 Κεφάλαιον has two meanings: (1.) It signifies the chief or 
 main point or particular beside or among others; e.g. Thucyd. 
 iv. 50, ἐν ais (ἐπιστόλαις) πολλῶν ἄλλων γεγραμμένων κεφά- 
 λαιον Hv: ἴῃ ἃ similar sense κεφαλή is used ; 6.9. κεφαλὴ τοῦ 
 πράγματος. (2.) It denotes the sum or result of numbers 
 added together and set down at the head of the column, the 
 addition being made from below upwards; comp. Arist. 
 Metaph. vii. 1, ἐκ δὲ τῶν εἰρημένων συλλογίσασθαι δεῖ καὶ 
 συνωγαγόντας τὸ κεφάλαιον τέλος ἐπιθεῖναι. In this sense 
 the word is taken here by Erasmus, Calvin, Luther [and 
 others, including the English version]: ‘ Now this is the - 
 sum, the net result, of what we are saying.” But the 
 meaning thus assigned to κεφάλαιον is not quite suitable to 
 the present context. It might indeed be so, if we referred 
 κεφάλαιον δέ exclusively to what follows in ver. 1: “ Such 
 an high priest we have at God’s right hand.” This propo- 
 sition, if it stood by itself, might be regarded as the sum- 
 mary or main result of both the preceding lines of teaching : 
 first concerning Christ our High Priest, as perfected through 
 suffering, the antitype of Aaron; and then, as royally en- 
 throned, the antitype of Melchizedek." But in ver. 2 an 
 important addition is made to what has been previously 
 taught,—namely, that Christ, thus exalted and enthroned, is 
 working as a priest for us in the archetypal sanctuary; and 
 it seems most natural to refer κεφάλαιον δέ to the whole 
 paragraph, with this additional point included. Moreover, 
 if κεφ. were meant to be taken here in the sense of “ result” 
 or “ sum,” we should expect the genitive τῶν εἰρημένων or 
 (at any rate) τῶν λεγομένων, and not, as we have it, ἐπὶ τοῖς 
 λεγομένοις, which in any case must be closely connected 
 with κεφάλαιον. We agree, therefore, with almost all 
 
 1 So Hofmann. 
 
 * Hofmann proposes another mode of construing the sentence, which 
 can only be regarded as too venturesome an exegetical novelty for 
 
CHAP. VIII. 1, 2. ἘΠ 
 
 moderns (Bleek, De Wette, Liinemann, etc.) in rendering 
 κεφάλαιον here by “ Hauptsache,” main or principal matter. 
 The whole thought which follows is virtually the subject, and 
 κεφάλαιον the predicate, or κεφάλαιον may be regarded as 
 simply in apposition to that to which it is prefixed. (For 
 this view of the construction, consult, among others, Iiihner, 
 § 500, Anm. 2; Madvig, §197; and Rost, p. 482 of 7th ed.) 
 A third view is also possible,—that, namely, which regards 
 κεφάλαιον as an adverbial accusative (Vow as to the main 
 point—such an high priest we have): comp. Auschines, de 
 falsa legatione, p. 278, 8, πέρας δὲ τοῦ πράγματος : and 
 contra Ctesiph. p. 515, 17, τέλος δὲ παντὸς τοῦ λόγου. In 
 all these views of the nature of the construction, the logical 
 relation of the thoughts remains much the same.” 
 
 Instead of τῶν λεγομένων, our author says, with more 
 particularity, ἐπὶ τοῖς λεγομένοις, i.e. “ beside,” or “ in addi- 
 tion,” or “ in reference to what is being said,”® where λεγο- 
 μένοις should be followed by a colon rather than by a comma. 
 The following τοιοῦτον leads us to expect a somewhat full 
 description of its subject, such as, in fact, we have at vii. 
 26; and consequently ver. 2 must be regarded as constitut- 
 ing part of the description here. The “ main point” (κεφά- 
 Aavov) is indeed, that Christ, being thus royally exalted to 
 the throne of God, has an equally exalted sphere for His 
 
 serious consideration. Je would take κεφάλαιον δέ by itself, and attach 
 ἐπὶ τοῖς λεγομένοις (with ὠρχιερεῦσιν understood) to what follows, ren- 
 dering the whole thus: Now to sum up what has been said: We have, 
 in addition to those high priests (of the law), such an high priest (as this), 
 holy, harmless, ete. 
 
 1 Vid. Wannowski, Syntazis anom. Grecorum, p. 200. 
 
 ? Lunemann, however, is quite mistaken in supposing, that because 
 κεφάλαιον is without the definite article, it must be therefore understood 
 here of some one main point among others. In expressions of this 
 kind, κεφάλαιον δέ (τῶν εἰρημένων), τεκροήριον δέ, σηρῥεῖον δέ, μαρτύριον OE 
 (Madvig, ὃ 196, Anm.), the substantive is always to be regarded as logi- 
 cally defined, as when we say (in German), “ Summa summarum” [or in 
 English, Sum-total of all this is so and so], or the like. 
 
 3°Ezi seems to be here used with that quasi-local or temporal signi- 
 fication which properly belongs to this preposition with a dative, and 
 might be best rendered by the German “ oe.” 
 
 VOL, TI, B 
 
18 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 high-priestly operation. To give yet stronger emphasis te 
 this His transcendent royalty, the phrase of i. 3, ἐν δεξιᾷ τῆς 
 peyarwovvns,' is expanded into ἐν δεξιᾷ τοῦ θρόνου τῆς peya- 
 λωσύνης, reminding us of the term in Jewish theology, xD 
 7297 (the throne of the divine glory). “Ev τοῖς οὐρανοῖς 
 must, with all modern interpreters (except Hofmann”), be 
 referred (like ἐν τοῖς ὑψηλοῖς in i. 3) to ἐκάθισεν (Christ is 
 seated in heaven, on the right hand of the throne). 
 
 Tov ἁγίων in ver. 2 refers, of course, to the eternal sanc- 
 tuary in the heavens, as distinguished from the earthly holy 
 of holies. Some would understand τῶν ἀληθινῶν after it, 
 as suggested by the following τῆς ἀληθινῆς (σκηνῆς). So 
 Bohme, Bleek, Ebrard, and Liinemann. But the relative 
 position of the words is not favourable to this view. It would 
 be better, therefore, to render the clause thus: “ Minister or. 
 warder of the sanctuary there (z.e. in heaven), and of the 
 true tabernacle.” “ειτουργός is the standing designation of 
 the priest as minister of Jehovah (‘7 mwn: comp. Isa. Ixi. 
 6; Jer. xxxii. 21; Neh. x. 40); λειτουργεῖν being the 
 regular Septuagint word for the discharge of priestly and 
 Levitical functions (NY) in the public service (MNaIy*) of 
 God. Δειτουργὸς τῶν ἁγίων is here combined, as frequently 
 in the Septuagint—Ae:toupyla τῆς σκηνῆς, or οἴκου τοῦ Θεοῦ. 
 Ta ἅγια is also here clearly distinguished from ἡ σκηνή: 
 while it is evident from ix. 11, 12, that they stand in very 
 close connection with one another. We cannot therefore 
 render τῶν ἁγίων λειτουργός (with Luther* and others) “a 
 minister of holy things,” or “ of heavenly blessings.” Both 
 terms designate different parts (the inner and the outer) of 
 the same place or building. Ta ἅγια is the DwIp wap (“holy 
 of holies”), which in the earthly tabernacle was the adytum 
 
 1 See note there. 
 
 * Comp. Schriftbeweis, ii. 1, 287, with Weissagung u. Evfiill. ii. 190. 
 
 3 See Note F. 
 
 * [Luther’s rendering is, ein Pfleger der heiligen Giiter.| In Philo, 
 when he speaks of the priest as ὁ θεραπευτὴς καὶ λειτουργὸς τῶν ἁγίων 
 (i. 114, 4), and says of the Levites, that for them ἡ τῶν ὡγίων dvc- 
 
 κείτῶι λειτουργία (i. 560, 2), the word (τῶν ἁγίων) certainly seems to 
 be used in a wider than the merely local sense, 
 
CHAP. VIII. 1, 2. 19 
 
 behind the second veil: it is once called by our author ἅγια 
 ἁγίων (ch. ix. 3), but elsewhere simply τὰ ἅγια (ix. 25, xiii. 
 11, etc.), “the sanctuary.” Ἡ σκηνή is the wap, or Dds, 
 the outer tabernacle, or “ holy place,” which at ix. 2 is 
 called by our author σκηνὴ ἡ πρώτη, “ the first tabernacle.” 
 This, the obvious interpretation of ver. 2, is the only correct 
 one; yet that, at the same time, we are not to transfer with 
 literal exactness to the heavenly world the local boundaries 
 and partitions of the earthly type, is both evident from the 
 nature of the heavenly in itself, and is expressly guarded by 
 the use of the epithet ἀληθινῆς here. Great realities, indeed, 
 are the subjects of discourse, but those of an ideal and 
 archetypal character. The use of the adjective ἀληθινός is 
 common to our epistle with Luke xvi. 11, and the Gospel, 
 Apocalypse, and Kpistles of St. John. Elsewhere it does 
 not occur in the New Testament, except only 1 Thess. i. 9. 
 It is applied to that which answers to its name and notion in 
 the fullest, deepest, and most unlimited manner,—to that 
 which is not merely relatively, but absolutely, such as it is 
 called,—to that which is not merely outward and material, 
 but inward and spiritual—not temporal and typical merely, 
 but antitypical, archetypical, and eternal. The distinction 
 in meaning between ἀληθινός and ἀληθής can hardly be more 
 accurately expressed than in the words of Kahnis (Abend- 
 mahl, p. 119): “ The measure of ἀληθής is the reality, that 
 of ἀληθινός is the idea. The idea corresponds to the reality 
 with ἀληθής ; the reality corresponds to the idea with ἀλη- 
 Owes.” So it is here. The “true” tabernacle, in which 
 our High Priest now ministers, is the original, essential, and 
 archetypal one; not a work of human hands; not con- 
 structed of perishable materials, but a supra-mundane work 
 of God Himself, the product of an immediate divine opera- 
 tion. The earthly tabernacle had been “ pitched” by Moses 
 (ἔπηξεν, Ex. xxxiii. 7), the heavenly by the Lord, ἐπ. ὁ 
 Κύριος καὶ οὐκ ἄνθρωπος : so the textus receptus; but the 
 καί, which is wanting in B.D.* E.* 17 [and the Cod. Sin.], 
 has been rightly excluded from their texts by Lachmann 
 and Tischendorf. 
 
20 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 The question here arises, and demands an answer, what 
 the sacred writer himself understood by the heavenly “ sanc- 
 tuary” (τὰ ἅγια) and the “ true tabernacle,” of which he 
 thus speaks. The older commentators frequently interpret 
 the “true tabernacle” to be the Lord’s body; so, for in- 
 stance, Jo. Philoponus, Jo. Brentius, jun. (1571), Jo. Jac. 
 Gryneus (1580). They appeal on behalf of this interpre- 
 tation of σκηνή to St. John i. 14 (σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκή- 
 νωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν), without inquiring into or developing the 
 consequences, and without making any distinction between 
 the σῶμα τῆς σαρκός and the σῶμα τῆς δόξης. The follow- 
 ing considerations may be urged in favour of their view: 
 Our Lord’s incarnation is expressly described (St. John i. 
 14) as a σκήνωσις ; His human corporeity, therefore, may be 
 regarded as a σκηνή (comp. 2 Pet. 1. 14); He Himself. 
 speaks of His body as a “ temple” (St. John ii. 21), which 
 He contrasts with the wood and stone erection of Herod; 
 Christ and His church together form one “ holy temple” 
 (Eph. ii. 19-22); the crucified flesh (σάρξ) of Christ is in 
 this very epistle (x. 20) compared to the veil of the temple, 
 which had been rent in twain; and from this the inference 
 drawn, that our “ new and living way” of approach to the 
 eternal sanctuary is His glorified humanity. All this being 
 taken into account, the supposition appears a natural one, 
 that by σκηνή here we are to understand also the Lord’s 
 humanity, and that in the same sense in which Jacob Bohme 
 says (iv. 173), “ We are all in Christ one body; for He is 
 our body in God, as Adam is our body in the world.”? No 
 one in later times has revived and developed this interpre- 
 tation with so much intelligence and completeness, nor de- 
 fended it with such soundness of argument and wealth of 
 illustration, as Hofmann (Weissagung, 11. 189-192; and 
 Schriftbeweis, ii. 1, 405, and elsewhere). 
 
 Hofmann, in developing his view, proceeds from the per- 
 
 1 See Note G. 
 
 2 (St. Bernard (I think) says somewhere, speaking of the dead in 
 Christ, in their present disembodied condition, sub humanitate Christi 
 requiescunt.—TR. } 
 
CHAP. VIII. 1, 2. oT 
 
 fectly correct assumption, that the sacred writer means here 
 to distinguish the sanctuary (τὰ ἅγια) of the immediate 
 Divine Presence, God’s own “ place,” from His place of 
 meeting with mankind, the tabernacle (σκηνή) wherein He 
 is pleased to dwell among them. On the basis of this 
 assumption, he maintains that the true σκηνή is in the first 
 instance the glorified humanity of Christ, and then, in the 
 next place, the church, as being the extension of the incar- 
 nation, and having such for its members as have “ put on 
 Christ,” i.e. to whom Christ is, as it were, the raiment they 
 are clothed with, or (according to 2 Cor. v. 1)! the οἰκία 
 ἀχειροποίητος of their redeemed personality. As, then, the 
 Levitical high priest is styled τῶν ἁγίων λειτουργός (in so 
 far as he is admitted to the most holy place of the Divine 
 Presence), and τῆς σκηνῆς Χευτουργός (inasmuch as he mi- 
 nisters to God in the chosen place of His manifestation 
 among men), appearing in the one on men’s behalf before 
 God, and so working in the other, that God vouchsafes to 
 dwell among men; so again, in both particulars, is this true 
 (in transcendent and antitypical reality) of Christ: First, He 
 is the true τῶν ἁγίων λειτουργός, inasmuch as through the 
 sacrifice of His death He has passed away from the world 
 and entered into God; and secondly, He is τῆς ἀληθινῆς 
 σκηνῆς λειτουργός, inasmuch as He is now in His glorified 
 humanity with God, and God with us through Him. In the 
 one respect He mediates for us in the holy of holies of the 
 divine nature; in the other He embraces and overshadows 
 with His glorified humanity the whole company of Christian 
 souls, spreading over them all, as it were, the curtains of that 
 sacred tabernacle, and so putting Himself at their service 
 in their approaches and communion with the heavenly Father. 
 
 I have endeavoured faithfully to represent Hofmann’s 
 view, though using only partially his own words. It is ob- 
 viously difficult to explain, in consistency with this interpreta- 
 tion, the meaning of λειτουργός as an appellative of our Lord, 
 or to assign an intelligible meaning to the different parts of 
 
 1 Such, at any rate, is Hofmann’s interpretation of this difficult 
 expression. 
 
22 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 the earthly tabernacle, if this must be regarded as its typical 
 meaning. But a closer examination exhibits the necessity of 
 abandoning this interpretation altogether. It is, for instance, 
 quite irreconcilable with ix. 11, where the most natural con- 
 struction is, and remains, that which connects διὰ τῆς μείζο- 
 vos καὶ τελειοτέρας σκηνῆς with εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὰ ἅγια. To 
 interpret this as meaning that our Lord had passed through 
 His own glorified humanity into the sphere of the divine 
 nature, constitutes an impossible figure, or suggests an inad- 
 missible thought. It is further inconsistent with ver. 5 of 
 the present chapter, according to which the earthly Mosaic 
 tabernacle was a copy of a heavenly archetype, exhibited to 
 Moses on Mount Sinai. Now surely it is infinitely more 
 probable that the image there presented to the eye of the 
 lawgiver was that of the companies of worshipping angels, 
 with the divine throne in the background, than any ideal 
 representation of the future humanity of the incarnate 
 Saviour. And, finally, it is a view not only current in the 
 later synagogue,’ that there was an intimate and mysterious 
 connection between the Jerusalem below and her sanctuary 
 (num Sy obvi), and the Jerusalem above with hers (ody 
 iby Sw); but the same idea is constantly suggested by the 
 language of both the Old and New Testaments. Scripture 
 speaks repeatedly of a holy or heavenly temple (wtp 55), e.g. 
 Ps. x1. 4, xvill. 7; Mic. i. 2; Hab. ii. 20), which (from what 
 is said of it) can be meant to adumbrate neither God Him- 
 self, nor Christ incarnate, nor the church, but rather the 
 place of adoration of blessed spirits (Ps. xxix. 9), or of men 
 admitted to their fellowship (Isa. vi.). This temple (ναὸς τῆς 
 σκηνῆς τοῦ μαρτυρίου) is presented to the mental vision of 
 the seer of the Apocalypse (Rev. xv. 5), and by him de- 
 scribed under earthly figures in its various details. Nor 
 should we be justified by Rev. xxi. 22 in spiritualizing away 
 these representations of heavenly realities; for there the 
 new Jerusalem, descending on the transfigured earth, is 
 simply opposed, as a place altogether filled with the divine 
 presence, to the ancient type, in which temple and city were 
 1 See Note H. 
 
CHAP. VIII. 1, 2. 23 
 
 distinct localities. With these and the like arguments I have 
 already combated Hofmann’s view,’ and must continue to do 
 so. The fact then is, that the sanctuary which here presents 
 itself to the thought of our author, is the place of the divine 
 presence and throne, and the tabernacle that of the angels 
 and the blessed. The divine sanctuary (τὰ ἅγια) is “ the 
 place of God,” which in itself is elevated above all space and 
 time, and filling all things, is not comprehended by any ; it 
 is, in brief, the uncreated heaven of the divine glory. But 
 God, the absolute eternal One, has assigned place and time 
 to all His creatures, as conditions of their existence. He 
 makes use of those conditions in manifesting Himself to 
 them; and the very highest creaturely existences, though 
 having their roots of being in the eternal blessedness, are not 
 independent of these creaturely forms. In accordance with 
 this observation, it must be held, that there is always some- 
 where a glorious creaturely heaven, not forming indeed a 
 definite part of the created universe, and yet having, from 
 the very nature of those who belong to it, a certain definite 
 localization ; that it is always and only there wherever God 
 vouchsafes to exhibit Himself to angels and to men, in 
 glorious manifestations of His divine love. This heaven of 
 glory is the ἀληθινὴ σκηνή here spoken of, “the greater and 
 more perfect tabernacle” (of ix. 11) through which Christ 
 passed in order to enter that divine sanctuary of the imme- 
 diate Presence, which as the holy of holies (sanctum sane- 
 torum) forms the adytum or innermost recess of the heavenly 
 tabernacle, its infinite and eternal basis and background, and 
 which now, in virtue of the atonement once accomplished by 
 our Lord, is no longer (like its earthly type) hidden behind 
 a veil, withdrawn from sight and unapproachable, but thrown 
 open and made accessible to the blessed worshippers in the 
 σκηνή, by Him who is enshrined within it as its High Priest. 
 He bears, therefore, the twofold title: jirst, He is τῶν ἁγίων 
 λειτουργός, a minister of the eternal sanctuary, having been 
 received as God-man into the innermost sphere of Godhead, 
 
 1 Τὴ my Biblische Psychologie, vi. 6, in reference to his interpretation 
 of 2 Cor. νυ. 1. 
 
94 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 and invested there with divine glory while mediating for us ; 
 and secondly, He is τῆς σκηνῆς λειτουργός, a minister of the 
 heavenly tabernacle, into which we ourselves, if we persevere 
 to the end, shall one day be gathered, and in which He acts 
 as Mediator now, on the one hand manifesting to the blessed 
 inhabitants the self-revelations of divine glory, and on the 
 other presenting to the Father their sacrifice of adoration 
 and praise. 
 
 It seems probable that the ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς of viii. 1 refers 
 both to τὰ ἁγία and to the σκηνή of ver. 2, regarded as 
 distinct portions of one heavenly whole. Our author appears 
 to use the word οὐρανός in the following significations: (1.) 
 In the lower sense, 6 οὐρανός signifies the starry firmament 
 (xi. 12, xii. 26), and οἱ οὐρανοί the created heavens, through 
 which the ascending Redeemer passed (iv. 14), and above 
 which He is now exalted (vii. 26). (2.) In the higher sense, 
 ὁ οὐρανός signifies God’s own eternal heaven, or sphere of 
 divine glory, into which the ascended Lord has been assumed 
 (ix. 24; Acts ii. 21), and which is not essentially different 
 from God Himself (comp. Luke xv. 18, 21, where οὐρανός, 
 nv’, is = Θεός) ; while οἱ οὐρανοί combines in one term this 
 eternal heaven of God Himself, and the blessed spheres in 
 which His glory is manifested to the angels and the re- 
 deemed (comp. Luke xv. 10, 7),— those “ heavens” in 
 which the antitypes of earthly sanctities are enshrined (ix. 
 23), in which our names are written (xii. 23; St. Luke x. 
 20), and where our inheritance is to be (x. 34; St. Luke xii. 
 33). (8.) There are passages (not, however, it would seem, 
 in this epistle) where ὁ οὐρανός and of οὐρανοί are used yet 
 more comprehensively, still so as to include in one perspec- 
 tive, as it were, the natural heaven, the angelical and the 
 divine (comp. especially St. Luke’s twice related history of 
 the ascension, St. Luke xxiv. 51, Acts i. 11 and ii. 34); 
 but here (viii. 1), where the throne of divine majesty is 
 spoken of as ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, we need only think of the divine 
 and angelical heavens,—the one the antitype of the earthly 
 sanctuary, the other of its vestibule, the earthly tabernacle. 
 In this double sphere our High Priest is sacerdotally me- 
 
CHAP. VIII. 3-6. 25 
 
 diating for us. That it is so, and cannot be otherwise, the 
 sacred writer goes on to prove. 
 
 Vers. 3-6. For every high priest is appointed for the offer- 
 ing of both gifts and sacrifices ; whence a necessity that this 
 one should also have something which he might offer. Lor if 
 he were on earth he would not even be a priest, inasmuch as 
 the priests are here already who offer the gifts according to the 
 law; as being such who serve the type and shadow of the 
 heavenly things, even as Moses is admonished when about to 
 construct the tabernacle: for, “ See,” saith he, “ thou make all 
 things according to the pattern shown thee in the mount.” But 
 now so much the more excellent a priestly office hath he ob- 
 tained, by how much he is mediator of a better covenant, 
 founded as it is upon better promises. 
 
 Michaelis observes in his Paraphrase, that ver. 3 might be 
 omitted here without our missing it. Bleek is inclined to 
 agree with him, though it does not escape him that ver. 3 is 
 but the commencement of an argument, to show that the high 
 priest after the order of Melchizedek requires for the discharge 
 of his functions a heavenly sanctuary. De Wette, rejecting 
 this better view, maintains that ver. 3 disturbs the order of 
 thought. Tholuck even regards it as a link of thought, which 
 is immediately dropped in favour of others; while Liinemann 
 considers it to be an observation made, as it were en passant, 
 to justify the use of the term Aevtoupyos. Ebrard, on the 
 other hand, maintains that all is here clear, conclusive reason- 
 ing, and seems to have thought the meaning of προσενέγκῃ 
 to be so self-evident that he has left us in uncertainty what 
 meaning he himself attaches to it. The chain of the argument 
 appears to be as follows: Christ is Priest in the heavenly 
 archetypal sanctuary (vers. 1,2); for there is no priest with- 
 out some sacrificial function (ver. 3); and if here on earth, He 
 would not be a priest at all (ver. 4), where there are priests 
 already who serve in the typical and shadowy sanctuary 
 (ver. 5). The priestly functions of Christ, therefore, must 
 be discharged in a higher sphere; and so it is. His sacerdotal 
 ministration is as far exalted above that of the law as the 
 
26 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 new covenant, of which He is Mediator, is superior to the 
 old covenant, to which the earthly sanctuary belongs (ver. 6). 
 This connection of thought is clear and consistent, if we bear 
 in mind that vers. 3-6 are the proof of the thesis in vers. 1, 2, 
 and that λειτουργεῖν and προσφέρειν (δῶρά τε καὶ θυσίας) 
 express for our author identical, or at least nigh-related and 
 inseparable notions." Accordingly the λειτουργίας in ver. 6 
 answers to the προσενέγκῃ of ver. 3 (the one at any rate 
 including the other); and the whole paragraph (vers. 3-6) 
 consists of two syllogisms: (a) A priest’s office is to offer 
 sacrifice; Christ is a priest (Aevtoupyos) ; therefore Christ 
 must have something to offer. (ὦ) The sphere in which 
 Christ’s priestly office is discharged must be either an earthly 
 one or not; an earthly one it cannot be, inasmuch as on earth 
 (in the material tabernacle) there are other priests officiating 
 according to the law; therefore Christ’s sphere of priestly 
 operation must be an unearthly, z.e. a heavenly one. 
 
 To this conception, however, of the sacred author’s pro- 
 cess of argument a serious objection has been made. ‘The 
 argument thus understood would rest, as Bleek correctly 
 observes, on the assumption of a continuous heavenly προσ- 
 φέρειν on the part of our Lord. And does not this involve 
 a contradiction to what is elsewhere insisted on—the one 
 offering of Himself, made once for all, by which Christ is 
 distinguished from all the priests of the line of Aaron, “ who 
 offer oftentimes the same sacrifices” (x. 11), and especially 
 from the high priest re-entering year by year the most holy 
 place with the offering perpetually renewed of atoning blood 
 (ix. 7, 25)? 
 
 This is the difficulty ignored by Ebrard. Let us examine 
 more closely the words involving it—é0ev ἀναγκαῖον ἔχειν τι 
 καὶ τοῦτον ὁ προσενέγκῃ. Liinemann renders them (supply- 
 ing ἣν), “ Wherefore it was of necessity that this man also 
 should have something which He might offer ;” referring the 
 ἔχειν to the Lord’s condition while here in the flesh—it was 
 necessary that He should have a body which He might offer 
 
 1 This is not only evident from ver. 3, in its connection with ver. 2, 
 but derives also fresh confirmation from x. 11, compared with Phil. ii. 17. 
 
CHAP. VIII. 3-6. 27 
 
 once for all. If this interpretation be correct, the sentence 
 contained in ver. 3 must certainly be regarded as a merely 
 casual observation, having no immediate connection with the 
 main argument. We must, however, understand ἔχειν tu as 
 spoken of our Lord in His heavenly state of existence, even 
 as He Himself is here spoken of as the heavenly λειτουργός, 
 and therefore reject Liinemann’s interpretation. Hofmann 
 renders the sentence thus: “ Wherefore it ¢s of necessity 
 (supplying ἐστί) that this man also should have something 
 which He hath (once) offered,’—referring ἔχειν te to our 
 Lord in His present exaltation at God’s right hand, and 
 προσενέγκῃ to His self-offering once made here below, which 
 He possesses as a fact accomplished, now that He is en- 
 throned in heaven. “ He must have a sacrifice” (says Hof- 
 mann) “with which He ministers, otherwise He would not be 
 high priest ; but fis sacrifice is one offered already, not one 
 that has yet to be made,—His ministry (Aevroupyia) being 
 as superior to that of the Old Testament, as the new cove- 
 nant itself is to the old” (Schriftbew. ii. 1, 288). This inter- 
 pretation of the ὃ προσενέγκῃ is to me more than doubtful. 
 That the aorist imperatively demands such a rendering, no 
 one with an intimate knowledge of Greek syntax will main- 
 tain. The sentence, necesse est eum habere aliquid quod 
 offerat, may be rendered in Greek equally well by ὃ προσ- 
 ἐνέγκῃ as by ὃ προσφέρῃ : the conception, indeed, is some- 
 what different, when the aorist is used, from that attaching 
 to the present (Madvig, ὃ 128) ; but the reference (forwards, 
 not backwards) may yet remain the same (compare, for 
 example, Matt. viii. 20 with Luke xxii. 2). At the same 
 time, it must be allowed that ὃ προσενέγκῃ might have the 
 meaning of “ quod offerret” or “ quod obtulerit.” The ques- 
 tion is one which subject and context must decide. And 
 who, in the present instance, would maintain that the natural 
 conclusion from the premiss, that a high priest as such is 
 called to offer sacrifice, would be, that Christ as High Priest 
 must have something which He has already offered, and not 
 rather that He must have something to offer? Hofmann 
 1 See Note I. 
 
28 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 himself, feeling the impropriety of such a conclusion, formu- 
 lates it thus: “ Christ is High Priest, and therefore must 
 have a sacrifice wherewith to minister.” Exactly so; and 
 it is this very ministering (λειτουργεῖν) with a sacrifice 
 (which in fact has been already offered once for all) that the 
 sacred writer calls here a προσφέρειν, using the word with 
 that peculiar latitude of application which meets us else- 
 where in this epistle. So, for instance, at v. 7, the prayers 
 and supplications of our Lord in the days of His flesh are 
 spoken of as a προσφορά; and so His heavenly intercession 
 on our behalf now might be regarded in the same light. 
 As ἐντυγχάνων ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, He is still προσφέρων τι. But 
 that is not the meaning here. Christ’s προσφέρειν in the 
 heavenly sanctuary being opposed to the προσφέρειν δῶρα 
 τε καὶ θυσίας of the Jewish high priest in the earthly one, 
 the τὸ here must denote something more concrete than the 
 ministry of intercession. The mean or instrument of that 
 perpetual ἱλάσκεσθαι τὰς ἁμαρτίας τοῦ λαοῦ attributed to 
 the High Priest in heaven (at ii. 17), on the basis of His 
 atoning death, is something more than mere intercession. 
 Our author uses προσφίρειν to denote not only the immola- 
 tion (slaying) of the victim, and its sacrificial oblation on 
 the altar, but also a special transaction with the blood, which 
 in the typical rite formed the mid-act between two others. 
 The high priest on the day of atonement, after first slaying 
 the bullock and the goat for a sin-offering, carried the blood 
 of either sacrifice into the holy of holies, and sprinkled it 
 there before the mercy-seat: this act is designated at ix. 7 
 asa προσφέρειν ; and not till after this had been done was 
 the fat of the sin-offerings offered on the altar, and the 
 bodies of the victims burned without the camp, or holy city. 
 Now these three successive actions, the slaying of the victim 
 in the outer court, the oblation of the fat upon the altar, and 
 the cremation of the body ἔξω τῆς παρεμβολῆς (Heb. xiii. 
 11), found their one and only antitype in the Lord’s sacri- 
 ficial death on Calvary; while that other distinct action of 
 the Jewish high priest on the same occasion, the carrying the 
 sacrificial blood into the holy of holies, found equally its one 
 
: CHAP. VIII. 3-6. 29 
 
 and only antitype in the entrance of Jesus Christ once for 
 all, not ἐν αἵματι ἀλλοτρίῳ (ix. 25), but διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵμα- 
 τος, into the eternal sanctuary. This blood of Jesus, then, 
 once shed for us and our sins upon the altar of the cross, 
 and thus brought once for all before God in heaven, is the 
 ti’ of which our author here speaks, as indeed the whole 
 apostolic Scripture proceeds on the assumption of the eternal 
 presence before God, and the perpetual application of that 
 “ precious blood.” We are not, however, yet come to the 
 place where this question must be discussed in detail ;? the 
 point with which our author is here immediately concerned 
 being simply this,’ that our high priest, in order to be high 
 priest at all, and as such Aaron’s antitype, must have some- 
 thing to offer, and that the place of such offering cannot be 
 an earthly, and therefore must be a heavenly one. 
 
 The following εἰ μὲν in ver. 4 corresponds to the νυνὶ δ΄ 
 of ver. 6. It is, however, a question whether we should read 
 εἰ μὲν yap, with the text. rec., Tischendorf, and the majority 
 of Mss.; or εἰ μὲν οὖν, with Scholz and Lachmann, and the 
 weighty authorities, A.B.D.' 17, 73, 80, 137, together with 
 the Latin and other ancient versions, including probably the 
 Peshito. The latter reading, which is also that preferred by 
 Bleek and Liinemann, gives the completest and most logical 
 expression to the thought, making vers. 3-6 to constitute but 
 one syllogism. As High Priest, Christ must have a priestly 
 function (ver. 3); such a function could not be discharged 
 by Him on earth (vers. 4, 5); therefore it must have a 
 heavenly (supra-legal) character. But the very fact that 
 this reading is the easier one, throws suspicion on its genuine- 
 ness ; whereas there is this further probability in favour of 
 εἰ μὲν yap, that the author elsewhere in this epistle accu- 
 mulates the use of the particle yap (compare vii. 12-14). 
 Adopting then the reading εἰ μὲν yap,’ we may conceive the 
 
 1 See Note K. 2 See commentary on ix. 12, 
 
 8 This remark is already made by Justinianus, Estius, and others of 
 the older commentators. 
 
 4 Hofmann’s conception of the apostolic writer’s meaning allows of 
 the retention of εἰ μὲν γώρ without any lacuna in the process of argu- 
 
30 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 sacred writer’s process of reasoning thus: (a) Our High 
 ‘Priest is ἃ λευτουργός (priest-minister) in the eternal sanc- 
 tuary of heaven; (@) for if an high priest at all, He must 
 have some λειτουργία to discharge: and (y) that λειτουργία 
 (priestly function) must be a heavenly, supra-mundane one ; 
 for (8) if on earth, He could not be a priest at all. Or if 
 this insertion of the unexpressed thought (vy) be regarded as 
 unwarrantable, we may take vers. 3 and 4, 1.6. (8) and (6), 
 as separate proofs of the two parts of the previous proposi- 
 tion (a): “ Our High Priest is a Nevroupyos of the heavenly 
 sanctuary :” thus (a) He is λειτουργός, because (ver. 3) every 
 high priest has some λειτουργία ; and (Ὁ) “ of the heavenly 
 sanctuary,” because (ver. 4) in His case that λειτουργία 
 could not be discharged on earth. 
 
 Εἰ μὲν γὰρ ἦν is rendered, even by Béhme (incorrectly), 
 quodsi enim fuisset’ (“ for even if He had been”). But this 
 rendering misses the sacred writer’s thought, whose point of 
 view is strictly the heavenly one. Our High Priest is in 
 heaven, and it could not (he argues) be otherwise; for beside 
 the existing Jewish, there cannot be a second earthly priest- 
 hood. Were Christ still living on the earth, as in the days 
 of His flesh He once lived here, He would not be a priest 
 at all, neither ἱερεύς nor (ἃ fortiori) ἀρχιερεύς" And the 
 reason for this is given in the following clause: ὄντων τῶν 
 ἱερέων τῶν προσφερόντων κατὰ τὸν νόμον τὰ δῶρα. (This 
 is the reading of the textus receptus ; τῶν ἱερέων is, however, 
 to be rejected as a gloss (with Lachmann and Tischendorf) ; 
 while κατὰ τὸν νόμον is (with Bleek) to be retained, against 
 Lachmann and Tischendorf, who (following A. B. and some 
 
 ment, and indeed makes it more suitable than εἰ μὲν οὖν (He must have 
 an already accomplished sacrifice, and not one still going on; for if He 
 were on earth, etc.). But this is overstraining the force of the aorist 
 and against the context. 
 
 1 In another connection this translation would doubtless be admissible 
 (comp. Matt. xxiii. 30). 
 
 2 It is to be observed, however, that οὐδέ here does not belong (as 
 Bleek, Bisping, and Hofmann seem to think) to ἱερεύς, but to ἦν ἄν, ne 
 esset quidem. The construction is similar to that in ver. 7, in Luke vii, 
 39, xvii. 6, John ix. 41, Gal. i. 10, and elsewhere. 
 
CHAP. VIII. 3-6. 91 
 
 cursives) read κατὰ νόμον. The variations are for the sense 
 indifferent.) After ὄντων we are to supply in thought the 
 ἐπὶ γῆς of the previous clause, as in ver. 2 ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς 
 is to be understood after τῶν ἁγίων. Apa here includes 
 all offerings whatsoever, being an abridgment of the phrase 
 δῶρά te καὶ θυσίαι. “Ovtwy precedes, for the sake of the 
 emphasis. There are already priests on earth who offer 
 sacrificial gifts according to the law, 1.6. who are legitimate 
 priests. This their legitimacy is further proved by the rela- 
 tive clause, commencing with οἵτινες (quippe qui), which at 
 the same time exhibits the possibility and necessity of a 
 higher priesthood. 
 
 Οἵτινες ... λατρεύουσιν. The verb λατρεύειν, which is 
 of special frequency in the writings of St. Luke, and is else- 
 where used of divine service in general, with the dative τῷ 
 Oco (e.g. ch. ix. 14, xii. 28; Luke ii. 37; Acts xxvi. 7, etc.), 
 is here used of priestly sacrificial service in particular, with 
 the dative ὑποδείγματι καὶ σκιᾷ, expressing the official sphere 
 or terrain to which this service is confined (compare the ἐν 
 τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντες of ch. xill. 10, and a similar construc- 
 tion of λειτουργεῖν with οἴκῳ at Ezek. xlv. 5, and with 
 θυσιαστηρίῳ in Clem. Rom. c. xxxii.)." The whole phrase, 
 οἵτινες ὑποδείγματι καὶ σκιᾷ λατρεύουσι τῶν ἐπουρανίων, has 
 evidently an air of depreciation about it, which is still more 
 apparent at ch. xui. 10: not as though the sacred writer 
 would dispute the divinely established validity of the Levi- 
 tical priesthood, which, on the contrary, he expressly main- 
 tains; but forasmuch now that the true High Priest is 
 come, the dignity of the legal priesthood fades away, so the 
 tabernacle with its sacred furniture no longer partakes of 
 the dignity of its heavenly original, but sinks to the position 
 of a mere pattern and shadow. “ The heavenly things” (τὰ 
 ἐπουράνια) are the archetypes of all that was comprised in 
 the tabernacle and its furniture (ch. ix. 23). Ὑπόδειγμα 
 
 1 Τὸ cannot be maintained that λατρεύειν, as compared with λειτουργεῖν, 
 is, in the usage of the Greek Scriptures, the nobler word. Rather we 
 should say it is the more general term, λειτουργεῖν being the proper 
 word for special priestly service, like the Hebrew my, 
 
92 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 (from ὑποδεικνύναι, oculis subjicere) is a visible image or 
 pattern, whether as a foretype which is followed (iv. 11), or 
 an after-copy (as here and ix. 23) from an original.’ In the 
 latter sense it is sometimes used to denote a mere sketch or 
 outline. Sd corresponds to both umbra and adumbratio, 
 the natural shadow, as well as a product of art. In contrast 
 to σῶμα (Col. ii. 17: comp. Philo, i. 434, 6; Joseph. Bell. 
 ii. 2, 5), it signifies the shadow cast by a solid body; and in 
 contrast to εἰκών, the bodily form of a thing (as our author 
 himself uses εἰκών at x. 1), it denotes the mere outline 
 (= σκιαγράφημα). It is in this latter sense that it is here 
 attached to ὑπόδειγμα. 
 
 The earthly tabernacle, in all its arrangements, is a mere 
 copy of or sketch drawn from a heavenly original; and this 
 is proved from Ex. xxv. 40 (comp. xxv. 9 and xxvi. 30). 
 Moses is there bidden, when about to proceed at God’s com- 
 mand to the formation’ of the tabernacle, to follow accurately 
 the pattern exhibited to him on Mount Sinai. The Septua- 
 gint word for the deliverance of a divine oracle or injunction 
 is χρηματίζειν (τοὺς λόγους) τινί or πρός τινα; in the New 
 Testament it is also used passively, as well χρηματίζεται τινί 
 τι (Luke ii. 26) as χρηματίζομαί τι (Acts x. 22, and twice 
 in St. Matthew). Accordingly καθὼς κεχρημάτισται Μωυσῆς 
 will mean: as then Moses has received (in our Scriptures) 
 the divine injunction (which we still read there). The cita- 
 tion, as it stands in the Septuagint, is: ὅρα ποιήσεις κατὰ 
 τὸν τύπον TOV δεδειγμένον σοι ἐν τῷ ὄρει. For ποιήσεις, the 
 text. rec. in our passage has the grammatically possible but 
 not well supported reading ποιήσῃς, i.e. the aor. conj., in the 
 same sense as the fut.: “ See that thou make” ['Tischendorf, 
 Lachmann, etc., read here ποιήσεις, on overwhelming Ms. 
 authority]. Πάντα is an insertion of our author’s, required 
 
 or justified by the sense. So Philo, i. 108, 5: ὡς (ὅς) φησί 
 
 1 See Note L. 
 
 2 Compare Philo’s use of ἐπιτελεῖν in the like sense of the realizing 
 of an ideal, and in a similar connection: Moses beheld with his soul the 
 tncorporeal ideas (or images) of corporeal things which were thereupon to 
 be constructed (τῶν μελλόντων dvarorsiobccs). 
 
CHAP. VIII. 3-6. 33 
 
 κατὰ τὸ παράδειγμα τὸ δεδειγμένον σον ἐν τῷ ὄρει πάντα 
 ποιήσεις. Finally, though it seems hardly worth observing, 
 δεδευγμένον is here substituted for the Septuagint devyOévra.' 
 On the other hand, it is important to observe that the yap 
 does not belong to the citation at all, but is part of the 
 formula of introduction :? for, “ See,” saith He, i.e. 6 Θεός, 
 or taking φησί impersonally (that is, without a definite 
 subject), “dé is said” (1.6. in Scripture) (Bernhardy, Synt. 
 419). 
 
 St. Stephen refers to the same Old Testament scripture 
 at Acts vii. 44,7 where he says, ἡ σκηνὴ τοῦ μαρτυρίου ἣν 
 τοῖς πατράσιν ἡμῶν ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ, καθὼς διετάξατο ὁ λαλῶν 
 τῷ Μωυσῆ, ποιῆσαι αὐτὴν κατὰ τὸν τύπον ὃν ἑωράκει. We 
 have here again the same τύπος (for the Hebrew n3n) 
 which is found only at Ex. xxv. 40 (in the Septuagint), 
 whereas nn is elsewhere rendered by παράδειγμα (as at 
 Ex. xxv. 9) or by ὁμοίωμα. The rendering of m3an3 by 
 “after the copy” or “adumbration,” to which Bleek appears 
 inclined, would not be quite correct; both words (nan and 
 τύπος) with 3 and κατά have the signification of norma 
 normans, a pattern or original (not a copy); but it still 
 remains a question whether the original thus exhibited to 
 Moses was the actual heavenly archetype, or only mediately 
 that archetype in a sensuous representation. The latter is 
 the view of Faber Stapulensis, Rivet, Schlichting, Limborch, 
 Storr, von Gerlach, and Ebrard, who says expressly that 
 Moses saw in vision an architectural plan which, apart from 
 the vision, had no real existence. The actual wording of 
 the text does not enable us to decide the question. For as 
 man, starting with the signification building or construction 
 
 1 See Note M. 
 
 2 In what sense special emphasis is thereby laid on the ὅρα, is mani- 
 fest from Philo’s quest. in Exod., preserved in an Armenian version 
 (Opp. vii. 369, ed. Tanchuitz) : ‘* Inspice,” dicit monens quomodo animx 
 speculationem sine somno servare oportet et vigilem esse ad videndas species 
 incorporeas. 
 
 8 Another parallel between the diction of this epistle and that of St. 
 Luke. 
 
 VOL, II. ς 
 
34 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 (Isa. xxii. 28), comes to stand for any kind of figure or like- 
 ness (Deut. iv. 17), plan or pattern’ (1 Chron. xxviii. 11-19), 
 so τύπος, starting from the meaning“ stamp” or “ impres- 
 sion” (comp. John xx. 25, τὸν τύπον τῶν ἥλων), takes those 
 of “figure” or “image” (Acts vii. 43), “sketch” or “ draft” 
 (as of a letter, Acts xxiii. 25), “exemplar” (for imitation, 
 1 Thess. i. 7) or “ensample” (for warning, 1 Cor. x. 6, like 
 δεῖγμα πυρὸς αἰωνίου, Jude 7), “ pattern,” “ architectural 
 plan,” or “model” (for a building or work of art). Now 
 Moses, it is said, received the injunction to construct the 
 tabernacle after a heavenly pattern exhibited to him. And 
 here we are told that the tabernacle was itself an ὑπόδειγμα 
 καὶ σκιὰ τῶν ἐπουρανίων. The “pattern” after which it 
 was constructed must therefore be sought in the “ heavenly 
 things” themselves: our author knows of nothing between 
 them and their earthly ἀντίτυπα (ix. 24); the tabernacle is 
 for him the shadow of a heavenly substance, but not the 
 shadow of another shadow. Had he so regarded it, he 
 would certainly not have omitted so important an element 
 in his argument. And yet we cannot suppose either that 
 Moses was left to translate his vision of the heavenly world 
 into the architectural and other visible forms of the earthly 
 sanctuary; nor that that vision, when accorded him, consisted 
 of an actual insight into the very essences of the things 
 themselves. Such insight has never yet been vouchsafed to 
 mortal man; and in the case of Moses as mediator of the 
 legal dispensation, we are the more compelled to assume that 
 the super-sensual, if exhibited to him, must have taken sen- 
 suous and visible forms of manifestation. The law itself in 
 all its parts is not an immediate revelation of God, but is 
 mediated throughout by angelic and human agencies (Heb. 
 il. 2; Acts vil. 53; Gal. iii. 19), like the pure sunlight re- 
 fracted through a prism. If, therefore, it must be assumed 
 on the one hand, that the vision vouchsafed to Moses was 
 not a mere plan of the earthly tabernacle, but a real mani- 
 
 1 Compare Ps. cxliv. 12, Our sons like plants that have shot up in 
 
 their youth, our daughters like corner-stones hewn after the pattern for a 
 palace ; and 2 Kings xvi. 10, ‘‘a@ likeness of the altar, and a plan of it.” 
 
CHAP. VIII. 3-6.. 35 
 
 festation of the heavenly world, of which that tabernacle 
 was to be a type; so, on the other hand, we must suppose 
 the manifestation to have been made, by a divine operation, 
 in such a form as to have fitted it to serve as a model for 
 the earthly building. And that building, thus constructed 
 in accordance with the vision, flashed upon the inward eye 
 of the great legislator, was ministered in by the Levitical 
 priesthood. Another such priesthood ministering in that 
 which is the shadow of heavenly things would be unimagin- 
 able. The high-priesthood of Christ, therefore, must belong 
 to the heavenly world itself, and be of a supra-mundane and 
 heavenly nature. 
 
 Carrying out this process of argument, the author pro- 
 ceeds: νυνὶ δὲ διαφορωτέρας τέτευχε NevToUvpyias—But now 
 being thus disqualified for being a priest on earth, He hath 
 obtained a so much more excellent priesthood. Nuvi dé has 
 logical (comp. ix. 26 and xi. 16), not temporal significance (as 
 νῦν δέ at ii. 8 and xii. 26). For the Ionic form’ τέτευχε of 
 the tewt. rec. Lachmann and Tischendorf read (with A.D." I. 
 K. al.) rérvyev,—a form not mentioned by the grammarians, 
 but found also in Plutarch and Diodorus (vid. Lobeck, 
 Phryn. 395).? The verb τυγχάνειν takes here, as elsewhere, 
 when used in the sense of nancisci aliquid, a genitive of the 
 object (comp. xi. 35). To regard διαφορωτέρας λειτουργίας 
 as an accusative plural is an offence against grammar. For 
 the comparative form, διαφορώτερος, see note on i. 4. 
 
 The priesthood of Christ being no earthly one, is so much 
 the more excellent, and in such degree Sow καὶ κρείττονός 
 ἐστιν διαθήκης μεσίτης, ἥτις ἐπὶ κρείττοσιν ἐπωγγελίαις νενο- 
 μοθέτηται. The superior dignity of Christ’s priesthood to 
 that of Aaron is here measured by the superiority of the new 
 covenant to the old, being the reverse of the argument at 
 vil. 22, where from the greatness of the priest after the 
 
 1 Found also in Attic writers. In the κοινὴ διάλεκτος it is the usual 
 form. It is without sufficient proof that Fischer and Sturz (p. 198) 
 regard it as a Macedonico-Alexandrine form. 
 
 2 The Attic form τετύχηκε is found only in some cursive Mss. (Com- 
 plut. Plaut. Genev.). 
 
36 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 order of Melchizedek is inferred the superiority of the cove- 
 nant of which He is Mediator. The term there used to 
 express His relation to the covenant was éyyvos, here we 
 have the more general term μεσίτης ; both notions are 
 united in the Attic word pecéyyvos, which, according to 
 Moris and Thomas Magister, must be employed instead of 
 the Hellenistic term μεσίτης. Both appellations éyyvos and 
 μεσίτης point to a sphere beyond that of the operations of 
 the Levitical priesthood. The “mediator” of the Old Tes- 
 tament was not Aaron, but Moses. The Levitical priesthood 
 was itself a mere product of that covenant, not its basis, 
 serving to maintain the covenant relation, and helping to 
 remove disturbances thereof, but no more; whereas Jesus 
 Christ is both founder and finisher as well as conservator of 
 the New Testament, as the éyyvos and μεσίτης of which He © 
 stands in an antitypical relation not to Aaron only, but also 
 and specially to Moses. 
 
 The superiority of the new covenant to the old is further 
 exhibited by the relative clause commencing with #rvs; its 
 establishment is characterized by νενομοθέτηται, as a law- 
 based constitution. Compare vii. 11, where the same term is 
 applied to persons whose duties and privileges are determined 
 by law. At vii. 11, νενομοθ. is followed by ἐπί seq. gen. 
 (the people of Israel have a legal constitution made with 
 reference to, or resting upon, the Levitical priesthood), here 
 by ἐπί seq. dat., expressing the conditions on which the 
 whole new covenant is established (compare Xen. Hell. 
 ii. 2, 20 (the Lacedzemonians concluded peace ἐφ᾽ 6, on con- 
 dition that ...), and Thucyd. iii. 114, ἐπὶ τοῖσδε). The use 
 of the word νομοθετεῖσθαι in reference to the new testa- 
 ment presents no difficulty. Not only St. James speaks of 
 it as the perfect law of liberty (νόμον τέλειον τὸν τῆς ἐλευθε- 
 pias, i. 25), but St. Paul likewise, contrasting it as the νόμος 
 πίστεως to that of works (τῶν ἔργων), Rom. iii. 27 (comp. 
 viii. 2 and ix. 31). Νόμος in Scripture designates any and 
 every revelation of the divine will, by which the relations of 
 the church and its members to God are determined! 
 
 1 See Note N. 
 
CHAP. VIII. 7-12. 37 
 
 The sacred writer proceeds to another proof of the supe- 
 riority of the new covenant—its being already looked forward 
 to under the old. 
 
 Ver. 7. For if that first were irreproachable, a place would 
 not be sought for a second. 
 
 We might also translate, [f that first had been irreproach- 
 able, a place would not have been sought, etc. ; but in Greek 
 neither protasis nor apodosis is so conceived (otherwise the 
 latter would have been a pluperfect): comp. vii. 4. The 
 form of the argument is similar to that of vii. 11. "ἄμεμπτος 
 (as at Luke i. 6, and throughout the New Testament) is 
 used passively = that which admits not of blame, irreproach- 
 able, μὴ μέμψιν δεχόμενος. Ebrard and Liinemann need- 
 lessly imagine that two thoughts are confounded in the 
 apodosis—“ there would be no place for a second, and no 
 second would be sought for,” or vice versa. The phrase ζητεῖν 
 τόπον is like τόπον εὑρίσκειν (xii. 17), τόπον λαμβάνειν (Acts 
 xxv. 16), τόπον διδόναι (Rom. xii. 19). The διαθήκη δευτέρα 
 exists already under the first (πρώτη; not προτέρω; see Winer, 
 Ρ- 218), 1.6. in the divine counsels. A place is sought for it 
 not in the hearts of men (Bleek), but in the historical mani- 
 festation of the divine purposes. That is, it is “ sought” by 
 the prophetic word, which gives expression to the divine pur- 
 pose pressing on to its accomplishment. And so the writer 
 proceeds :-— 
 
 Vers. 8-12. For, finding fault, he saith unto them, Behold, 
 days are coming, saith the Lord, when I will conclude towards 
 the house of Israel and towards the house of Judah a new 
 covenant: not according to the covenant which I made for their 
 fathers, in the day of my taking hold of their hand to lead 
 them forth out of the land of Egypt; for they themselves 
 abided not in my covenant, and I disregarded them, saith the 
 Lord. For this is the covenant which I will frame for the 
 house of Israel after those days,: saith the Lord; putting my 
 
 1 Attic writers also use dueuarog in the sense of ‘‘ one who has no 
 fault to find.” See Thomas Magister, 
 
38 EFISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 laws into their mind, I will also inscribe them on their hearts, 
 and will be unto them for a God, and they shall be unto me 
 for a people. And they shall not teach every one his fellow- 
 citizen, and every one his brother, saying, Know the Lord; 
 because all shall know me, from their least unto their greatest. 
 For Iwill be merciful to their unrighteousnesses, and their sins 
 [and breaches of law] will I remember no more. 
 
 After μεμφόμενος (ver. 8) we must either supply αὐτοῖς 
 (comp. Ex. ii. 7), and render it wituperans enim eos dicit 
 (Itala, Vulg., Peshito, Luther, Calvin, Beza, Bengel, and 
 Béhme), or read with Lachmann (following A.D.*K. ai.), 
 αὐτούς, which grammatically is the better reading, and as to 
 sense more suitable than the αὐτήν (i.e. τὴν πρώτην Sia- 
 θήκην) of Bleek, De Wette, Liinemann, Ebrard, and others ; 
 seeing that the following prophetic passage contains no direct 
 fault-finding with the Old Testament. Adrois evidently 
 refers to the people themselves, as at xi. 3;' and “the sacred 
 writer uses the expression He jfindeth fault with them of set 
 purpose, to mark the fact that God does not blame His own 
 institution, but the unfaithfulness of men under it.” So 
 Rieger, quite correctly. The covenant was in itself, and in 
 reference to the divine plan and purposes of mercy, free 
 from all blame; yet inasmuch as not individuals only, but 
 the whole people, fell away under it, it could not escape the 
 charge of being unable to establish an abiding communion 
 between God and man. 
 
 The great prophetic passage here cited is from Jer. xxxi. 
 (Sept. xxxviii.) 31-34, to which Ezek. xxxvi. 25-27 forms 
 a counterpart. It occurs in the third section of the third 
 great trilogy of the Jeremianic collection of prophecies.? 
 This trilogy commences with ch. xxi. Its first book, that 
 “ against the Shepherds,” occupies ch. xxi.—xxv.; its second 
 book, that “ of Jeremiah’s Conflict with the false Pro- 
 
 1 And so in the Gospels frequently ; e.g. Matt. iv. 23, xi. 1, xii. 9, 
 Luke ii. 22. 
 
 2 T hope to show elsewhere, that the whole collection of Jeremiah’s 
 prophecies consists of three great trilogies. Neumann (i. 89) is rightly 
 dissatisfied with all previous arrangements. 
 
CHAP. VIII. 8-12. 39 
 
 phets,” occupies ch. xxvi.—xxix.; and the third, “ the Book 
 of the Restoration,” ch. xxx. and xxxi. The prophecies 
 contained in these two chapters were given to Jeremiah 
 when, after the conquest of Jerusalem, he had been carried 
 in fetters, among other captives, to the standing quarters of 
 Nebuzaradan at Rama. Committed at the same time to 
 writing by express command of God, these prophecies speak 
 of the ultimate restoration of the whole people of Israel, of 
 the second David, of Rachel’s lamentation at Rama over her 
 children carried away into captivity, and their future return ;' 
 and lastly, of the new covenant which Jehovah will one day 
 make with His people, based on a final and absolute remission 
 of sins. The passage here selected from this chain of pro- 
 phetic utterances, whose Messianic meaning no evasion can 
 get rid of, begins with the stereotype phrase in Jeremiah, 
 ἰδοὺ ἡμέραι ἔρχονται (the thrice inserted λέγει Κύριος is in 
 the Vatican text of the Sept. throughout φησὶ Κύριος. 
 Jehovah holds out the prospect of a new covenant to be 
 made with the houses both of Israel and Judah, that is, with 
 the whole covenant people: the καί before συντελέσω corre- 
 sponds to the Vav of the apodosis in the Hebrew text, and 
 therefore must be rendered by “ when,” or a similar particle. 
 For καὶ συντελέσω ἐπὶ τὸν, κ-τ.λ., the text of the Sept. has 
 καὶ διαθήσομαι τῷ, κιτλ. Elsewhere the Sept. uses the 
 expression συντελεῖν διαθήκην twice, to represent N42 ΠῚ, 
 viz. ch. xxxiy. (xli.) 8 and 15. Our author seems here to 
 have purposely selected the term συντελέσω to express more 
 clearly the conclusive perfecting power of the new covenant 
 of the gospel. It is characterized, in the first place nega- 
 tively, by its non-resemblance to the old covenant made at 
 Sinai, and renewed in the plains of Moab: od κατὰ τὴν 
 διαθήκην ἣν ἐποίησα (UXX. διεθέμην)" τοῖς πατράσιν αὐτῶν 
 
 1 5366 xxxi. 16, They shall come again from the land of the enemy ; 
 and 17, Thy children shall come again to their own border. 
 
 2 Codd. A. and FA. (Friderico-Augusteus) have the first time λέγει 
 K., but both times afterwards Φησί. 
 
 8 Tlosciv διαθήκην may here also be a reminiscence of another Septua- 
 gint rendering at xxxiv. (xli.) 18. 
 
40 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 ἐν ἡμέρᾳ ἐπιλαβομένου μου Ths χειρὸς αὐτῶν ἐξαγαγεῖν αὐτοὺς 
 ἐκ γῆς Αἰγύπτου. The construction ἐν ἡμέρᾳ ἐπιλαβομένου 
 μου for ἐν ἣ ἐπελαβόμην (Justin, dial. c. Tryph. ς. xi.) is an 
 imitation of the Hebrew. It was God, the Deliverer from 
 the land of Egypt, who offered that first covenant of Sinai 
 to His people. That covenant was therefore also not alto- 
 gether wanting in grace and glory; nevertheless God here 
 declares that He will conclude a new one, which shall be 
 different from it, and adds the reason: ὅτι αὐτοὶ οὐκ évé- 
 μειναν ἐν τῇ διαθήκῃ μου κἀγὼ (so FA., while both Vat. and 
 Al. have καὶ ἐγώ) ἠμέλησα αὐτῶν, λέγει (Codd. LXX. 
 φησὶ) Κύριος. The expression in the Hebrew is both times 
 positive, “ because they brake my covenant, and I conceived 
 displeasure against them.” Yet the rendering οὐκ ἐνέμειναν 
 is excellent; they remained not in the covenant which was | 
 intended to include and unite them with God, and so made 
 of it an empty formal framework.’ Such ἃ covenant-breaking 
 people could no longer be the subject of covenant mercy on 
 God’s part; the Holy One must withdraw from them the 
 providential preference and protection which He had pur- 
 posed to vouchsafe: κἀγὼ ἠμέλησα αὐτῶν. The objection 
 which might here present itself—Could, then, Israel’s un- 
 faithfulness to the covenant annul the faithfulness of God? 
 —is easily answered. (God’s faithfulness to that first cove- 
 nant was indeed gloriously vindicated in the very fact that 
 
 1“ The law” (said Schelling) ‘‘ appears to have been the mere ideal 
 of a religious constitution, such as never existed in reality. The Jews were 
 actually and practically almost mere polytheists. The substance of their 
 practical religious belief was paganism; revealed religion was but as an 
 accident. They seem to have passed through all stages of corruption, from 
 the queen of heaven to the abominations of the Phenicians, and even those 
 of Cybele” (Offenbarung’s Philosophie, published by Paulus, p. 668). If 
 indeed we except the times of David, and the early part of Solomon’s 
 reign, during which the salutary influence of Samuel continued to be 
 felt, there was no period in the history of Israel before the captivity, 
 wherein the worship of Jehovah was not more or less confronted with 
 that of idols. And even afterwards, among those who returned from 
 Babylon, wearied and disgusted as they seemed with their former 
 idolatries, a scarcely less pernicious and idolatrous formalism and wor- 
 ship of the letter soon gained ascendency. 
 
CHAP. VIII. 8-12. 41 
 
 when it had failed to accomplish His gracious purpose in its 
 institution, He forthwith devised a second covenant which 
 could not fail; and so grace was outbidden by yet larger 
 grace. 
 
 The difference between the two covenants is next stated 
 positively: ὅτι αὕτη ἡ διαθήκη" ἣν διαθήσομαι τῷ οἴκῳ 
 ᾿Ισραὴλ μετὰ τὰς ἡμέρας ἐκείνας, λέγει" Κύριος. The days 
 here meant are the “days that are coming” of ver. 8. 
 When these days shall be fulfilled, and the sought-for place 
 be found in them, then will the new covenant be concluded 
 with the once more united house of all Israel. The first 
 “more excellent promise” (κρείττων ἐπαγγελία), on which 
 this new covenant will be established, is this: that in the 
 place of the external obligation and opposition exciting 
 bondage of the letter, will henceforth stand the inward 
 power of the divinely implanted knowledge of the will of 
 God, forming a new bond of communion between the Lord 
 and His people: διδοὺς" νόμους μου εἰς τὴν διάνοιαν" αὐτῶν, 
 καὶ ἐπὶ καρδίας αὐτῶν ἐπιγράψω αὐτούς"" καὶ ἔσομαι" αὐτοῖς 
 εἰς Θεὸν, καὶ αὐτοὶ ἔσονταί μοι εἰς λαόν. The διδούς (which 
 seems to imply a i) in the original‘) is remarkable: after it, 
 as it now stands, the διαθήσομαι αὐτήν must be understood, 
 and so the parallelism of the first clause with the second (xal 
 ἐπὶ καρδ. αὐτῶν ἐπιγράψω αὐτούς) made complete. The ἐπὶ 
 καρδίας of our text answers to the Hebrew oad-by ; and (as 
 
 1 Lachmann reads 4 διαθήκη [ov], following A.D.E. and the Vat. 
 of LXX.; the Al., on the other hand, and FA., omit ov. 
 
 2LXX. φησί. 
 
 3 So the LXX. in Al. and FA.; but the Vat. reads διδοὺς δώσω. 
 For νόμους, FA.* reads, in accordance with the original Hebrew text, 
 νόμον. 
 
 4 ΒΑ. reads καρδίων. 
 
 ὅ The Vat. reads γράψω, Al. and I'A. καὶ ἐπιγράώψω αὐτοὺς ἐπὶ τὰς 
 καρδίας (ΒΑ. ἐπὶ καρδίαν) αὐτῶν. 
 
 6 Al. and FA. read, καὶ ὄψομαι αὐτοὺς καὶ ἔσομαι, x.7.A., reminding 
 one of John xvi. 22, πάλιν δὲ ὄψομαι ὑμᾶς : it answers to some such 
 Hebrew phrase as D°N7p5}. 
 
 7 The complete phrase is διδοὺς δώσω (Vat.) = jn ἢ). Compare 
 Deut. xv. 10, LXX., and Thiersch, de Pent. Versione Alex. iii. 12, 
 
42 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 Prov. vii. 8, LX X., proves) καρδίας is to be regarded as the 
 genitive singular. The second “ more excellent promise” of 
 the new covenant is: that, as the result of manifold inward 
 divine revelations, a true knowledge of God will become 
 universal, a common possession of all His people: καὶ οὐ 
 μὴ διδάξωσιν ἕκαστος τὸν πολίτην αὑτοῦ, καὶ ἕκαστος τὸν 
 ἀδελφὸν avtov,” λέγων: Γνῶθι τὸν Κύριον" ὅτι πάντες εἰδή- 
 σουσί(ν) με, ἀπὸ μικροῦ αὐτῶν ἕως" μεγάλου αὐτῶν. The 
 rendering of »ῈὺῈ by πολίτης is much less usual in the Sept. 
 than by ὁ πλησίον ; it is found only occasionally in Jeremiah 
 and the Proverbs. The first of the two αὐτῶν 5 (which is 
 omitted by Lachmann) is not wanted; the second is abso- 
 lutely necessary,—making, according to the Hebrew idiom, 
 the positives into superlatives: “from their least to their 
 
 greatest” (Ges. ὃ 119, 2). All will know‘ the Lord, 1.6. will ~ 
 
 be inwardly διδακτοὶ Θεοῦ (John vi. 45), and need no out- 
 ward teaching (1 John ii. 20, 27). The third “more 
 excellent promise,” which constitutes the basis of the new 
 covenant, is: that all sins will be done away by the pre- 
 venient grace of a free pardon: ὅτε ἵλεως ἔσομαι ταῖς ἀδι- 
 κίαις αὐτῶν, καὶ τῶν ἀνομιῶν αὐτῶν οὐ μὴ μνησθῶ ἔτι. This 
 promise is the foundation and, as it were, the corner-stone 
 of all others. The ὅτε with which it commences is not 
 co-ordinate with the ὅτι in the preceding clause, but the 
 proof of it. The words καὶ τῶν ἀνομιῶν αὐτῶν are wanting 
 both in the original Hebrew and the Septuagint; and I agree 
 with Bleek® in thinking it more than probable that they are 
 an interpolation from ch. x. 17, where καὶ τῶν ἀνομιῶν 
 αὐτῶν stands in the place of καὶ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν. At 
 the same time, the authority of B., 17, 28, Vulg., Syr., Copt., 
 
 1LXX. Al., τὸν ὠδελφόν. The reading, τὸν πλησίον αὐτοῦ is not 
 
 well attested. 
 
 2 LXX., Al, πλησίον. 
 
 3 LXX., Al., μικροῦ ἕως; and so Lachmann, here following 
 ‘AB.D*K, αἵ. 
 
 * εἰδήσουσιν, Ionic fut., used also by Attic writers for εἴσονται. Vid. 
 Lobeck, Phryn. p. 748. 
 
 5 Note O, at the end of this volume. 
 
 8.1. 362. 
 
CHAP. VIII. 8-12. 43 
 
 is not sufficient to warrant their exclusion from the text. 
 They must be suffered to remain, though subject to some 
 suspicion ; for it is still possible, as Joh. Gerhard suggests, 
 that the sacred writer may have introduced the words ἐξηγή- 
 σεως et ἐμφάσεως, causa ut significaretur cujusvis generis pec- 
 catorum remissionem vere credentibus esse promissam. ‘That 
 in Christ Jesus all our sins are once for all forgiven; that 
 we have nothing to do but to receive this forgiveness in 
 humble faith ; and that when we fall into sin the covenant 
 foundation still remains, and needs not the repetition of legal 
 sacrifices to give it fresh validity ;—this indeed is the prin- 
 cipal and fundamental prerogative of the new covenant: for 
 “ where forgiveness of sins is, there is also life and salva- 
 tion.”* How deeply sensible our author (and that in a truly 
 Pauline way) was of this truth, is evident from the close of 
 this, the central portion of the epistle: at ch. x. 17 he returns 
 to it, and solemnly repeats the sentence, that where remission 
 of sins is, there is no more offering for sin. 
 
 We find ourselves here in the middle of the second sec- 
 tion of this central treatise (vil. 26-ix. 12). As in v. 1-10 
 the sacred writer proved the resemblance between the type 
 Aaron and Christ the antitype, so here he exhibits their dis- 
 similarity. Christ is greater than the Levitical high priest : 
 (a) through His high-priestly sacrifice, offered once for all ; 
 (8) through His consequent exaltation to the right hand of 
 the Divine Majesty; (vy) through the divine supra-mundane 
 sphere of His high-priestly work ; and (6) finally, through 
 the absolute and unconditional forgiveness of sins vouchsafed 
 through the covenant of which He is Founder. The con- 
 ditions and characteristics of this new covenant have been 
 described in the words of the prophet Jeremiah. The sacred 
 writer proceeds by an antithetical parallelism to show (ix. 
 1-12) how, on the one hand, the Old Testament had its 
 visible sanctuary with sacred mystic furniture, and in this 
 sanctuary a holy place accessible to the priests, and a holy 
 of holies entered by the high priest alone once every year 
 with the blood of a twofold sacrifice; and how, on the other 
 
 1 Luther’s Catechism. 
 
44 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 hand, these shadows have all been brought to an end through 
 the entrance of the High Priest of the New Testament into 
 the eternal sanctuary with the blood of His own once-offered 
 sacrifice, accomplishing an eternal redemption. This anti- 
 thetical parallelism is introduced by the concluding verse of 
 this eighth chapter. 
 
 Ver. 13. In that he saith “ A new” [covenant], he hath 
 made the first old. But that which decayeth and waxeth old is 
 ready to vanish away. 
 
 Ἔν τῷ λέγειν here is like ἐν τῷ ὑποτάξαι at 11. 8, and 
 ἐν τῷ λέγεσθαι at iii. 15. Jn saying, or by saying, “ A new 
 (covenant),” he has antiquated the former one. The perfect 
 πεπαλαίωκε expresses the completion of the act of παλαιοῦν, 
 
 as coinciding with the utterance of the divine prophetic word, - 
 
 and effected by it. Every word of God is an expression of 
 His will; and the divine will is at the same time a divine 
 act, even before its historical manifestation. The πεέπα- 
 λαίωκε is therefore more than declarative. God cannot 
 declare a person or thing to be so and so, without its being 
 or becoming essentially that which God declares it to be. 
 IIadauodv,' moreover (except when used intransitively, as at 
 Isa. lxv. 22), always signifies to make old (Lam. iii. 4; Job 
 ix. 5, xxxii. 15), or set aside as obsolete (Dan. vii. 25). The 
 rendering of the Vulgate is: dicendo autem novum veteravit 
 prius: quod autem antiquatur (Itala, veteratur), et senescit 
 prope interitum est. Erasmus, Beza, and many others, also 
 render πεέπαλ. by antiquavit, in accordance, if not with the 
 old Roman,’ at any rate with the later juristic use of the 
 word. Παλαιός answers pretty closely to the Latin anti- 
 quus, as ἀρχαῖος to priscus, and γεραιός (γηραιός) to vetus 
 (vetustus) : καινός, as the antithesis of παλαιός and its syno- 
 nymes, is equivalent to novus; while, on the other hand, νέος 
 (syn. πρόσφατος) answers to recens: καινόν is that which has 
 
 1 Jn extra-biblical literature, the middle or passive σ-ὡλωιοῦσθωι 15 
 the only form used, in the sense of becoming or being made old. 
 
 * Antiquare being the technical term for the rejection of a proposed 
 law. 
 
 “απ πε νου 
 
CHAP. VIII. 13. 45 
 
 not hitherto existed or lived; veov that which has just come 
 into existence, and is full of fresh life. The meaning, there- 
 fore, of our verse will be, that God, in promising a “ new” 
 covenant, has marked that mediated by Moses with the 
 character of obsolescence: it is henceforth a παλαιούμενον, 
 that which is daily becoming more and more antiquated, and 
 γηράσκον, daily growing older and feebler, losing more and 
 more its former life and energy; but that which is thus 
 becoming antiquated and lifeless is ἐγγὺς ἀφανισμοῦ (comp. 
 κατάρας ἐγγύς, vi. 8), 1.6. drawing ever nearer to that final 
 point where its very existence and right to exist will have 
 come to an end. That final point has, according to the 
 sacred writer, been reached already. It is no longer for him, 
 as Tholuck* appears to imagine, in any way a thing of the 
 future ; for he is not speaking of Judaism and Christianity 
 as merely historical phenomena, but of the two διαθῆκαι in 
 their divine force and reality. Ever since the new covenant 
 was established in the blood of Jesus Christ, the old cove- 
 nant has had only a seeming existence and validity in the 
 mind of Israel: it belongs henceforth to a dead and buried 
 past. Already in the times of psalmists and prophets, it was 
 becoming a παλαιούμενον καὶ γηράσκον ;? and that is the 
 best explanation of their position in regard to it. Otherwise 
 it would be impossible to understand the opposition to sacri- 
 ficial worship which meets us in all parts of later and pro- 
 phetical Scripture: e.g. 1 Sam. xv. 22 sq.; Ps. xl. 7 sq.; 
 Bom 1 (1 8osq. 6) Prov. xxt.'3') Hos.’ vi. 65 Jer. ‘vil. 
 21-23. It is not there said that external sacrifices are good, 
 if only performed in a right spirit; but all such sacrifices 
 
 1 Comment. in loc. 
 
 2 This is the boast of modern Judaism against their own rabbinical 
 traditions as well as against Christianity. ‘* The rabbinical position is 
 so far,” says Holdheim, ‘‘ the same as that of Christianity, that both 
 regard sacrifice and atonement as ideas of perpetual validity. Chris- 
 tianity teaches that atonement has been once for all accomplished by 
 the one sacrifice of the cross; rabbinical Judaism looks forward to a 
 restoration of the sacrificial system of the Thora” (Ceremonialgesetz 
 im Messiasreich, 1845). But modern Judaism rejects the idea of sacrifice 
 altogether. 
 
46 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 appear to be utterly discarded in favour of those which are 
 wholly spiritual. True, indeed, they merely appear to be so. 
 But nevertheless this aversion in the greatest minds of the 
 Old Testament from the outward and ceremonial, was in 
 their times a prophetic anticipation of that worship of God 
 in spirit and truth which is the main characteristic of the 
 New Testament. That a religion of outward works, without 
 that inward life of the heart which the law assumes and 
 requires, but is unable to give, is utterly worthless, was 
 proved, even in the fairest times of Israel’s history, by the 
 prevalent immorality, notwithstanding the strictness of legal 
 observances. And as the whole people, so each individual 
 experienced the same in his own case. The more spiritually- 
 minded any one might be, the more indifferent must he 
 have become towards those legal observances which ofttimes - 
 served as a mask to the profoundest ungodliness. This ex- 
 plains our finding in the prophets, while they never impugn 
 the divine authority of the ceremonial law, and at times 
 sternly rebuke and punish high-handed violations of its ordi- 
 nances, yet so many more exhortations to spiritual worship in 
 antithesis to that of the letter and outward observance. The 
 new covenant is already in their times striving with the old, 
 and threatening with ruin the aged structure. In that of 
 our author the unequal conflict had already come to an end. 
 The old covenant is virtually dead, and the new occupies its 
 place. The temple service, though to continue it may be a 
 few years longer in outward splendour, is only a bed of state, 
 on which a lifeless corpse is lying; the humble forms of 
 worship of the New Testament church enshrine a vigorous, 
 heaven-aspiring life. 
 
 All this notwithstanding, the first readers of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews were sorely tempted to suffer themselves to 
 be dazzled by the pomp of the Levitical forms of worship, 
 and to take offence at the humilities of the religion of the 
 cross. To guard them from such temptation, the sacred 
 writer proceeds to show, in the ninth chapter, how the glory 
 of the Old Testament sanctuary, with its sacred furniture and 
 priestly ministries, pales before the infinitely more gracious 
 
CHAP. IX. 1. 47 
 
 and majestic glories of the High Priest of the New Testa- 
 ment, and of the eternal sanctuary in which He vouchsafes 
 to mediate for us. 
 
 Ch. ix. 1. Now indeed accordingly the first [covenant] 
 had also ordinances of divine service, and the worldly sanc- 
 
 tuary. 
 The first covenant was indeed well appointed in reference 
 to divine service; but— This “ but” is further expanded in 
 
 ver. 6 and the following verses. Having laid down that, in 
 fulfilment of the prophetic word, a new covenant is to suc- 
 ceed the old, the sacred writer proceeds with a μέν quidem, 
 and an οὖν igitur, to concede the points of excellence of 
 which the latter could boast, and with the following δέ vero 
 to indicate its deficiencies, and the superiority of that which 
 supersedes it. All are now agreed that the right reading is 
 εἶχεν μὲν οὖν Kal ἡ πρώτη, Not ἡ πρώτη σκηνή, which has all 
 the uncials against it, and got into the tertus receptus (Rob. 
 Stephens, 1550) from the Complutensian of 1520. The text 
 of Erasmus, from which Luther rendered, had only ἡ πρώτη. 
 Calvin and Beza with good right declared σκηνή to be an 
 awkward gloss. Sebastian Schmidt endeavoured to vindicate 
 it without success: the sentence habeat prius tabernaculum 
 sanctuarium mundanum remains, after all explanations, an 
 illogical proposition, the tabernaculum being itself sanctuarium.' 
 The reading σκηνή must therefore be rejected, and ἡ πρώτη 
 be interpreted, according to viii. 13, as referring to διαθήκη. 
 The antithesis is not between an earthly tabernacle and that 
 in heaven, but between the first covenant with its ministries 
 of mediation, and the new covenant with its divine Mediator. 
 The antithetical comparison commences with the imperfect 
 εἶχεν. The sacred writer looks back from the platform of 
 
 1 Σχηνὴ ἡ πρώτη, in ver. 2 and in vers. 6, 8, is the holy place of the 
 tabernacle in contradistinction from the holy of holies, not the Mosaic 
 tabernacle itself in contradistinction from any later structure. IIpary 
 has therefore a different meaning in vers. 2, 6, 8, from what would be 
 assigned it in ver. 1. In the 4 πρώτη σκηνή of Jos. ὁ. Ap. i. 3, πρώτη 
 has that temporal meaning. 
 
48 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. ? 
 
 the new covenant towards that which preceded it, and has 
 now become for him not merely a παλαιούμενον, but a 
 παλαιωθέν. 
 
 The objects of the verb (εἶχεν) are two, not {Π|1:6---δικαιώ- 
 pata λατρείας (gen. sing.), and ἅγιον κοσμικόν. The render- 
 ing adopted by Luther and others, “ Now the first had also 
 its ordinances and services” (λατρείας, acc. plur.), though 
 grammatically possible,’ is against the context: the sacred 
 writer is not thinking of the Mosaic ordinances generally, 
 but simply of those relating to public worship. “ατρείας 
 must therefore be a genitive dependent on δικαιώματα. The 
 Vulgate rendering is justijicationes culture. But δικαίωμα 
 has always a passive signification, denoting the product either 
 of righteous legislation, righteous judgment, or righteous 
 action: eg. Luke i. 6, it denotes a righteous ordinance or - 
 precept; Rom. v. 16, an exculpatory or justifying sentence ; 
 Rev. xv. 4, a just judgment; Rom. v. 18, just action; and 
 here, as at ver. 10, it is undoubtedly to be taken in the first 
 of these senses—being derived from δικαιοῦν, to ordain, 
 constitute, or give legal validity (cf. Philo, i. 653, 5, 16). 
 Δικαίωμα is accordingly the LXX. rendering of the Hebrew 
 paw or pn and their synonymes. The old covenant had also 
 its constitutions or ordinances in reference to the service of 
 God, which were themselves juris divini, being based on a 
 revelation of the divine will. Then follows the second object 
 of εἶχεν, connected with the first by the enclitic particle τε, 
 —70 τε ἅγιον κοσμικόν. The meaning in any case must be, 
 that the old testament had also a sanctuary. To take ἅγιον 
 (as, for instance, Luther, “an outward sanctity”) in any 
 other than a local sense is a mistake. The various parts 
 and ornaments of the Levitical sanctuary are described, and 
 at ver. 11 the heavenly σκηνή is directly contrasted with it. 
 Instead, however, of simply saying ἅγιόν τε, the sacred writer 
 expresses himself thus: τό τε ἅγιον κοσμικόν. The use of the 
 article, and its non-repetition before the adjective κοσμικόν, 
 is remarkable. As the adjective κοσμικὸν cannot be under- 
 stood in the sense of “ beautiful,” which would require κόσ- 
 
 1 In ver. 6 our author uses λωτρείως as a plural. 
 
CHAP, IX. 1. 49 
 
 pov, nor in that of “universal,” “belonging to the whole 
 κόσμος," ἡ which would assign to the Levitical sanctuary a 
 position of wider significance than that given it in the 
 Thorah, we must regard it here as denoting a difference 
 between the Levitical sanctuary and that of the new testa- 
 ment. The proper meaning of the adjective κοσμικός is 
 “worldly,” “belonging to this world,’ having relation to it 
 (Tit. ii. 12). The heavenly tabernacle of the new testa- 
 ment is said in contradistinction to be οὐ χειροποίητος τοῦτ᾽ 
 ἔστιν ov ταύτης τῆς KTicews; and so the earthly sanctuary 
 of the Old Testament is here called κοσμικόν, as being 
 by place, material, construction, and usage related to the 
 present transitory world. So Egid. Hunnius: Sanctum 
 mundanum quia manufactum erat, constans ex materia pre- 
 tiosa quidem sed tamen dissolubili. This restriction, how- 
 ever, of the cosmic character to the materia ex qua is so far 
 a mistaken one. 
 
 A question remains as to the construction of the sentence. 
 Three methods are possible :— 
 
 We may render it, (1) “ The first (covenant) had also 
 ordinances for the conduct of divine service, and the worldly 
 sanctuary.” So Bleek, Tholuck, Liinemann, Winer,” jus- 
 tifying the phrase τὸ ἅγιον κοσμικὸν either from the later 
 usage of the language, or as being like the ὁ αἰὼν πονηρός of 
 Gal. i. 4, where αἰών and πονηρός form together one com- 
 pound notion. This justification is not needed here. Instead 
 of στενὴ ἡ 650s, we might say equally well ἡ ὅδος στενή, 
 whereby a special stress would be laid on the adjective, which 
 is lost in the rendering “ the narrow way ; ® as also the full 
 force of κοσμικόν here is lost in the rendering “ the worldly 
 
 1 Compare Jos. Bell. iv. 5, 2, τῆς κοσμικῆς θρησκείας κατάρχοντες, 
 speaking of the Jewish high priests. Chrysostom, Haymo, and others, 
 are also wrong in interpreting ἅγιον κοσρικόν of the atrium gentium in 
 the temple: Sanctum sxculare in quo sxculi homines, hoc est, gentiles ad 
 Judaismum transeuntes recipiebat. The author of this epistle speaks 
 throughout of the Mosaic tabernacle, not of the temple. 
 
 4 eG 
 
 8 See Kiihner, ὃ 495, 1; Buttmann, ὃ 125, Obs. 4. 
 
 VOL. II. D 
 
50 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 sanctuary.” It is indeed completely wrong to imagine that 
 τὸ ἅγιον x. could be equivalent to ἅγιόν Te TO κοσμικόν, 
 whereas it must rather be resolved into τὸ ἅγιον κοσμικόν τι 
 or κοσμικὸν ὄν. A better rendering, therefore, would be, 
 (2) “ The sanctuary” (i.e. the well-known Mosaic tabernacle) 
 “ being a thing of this world,” where κοσμικόν is regarded as 
 a sort of apposition more nearly defining the object, τὸ ἅγιον. 
 But inasmuch as the usage of ἔχειν with determined object 
 and undetermined adjectival predicate is common (e.g. Isocrat. 
 Phil. ὃ 184, τὸ σῶμα θνητὸν ἅπαντες ἔχομεν ; vid. Madvig, 
 § 12), and familiar to our author (vid. v. 14, vii. 24), it 
 would be still better to render it, (3) “ The jirst covenant 
 had also liturgical ordinances, and the sanctuary as a thing of 
 this world,” i.e. a sanctuary of a simply cosmical character.’ 
 In this way only can the otherwise difficult article be ex- . 
 plained in accordance with Greek modes of thought. Logi- 
 cally, the sense is the same in all three renderings. The 
 sacred writer proceeds to develope the cosmical character of 
 the sanctuary of the old testament. 
 
 Ver. 2. For a tabernacle was prepared, the first one 
 wherein were the lamp, and the table, and the setting forth 
 of the loaves, which (part of the tabernacle) was called 
 “ Folies.” 
 
 The structure of thought is this: The old covenant had 
 a sanctuary of its own, and that of a cosmic nature; for a 
 tabernacle was constructed—first, the outer part, which was 
 called the holies or holy place, and then another part called 
 the holy of holies. It is scarcely necessary to observe that 
 the aor. κατεσκευάσθη (used in the same connection by 
 Philo, ii. 149, 8) refers to the construction of the Mosaic 
 tabernacle, and not of any later building. (For σκηνή placed 
 at the beginning of the sentence without the article, and 
 followed by appositional epithets with the article, both here 
 and in the following verse, compare vi. 7, Acts x. 41, xix. 
 11, xxvi. 22; and Winer, § 20, 4.) The two divisions of the 
 
 1 Like, for example, ἔχει τὸ χρῶμα μελάντερον, t.€. has a complexion 
 of a specially dark hue. 
 
CHAP. ΙΧ. 2. 51 
 
 tabernacle are not here regarded as separate buildings, but 
 as the outer and inner parts of the same building. Valcke- 
 naer compares the ἐν πρώτῃσι θύρῃσι in Homer, and the 
 est mihi conclave retro in ultimis credibus of Terence. 
 
 Three ornaments are enumerated as belonging to the outer 
 tabernacle (the holy place): (1) ἡ λυχνία, Heb. m7, the 
 golden candelabrum, with its upright shaft and six branches 
 (three on each side) crowned with seven lamps, and adorned 
 with almond blossoms, pomegranates, and lilies;* (2) ἡ tpa- 
 πέζα, jrown, the holy table, made of acacia (shittim) wood, 
 and overlaid with pure gold, on which account it was called 
 sometimes 1110n ‘wn, the pure table ;” (3) ἡ πρόθεσις τῶν 
 ἄρτων, ondn ΠΡ", the arrangement of the loaves called 
 ““shew-bread” (2 Chron. xiii. 11), i.e. the double row made 
 of such loaves. Bleek, Winer, and Liinemann, insist on 
 understanding πρόθεσις here of the action of arranging the 
 twelve loaves, but the connection shows that the sacred writer 
 must have had the loaves themselves as arranged in view. 
 Tholuck’s, therefore, is the correcter rendering, strues panum, 
 and πρόθεσις answers exactly to ΠΡ». The loaves of 
 shew-bread were placed on the holy table in two myn, six 
 in each row. Into the ritual use or symbolical meaning of 
 these sacred ornaments of the tabernacle the commentator is 
 not called to:inquire, as he has only to do with what his 
 author says, not with what he omits, except occasionally when 
 such omission appears significant. So here it is noticeable 
 that he omits to mention as belonging to the holy place the 
 golden altar of incense, which also stood there. When Philo 
 (i. 504, 33) speaks of the τριῶν ὄντων ἐν τοῖς ἁγίοις σκευῶν, 
 he means, as he proceeds to enumerate, the candlestick, table, 
 
 1 The tabernacle of Moses had only one such candelabrum, the temple 
 of Solomon ten, that of Herod again only one. 
 
 2 Tn the tabernacle and in Herod’s temple there was only one such 
 table, in Solomon’s temple ten, which were probably used in succession, 
 one at one time. See 2 Chron. iv. 8, and comp. 1 Chron. xxvi. 16 and 
 2 Chron. iv. 19. 
 
 3 Neither an hypallage propositio panum= panes propositi, nor still 
 less, an hendiadys=mensa propositionis panum, is admissible here (Baum- 
 garten, Valckenaer). 
 
52 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 and incense-altar.1 Our author keeps this threefold enume- 
 ration in view; but wishing to omit the incense-altar, separates 
 
 the table from its loaves of shew-bread, and attaches the . 
 
 incense-altar to the inner sanctuary. His object in so doing 
 is obvious. Its investigation, however, must be deferred till 
 we come to the comment on ver. 4. 
 
 The outer division of the tabernacle thus furnished is 
 
 called the holy place, ἥτις λέγεται ἅγια. The texts of Eras- 
 
 mus, Stephens, and Mill, accentuate falsely ἁγία. Among 
 the ancients, Theodoret correctly remarked that ayia was to 
 be read προπαροξυτόνως, proving it by reference to the fol- 
 lowing ἅγια ἁγίων. The YIP, or 2271 (the holy place), is 
 commonly designated in Hellenistic Greek as τὰ ἅγια (e.g. 
 1 Kings viii. 8, LXX.). The article is omitted here before 
 
 the predicate. The sacred writer proceeds to describe the’ 
 
 inner division of the tabernacle. 
 
 Ver. 3. But behind the second veil a tabernacle which is 
 called holy of holies. 
 
 The preposition μετά, which has often the sense of post 
 (“‘ after,” in order of succession or time), has here (as Her. 
 iv. 49°) the rarer sense of pone. The δεύτερον καταπέ- 
 τασμαἣ is the veil made of blue, purple, and scarlet wool, 
 and fine twined linen (byssus), adorned with figures of 
 cherubim, and hung on four gilded pillars of acacia wood 
 resting on silver sockets, which concealed the holy of holies, 
 and had to be drawn aside for a moment by the high priest 
 when he entered the inner sanctuary on the day of atone- 
 ment. The genitive construction ἅγια ἁγίων marks the 
 special holiness of this adytum of the sanctuary, called also 
 727 [the oracle]. The author proceeds to describe this most 
 sacred locality in detail. 
 
 Ver. 4. Having a golden incense-altar, and the ark of the 
 covenant, overlaid on all sides with gold, in which was a golden 
 1 ruxvia, τράπεζα, θυμροιωτήριον. 
 
 2 usta Κύνητας, beyond the Cynete. 
 ® Comp. Philo, ii. 246, 49; 253, 47. 
 
 — τὰν δον νυν" υὐδδΝοι, 
 
CHAP. ΙΧ. 4. 53 
 
 pot, containing the manna, and the rod of Aaron which had 
 budded, and the tables of the covenant. 
 
 Whether we render θυμιατήριον (which in itself would 
 simply denote any incense-vessel) by “ censer” (with Peshito, 
 Vulgate, Luther) or by “ altar” (with the Itala, which in 
 Sabatier’s text reads aureum habens altare), the statement 
 χρυσοῦν ἔχουσα θυμιατήριον still remains a difficulty, which 
 is not to be so lightly disposed of as it is by Ebrard. As to 
 the rendering of θυμιατήριον, many interpreters (e.g. Gro- 
 tius, Limborch, Bengel, Bohme, Menken, Stuart, Klee, von 
 Gerlach, Stier), and among them some great biblical archzeo- 
 logists (Villalpandus, de Dieu, Reland, Lundius Deyling, Jo. 
 Ge. Michaelis), and several ancients (Theophylact, Anselm, 
 Thomas Aquinas, Lyranus), adhere to “ censer,” following 
 the Vulgate, which reads aureum thuribulum, and understand 
 by it the golden censer with which the high priest entered 
 the holy of holies on the day of atonement. In his right 
 hand he carried the golden coal-vessel filled with burning 
 coals from the altar of burnt-offering, in his left the golden 
 censer with a handful of incense. After entering the inner 
 sanctuary, he set down the vessel filled with the live coals 
 before the mercy-seat, and shook out the incense over them 
 from the golden censer. But even so the censer could not 
 be said to be rn the sanctuary, as, according to the tradition, 
 it was immediately carried out and placed in the temple 
 aumbry (o°527 nsw), but (at the utmost) only to belong to 
 it; besides which—and this is a decisive argument against the 
 interpretation proposed—this “censer” is nowhere mentioned 
 in the Thorah, but only in the ritual of the second temple, 
 under the name of }2.. The Thorah (Lev. xvi. 12) speaks 
 only of the vessel Annid' in which the high priest carried the 
 coals from the altar of burnt-offering. This Anno is in the 
 LXX. called πυρεῖον, not θυμιατήριον (though Photius does 
 explain one word by the other), and, what is again decisive, 
 it is not said to be of gold. Now nothing is more certain 
 than that the writer of this epistle confines himself strictly 
 to the literal expressions of the Thorah in his enumeration 
 
 1 Rendered ‘‘ censer” in our auth. version.—Tr. 
 
54 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 of the sacred furniture of the holy and most holy places ; 
 and the same is the case with Philo in his mystical interpre- 
 tations. When, for instance, he enumerates (ii. 149, 40) 
 the σκεύη ἱερά (such as κιβωτός, λυχνία, τράπεζα, θυμιατή- 
 ρίον, βωμός), he always means by θυμιατήρίον the altar of 
 incense, in contradistinction to the altar of bnrnt-offering, 
 which stood in the open air (ὁ ὕπαιθρος βωμός), and which 
 he also calls θυσιαστήριον. Hellenistic usage differs here 
 from that of the LXX. The LXX. calls the altar of 
 incense θυσιαστήριον θυμιάματος, or θυσιαστήριον χρυσοῦν, 
 in contradistinction to the θυσιαστήριον ὁλοκαυτώματος, OF 
 θυσ. χαλκοῦν, the brazen altar of burnt-offering. Θυμια- 
 τήριον is used, on the other hand, by the LXX. only at 
 Ezek. viii. 11 and 2 Chron. xxvi. 19 as translation of ΠΡΟ, 
 “‘censer,” aud is not employed by the other Greek trans- - 
 lators as designation of the incense-altar, simply because 
 their zeal for literality did not permit of their rendering the 
 term Mupn naw by a single Greek word. But in extra- 
 biblical Greek, where such considerations had no place, the 
 shorter name was preferred; and while the altar of burnt- 
 offering was called simply τὸ θυσιαστήριον (from θύειν, 3), 
 the altar of incense was called θυμιατήριον (from θυμιᾶν, 
 nop). So we find it used by Philo, Josephus, Clemens 
 Alexandrinus, and Origen. The plural θυμιατήρια is some- 
 times used for incense-vessels generally (e.g. Jos. Bell. i. 
 7, 6), but θυμιατήριον invariably for the incense-altar. 
 Such being the Hellenistic usage, and in particular that of 
 Josephus and Philo, whose phraseology has so many points 
 of resemblance to that of our author, it seems impossible 
 to escape the conclusion that θυμιατήριον means here the 
 incense-altar, and nothing else. It would be, moreover, a 
 quite inexplicable omission in this connection, had he said 
 nothing about it. 
 
 But if θυμιατήριον here is the altar of incense, the sacred 
 writer appears to be involved in the gross error of supposing 
 that this golden altar, of which Philo says correctly that it 
 stood between the golden candlestick and the holy table (ii. 
 150, 34), ἔσω τοῦ προτέρου καταπετάσματος (ii. 253, 46), had 
 
CHAP. IX. 4. 55 
 
 actually its place μετὰ τὸ δεύτερον καταπέτασμα, in the holy 
 of holies. Bleek, De Wette, and Liinemann assume that 
 this was really our author's meaning; and Bleek draws 
 thence the conclusion that he could not have been a Jew 
 of Palestine : but even supposing him to have been an Alex- 
 andrine Jew, he must have been a monster of ignorance and 
 forgetfulness to be capable of such a mistake. We cannot 
 believe this, and must therefore endeavour to find another 
 interpretation of his words—ypuaobv ἔχουσα θυμιατήριον. 
 We ask, first ; May we discern a motive which might have 
 influenced the writer of this epistle, though well acquainted 
 with the local position of the incense-altar in the outer sanc- 
 tuary, to assign it nevertheless to the holy of holies? Such a 
 motive may certainly be discovered, and is indeed recognised 
 by Bleek himself. “ The sacred writer,” so says Bleek, and 
 after him Tholuck, ἐς regards the holy of holies without its veil 
 as a symbol of the heavenly sanctuary, and had therefore a 
 direct interest in regarding the altar whose incense-oblation sym- 
 bolized the prayers of saints (Rev. viii. 3 sq.) as pertaining to 
 this inner sanctuary.” This is the exact truth. The Scrip- 
 tures of the Old Testament, as well as those of the New, 
 speak of a heavenly altar (Isa. vi. 6), the counterpart of the 
 earthly 2ΠῚΠ nam. And inasmuch as this antitypical altar 
 actually did belong to the heavenly sanctuary, it was obvi- 
 ously natural for our author to assign the typical altar like- 
 wise to the earthly holy of holies. We inquire, in the second 
 place, whether the sacred writer was justified by such con- 
 siderations in thus speaking of the altar of incense? The 
 answer should be: Certainly he was, and yet not on the prin- 
 ciple laid down by Ebrard, that the incense and its fragrance 
 being destined to enter the holy of holies as the symbol of wor- 
 ship and prayer, the altar from which it came might be said to 
 belong to the same inner sanctuary. 'This reason is as good as 
 none at all; for, on the same principle, it might be said that 
 the loaves of shew-bread belonged to the holy of holies, inas- 
 much as they were placed as a twelvefold thankoffering for 
 all Israel on the holy table, to attract the regards of Him 
 who sits between the cherubim in the most holy place. Nor 
 
56 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 can appeal be made to the circumstance that at Ex. xxvi/ 35 
 there is no mention of the altar of incense among the fur- 
 niture of the holy place “ without the veil,” for this simple 
 reason, that the construction of this altar had not at that 
 time been commanded; nor, again, to the fact that at Ex. 
 xxx. 10 it is called ΣῚΡ wp, even the altar of burnt-offer- 
 ing which stood outside, both parts of the sanctuary being at 
 Ex. xl. 10 honoured by the same name. On the other hand, 
 it is not without significance in reference to this question, (a) 
 that the altar of incense is said (at Ex. xxx. 6 and xl. 5) to 
 be placed before the ark of the covenant, or the Capporeth, 
 and so brought in direct connection with it; (0) that, like 
 the Cappéreth, it was on the day of atonement sprinkled with 
 the atoning blood; and (c) that it is spoken of at 1 Kings 
 vi. 22 (precisely as here) as belonging to the inner sanctuary, 
 sams ἼΩΝ namn.! Our author, like that of the book of 
 Kings, regards the altar of incense as belonging to the holy 
 of holies, although placed within the outer sanctuary in order 
 to be daily served by the ordinary priests. Had he said ἐν 
 ἣ χρυσ. θυμ., the statement would have been directly erro- 
 neous, and it must be allowed that ἔχουσα is an ambiguous 
 expression. I cannot, however, believe that the sacred 
 writer would have expressed himself so ambiguously, unless 
 he had felt quite sure that he would not be misunderstood. 
 The adjective χρυσοῦν is not prefixed for the sake of 
 emphatically distinguishing this altar from that of burnt- 
 offering, which was of brass, but as an epitheton ornans, 
 which, as descriptive of the material and construction, is 
 without the article. The incense-altar being made of gold, 
 is characteristic of the external magnificence of the Levitical 
 cultus, to which the sacred writer has called attention. For 
 the same reason, he describes the ark of the covenant, the 
 second vessel belonging to the holy of holies, not without 
 reference to its costliness and magnificence, as τὴν κιβωτὸν 
 τῆς διαθήκης περικεκαλυμμένην πάντοθεν χρυσίῳ; where, 
 however, περίκεκ. is not a mere epitheton, like χρυσοῦν 
 
 1 Rendered in our version inexactly, ‘‘the altar that was by the 
 oracle.” —Tr. 
 
CHAP. ΙΧ. 4. 57 
 
 above, but, like κοσμικόν in ver. 1, a determinative predicate, 
 and therefore without the article. 
 
 The ark of the covenant’ was, he says, overlaid round 
 about (πάντοθεν), on all surfaces, ἔσωθεν καὶ ἔξωθεν (Kx. 
 xxv. 11; Philo, πολυτελῶς ἔνδοθεν καὶ ἔξωθεν), with gold 
 (χρυσίῳ is a more suitable term than χρυσῷ to designate 
 wrought gold); whereas the incense-altar, which was simply 
 externally covered with gold, is designated as χρυσοῦν. The 
 reference is, of course, to the sanctuary in the time of 
 Moses. The temple of Solomon also possessed the ark. Its 
 fate during the Chaldean catastrophe is involved in obscu- 
 rity. See Grimm on 2 Macc. ii. 1-8. In the second temple 
 its place was occupied by the so-called lapis fundationis, a 
 stone slab three fingers high.” 
 
 With the ark were likewise wanting in the second temple 
 the other articles of sacred furniture enumerated here as its 
 contents or adjuncts:—(1) Stdpvos χρυσῆ ἔχουσα τὸ μάννα 
 (Ex. xvi. 32-34, in LXX., λάβε στάμνον, χρυσοῦν, where 
 σταμν. is masc.),—a golden pot in which an omer of manna 
 was preserved in remembrance of the miraculous feeding of 
 the people in the wilderness. The Hebrew word is niyis, 
 probably from jx, to enclose, contain; and if so, there is 
 nothing to object to in the rendering στάμνος. The epithet 
 xpuo., on the other hand, is an addition to the original text, 
 in which our author follows, with Philo,’ the Septuagint tradi- 
 tion. That this pot of manna was laid up inside the ark, is a 
 natural conclusion from the words of the Thorah, “Π ‘155 and 
 ΤΠ 80, against which no argument can properly be drawn 
 from 1 Kings viii. 9 (2 Chron. v. 10), where it is said that 
 there was nothing in the ark (of Solomon’s time) save the two 
 tables of stone which Moses put there at Horeb. The very terms 
 of this statement may almost seem to imply that other things 
 had been there formerly. The sacred writer here follows the 
 same tradition as that of the Gemara Talm. babli, Joma 52b, 
 “ Since the ark became invisible, have likewise disappeared the 
 
 1 737 jw, Josh. iii. 6, and frequently. 
 2 Heb. mny js; vid. Gesenius, 7168. s.v. ANY, ili. 
 31,533, 41, ἐν στάρονῳ χρυσῷ. 
 
58 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 pot of manna, and the eruse of anointing oil, and Aaron’s rod 
 with its almonds and blossoms, and the coffer which the Philis- 
 tines sent as a present to the God of Israel.”* Further, (2) ἡ 
 ῥάβδος ᾿Ααρὼν (--- τοῦ Aap.) ἡ βλαστήσασα. This miracu- 
 lous witness to Aaron’s exclusive right to the priesthood was, 
 according to the traditional interpretation of Num. xvii. 10, 
 laid up like the pot of manna within the ark, along with the 
 tables of the law. (8) Ai πλάκες τῆς διαθήκης : the tables 
 of the covenant are mentioned last, simply because the sacred 
 writer, having called attention to the cosmic character of the 
 ancient sanctuary, naturally mentions first those contents of 
 the ark which were most costly or most beautiful. He pro- 
 ceeds with a further description of its adjuncts :-— 
 
 Ver. 5. And over it cherubim of glory overshadowing the 
 
 mercy-seat, concerning which things one cannot now speak in 
 detail. 
 
 Ὑπεράνω αὐτῆς is equivalent to Ὁ dyn, Ezek. i. 26; αὐτῆς 
 referring, of course, to τὴν κιβωτὸν τῆς διαθήκης. The ark 
 was covered above by a massive gold plate of equal length 
 and breadth, at either end of which were two massive golden 
 cherubs, investing themselves with their outspread wings,” 
 and with downward-looking countenances. This golden plate 
 was called mrp (Cappéreth), “the cover.” Ewald’s conjec- 
 ture,® that the ark had its own cover distinct from this 
 Capporeth which rested on it, has been already refuted by 
 Lundius.* It finds no support in Scripture, which never 
 
 speaks of more than one Capporeth (or cover) “ over the 
 
 ark” (jawn-by) or “over the testimony” (nytyn-by), 1.6. the 
 tables of the law laid up within the ark. Nor would it be 
 correct to say that mp3 in the sense of * cover” must be 
 
 1 Levi Ben Gerson and Abarbanel, with other Jewish commentators 
 on 1 Kings viii. 9, maintain the tradition that the pot of manna and 
 Aaron’s rod were laid up in the ark. Bleek supposes that Abarbanel 
 appeals for this to the Cabbala, but that is a mistake. mbap in the pas- 
 sage referred to simply means “tradition,” as it is rightly rendered by 
 Tholuck. 
 
 2 map, LXX. συσκιάζοντες. 3 Alterthiimer, 140. 
 
 4 Cap. ix. 21, 22. 
 
CHAP. IX. 5. 59 
 
 punctuated 53 (Chephoreth), since M182 (Cappéreth) is a 
 Piel form like 393 (Parécheth)' from 153. We cannot there- 
 fore agree with Bihr (Symb. 1. 381; Salom. Tempel, 165), 
 Philippi (on Rom. iii. 25), and others, that the original mean- 
 ing of the term Cappéreth was Propitiatorium (ἱλαστήριον), 
 an instrument of propitiation; and yet are ready to grant 
 that it is more than probable that in later biblical literature 
 (as at 1 Chron. xxviii. 11 5) it acquired the additional mean- 
 ing of a covering or atonement for sin. Hofmann unites 
 both meanings in a facile manner, by conjecturing that the 
 mercy-seat was called Cappdéreth, as forming a cover to, 
 and so hiding, the fire of wrath in the divine mind against 
 the violation of the ten commandments laid up in the ark. 
 (For this interpretation, see Weissag. 1. 141, and Baumgarten, 
 Pentat. ii. 53.) It is also the interpretation of Hengstenberg, 
 but is examined and rejected by Biihr (Salom. Tempel, pp. 
 173-177) on the following grounds: First, that it rests on a 
 very weak foundation, in the single phrase nayn-by wx mas, 
 where the law is called-“ the testimony,” as God’s witness 
 to Himself, not as His witness against Israel; secondly, that 
 it does not get beyond the meaning operculum, which it takes 
 at once symbolically and literally ;* and thirdly, that if the 
 idea of propitiation had been originally associated with that 
 of the Cappdreth, it must have appeared in the language 
 of the ritual for the day of atonement. The Septuagint 
 renders Cappéreth on the first time of its occurrence (Ex. 
 xxv. 17) by ἱλαστήριον ἐπίθεμα, and afterwards simply by 
 ἱλαστήριον, the key to which rendering may be found in 
 
 1 That nouns of this Piel formation retain (with that intensification 
 
 msa = interclusis imbrium is derived from the Kal ἽΝ, arcere, cohibere, 
 and not from the Piel 73, in accessum reddere, munire. 
 
 2 The holy of holies is there called nnpon ΓΔ, the House (Eng. ver. 
 Place) of the Cappéreth (mercy-seat). Comp. Winer, R.W. i. 202. 
 
 3 “The mercy-cover that hides the handwriting of ordinances which 
 was against us.”—EBRARD, 
 
60 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 Lev. xvi. 15, ῥανεῖ τὸ αἷμα αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ τὸ ἱλαστήριον κατὰ 
 πρόσωπον τοῦ ἱλαστηρίου καὶ ἐξιλάσεται, κ-τ.λ. 
 
 From a comparison of the various places in which the 
 word is used in Scripture, we may gather that the first im- 
 mediate meaning and purpose of the Cappdreth was to be 
 the cover of the ark, in which was enshrined Jehovah’s tes- 
 timony to Himself in His relation to Israel (i.e. the tables of 
 the law), and that as such it made of the ark a throne or 
 footstool for God (1 Chron. xxviii. 2: comp. Ps. cxxxii. 7, 
 xcix. 5; Lam. ii. 1; Isa. Ixvi. 1). It was, so to speak, the 
 middle thing (medium) between the shrine of the covenant 
 Acts and the God of the covenant (Ps. cxxxi. 8). The 
 besprinkling (on the day of atonement) of the Capporeth 
 with the blood of atonement, cleansed this medium from the 
 impurities of the earthly locality in which it was placed, and . 
 aimed at such atonement or reconciliation as might unite 
 Israel and Jehovah in the same way as the Cappéreth united 
 Him with the Ark of the covenant. The Cappdéreth was 
 accordingly the same thing as the Ragia (the outstretched 
 firmament) in Ezekiel’s vision of the mercabah (Jehovah's 
 chariot-throne). The ark was, in fact, itself a mercabah 
 (1 Chron. xxviii. 18),—the difference between it and Ezekiel’s 
 “chariot” being simply that the one moved, the other was 
 ordinarily still. Consequently in Ezekiel’s vision the cheru- 
 bim are under the Ragia prepared to carry it whithersoever 
 the Lord will, while in the case of the ark they are placed 
 above the Cappdéreth at either end, with the glory of the 
 Lord between them, and engaged in perpetual adoration.' 
 
 The Cappéreth, then, with the ark, is the throne or foot- 
 stool of God, as the sanctuary in which it is placed is called 
 naw Nan, “the place of my session” (Ex. xv. 17; 1 Kings 
 vill. 13); and “righteousness and judgment” as revealed in 
 the Thorah are said to be “the pillars” of Jehovah’s “throne” 
 (Ps. Ixxxix. 15, xevii. 2), even as the Cappdreth is spoken of 
 as being “over the testimony.” The cherubim, elsewhere 
 regarded as the bearers of the throne, are here its attendant 
 
 1 That, and not motion, is the meaning of their uplifted wings. 
 Comp. Isa. vi. 2. 
 
CHAP. IX. 5. 61 
 
 guards. The Lord Himself promises to be present upon it, 
 and to speak with Moses “ from above the Capporeth, from 
 between the two cherubim” (Ex. xxv. 22). The cherubim 
 have therefore the glory of Jehovah between them, and 
 hence are called χερουβὶμ δόξης The name cherubim 
 (undoubtedly allied to γρύψ' γρυπές) signifies, as I have 
 shown elsewhere, beings who grasp or hold fast, and so make 
 that which is held fast unapproachable. They are the living 
 chariot and barrier created for itself by the Divine Majesty, 
 and in asimilar sense they are spoken of as the guards of 
 paradise. This observation will enable us to decide between 
 the two possible interpretations of the genitive δόξης given 
 by Cyril and Cicumenius: ἢ τὰ ἔνδοξα ἢ τὰ ὄντα τῆς 
 δόξης τουτέστι τοῦ Θεοῦ. The latter is to be preferred ; 
 for δόξα is here, as elsewhere, the divine glory: the cherubim 
 are regarded as accompaniments of that glory.” The 
 
 1 The reading χερουβείμο is only a different mode of spelling the same 
 word, or of representing the same pronunciation, and an instance of the 
 frequent interchange of the εἰ and « which is found in the oldest classical 
 Mss., and proves how very ancient the corrupt pronunciation called 
 Itacism is (vid. Mullach, Gramm. der griech. Vulgdrsprache, p. 116 sqq.). 
 The reading χερουβείν (χερουβίν) is, on the other hand, more noteworthy, 
 as representing the Aramaic form 373, belonging toa dialect which 
 at the date of our epistle still existed as a living tongue. Philo adheres 
 throughout to the old Hebrew xspovG/~, speaking of it as the form of 
 the word in the Χαλδαίων γλώττῃ, by which he means the ancient 
 language of his people. Josephus employs the Hellenized equivalent 
 χερουβεῖς (vid. Grossmann, Philonis Judxi Anecdoton Grecum de Cheru- 
 binis (1856), pp. 7, 11). 
 
 2 Compare Ecclus. xlix. 8, where it is said of Ezekiel: εἶδεν ὅρασιν 
 δόξης... ἐπὶ ὥρρματος xepovGie. It was a question learnedly discussed 
 in the last century, whether God manifested His presence in a cloud 
 upon the mercy-seat, or whether the jay of Lev. xvi. 2 was only a cloud 
 of incense (vid. Thalemann, de nube super arca faderis commento judaico, 
 1771). St..Jerome says: Super propitiatorium et cherubim nihil erat 
 positum quod videbatur sed sola fide credebatur ibi sedere Deus. Theo- 
 doret, on the other hand, that God manifested His presence ἐν νεφέλη 
 φωτοειδῇ. Vitringa, with some inconsistency in parts of his dissertation, 
 endeavoured to maintain the correctness of St. Jerome’s statement. In 
 fact, it would seem that Lev. xvi. 2 cannot well be understood of the 
 cloud of incense, but only of a divine manifestation (comp. Ex. xix. 9; 
 
62 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 neuter? (χερουβὶμ---κατασκιάζοντα) is both suitable to the 
 mysterious nature of the beings designated, and to the appli- 
 cation of the name here te images of them literally over- 
 shadowing the Capporeth. 
 
 Having thus briefly sketched the ancient sanctuary and 
 its furniture, the writer of the epistle breaks off abruptly 
 with the remark: περὶ ὧν οὐκ ἔστιν νῦν λέγειν κατὰ μέρος 
 (κατὰ μέρος opp. ἐν κεφαλαίῳ). If he had been able to enter 
 into particulars, how much he might have said of the sym- 
 bolical meaning of each article, from the golden candlestick 
 to the golden Cappéreth! But this he cannot now do (οὐκ 
 ἔστιν), as being beyond his present object. He therefore 
 proceeds at once from the ἅγιον to the δικαιώματα λατρείας 
 connected with it. The outer division of the sanctuary is 
 
 accessible only to the priests, the inner to the high priest - 
 
 alone, and to him only once in the year :— 
 
 Vers. 6, 7. Now these things being thus arranged, into the 
 first tabernacle enter the priests continually, accomplishing 
 [there] the services [of their order]; but into the second the 
 high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he 
 offereth for himself, and for the ignorances of the people. 
 
 The present εἰσίασιν is not here the so-called historical 
 present. The sacred writer regards indeed the old covenant 
 as passed away and superseded, but its ritual worship has 
 still a dying life and present existence. But if εἰσίασιν be 
 a genuine present, it would seem to follow that he regards the 
 details of arrangement in the sanctuary already enumerated 
 as likewise still existing. And so in tact he does, without 
 however justly exposing himself to the imputation of such 
 gross ignorance as that attributed to him by Bleek and 
 1 Kings viii. 12). At any rate, the divine glory was above the mercy- 
 seat, whether visible or not. 
 
 1 The Septuagint only occasionally uses the word as a masculine. 
 Josephus says sometimes οἱ, and even αἱ χερουβεῖς; Philo only ra 
 χερουβίμ.. They are for the latter symbols of the highest powers of the 
 divine nature, the creative and the kingly. At ii. 218, 36, he says, in 
 an invocation, δόξαν δὲ σὴν εἶναι νορείζω τάς σε δορυφορούσας δυνάμεις. 
 This agrees with our interpretation of the χερουβὶμ δόξης. 
 
CHAP. IX. 6, 7. 63 
 
 Liinemann, of not being aware that the Mosaic ark of the 
 covenant had at that time long since disappeared. The 
 primary reference of τούτων οὕτως κατεσκευασμένων is un- 
 doubtedly to the κατεσκευάσθη of ver. 2, which carries us 
 back to the Mosaic era, and to the original construction of 
 the tabernacle with its twofold courts; and the perfect par- 
 ticiple certainly implies that this arrangement is contemplated 
 as still continuing, but not necessarily that it does so in every 
 particular. Otherwise one must attribute a quite impossible 
 ignorance to a man evidently so learned in the Scriptures as 
 our author—that of the Scripture record of the superseding 
 of the tabernacles of Moses and David by the erection of the 
 temple in the time of Solomon. He was undoubtedly fully 
 aware likewise, that certain things were wanting in the second 
 temple which were present in the first, and among them the 
 ark of the covenant, with its Cappdreth. The legend of 
 the ark’s disappearance after the destruction of the city by 
 the Chaldees, recorded in 2 Mace. iv., could not have been 
 unknown to our author, who indeed refers to other passages 
 in the same book (2 Mace. vi. 18 sq.)' in the ἐτυμπανίσθησαν 
 of ch. xi. 35. Nevertheless he expressly mentions the ark 
 here, because it is the original divinely-ordered arrangement, 
 not any subsequent alterations of the Levitical sanctuary, 
 which he has now in view, and because, in order to exhibit 
 the full pre-eminence of the new covenant over the old, he 
 must compare it with the latter in its highest completeness 
 and perfection. However gloriously, then, the holy of holies 
 of the old covenant may have been furnished, there was still 
 something wanting there. 
 
 Into the foremost part of the tabernacle (the San) the 
 ordinary priests might at any rate enter διαπαντός, without 
 intermission, on any and every day in the year, for the 
 purpose of performing their daily ministrations [ἐπιτελεῖν 
 λατρείας is like the ἐπιτελεῖν θρησκείας of Herod. ii. 37, and 
 the éut. εὐχάς, θυσίας, λειτουργίας of Philo i. 653, 15, 27]. 
 The ministrations (λατρείαν) here meant are the dressing of 
 the lamps and the offering of incense, which took place every 
 
 1 Compare also 2 Mace. vii. 20-41 with Heb. xi. 35, 
 
64 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 morning and evening; and the removal and setting forth 
 (πρόθεσις) of the twelve loaves of shew-bread, which was 
 done every Sabbath-day. But into the inner part of the 
 tabernacle [the Debir (1:27), or “ Oracle,” as it was called, in 
 Solomon’s temple] only the high priest was suffered to enter, 
 and that only once a year (ἅπαξ τοῦ ἐνιαυτοῦ, ΓΞ NNN, Ex. 
 xxx. 10, Lev. xvi. 34, LX-X.), that is, on one day only, the 
 day of atonement (o™227 oY). Any one determined to 
 misunderstand this, might say that the sacred writer’s mean- 
 ing is that the high priest entered the holy of holies only 
 once on that one day. But this would be incorrect. The 
 Thorah itself expressly speaks of two such enterings (Lev. 
 xvi.); in reference to which, Herod Agrippa, in his letter 
 to the Emperor Caius (Caligula), says that the high priest 
 
 forfeits his life if he presumes in that one day to enter (τρὶς. 
 
 ἡ καὶ τετράκις) as many as three or four times (Philo, 1]. 
 591,15). This again, however, contradicts the Jewish tradi- 
 tion, as preserved to us in the talmudic tract Joma; accord- 
 ing to which the high priest did actually enter the holy of 
 holies four times on the day of atonement: first, with the 
 pan of live coals and the censer filled with incense ; secondly, 
 with the blood of the bullock; thirdly, with that of the 
 goat; and fourthly, after the evening sacrifice, to fetch away 
 the coal-pan and the censer. A little further consideration 
 would, however, show that these four enterings were for 
 purposes of atonement only two, and that the first was 
 separated from the second, and the fourth from the third, 
 only by necessity or convenience. Our author here has 
 evidently the two principal enterings (the second and third) 
 in view when he adds, od χωρὶς αἵματος, ὃ προσφέρει ὑπὲρ 
 ἑαυτοῦ Kal τῶν τοῦ λαοῦ ayvonuatwv,—the reference being 
 to the blood of the bullock which the high priest offered περὶ 
 τῆς ἁμαρτίας ἑαυτοῦ, and to that of the goat which he sub- 
 sequently offered περὶ τῆς ἁμαρτίας τοῦ λαοῦ. 
 
 The ὑπὲρ ἑαυτοῦ, said of the Levitical high priest, is 
 equivalent to ὑπὲρ τῶν ἑαυτοῦ ἀγνοημάτων ; and ἀγνοήματα" 
 is a general term for all such offences as are not committed 
 
 1 The word is of rare occurrence in the LXX. 
 
CHAP. IX. 6, 7. 65 
 
 with a high hand, in open defiance of the divine law, but 
 through human infirmity, or with a half consciousness only 
 of their moral turpitude, and for such as, when recognised as 
 sins, are truly repented of." 
 
 The transaction with the blood of atonement consisted in 
 sprinkling (ΠΤ, “t7), anointing or smearing (77N3), and out- 
 pouring (n=). First, the blood of either sacrifice was 
 “sprinkled,” once upwards, and seven times backwards, 
 before the Cappéreth ; after this the horns of the altar of 
 incense were “ anointed” with the mingled blood of both 
 sacrifices, and the same “ sprinkled” seven times before it ; 
 lastly, the remainder of the blood was “ poured out” at the 
 foot of the altar of burnt-offering. The first of these three 
 actions, that of “ sprinkling” in the holy of holies, is here 
 called προσφέρειν, a term quite in accordance with the sacri- 
 ficial language of the Thorah, ptA~ns apn, προσφέρειν τὸ 
 αἷμα, Lev. i. 5, vii. 383, Ezek. xliv. 7,15. Juther renders 
 here: “not without blood which he offered.’ The one- 
 sided inference of the Socinians, apparet hine oblationem 
 illam pontificis non fuisse positam in ipsa mactatione pecudum, 
 proinde nec oblationem Christi illi respondentem (Schlichting), 
 has been already refuted at ch. viii. 3. But not less one- 
 sided in the opposite direction is the assertion of Seb. 
 Schmid: sanguis oblati sacrificit inferebatur in sanctum sanc- 
 torum idemque spargebatur, non autem demum offerebatur, 
 nist offerre significet ferre ante aliquem et ill. proponere de 
 sacrificio ad placandum et exorandum. It is even contradic- 
 tory to the letter of the text of Lev. xvi., which enjoins first 
 the slaying of the victim (Ann), then the application of the 
 blood, and finally the consumption of the fat on the altar 
 (mupn) of burnt-offering. The application and offering of 
 the blood is therefore an integral part of the sacrificial 
 action, for which the slaying of the victim and tle accom- 
 panying ΠΡΟ (laying on of hands) is preparatory ; while the 
 application of the blood, which is the atonement proper, 
 (7753) prepares the offerer (jpn by>) for the presentation on 
 the altar of his gift. It would, however, be a mistake to 
 
 1 See note on ch. v. 2 above. 
 VOL. II. E 
 
66 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 suppose that the antitype must in every respect correspond 
 to this succession of actions in the typical sacrifice; but of 
 this more hereafter. The sacred writer’s present purpose is 
 to show how the highest act of the Levitical worship, the 
 entrance of the high priest into the holy of holies, itself 
 exhibited the imperfection of the covenant to which that 
 worship belonged. 
 
 Ver. 8. The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into 
 the holies hath not yet been made manifest so long as the first 
 tabernacle remains standing. 
 
 The writer’s meaning is, that the Holy Spirit, as He 
 inspires the word of prophecy, so also interprets the other- 
 wise voiceless types of the Old Testament worship and his- 
 tory ; His work being, both by the word of prophecy (xii. 
 27; 1 Pet. i. 11) and by the disclosure of typical signi- 
 ficances, to make δῆλον, t.e. δηλοῦν, to signify or illustrate 
 divine verities. The point which this divine Interpreter 
 would illustrate by that arrangement of the Mosaic sanctuary 
 to which reference is here being made was this (τοῦτο), that 
 so long as the first tabernacle should remain standing, the 
 way of approach to the true sanctuary would not be dis- 
 closed. It is hardly probable that the sacred writer should 
 use ἡ πρώτη σκηνή here in a different sense from that of 
 vers. 2 and 6. It does not therefore mean the old Levitical 
 sanctuary, in contradistinction from that of the New Testa- 
 ment (like ἡ πρώτη διαθήκη, vill. 7, 13, ix. 1), but the holy 
 place of priestly service, in contradistinction from the holy 
 of holies (ἡ δευτέρα σκηνή). From which it is evident that 
 “the holies” (τῶν ἁγίων) of our present verse must be the 
 inner sanctuary, the most holy place; and we find, accord- 
 ingly, ἅγια, τὰ ἅγια, τῶν ἁγίων, used in the same sense in 
 “ subsequent passages of the epistle (comp. ix. 12, 24, 25, x. 19, 
 xiii. 11). In the Old Testament, likewise, 1P0, τὸ ἅγιον, 
 is not infrequently the abbreviated term for Ow pn wip 
 (Lev. xvi. 16, 17, 20, 23, 27), as being the holy place κατ᾽ 
 e€oy.; and so in Ezekiel the inner sanctuary is distinguished 
 as wip from the outer, which is called 537 (ch. xli. 21, 23). It 
 
CHAP. IX. 9. 67 
 
 is the place of the Divine Revealed Presence, or of the Divine 
 Glory; and ἡ τῶν ἁγίων ὁδός is (like ἡ εἴσοδος τῶν ἁγίων of 
 x. 19, and ἡ ὁδὸς τοῦ ξύλου τῆς ζωῆς of Gen. ili. 24) the way 
 of approach to this glorious sanctuary. So long as the first 
 (the outer) sanctuary remained standing, the veil which hung 
 between it and “ the holies” hid the way of approach, which 
 therefore was οὔπω φανερά. Bleek and Liinemann regard 
 the πρώτη σκηνή as symbolical of the Levitical priestly ser- 
 vice, which had to be done away in order to open the ap- 
 proach to the holy of holies; Ebrard, as symbolical of the 
 relative sanctity and outward righteousness of the old law, 
 under which the inner sanctuary served to symbolize free 
 and absolute divine communion. These interpretations seem 
 to miss the exact meaning of our author here, with whom 
 the point is not the contrast between the two parts of the 
 sanctuary, but the division between them, and the hiding of 
 the one from those engaged in worship in the other. It is 
 indeed clear from vers. 11, 12, that he regarded the πρώτη 
 σκηνή as having its antitype in the heavenly world no less 
 than τὰ ἅγια. That which had to be removed was, on the 
 one hand, the separation and concealment (which actually 
 existed in the spiritual world till the times of the gospel, 
 and was symbolized by the partition in the earthly sanc- 
 tuary); and on the other, the cosmic terrene character of 
 the sanctuary itself. We must accordingly refer the ἥτις 
 which follows (ver. 9) to τῆς πρώτης σκηνῆς, not as being 
 merely the outer sanctuary, but chiefly as being connected 
 with, and the way of approach, through a veil, to the holy 
 of holies. 
 
 Ver. 9. The which (tabernacle) is a parable for the time 
 now present ; according to which are offered both gifts and 
 sacrifices, having no power to perfect in conscience him that 
 serveth. : 
 
 De Wette’s rendering, “ which parable is for this present 
 time,” cannot be accepted, as it is not in accordance with 
 the usage of the language to combine the pronoun ὅστις with 
 a substantive in this way. The wsus loguendi, so far as I am 
 
68 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 aware, is, that the following substantive, in concord with 
 ὅστις, is uniformly the predicate : compare ἅτινα and ἥτις in 
 the parallel passage, Gal. iv. 24, 26. Neither is the femi- 
 nine ἥτις here to be explained on the principle of attraction, 
 as if for ὅ,τι ἐστὶ παραβολή (Vulg. adhue priore tabernaculo 
 habente statum que parabola est ; thus interpreted by Primasius, 
 “ que” subandi “ res”). This explanation is, if otherwise 
 admissible, quite unnecessary here, as #j71s may be referred 
 either to the πρώτης σκηνῆς or the στάσιν of the preceding 
 clause. To refer it to στάσιν would, however, seem to lay 
 too much stress on that comparatively unimportant word,— 
 ἔχειν στάσιν being simply equivalent to Dp nn = “ to 
 exist :” the reference to πρώτης σκηνῆς must therefore be 
 maintained as the only right one. 
 
 But to proceed. ‘O καιρὸς ὁ ἐνεστηκώς cannot mean 
 anything else but “ this present time ;” even the rendering 
 of the Vulgate, parabola temporis instantis (“ the time just 
 at hand”), being inexact: ἐνιστάναι is indeed properly ren- 
 dered by instare, “ to be imminent ;” but ἐνεστηκός, ἐνεστός 
 (Rom. viii. 38; 1 Cor. vii. 26), is always that which has 
 already supervened or come into existence, and therefore is 
 actually present. Chrysostom and others,’ giving the words 
 this interpretation, regard this “ present” here spoken of as 
 attached to the existence of the ancient tabernacle, and 
 therefore as a present which was in fact past after the ap- 
 pearance of our Lord. But this is inadmissible. The fol- 
 lowing προσφέρονται is against it, as the inexact rendering 
 of the Peshito and Luther’—“ in which were offered” —shows. 
 Most moderns therefore render thus, “ which is a parable 
 in reference to the present time:” either reading καθ᾽ ov 
 (instead of καθ᾽ ἥν) in the following clause, and regarding 
 that as a description of the “ present time,” which the writer 
 has in view; or taking the phrase ὁ καιρὸς ὁ ἐνεστηκώς (with 
 comparison of ὁ αἰὼν οὗτος and ὁ ἐνεστὼς αἰών of Gal. i. 4) 
 as a standing term for the Jewish times, or those of the Old 
 
 1 eg. Theophylact and Cicumenius, Schlichting, Seb. Schmidt, 
 
 Baumgarten, Bengel, Stein. 
 2 Which is also that of our auth. version.—TR. 
 
CHAP. IX, 9. 69 
 
 Testament, of the character of which the πρώτη σκηνή was 
 a parabolic representation (so Bleek, Tholuck, and Liine- 
 mann). But neither of these views is free from objection. 
 As to the former, it seems impossible that a writer who has 
 just been speaking of the tabernacle and its services as 
 things of the past (ix. 1), should be content to regard the 
 separation and veiling of the holy of holies as symbolical of 
 the existing present (as if even since the preaching of the 
 gospel the worship of God in spirit and in truth had not yet 
 begun). And as to the latter view, it is a mere imagination 
 that the phrase ΠῚΠ Don was used to designate the ante- 
 Messianic time as such. It simply means the present earthly 
 period of time, in contradistinction from the future eternity. 
 By τὸν καιρὸν τὸν ἐνεστηκότα, therefore, we must here 
 understand the present time of the new dispensation, in 
 which the types and shadows of the old are being fulfilled. 
 So St. John Damascene explains it, in his Heloge from St. 
 Chrysostom (in this particular departing from his authority) ; 
 and so Primasius, commenting on the temporis instantis (“ hoe 
 est presentis”) of the Vulgate: quod enim agebatur in templo 
 tunc temporis, figura erat et similitudo istius veritatis que jam 
 in ecclesia completur; and so likewise the Gilossa interlinearis.' 
 The sacred writer purposely does not say παραβολὴ τοῦ 
 καιροῦ τοῦ ἐνεστηκότος (as if the Levitical cultus and its 
 instruments were a symbolic representation of the existing 
 present, whereas the good things revealed in the gospel are 
 still invisible, and objects of faith) ;? but παραβολὴ εἰς τὸν 
 καιρὸν Tov ἐνεστ.; te. a parable lasting till the present time, 
 in which the substance being revealed, the shadows pass 
 away. So Carpzov, Heumann, and others render it, usque 
 ad presens tempus (compare the eis τέλος of John xiii. 1) ; 
 and Castellio, in presens tempus, as expressing more defi- 
 nitely the terminus ad quem (comp. Acts iv. 3; 2 Tim. i. 12), 
 
 1 This interpretation no doubt gave rise to the glossematical reading 
 found in several editions (Complut., Genev., Plautin., Montan.), εἰς 
 τοῦτον τὸν καιρόν, OF εἰς τὸν καιρὸν τοῦτον. 
 
 2. 80 at ch. xi. 19, the object of the παραβολή is the invisible and 
 still future resurrection, revealed and promised in the gospel. 
 
70 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 “a parable designed to last till the present time, and no 
 longer.” That the verb to be understood should be ἦν, not 
 ἐστί, no Greek scholar will consider a difficulty ; in fact, 
 nothing needs to be understood. 
 
 The next question is, Which of two readings is to be 
 preferred, the καθ᾽ ὅν of the tewtus receptus (D*** E.LK., 
 Itala, Peshito, and other versions), or the καθ᾽ ἥν of Lach- 
 mann! (A.B.D.*; Vulg. juata quam)? Bleek, Tholuck, 
 and Liinemann prefer καθ᾽ ἥν, though according to their 
 interpretation it would be the more difficult reading. We, 
 on the other hand, must regard καθ᾽ ὅν, on internal grounds, 
 as inadmissible. For though the present tense, προσφέ- 
 povrat, certainly implies the continuance of the Levitical 
 sacrifices in the writer’s own time, it is certain that he 
 
 regarded them as no longer having any validity. The. 
 
 Levitical priesthood was now virtually abolished, and its 
 symbolical office was no more. The reading καθ᾽ ὅν would 
 therefore, according to our view, be unsuitable, whether 
 taken in the sense of “ during” (like καθ᾽ ἑορτήν in Matt. 
 xxvii. 15), or in that of “ according to” which time (καιρόν). 
 We adhere then to the reading καθ᾽ ἥν, and refer it, with 
 Bleek and Bisping, to παραβολή, rather than with Liine- 
 mann to τῆς πρώτης σκηνῆς (though in either case the 
 meaning would be much the same): in accordance with (or 
 corresponding to) which parable (i.e. the holy place, with the 
 veiled sanctuary beyond it, declaring in a figure its own 
 imperfection), gifts and sacrifices (δῶρα te καὶ θυσίαι, 1.6. 
 unbloody and bloody offerings”) are offered, μὴ δυνάμεναι 
 κατὰ συνείδησιν τελειῶσαι τὸν λατρεύοντα. 
 
 The attributive participle δυνάμεναι (which might also 
 have been δυνάμενα) agrees here (as is often the case) with 
 the latter substantive (θυσίαι) ; perhaps also because the 
 bloody sacrifice is regarded as the basis of all others, and 
 therefore takes the first place in the writer’s mind. Instead, 
 moreover, of οὐ δυνάμεναι = invalida, he writes (giving a 
 subjective turn. to the negative) μὴ δυνάμεναι = que non 
 
 1 Confirmed now further by the Cod. Sinait.—Tr. 
 * See note on ch. v. 1, and compare viii. 3, 4. 
 
 3 
 ¢ 
 } 
 a 
 
CHAP. IX. 10. Ἧι 
 
 valeant (comp. μὴ δυνάμενον, qui non valeat, of iv. 15). 
 “ Him that serveth” (τὸν Natpevovta) is not to be understood 
 as referring merely to the ministering priest as such, but as 
 including every worshipping Israelite engaged in offering 
 sacrifice, whether by himself, or through the mediation of 
 others,—all the προσερχόμενοι, in fact, of χ. 1. The Israelite 
 who offers a legal sacrifice maintains thereby his corporate 
 membership in the Old Testament covenant; and if he offers 
 with a right disposition of mind, he experiences an answering 
 operation of grace, but still the holy of holies remains closed 
 for him: the sacrifices which he offers cannot perfect him 
 ‘Kata συνείδησιν, cannot give him an inward consciousness of 
 perfect reconciliation with God, perfectly satisfied desires 
 after salvation, or a perfected and inward peace. The 
 material offerings of the law are but parables intended to last 
 only till the time when the reality shall be made manifest. 
 Regarded in themselves, they are incapable of any operation 
 on the inward part of man. 
 
 Ver. 10. Consisting only NG: only connected with) 
 meats and drinks, and divers washings, ordinances of the jlesh, 
 imposed on them till the time of reformation. 
 
 We have in this verse the following various readings 
 which deserve attention :—(1) That of D*** E.LK., followed 
 by the tevtus receptus, and re-adopted by Tischendorf in 
 1849, καὶ δικαιώμασι (σιν) σαρκός. The Vulgate renders, in 
 accordance with this reading, θέ justitiis carnis ad tempus 
 correctionis impositis, as if it also read ἐπικειμένοις, which 
 probably is not to be found in any Greek ms. authority. 
 (2) Griesbach reads δικαιώασι σαρκός without the καί, 
 after Cyril of Alexandria,’ but with very slight ms. autho- 
 rity. Possibly the Peshito version may have been made 
 from this reading; but that such was the case cannot with 
 
 1 Cyr. Al. Opp. i. 347, iii. 829; comp. Nova Patrum Bibl. iii. 119. 
 Kay yap νεκροῦ τις ἥψατο, κἂν λεπροῦ, κἂν γονορρυὴς ἐγένετο, ἐβαπτίζετ 
 nal οὕτως ἐδόκει καθαρίζεσθαι" ταῦτα δὲ δικαιώματω ἦσαν σαρκὸς, τουτέστιν 
 ἐντολαὶ σώρκινωι, σωρκικῶς δικαιοῦσοιι τοὺς κατὰ σάρκα δοκοῦντας ὠκα- 
 θάρτους. 
 
72 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 certainty be inferred.1 (3) The reading of A, adopted by 
 Scholz, Knapp, and Lachmann, is δικαιώματα σαρκός. This 
 reading is also witnessed to by B, which reads καὶ δικαιώματα 
 σαρκός (the καί being simply an error of the transcriber), 
 and by the δικαίωμα of D*, which is represented by the 
 Itala: justitia carnis usque ad tempus restitutionis imposita. 
 
 Most of the older commentators refer μόνον ἐπὶ. -. 
 either to τελειῶσαι as an antithesis to κατὰ συνείδησιν, or to 
 τὸν λατρενόντα as expressing the nature and forms of his 
 worship. The latter view is against grammar; the former 
 (which has recently been espoused by Ebrard) against the 
 facts of the case.. The Levitical sacrifices were not offered 
 simply in atonement for ceremonial transgressions, in matters 
 of eating, drinking, washing, and the like, as is specially 
 evident in the quite general references to sin of all kinds on . 
 the day of atonement. The preposition ἐπί cannot there- 
 fore be taken here in the sense of “ referring to,” but either 
 in the cumulative sense of Luke iii. 20 (the sacrifices being 
 regarded as simple additions to other corporeal rites and 
 purifications), or in that of ix. 15, 17, etc., as denoting the 
 system during which the sacrifices had validity. These 
 two senses can hardly be discriminated or separated in 
 translation. 
 
 The next question is, whether we are to read καὶ δικαιώ- 
 ματα σαρκός, or δικαιώματα σαρκός omitting the καί. These 
 are the only two readings which rest on adequate authority.’ 
 To the former, with καί, there are two objections :—(1) 
 Though καί does occur in the sense of “ and in general” 
 (Matt. xxvi. 59) as well as in that of “ and in particular” 
 (vi. 10), we cannot here help feeling convinced that the 
 sacred writer in using καί would have added ἄλλοις δικαιώ- 
 μασιν σαρκός, and not changed the dative case for an 
 accusative. And (2) the neuter ἐπικείμενα, referring to 
 δῶρα τε καὶ θυσίαι, after the feminine δυνάμεναι, is another 
 serious difficulty. If Erasmus Schmid said well, Sicut antea 
 δυνάμεναι referebatur ad propinquius ζευγματικῶς, ita ἐπικεί- 
 
 1 The rendering of the Peshito is, uz sunt (ΠΤ δ 1) statuta carnis. 
 ® The Cod. Sin. reads δικαιώματω σαρκός without καί. 
 
CHAP. IX. 10. 73 
 
 μενα ad utrumque δῶρα τε καὶ θυσίαι συλληπτικῶς ; One 
 must also recognise the correctness of Sebastian Schmid’s 
 criticism: Quod licet qualitercunque, ut Erasmus Schmid 
 facit, constructio defendi possit, duritiem tamen videatur habere 
 non exiguam. We therefore elect to read, with Bengel, 
 Bleek, Tholuck, Ebrard, Liinemann, and against De Wette, 
 Boéhme, and others, δικαιώματα σαρκός. As being such, the 
 sacred writer reckons the Levitical sacrifices in one category 
 with βρώμασι καὶ πόμασι' καὶ διαφόροις βαπτισμοῖς, con- 
 temporary ordinances of the same Levitical cultus. He uses 
 the terms βρώματα, etc., as general titles for all the Levitical 
 ordinances concerning such matters, much in the same way 
 as various tracts in the Talmud are entitled: eg. Beizah 
 (Ax’2), collection of precepts and traditions concerning the 
 egg laid on a holy day, whether it may be eaten on the holy 
 day; ΠΡ, similar collection concerning fluids which render 
 eatables unclean; }¥p\y, concerning stalks of various fruits 
 which by touching eatables render them unclean, ete. ete. 
 It would be incorrect to infer (as some have done) from 
 Heb. xiii. 9, that the sacred writer is thinking here (under 
 Bpépara) specially of meats partaken of at sacrificial meals 
 or the paschal supper (Bleek, De Wette). The parallel 
 passages in Col. ii. 16-23, Rom. xiv., and 1 Cor. vili., render 
 it far more probable that he is referring to the laws, written 
 and traditional, concerning clean and unclean meats, which 
 were so widely discussed and controverted in the apostolic 
 age, and were closely connected with the precepts concerning 
 sacrifices. In the reference to πόματα he may have had 
 such precepts as Ley. xi. 34, Hage. ii. 13, or such as the 
 traditional prohibition of wine sold by a Samaritan in view. 
 By διάφοροι βαπτισμοί we are to understand not so much 
 the priestly washings before sacrifice, as the various baths 
 and purifications prescribed in the Thorah after ceremonial 
 defilement, and infinitely multiplied in the unwritten law, 
 the “washings of pots and pans” (Mark vii. 4), and of hands 
 before meals, etc. 
 
 1On the forms πόμα and πῶμα, compare G. Hermann, Bion et 
 Moschus, p. 76. 
 
74 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 All these various prescriptions and prohibitions the sacred 
 writer classes together as δικαιώματα σαρκός, not as though 
 outward purity and the sanctification of the natural life 
 was in itself a matter of indifference, but because offering 
 material sacrifices, eating and not eating, drinking and not 
 drinking, bathing and washing, are in themselves simply 
 bodily acts or abstinences, with no direct significance for the 
 inward man. They may indeed, if performed in a right 
 spirit, be accompanied by some inward blessing; but they 
 could never really satisfy the demands of an awakened con- 
 science, or restore to that communion with the Holy One 
 which sin destroys. The attributive genitive σαρκός (= cap- 
 Kika OY σάρκινα, comp. Vil. 16) is applied to such acts and 
 ordinances, not as in themselves evil or sinful, but simply as 
 
 inadequate. They were of a material, not a spiritual nature: | 
 
 they could not satisfy the needs of the inward man for un- 
 clouded divine communion, and therefore were merely μέχρι 
 καιροῦ διορθώσεως ἐπικείμενα. It is evident from a com- 
 parison of Acts xv. 10 (ἐπιθεῖναι ξυγόν) and 28 (ἐπιτίθεσθαι 
 βάρος), that ἐπικείμενα here includes the notion of the 
 painful and burdensome. These ceremonial precepts were 
 imposed on men preparing for better things till the time 
 of reformation,—a time when the inadequate and imperfect 
 should be succeeded by a better and more satisfactory order 
 of things, and when the endeavours of men after true com- 
 munion with God should be brought into the right track.’ 
 Such is the character of the earthly sanctuary and its 
 δικαιώματα. The picture is now completely drawn, and we 
 are fully prepared for the contrast which is to be presented 
 in the following verses (11, 12) of the present New Testa- 
 ment time, the καιρὸς διορθώσεως. The antithesis is in the 
 
 1 Compare Acts xxiv. 3, where the text wavers between dropbayaray 
 and κατορθωρμρώτων. The close of the prophecies of Ezekiel and Zecha- 
 riah must be brought into agreement with the μέχρι here. All that can 
 be gathered from the Acts of the Apostles (see Baumgarten, ii. 2, 154) 
 is, that the swaddling-clothes of the law were not forthwith burnt at 
 
 the appearance of the gospel, but to resume them when once thrown 
 
 aside was perfectly out of the question. 
 
 : 
 | 
 
CHAP, IX. 11, 12. @ 
 
 first instance to vers. 9, 10, but, properly speaking, must be 
 extended to the whole preceding paragraph: it involves the 
 δέ correlative to the μέν of ver. 1. 
 
 Vers. 11, 12. But Christ having appeared an high priest 
 of the good things to come, through the greater and more per- 
 fect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this 
 creation, and not through blood of goats and calves, but through 
 His own blood, hath entered once for all into the holies, obtain- 
 ing an eternal redemption for us. 
 
 The appearance of Christ as the promised Mediator of 
 the new covenant constitutes the turning-point in the history 
 of divine revelation, and marks the boundary between its 
 two great periods of prophetic preparation and evangelical 
 fulfilment. Παραγενόμενος is therefore, for the sake of 
 emphasis, placed after Χριστός at the head of the sentence. 
 ITapayevéc@as is the usual word for appearance or manifesta- 
 tion on the stage of history (comp. Luke xii. 51; Matt. 1.1 ; 
 1 Mace. iv. 46); and Bleek and De Wette err in referring 
 it here to our Lord’s entrance into the heavenly world, as if 
 He then for the first time became high priest. Had such 
 been the sacred writer’s meaning, he would have used the 
 word γενόμενος, not παραγενόμενος. (Comp. i. 4, vi. 20, 
 vil. 26.) We have already shown this Socinianizing con- 
 ception of our Lord’s priesthood to be a false one: Christ 
 became, indeed, high priest after the order of Melchizedek by 
 His entrance into the heavenly places, but not simply high 
 priest, for that He was already. It is therefore unnecessary 
 to put a comma (with Bengel and Griesbach) after παραγε- 
 νόμενος : still less must we think of supplying an εἰς τὸ εἶναι 
 ἀρχιερέα, as if our Lord’s assumption of the priesthood were 
 subsequent to His manifestation in the created universe. 
 From the first moment of the incarnation He was high 
 priest by vocation and potentially: all that followed, till He 
 passed into the highest heavens, was but progressive develop- 
 ments of that original calling. 
 
 It is next a question whether we should read, with the 
 textus receptus and the Vulgate, τῶν μελλόντων ἀγαθῶν, or 
 
76 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 with the Itala, Peshito, Philoxenian (and with Chrysostom? 
 and Cicumenius), τῶν γενομένων ayabodv.? Tischendorf, 
 who once followed Lachmann in adopting the latter reading, 
 has rightly abandoned it, and so likewise Hofmann.’ It is 
 probably simply an error in transcription, occasioned by 
 παραγενόμενος. The interpretation attached by some to the 
 reading γενομένων, that the writer of the epistle is contrasting 
 the symbols and figures of the Levitical worship with the 
 good things of the New Testament already realized, was 
 probably an afterthought. If, however, μελλόντων be the 
 right reading, there are, as Schlichting observes, still two 
 interpretations possible: Per futura bona intelligi possunt 
 tum ea bona que respectu legis erant futura, tum que respectu 
 hujus seculi sunt futura. It is, however, highly improbable 
 that by “the good things to come” should be intended | 
 merely good things which were indeed future blessings 
 under the law, but present now with us under the gospel. 
 Against such a view is the ἡ οἰκουμένη ἡ μέλλουσα of ii. 5, the 
 μέλλων αἰών of vi. 5, the ἡ μέλλουσα πόλις of xiii. 14, the 
 importance attached to hope throughout the epistle, and the 
 constant references to the world beyond the grave as the 
 proper sphere of the high-priestly action of our Lord. The 
 designation, moreover, of the Levitical sanctuary as ἅγιον 
 κοσμικόν, and of its δικαιώματα λατρείας as δικαιώματα 
 σαρκός, seems to indicate that this μελλόντων is not to be 
 understood of some actual historical future, but rather of 
 that heavenly and hidden sphere whose invisible presence in 
 this our earthly one is an object of faith. Bleek, De Wette, 
 Tholuck, Hofmann, and Liinemann, are therefore correct in 
 
 1 Chrysostom’s words are: οὐκ size’ παραγενόμενος cpxsepeds τῶν 
 θυομένων, ἀλλὰ τῶν γενομένων ἀγαθῶν, ὡς οὖκ ἰσχύοντος TOY λόγον Tapa- 
 στῆσαι τὸ πᾶν, utpote quod non posset universum explicare oratio. A con- 
 temporary of Cassiodorus, Mutianus Scholasticus, thus renders the text 
 of Chrysostom: Et non dixit: Adveniens Pontifex hostiarum, sed bonorum 
 que facta sunt, veluti non valente sermone universum exprimere (Cod. 
 Erlang. 223 of the year 1310). The text presented by St. John Damas- 
 cene in his Ecloge has, on the other hand, τῶν μελλόντων. 
 
 2 This is the reading of B.D* (but not of Cod. Sin.—TRr.). 
 
 8 Comp. Weissagung, ii. 191, with Schri/ibew. ii. 1, 291. 
 
CHAP. IX. 11, 12. V7 
 
 interpreting it of those future blessings of the heavenly world 
 which we believe in and hope for now, and of which, as 
 believers, we have already a prospective possession and an 
 actual foretaste. I cannot, however, agree with Hofmann, 
 that the emphasis is here to be laid on ἀγαθῶν rather than 
 on μελλόντων, as if only the High Priest of the new cove- 
 nant was an ἀρχιερεὺς ἀγαθῶν. ‘The sacred writer’s meaning 
 would rather seem to be, that if the Levitical high priest 
 might be in his degree an ἀρχιερεὺς ἀγαθῶν, he was not an 
 ἀρχ. τῶν μελλόντων ay., that honour being reserved for the 
 High Priest of the New Testament. Not indeed that this is 
 the antithesis which he has here specially in view; for τῶν 
 μελλ. aya. is here contrasted as a whole with the preced- 
 ing δικαιώματα σαρκός, 1.6. the tabernacle and sacrifices of 
 the Old Testament. The high priest of the earthly taber- 
 nacle and of the still veiled inner sanctuary was unable 
 by those material and animal sacrifices, and by the animal 
 blood which he then offered, to procure, either for the 
 congregation as a whole or for individuals, any truly satis- 
 fying hold of the good things of the future. But Christ 
 is now manifested as ἀρχιερεὺς τῶν μελλόντων ἀγαθών, 1.6. 
 as High Priest to obtain, and as High Priest to dispense 
 them. 
 
 The final step of the process by which He so obtained 
 these good things as to have them now in hand ready to be 
 bestowed on us, is expressed in the following sentence: διὰ 
 τῆς μείζονος . .. σκηνῆς .. «διὰ δὲ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος 
 εἰσῆλθεν ἐφάπαξ εἰς τὰ ἅγια. Hofmann still insists on con- 
 necting the two dud’s (dua τῆς μείζονος σκηνῆς and διὰ τοῦ 
 ἰδίου aij.) with the subject (Xp. παραγεν. apy.), as expressing 
 the way in which Christ became high priest; and this view 
 of the construction, at any rate, of the first διά follows of 
 necessity from Hofmann’s interpretation of the “ greater 
 and more perfect tabernacle” as denoting the sinless hu- 
 manity of our Lord. So also (in respect to the first διά) 
 the ancient interpreters for a like reason; e.g. Ambrosius, in 
 Ps, exviii.: Tabernaculum testimonii corpus hoe nostrum est, 
 in quo Christus advenit, per amplius et perfectius tabernaculum 
 
78 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 ut per sanguinem suum intraret in sancta et conscientiam nos- 
 tram ab omni opere mortuorum et labe mundaret ; and Chry- 
 sostom: τὴν σάρκα ἐν ταῦθα λέγει, καλῶς δὲ Kal μείζονα Kal 
 τελειοτέραν εἶπεν, εἴγε καὶ Θεὸς λόγος καὶ πᾶσα ἡ τοῦ πνεύ- 
 ματος ἐνέργεια ἐνοικεῖ ἐν αὐτῇ. The only difference between 
 Hofmann and the ancients in this interpretation is, that 
 while by the greater and more perfect tabernacle they under- 
 stood the humanity of Christ simply as such, and as taken 
 from the Virgin (e.g. Primasius : corpus intra uterum virginis 
 sine semine viri totius Trinitatis opere effigiatum), Hofmann 
 understands by it the Lord’s glorified humanity as the true 
 σκηνή or habitation of God, in which the fulness of the 
 divine nature dwelleth bodily (Col. ii. 9),—rightly regarding 
 the designation οὐ ταύτης τῆς κτίσεως as not applicable to 
 
 the σῶμα τῆς σαρκός which, in order therein to suffer, our . 
 
 Lord vouchsafed to carry about Him here (Weiss. ii. 189 ; 
 Schriftb. ii. 1, 290). This interpretation of the σκηνή we 
 have already examined at ch. vii. 2, and found there to be 
 untenable. We will now consider Hofmann’s reasons for 
 maintaining it in the present passage. 
 
 And first he argues, that if we connect διὰ τῆς μείζονος 
 σκηνῆς and διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος with εἰσῆλθεν, we obscure 
 the relation between vers. 13, 14, and ver. 11; that the 
 emphasis is evidently meant to be laid on the entrance of 
 Christ “‘ once for all” into the heavenly sanctuary, and that 
 this emphasis is weakened by the introduction of the two 
 antithetical clauses διὰ τῆς μείζονος... and οὐδὲ δι’ αἵματος 
 . . + before εἰσῆλθεν. To this we reply, that the emphasis 
 on ἐφάπαξ is by no means impaired by the introduction of 
 the two clauses, which simply define two characteristic cir- 
 cumstances of the Lord’s entrance which contribute to 
 render it such as in the nature of things is incapable of 
 repetition. Hofmann’s second argument is, that the con- 
 nection of the two clauses with εἰσῆλθεν has this further 
 inconvenience, that it compels us to take the first διά in a 
 local, the second in an instrumental sense; and against this 
 latter sense he argues that the blood of atonement was not 
 the mean by or through which, but the thing with which 
 
CHAP. IX. 11, 12. 79 
 
 the high priest, both in type and antitype, entered the inner 
 sanctuary ; comparing ix. 25, where it is said of the high 
 priest, εἰσέρχεται ἐν αἵματι (not δι’ αἵματος), = Ps. Ixvi. 13, 
 ‘ama. To this again we answer, first, that the difficulty made 
 out of the two senses of dua is only one for a German trans- 
 lator, and hardly one even for him; that διά may be rendered 
 in both instances by “through,” denoting in the first instance 
 the way or place through which, and in the next the means 
 or qualification through which, the high priest obtained an en- 
 trance to the holy of holies. Secondly, when at Lev. xvi. 2 
 sq: it is said that Aaron is not to come at all times, according 
 to his own pleasure, into the sanctuary, but only ἐν μόσχῳ 
 ἐκ βοῶν περὶ ἁμαρτίας, k.T.r., the inference is certainly an 
 obvious one, that the blood of the victims is regarded as an 
 enabling means of such approach; and the same is likewise 
 true of the antitype (comp. the ἀνάγκη of ix. 23). Christ, as 
 high priest taken from among men to act on our behalf, 
 could not in that character enter the heavenly sanctuary and 
 make it approachable by us without atonement made for us; 
 His own blood, therefore, was for Him the qualifying means 
 of His entrance there. Thirdly, Hofmann urges that, if “the 
 greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands” 
 be heaven itself, there can be no proper distinction established 
 between Ta ἅγια and ἡ σκηνή. So, with the same notion, 
 Beza remarks, per absurde diceretur per cwlum ingressus esse 
 in celum. But this supposed tautology is based on a mis- 
 understanding. This is evident from the fact that the 
 sacred writer speaks elsewhere of Christ as διεληλυθότα τοὺς 
 οὐρανούς (iv. 14, “having passed through the heavens”), and 
 again says of Him (ix. 24), εἰσῆλθεν εἰς αὐτὸν τὸν οὐρανόν 
 (that “ He has entered into the very heaven”). Putting these 
 two passages together, it cannot involve any absurdity to 
 interpret his meaning: per celos in caelum ingressus est. 
 Only by “the heavens” here we are not simply to under- 
 stand the star-worlds of astronomy, which, though they be 
 in contrast to any human constructions οὐ χειροποίητα, are 
 not, in respect of God Himself, od ταύτης τῆς κτίσεως. 
 Against such an interpretation may also be urged the lan- 
 
80 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 guage of viii. 2, where Christ is called the Aevtoupyds of the 
 true σκηνή. 
 
 Τὰ ἅγια is therefore here (as we have proved at vill. 2) 
 the «local place of the infinite, self-contained, self-centred 
 Godhead, and ἡ σκηνή the supra-local place of divine mani- 
 festations to the angels and the blessed, the heaven of love 
 in which God manifestly dwells, and in which He vouch- 
 safes the beatific vision to certain of His creatures, the vads 
 τῆς σκηνῆς τοῦ μαρτυρίου of Rev. xv. 5, which the apoca- 
 lyptic seer beheld filled with incense-smoke from the δόξα 
 and δύναμις of the divine presence. The former (τὰ ἅγια) 
 is that eternal heaven of God Himself (αὐτὸς ὁ οὐρανός), 
 which is His own self-manifested eternal glory (John xvii. 5), 
 and existed before all worlds; the latter (ἡ σκηνή) is the 
 heaven of the blessed, in which He shines upon His creatures 
 
 in the light of love. This created heaven has for its back-— 
 
 ground the eternal dwelling-place of the Holy One, and on 
 account of its immeasurable vastness and “ many mansions,” 
 is called also οὐρανοί (heavens; comp. viii. 1, ix. 23, x. 34, 
 and xii. 23, 25). Hofmann remarks, indeed (Weiss. ii. 189), 
 that there is nothing said in our present passage of a differ- 
 ence or contrast between the πρώτη and the δευτέρα σκηνή, 
 inasmuch as this distinction was destined (according to ver. 8) 
 to last only μέχρι καιροῦ διορθώσεως. The remark in no way 
 disturbs our position, since in the heavenly world there is no 
 longer any veil (καταπέτασμα) between the place of God’s 
 own immediate presence and that of His manifestation to 
 blessed spirits, and consequently no thought of separation, 
 much less of difference or contrast between them, as of a 
 πρώτη and δευτέρα σκηνή. The sacred writer, however, in 
 
 1 Est altare in celis (says Ireneeus, iv. 18, 6) (illuc enim preces nostrz 
 et oblationes diriguntur), et templum, quemadmodum Joannes in Apocalypsi 
 ait cet. And again Origen, in Lev. Hom. ix. 5: Necessarium fuit, domi- 
 num et salvatorem meum non solum inter homines hominem nasci, sed 
 etiam ad inferna descendere ut sortem apopompxi (νυ) tanquam 
 homo paratus in eremum inferni deduceret atque inde regressus opere 
 consummato adscenderet ad patrem ibique plenius apud altare illud celeste 
 purijicaretur, ut carnis nostre pignus, quod secum evescerat, perpetua 
 puritate donaret. 
 
CHAP. IX. 11, 12. 81 
 
 saying διὰ τῆς μείζονος καὶ τελειοτέρας σκηνῆς, points up- 
 wards, as it were, to the heavenly places whose blessed 
 inhabitants are rejoicing now in the unveiled light of the 
 divine glory—the διὰ τῆς being almost equivalent to δι᾽ 
 ἐκείνης τῆς ; and first he calls it μείζων, in contradistinction 
 to the narrowness and littleness of its earthly type, and 
 then τελειοτέρα, in contrast with the imperfect, undeveloped, 
 unsatisfactory character of the cosmic tabernacle, with the 
 veiled and unapproachable sanctuary behind it. The epithet 
 ov χειροποιήτου" after THs... σκηνῆς (but without the article) 
 is added as a kind of apposition, and is immediately explained 
 by the writer himself as equivalent to οὐ ταύτης τῆς κτίσεως. 
 That heavenly tabernacle, which his upward glance is now 
 surveying, is no work of men’s hands, but one “ pitched” 
 by the Lord Himself (vii. 2), 1.9. His own immediate work 
 and institution: it forms no part of the present material 
 cosmos in weds we are now placed, but appertains to the 
 future age,” and to the world of glory that is yet to come. 
 The next clause commences with οὐδέ (not καὶ οὐ), as 
 if the preceding one had run thus: Christ, in entering the 
 eternal sanctuary, passed not through a tabernacle made with 
 hands, but through that greater and more perfect heavenly 
 tabernacle; (and so proceeds) nor yet (οὐδέ) through blood of 
 goats and calves, but through His own blood entered He in 
 once for all. The blood through (i.e. by means of) which 
 the Levitical high priest obtained his yearly admission to the 
 holy of holies, was the blood of the two great sin-offerings 
 (the bullock and the goat) of the day of atonement; “ bullock” 
 (15) being in the Septuagint rendered by μόσχος, “ goat” 
 (wy) by τράγος. The plurals τράγων καὶ μόσχων are here 
 used generically, the goat-sacrifice being first named, as the 
 one most characteristic of the day of atonement. Christ, on 
 the other hand, as High Priest of the new testament, ob- 
 tained an entrance to the eternal sanctuary by giving up 
 His own life in sacrifice, and so by a blood as far excelling 
 
 1 The term is used by St. Luke in two places, and in a similar con- 
 nection: Acts vii. 48 and xvii. 24. 
 
 2 Comp. the title of Messiah (Isa. ix. 6, Vulg.), Pater futuri sxculi. 
 
 VOL. 11. Ἐ 
 
82 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 in preciousness that of the animal sacrifices in the hands of 
 the Levitical high priest, as the true “ place” of the divine 
 presence excels in sanctity the earthly holy of holies; for 
 that blood was His own, τὸ ἴδιον αἷμα, xiii. 12, Acts xx. 28. 
 With this, or rather by means of this blood, as the true key 
 to heaven, He has made His entrance “ once for all,” not at 
 repeated times, or year by year, into the sanctuary above. 
 The emphasis of the whole sentence commencing with 
 Χριστὸς δέ lies on ἐφάπαξ and the following αἰωνίαν λύτρω- 
 σιν εὑράμενος, the one only entrance, because made “ once 
 for all,’ and (what is intimately connected with it) the 
 eternal validity of the redemption thus obtained. So also 
 Hofmann, rightly observing that here the aorist participle 
 and the aorist verb (εὑράμενος and εἰσῆλθεν) denote contem- 
 porary actions (see on ii. 10). Liinemann’s rendering, “ after 
 He had obtained,” is, though not ungrammatical, yet not in 
 accordance with the sense; Ebrard’s, on the other hand, in 
 equal accordance both with sense and grammar: “ accom- 
 plishing thereby an eternal redemption.” Eternal redemption 
 had not indeed been fully obtained before our Lord’s en- 
 trance to the Father, that entrance being itself the con- 
 clusion of the great redeeming act. Nor is any injury 
 hereby done to the supreme and fundamental significance of 
 the Lord’s sacrificial death upon the cross, without which this 
 entrance ἐν αἵματι into the eternal sanctuary would have 
 been impossible. As the resurrection from the dead was the 
 divine obsignation of the work of atonement, so the entrance 
 of the Risen One into the Father’s presence imparted to that 
 work its eternal validity for us. 
 
 The Hebrew version, made under the auspices of the 
 London Society for Missions to the Jews, rightly renders 
 εὑράμενος here by a fut. consec., Diy mia ΝΥ, Like syn, 
 εὑρίσκειν signifies both to find and to obtain, and in the 
 middle voice to find or obtain for oneself, and then to accom- 
 plish or bring about what one has been labouring for or 
 striving after (comp. the ποιησάμενος of 1. 3); εὑράμην being 
 the Alexandrine, or at any rate non-Attic form of the aorist, 
 instead of evpounv. “Δύτρωσις is a Luke word (Luke i. 68, 
 
CHAP. IX. 11, 12, 83 
 
 ii. 388: comp. ἀπολύτρωσις, xxi. 28; λυτροῦσθαι, xxiv. 21; 
 λυτρωτής, Acts vii. 35), St. Paul using exclusively the 
 word ἀπολύτρωσις. The Septuagint renders by λύτρωσις 
 both mwa (redemption), its exact equivalent, and N18 (re- 
 lease) ; Theodotion employs it once as the rendering of 755 
 (atonement). In the ordinary Scripture usage of λύτρωσις. 
 (ἀπολύτρωσις), the notion of a λύτρον (redemption-price) is 
 almost lost sight of, as when the word is used of the redemp- 
 tion of Israel, or that of the elect in the last day ; but this is 
 by no means the case (as is evident from the two loci classici, 
 Matt. xx. 28 = Mark x. 45, and 1 Tim. ii. 5 sq.) when it is 
 applied to the redemption of mankind by Christ. The λύτρον 
 paid by Him for us is His death (ix. 15; Tit. ii.14; 1 Tim. 
 li. 5 sq.), as the offering up of Himself ; or His blood (Eph. 
 i. 7; Col. 1. 14), as the giving up of His ψύχη (Matt. xx. 
 28),—His “ precious blood,” as that of a lamb without 
 blemish and without spot (1 Pet. i. 19). In our present 
 passage, likewise, it is the Lord’s blood which is regarded as 
 the λύτρον. And since it is by means of this, His own blood, 
 that Christ enters into the holy of holies (even as the Levi- 
 tical high priest made his entrance by means of the blood of 
 goats and calves), so it is clear (contrary to the interpretation 
 given by many among the ancients) that to God Himself, 
 and not Satan, the λύτρον is paid. This is involved in the 
 very fact of the close relationship between the notions of 753 
 and 083: the blood which Christ as 155 paid for us is 
 ὈΣΊΒΞΠ D1,—the O52 O73 in virtue of which He, as anti- 
 type of the high priest, on the day of atonement entered 
 (after His passion) the eternal sanctuary, and appeared in the 
 presence of God for us. Now the blood of atonement was 
 offered to God, and to Him only: to Him, therefore, this 
 λύτρωσις was also made, to Him our redemption-price paid 
 down. And this λύτρωσις is an eternal one (αἰωνία for 
 αἰώνιος here only and at 2 Thess. ii. 16 in the N. T., but 
 sometimes in the LXX.); that is, it is of absolute, never- 
 failing validity. The same truth had been already expressed 
 in the word ἐφάπαξ. As Hofmann truly says, redemption 
 is the object which the high priest has in view in appearing 
 
84 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 
 
 before God: when that appearance has once been made, 
 the object has been gained, and gained for ever.' 
 
 It remains to inquire how the sacred writer thought, or 
 how he would have interpreted in his own mind this entrance 
 of Christ into heaven, διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος. In pursu- 
 ing which inquiry we will start from the following delicate 
 observations of Schlichting, which have been more or less 
 entirely made their own by Bleek, Liinemann, De Wette, 
 and even Tholuck, and well deserve a careful examination :— 
 Notandum est, autorem, ut elegantice comparationis consuleret, 
 usum esse in priore membro voce “ per,” licet pontifex legalis 
 non tantum per sanguinem hircorum et vitulorum, h.e. fuso 
 prius sanguine istorum animalium seu interveniente sanguinis 
 eorum fusione, sed etiam cum ipsorum sanguine (οὐ χωρὶς 
 αἵματος ἢ. 6. ἐν αἵματι) in sancta fuertt ingressus. Verum 
 quia in Christi sacrificio similitudo eo usque extendi non 
 potuit, cum Christus non alienum sed suum sanguinem fuderit, 
 nee sanguinem suum post mortem, sed se ipsum et quidem jam 
 immortalem, depositis carnis et sanguinis exuviis, quippe que 
 regnum Dei possidere nequeant in calesti illo tabernaculo ob- 
 tulerit, proindeque non cum sanguine sed tantum fuso prius 
 sanguine, seu interveniente sanguinis sut fusione in sancta 
 fuerit ingressus : idcirco divinus autor minus de legali pontifice 
 dixit, quam res erat, vel potius ambiguitate particule “ per” 
 que etiam idem quod “cum” in saeris literis significare solet, 
 comparationis concinnitati consulere voluit. In saying all this, 
 Schlichting avoids coming into conflict with his own pre- 
 viously drawn conclusion at vill. 3: ex his autoris verbis 
 apertissimum est, Christum nunc in celis offerre, nempe ut 
 "infra (ix. 14) docet autor, se ipsum Deo. Hofmann, who, as 
 we have seen, will not admit this conclusion (rendering viii. 3, 
 “ whence a necessity that this One also should have something 
 which He has offered”), agrees otherwise with Schlichting in 
 the views here expressed. In the Schriftbeweis he plainly 
 denies the possibility of the existence of glorified blood in 
 the heavenly world: 6.0. ii. 2,197, “ His life is still a life 
 
 1 See Note P. 
 ? In the Weiss. μι. Erfiill., on the other hand, he once wrote: ‘ Christ 
 
CHAP. IX. 11, 12. 85 
 
 in the body, and indeed in the same body as before Fis 
 passion ; but in so far as that former life on earth was a life 
 in blood, it belongs now to the past. That outpoured blood is 
 no longer contained in the Lord’s glorified body, or in any other 
 part of heaven; it works atonement, as the once shed on the 
 altar of the cross.” And again, at 11. 2, 209, he says further : 
 “ That communion with the humanity of our blessed Lord, 
 which is vouchsafed in the holy supper, consists mainly in the 
 communion of His glorified body, in virtue of which He pos- 
 sesses a nature that is one with ours; but His blood, the 
 communion of which is attached to the sacramental cup, is the 
 blood once shed for us upon the cross, and is only so far present 
 now as fis bodily life, which was once given up in that great 
 blood-shedding, is now restored, but without being again a life 
 in or sustained by blood.” 
 
 That in this way the reality of the presence of the blood 
 of Christ in the holy sacrament is seriously threatened, is 
 plain enough. The old Socinians (such as Schlichting) natu- 
 rally cared nothing about maintaining such real presence, 
 being content with a fust pro nobis sanguinis representatio et 
 adumbratio. But neither does Hofmann’s doctrine properly 
 admit of it. The Lord’s bodily life is now for Him a blood- 
 less one: “ The gift of Christs glorified body, through the 
 consecrated bread, is followed in the sacrament by the admini- 
 stration of the chalice, simply in order to realize in us the 
 derivation of His present heavenly life from the former earthly 
 one, through death and blood-shedding.” But how is it thus 
 realized? Not by any real communication of the Lord’s 
 blood; for that, according to Hofmann, is no longer in 
 existence. The Lord’s words, therefore, “ This is my blood,” 
 mean something different from what they say. His body is 
 present in the holy communion, but not His blood. We 
 receive the one really, the other at the most only dynamically. 
 Origen, whose teaching is very similar to this, distinguishes 
 between sanguis carnis and sanguis Verbi,—a distinction which 
 enables him to maintain the reality of the presence and 
 
 entered through the veil into the holy of holies, not without blood, but that 
 glorified.” 
 
86 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS 
 
 communication of the Lord’s blood in the sacrament, so far, 
 at any rate, as the words are concerned: and perhaps, indeed, 
 he means actually to do this; for while he sometimes uses 
 vitalis virtus as equivalent to sanguis, he also says that what 
 is meant by caro et sanguis Verbi is known to those who are 
 initiated into the holy mysteries." 
 
 Bengel likewise (in the Ewcursus to Heb. xii. 24) main- 
 tains the bloodlessness of the Lord’s glorified body, but 
 escapes the evil consequence of such a position in a peculiar 
 way. Vita gloriosa, he argues, non desiderat circulationem 
 sanguinis ; tota ex Deo est. But neither (he maintains, ap- 
 pealing to 1 Pet. i. 18 sq.) can the precious blood of the 
 unspotted Lamb have passed away like perishable things. 
 Christ, our High Priest, has carried His own blood for us 
 in separation from His body into heaven, even as the high 
 priest of the law carried the blood of others into the earthly 
 sanctuary. And much, we must allow, may be said for this 
 position, which is also that of Oetinger, Steinhofer, and 
 Stier. That the Lord entered heaven, not without blood, 
 is required by the type. That the sacred writer, instead of 
 saying διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος, might equally well have said 
 ἐν ἰδίω αἵματι, is evident from ch. viii. 3. That the διά of 
 mediation does not exclude (as Schlichting thought), but 
 rather includes,” the ἐν of accompaniment, we have already 
 proved. It remains, therefore, a very natural inference, that 
 the Lord took the blood of atonement into the presence of 
 
 1 Vid. Hofling, Lehre der Aeltesten Kirche vom Opfer. p. 170. 
 
 2 That this is the natural impression made by the words, is evident 
 from the following citations, in addition to those made by Bengel in the 
 5th section of his Excursus :—(«) Primasius: non cum sanguine legalium 
 animalium, a quo perfecte justificatio non poterat dari, sed cum sanguine 
 passionis sux introivit in patriam calestem. (8) Henr. Bullinger (1532): 
 ille inferebat sanguinem beluinum, hic vero proprium, humanum et sanctum. 
 (γ) Jo. Gerhard: Christus sanguinem suum in ara concis in sacrificium 
 effusum in celeste sanctuarium intulit. (6) Seb. Schmid: Christus ante 
 Patrem suum in celis non sanguinem tantum suum adfert, sed vulnera et 
 passiones corporis sui simul representat pro nobis intercedens. These are 
 but echoes of the scriptural word itself. How the act was done, is left 
 unexplained. 
 
 “ΞΡ, a υμῖνδὴι 
 
CHAP. IX. 11, 12. 87 
 
 the Father, in outward separation from His glorified body. 
 And this inference is the more natural, as the blood of 
 Christ in the sacrament is administered in outward separation 
 from the body. So, again, from ch. xii. 24 (comp. x. 22) 
 and 1 Pet. i. 2, it would seem (as the blood of sprinkling) to 
 have a continuous presence; as such, moreover, it is con- 
 trasted with the blood of Abel, and is repeatedly spoken of 
 as something different and apart from the person of the glo- 
 rified Jesus. Compare ch. x. 19-21, 29, and ch. xiii. 11 sq., 
 where σῶμα and αἵμα are significantly distinguished. 
 
 But all this notwithstanding, I cannot acquiesce in this 
 conclusion. The “blood of Jesus Christ shed for us” means 
 His life given up on our behalf. That material substance, 
 which was the medium or instrument of His bodily life, 
 when separated from His body, to whose life it ministered, 
 ceased to live, and is now therefore no more. But the body 
 which is given us in the holy sacrament is the body of the 
 living Jesus; and so likewise the blood which we there receive 
 is the blood of One who, having died, now lives for evermore. 
 As the flesh and blood of which He speaks in the sixth of St. 
 John, and on which faith continually feeds, are instinct with 
 life, both in themselves and in their operation, so are they 
 likewise full of living energy as sacramental gifts. We 
 should be compelled, therefore, to suppose rather a revivi- 
 fication of the Lord’s blood in separation from His risen 
 and glorified body (which were indeed a strange and inad- 
 missible conjecture), or such a reassumptio as that imagined 
 by our earlier dogmatists. So Quenstedt (col. 1223): No- 
 thing in the Lord Jesus Christ could see corruption, and there- 
 fore not His sacred blood: St. Peter speaks of it as unlike 
 corruptible gold and silver, and therefore incapable of dissolu- 
 tion ; even in its effusion it remained in union with the divine 
 hypostasis, and was still the blood of God (Acts xx. 28), and 
 consequently was reassumed by Him at the resurrection. The 
 blood of Christ, the price of our redemption, was in no wise 
 inferior to His sacred flesh. We are therefore piously con- 
 vinced, that not one precious drop shed for us on the cross 
 remained behind, but that it was all gathered again into His 
 
88 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 sacred veins on the morning of the resurrection. So Thomas 
 (Aquinas), following St. Augustine, holds that every drop of 
 the Lord’s blood, as belonging to the truth of His human 
 nature, was raised and glorified. Nor may we make dis- 
 tinctions, with Prierias and Cajetan, between natural blood and 
 that shed with saving power for our redemption. The blood 
 of Christ ts all one and the same substance, and the whole of 
 at was reassumed. 
 
 Thus argues Quenstedt. In reply to Hofmann, and 
 those who agree with him, we may first remark, that there 
 seems no good reason for supposing the glorified body of the 
 Lord to be therefore bloodless. If possessed of flesh and 
 bones (Luke xxiv. 39), without thereby becoming psychical, — 
 why should it not also contain blood without losing its 
 spiritual (pneumatic) character? Moreover, if the glorified 
 One gives us His flesh to eat and His blood to drink, we 
 cannot, without exegetical evasions, deny both flesh and blood 
 to His glorified humanity. . Again, the supposition that our 
 Lord presented in heaven His sacred blood apart from His 
 own personality, is certainly against the tenor of this epistle. 
 The προσφέρειν τί of ch. viii. 3 becomes the προσφέρειν τὸ 
 ἴδιον αἵμα of ch. ix. 12, and this again is explained and 
 defined by the προσφέρειν ἑαυτόν of ch. ix. 25. And lastly, 
 there seems no occasion to have recourse to the hypothesis of 
 a reassumption of the blood shed upon the cross, any more 
 than of the bloody sweat of Gethsemane, or the holy tears 
 at the grave of Lazarus. The notion, too, that our blessed 
 Lord shed all the blood of His sacred body on the cross, is 
 without any warrant in holy Scripture—a mere fancy. 
 Without going into medical details on so sacred a subject, 
 we may say it is inconceivable. The hypothesis, then, of a 
 redintegratio, is far more acceptable than that of a reas- 
 sumptio. The sacred blood thus redintegrated, remains and 
 is the same as that which was shed. “ The Lord’s glorified 
 body retains the virtue of that sacrificial death in which it was 
 once offered, and so His blood the virtue of that atonement 
 which it was once shed to procure.” So may we say with 
 Kahnis, without lowering the substance of the sacramentai 
 
CHAP. IX. 11, 12. 89 
 
 gift to a mere vigor mortis. And with Thalhofer we may 
 add, without drawing his conclusions in favour of the sacri- 
 ficial theory of the mass: “ The sacrificial action of the God- 
 man was not limited to the moment in which flesh and blood 
 were outwardly separated on the cross. The glorified Redeemer 
 still continues it in will, and therefore in substance. The same 
 self-sacrificing love which accomplished the work of Calvary, 
 still agitates His heart in heaven, and pulsates therein upon our 
 altars.” The sacrifice of Christ (so far as it was antitypical 
 of the slaying of the victim, and its presentation on the 
 altar) was accomplished on the cross. But the antitypical 
 correlative of the presentation of the blood before the mercy- 
 seat was our Lord’s appearance before God the Father, 
 bearing in His glorified body (identical with that which 
 suffered) His own precious blood, now also glorified (yet still 
 identical with that which had been shed). That high-priestly 
 self-presentation of the Redeemer is the eternal conclusion 
 and ratifying seal of the work of redemption. 
 
 We recall to the recollection of our readers that this 
 second or middle portion of our epistle (forming an almost 
 independent treatise on the priesthood of Christ) is divided 
 into three sections: the first of which (ch. vii. 1-25) com- 
 pares Melchizedek with Christ, as “ priest after the order 
 of Melchizedek ;” the second (ch. vii. 26-ix. 12) compares 
 Christ as “high priest” with the high priests of the Old 
 Testament ; and the third (ch. ix. 13—x. 18) exhibits the whole 
 redeeming work of Christ as the one “eternal high priest 
 after the order of Melchizedek.” Waving reached the end 
 of the second section, we now enter upon the third, 
 
THIRD SECTION. 
 
 THE ETERNAL AND ABSOLUTE HIGH-PRIESTHOOD OF 
 CHRIST AND ITS FINAL OPERATION SUPERSEDING 
 ALL THE TYPES AND SHADOWS OF THE LAW. 
 
 Cuap. 1x. 13-x. 18. The self-sacrifice of Christ cleanses the 
 hearts to which its blood is applied, and so prepares 
 them for the living service of the living God; His death 
 is the consecration of a new covenant, and of the things in 
 
 heaven; His entrance into the eternal sanctuary is the 
 
 seal of the absolute remission of sin, beyond which 
 nothing more remains in prospect but His ultimate return 
 to manifest our salvation (ix. 13-28). In contrast with 
 the oft-repeated sacrifices of the law, Christ by His one 
 self-offering has fully accomplished the will of God, and 
 obtained a perfect sanctification for us; henceforth He 
 sits enthroned expecting final victory: the new covenant 
 is now established, and needs no other sacrifice than His, 
 being based on the absolute forgiveness of sins procured 
 thereby (x. 1-18). 
 
 wa LIS third section is a development and expansion 
 of the last clause of the preceding one, which we 
 have just been considering: αἰωνίαν λύτρωσιν 
 εὑράμενος. Its first half (ix. 13-28) attaches itself 
 chiefly to vers. 11, 12, and consists of three paragraphs, of 
 which the first (vers. 13, 14) refers to the διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου 
 αἵματος of ver. 12; the second (vers. 15-23) to the ἀρχίιε- 
 pers τῶν μελλόντων ἀγαθῶν of ver. 11; and the third (vers. 
 24-28) to the εἰσῆλθεν ἐφάπαξ εἰς τὰ ἅγια of ver. 12. In 
 the second half of this section (ch. x. 1-18) all the threads 
 of the discourse beginning at vil. 1 are again taken up and 
 90 
 
CHAP. IX. 13, 14. 91 
 
 interwoven with a fresh quotation from a prophetic psalm 
 (Ps. xl.). The exaltation of Jesus Christ above Aaron, 
 through His own high- priestly sacrifice of Himself, His 
 royal session after the manner of Melchizedek at God’s right 
 hand, and the present realization of the new covenant pre- 
 dicted by Jeremiah,—all find in this concluding paragraph 
 a final and fullest-toned expression. 
 
 In thus subdividing this part of the epistle, it is not our 
 meaning that the sacred writer himself made a conscious 
 break at vil. 25, or at ix. 12 here. His well-connected 
 thoughts, and the well-fitting words in which they find ex- 
 pression, flow on in one continuous stream; but looking back 
 from the termination, we see these turnings in it. It need 
 not therefore disturb us to find the commencement of this 
 third section at ver. 13 so closely connected with the preced- 
 ing clause of ver. 12, and thus proceeding :— 
 
 Vers. 18, 14. For if the blood of bulls and goats, and 
 ashes of an heifer sprinkling the dejiled, sanctifieth to the purity 
 of the flesh; how much more shall the blood of Christ, who 
 through the eternal Spirit offered himself without fault to God, 
 purify’ your conscience from dead works, to serve the living 
 God! 
 
 The particle εἰ (as Baumgarten observes) is not to be 
 taken dubitative and conditionaliter, but antecedenter and συλ- 
 λογιστικῶς. The sacrifices and purifications of the Old 
 Testament did indeed accomplish something, but the blood 
 of Christ has accomplished infinitely more. He mentions 
 (1) the blood of bulls and of goats (comp. ch. x. 4, and 
 Isa. i. 11, LX Χ.)-- -τὸ αἵμα ταύρων καὶ τράγων ; or, as we 
 ought to read it, with Lachmann and Tischendorf (following 
 A.B.D.E.),’ τράγων καὶ ταύρων, “of goats and bulls.’ The 
 yearly sacrifices of the day of atonement are those referred 
 to: the ταύρων being equivalent to the μόσχων of ver. 12; 
 
 1 The original part of the Codex Vat. breaks off at ΚΑΘᾺ in καθαω- 
 ριεῖ : what follows is by a later hand, and is referred to by Tischendorf 
 as b instead of B. 
 
 * So also the Codex Sinaiticus.—Tr. 
 
92 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 and the τὸ αἷμα (not simply αἷμα) expressing the fact that 
 the whole blood, not simply a part of it, was expended in the 
 work of atonement. He mentions (2) the ashes of an heifer— 
 σποδὸς δαμάλεως ῥαντίζουσα τοὺς κεκοινωμένους. We shall 
 better understand what the writer here affirms of the opera- 
 tion of these rites of the Old Testament, if we examine in 
 detail this particular rite of sprinkling (ΠΝῚΠ) with water of 
 purification (ΠΝ ΘΠ 772 1D), in respect both to its ritualism and 
 its symbolical significance. 
 
 We read, then (Num. xix.), that first of all a perfectly 
 spotless, and as yet unyoked red heifer, was to be taken: 
 spotless and unyoked, because destined to subserve the compo- 
 sition of a sacred water of purification; and red, as the colour 
 of life, because that purifying composition was to cleanse 
 those who had suffered defilement through contact with the | 
 dead. A female animal was to be taken, because the female 
 sex is MN, ζωογόνος : and a cow, because as ΠῚ, symbol of 
 fruitfulness, it would be the directest antithesis to the un- 
 fruitfulness of death. The animal was to be brought to 
 Eleazar the priest, and to be slain by him without the camp, 
 not to Aaron the high priest, because all, even the remotest 
 contact with death, was for him unbecoming ;’ and without 
 the camp for a similar reason, because the camp of Israel, 
 with the sanctuary in the midst of it, was holy, and not to be 
 defiled by any conscious or designed connection with death. 
 After slaying the red heifer, Eleazar was to dip his finger in 
 the blood, and sprinkle it seven times in the direction of the 
 tabernacle. The blood of a sin-offering made for the whole 
 congregation, which was slain in the court of the tabernacle, 
 was also sprinkled seven times within the holy place, before 
 the Pardcheth: here, on the other hand, the sprinkling was 
 made in the air, lest the defilement of death, which is the 
 prominent thought in the whole ceremony, should seem to be 
 brought into any connection with the sanctuary of God; but 
 at the same time it was made towards the tabernacle, in order 
 to impart to the sin-offering there presented somewhat of its 
 
 1The high priest was not even permitted to approach the dead 
 bodies of his parents. 
 
CHAP. IX. 13, 14. 93 
 
 cleansing, death-destroying power. After this the heifer was 
 to be entirely burnt, flesh, skin, blood, and all; and into the 
 burning the priest was to cast cedar wood, hyssop, and a 
 crimson band or ribbon. In the case of the sin-offering for 
 the congregation, the rest of the blood was poured out at the 
 foot of the altar, the fat pieces consumed on the altar, and 
 the remains of the sacrifice burned without the camp. What 
 is unexampled here is, that the blood of the heifer is also 
 burned; but the meaning of this is not hard to discover ;— 
 the purpose of the whole ceremony being to produce a heap 
 of ashes possessed of the highest purifying energy, the 
 blood, which, in consequence of the sprinkling towards the 
 holy place, had become impregnated with purifying and 
 atoning power, would naturally form a principal ingredient. 
 The three articles superadded to the burning seem to be 
 rather medicamenta than symbols properly so called. The 
 fragrance of the cedar wood would act against the odour of 
 death ; the hyssop was regarded by all antiquity as an instru- 
 ment of purification; and the crimson band, coloured with 
 the cochineal dye, may indeed (as Bihr and Kurtz maintain) 
 have symbolized life; but the cochineal was itself regarded 
 in antiquity as a cordial.’ The priest, the man who burned 
 the body, and the man who collected the ashes, were all three 
 “unclean until the evening :” “ unclean,” because engaged 
 in a rite connected with the uncleanness of death; but only 
 “ till the evening,” because the removal of such uncleanness 
 was the very end of the ceremony. The red heifer herself 
 was, on the other hand, not regarded as unclean. On the 
 contrary, the whole was a nxon (sin-offering), and conse- 
 quently “ most holy” (ΟΡ wip): it was only the intention 
 or thought of uncleanness inseparable from the: preparation 
 of an antidote, which rendered those unclean for a time who 
 were concerned in such preparation. 
 
 The rite being thus completed, the ashes were to be laid 
 up in a clean place outside the camp, to serve (when rinsed 
 with the naturally purifying element of water) as a means 
 
 1 These ingredients were, however, used in such small quantities, as 
 not to have more than a symbolical significance. See Note Q. 
 
94 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 of cleansing for those who had been defiled by contact with 
 a dead body: for that purpose, such persons were to be 
 sprinkled with the water on the third and on the seventh 
 day, and so purified; the same rule applying also to the 
 house of the dead, and to the furniture and clothes contained 
 in it. A man, who himself was in a state of ceremonial 
 purity, had to perform the act of sprinkling (with a bunch of 
 hyssop), but became thereby unclean until the evening, and 
 had to wash his clothes. The proper name of this “ water 
 of sprinkling,” or “ of separation,” was in Hebrew ΠῚ) Ὁ 
 (LXX. ὕδωρ ῥαντισμοῦ), and also NNYO “Ὁ, “ water of puri- 
 fication” (Num. viii. 7, LX X. ὕδωρ ἁγνισμοῦ). 
 
 This Greek (Septuagint) term ὕδωρ ῥαντισμοῦ was in 
 the sacred writer’s mind when using the bold abbreviation, 
 σποδὸς Sayan. ῥαντίζουσα τοὺς κεκοινωμένους (instead of . 
 ῥαντιζομένη ἐπὶ τοὺς Kexow.). The “unclean” (L.XX. and 
 Philo, ἀκάθαρτοι arid μεμιασμένοι) are here called κεκοινω- 
 μένοι, the antithesis of Sn (κοινόν) and wtp (ἅγιον) being con- 
 founded with that of Ὁ (ἀκάθαρτον) and "bd (KdPapor).! 
 (Comp. Acts x. 14 sq., 28, xi. 8 sq., and xxi. 28.) It is further 
 evident from all the ritual thus detailed how truly and pro- 
 perly the “ashes of the heifer” might be said to “ sanctify” 
 (ἁγιάζει is a more significant term than ayvige) “ unto the 
 purity of the flesh,” 1.6. so as to produce a ceremonial and 
 external state of purity (πρός indicating here the result, not 
 the purpose, as it would have done had the phrase been πρὸς 
 τὴν τῆς σαρκὸς κάθαρσιν instead of καθαρότητα). Philo also 
 says of the legal λουτρὰ καὶ περιῤῥαντήρια, that they are 
 directed towards a κάθαρσις τοῦ σώματος (1. 251, 8); but 
 the writer of this epistle extends the statement to all sacri- 
 fices (which latter, according to Philo, were intended to pro- 
 duce a κάθαρσις τῆς ψυχῆς), and even to the sprinkling of 
 the blood on the day of atonement. From which it is evident 
 
 1 At Lev. x. 10 there are properly two quite distinct antitheses: on 
 the one hand, that of clean (ΠΏ) and unclean (22) ; on the other, that 
 of “holy” (wp) and ““ common” (dyn), ie. the loose, unbound (from 
 bbn, to loose), unguarded, unreserved, left free for the use of all (comp. 
 1 Sam. xxi, 5). 
 
CHAP. IX. 13, 14. 95 
 
 that he is contemplating the Levitical sacrifices (apart from 
 any spiritual blessings that may have accompanied them) 
 simply in their naked objectivity as outward acts, and regards 
 that membership in the commonwealth of Israel which the 
 Levitical sacrifices maintained or restored as confined to the 
 sphere of the σάρξ, i.e. of the natural and earthly life conse- 
 crated by the benediction of the Levitical covenant. His 
 thought may be thus expressed: The sacrifices and purifica- 
 tions of the old covenant were unable to form a spiritual 
 church on the ground of a spiritual regeneration, and yet in 
 their outwardness were able to effect an outward sanctifica- 
 tion: how much the rather may we now expect an inward 
 spiritual blessing from the operation of the blood of Christ ! 
 The logical relation of the two clauses is not so much that 
 of Rom. v. 10 as that of Matt. vii. 11. On the one hand, 
 we have the blood and ashes of animal sacrifice ; on the other, 
 the blood of Christ—ro αἷμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ ὃς Sia πνεύματος 
 αἰωνίου ἑαυτὸν προσήνεγκεν ἄμωμον TO Θεῷ. 
 
 To enter into the proper meaning of these words, we 
 must surrender, in the first place, the reading supported by 
 not a few, but those confessedly inferior authorities,’ διὰ 
 πνεύματος ἁγίου. ‘This reading must be rejected on purely 
 critical grounds, but has also the context against it. Bleek’s 
 remark, “ The divine element in Christ is, in fact, the Holy 
 Spirit,” is contrary to Scripture; and De Wette’s, “ The 
 Holy Ghost is meant, which on Christ was bestowed without 
 measure,’ is inapplicable, inasmuch as the expression in its 
 present context denotes evidently something belonging to the 
 essence of the Lord’s personality. We give up, in “he. second 
 place, any reference of προσήνεγκεν here to Christ’s heavenly 
 mpoo Popa such as that assumed by Bleek and the Socinian and 
 Arminian commentators. Whenever the sacrifice of Christ” is 
 
 1 Viz. D*, many cursives; the Coptic, Itala, and Vulgate versions ; 
 Chrysostom, Damascenus, the Glossa interlinearis, and other Greeks and 
 Latins,—among the latter, Ambros. ; finally, Luther. 
 
 2 The sacrifice of the cross is, as we have often remarked before, the 
 antitype both of the ny ny, the slaying of the victim, and of the AAypA, 
 its consumption on the altar. 
 
96 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 typically and antithetically compared with the sacrifices of 
 the Old Testament, it is His self-oblation on the altar of the 
 cross which is the point of comparison. That such is the 
 case here is evident from the epithet ἄμωμον = dn, involy- 
 ing a reference to the requirements made of victims offered 
 under the law;! in accordance with which observation we 
 must interpret the διὰ πνεύματος αἰωνίου of the present text. 
 Nor have I myself ever been able to understand this πνεῦμα 
 αἰώνιον otherwise than as expressing that element in the sacri- 
 fice of Christ which answers to the animal soul (w53) in the 
 expiatory sacrifices of the Old Testament :” so that διὰ πν. 
 αἰων. would mean, “through the medium of His own eternal 
 Spirit,” z.e. the whole divine and human, but more particularly 
 the divine inward being of the God-man, the divine eternal 
 personality which at the resurrection interpenetrated, trans- 
 figured, and as it were absorbed the σάρξ, so that He is now - 
 altogether πνεῦμα (1 Cor. xv. 45; 2 Cor. ili. 17 sq.). And 
 so πνεῦμα is used in antithesis to σάρξ at Rom. i. 4 (comp. 
 1 Tim. iii. 16 and 1 Pet. iii. 18).? This the inward being of 
 Christ is called here eternal Spirit, because absolute, divine, 
 and purely self-determined. The act of self-sacrifice through 
 
 1 The old Socinian commentators understood éuaoy here to apply 
 to the glorified humanity of the exalted Saviour, Schmalz making it 
 almost identical in meaning with ‘‘ bloodless.” 
 
 2 For an examination of Hofmann’s interpretation, see Note R. 
 
 8. Τὸ is quite against St. Paul’s phraseology and sentiments when 
 Zeller and Lipsius say of our Lord, that ‘‘ the divine rvedue obtained in 
 Him personal existence :” it would have been more correct to say that 
 the πνεῦροω of the Godhead, so far as it is πινεῦροα of the Son, obtained a 
 human personal existence in Him. Used in this sense, rveiu desig- 
 nates the inward spiritual being of the incarnate One, as when Ignatius 
 speaks of an ἕνωσις oupuds καὶ πνεύματος in Christ, and Barnabas calls 
 the body of Christ σκεῦος zvevmaros, and Lactantius calls His pre-existent 
 being Sanctus Spiritus (Dorner, Dogma von der Person Christi, i. 209-218, 
 and Schmid, Neutest. Theologie, ii. 297). Among the older commenta- 
 tors who have taken this view of the meaning of πνεῦρεω αἰώνιον, Beza 
 is worthy of special note; his words are: Opponit pecudum sanguini 
 sanguinem ejus, qui non homo duntazat, quales ceteri, sed Deus etiam 
 Suerit, nam Spiritus xterni appellatione Deitatis in humanitate assumpta 
 efficacitatem infinitam intelligo, que totum hoc sacrificium consecravit. 
 
CHAP. IX. 18, 14. 97 
 
 this eternal Spirit is an ethical one of absolute validity and 
 worth ;* “through” (διά) being here = “in virtue of,” and 
 used in the same sense as at Acts i. 2, xi. 28, and xxi. 4. 
 For the animal soul or 53, a sacrificial death is a matter of 
 constraint, unconsciously, or at any rate unwillingly endured; 
 but that of Christ made in the energy of eternal Spirit is a 
 fully conscious and absolutely free act of obedience and love 
 (per ardentissimam caritatem a Spiritu ejus eterno profectam, 
 (Hcolampadius), and therefore productive not of a shadowy, 
 but of a real atonement before God: it is the self-surrender 
 of a pure and sinless, and at the same time infinite and ever- 
 during life, and a work of infinite intensity and saving power 
 commensurate to the needs not of individuals only, but of all 
 mankind. This its universal application is indicated here by 
 the comparison not with ordinary sin-offerings made by indi- 
 viduals, but with that of the day of atonement made for all 
 Israel, and with the universal means of purification provided 
 for the whole people in the ashes of the red heifer. And 
 hence also the ὑμῶν of the teat. recept. to which on internal, 
 if not on external grounds, the preference is to be given over 
 the ἡμῶν of Lachmann and Tischendorf. 
 
 With the word ὑμῶν the sacred writer now consciously 
 addresses himself to the church of the New Testament, and 
 reminds her how far more effectual and universal a means of 
 cleansing she is possessed of in the blood of Christ once 
 offered, and henceforth glorified, than had that of the Old 
 Testament, in all its ashes of purification and sacrifices of 
 atonement. Cleansing of the conscience from dead works 
 for the service of the living God, is the blessed effect of the 
 due application of this sacred blood of God Himself (Acts 
 xx. 28), and the gracious motive through which it was out- 
 poured. Its operation is not a surface one, but central. It 
 
 1 Jam vero (says Seb. Schmid) cum hic Spiritus xternus adeoque 
 infinitus sit, utique pondus meriti et satisfactionis, quod ab eodem spiritu 
 est, xternum et infinitum est. Quodsi xternum et infinitum est, ne quidem 
 infinita Dei justitia in eo aliquid desiderare potuit. This rational conclu- 
 sion in the spirit of the church doctrine of the atonement is scriptural 
 and unassailable. 
 
 VOL II. [εἰ 
 
98 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 cleanses the συνείδησις (i.e. a man’s own inward conscious- 
 ness of his relation to God) ἀπὸ νεκρῶν ἔργων ; 1.6. it relieves 
 the mind from that shameful burden of a sense of impurity 
 and alienation, which, making of the inward man a living 
 corpse, produces only works (and among them even those 
 of apparent legal righteousness) in which no pulses of the 
 higher life are found. There is no leaping here, as De 
 Wette supposes, from the idea of atonement to that of 
 regeneration or renewal. Both ideas, justification and sanc- 
 tification, lie involved together in the one καθαρίζειν ; comp. 
 1 John i. 7. 
 
 The purpose of this justifying and sanctifying operation 
 of the blood of Christ, is to produce a living witness of its 
 reality in a life of holy service—els τὸ λατρεύειν Θεῷ ζῶντι." 
 
 The man ceremonially cleansed and externally atoned for. 
 
 under the Old Testament, had at once a right to join in the 
 outward worship of God and the outward common life of the 
 congregation of Israel, although no inward change may have 
 passed over him; but he who has been reconciled and cleansed 
 by the inward operation of the blood of Christ, stands hence- 
 forth in living communion with God his Saviour, and is 
 empowered to serve the living God with living works and 
 inward service. And it is just this disburdening purification 
 of the conscience by the blood of Christ, independently of 
 all outward performances, which proves that the entrance of 
 Christ διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος into the presence of the Father 
 was indeed the accomplishment of an eternal redemption, and 
 has put an end to the expiations and lustrations of the law. 
 
 We now come to the second paragraph of this third 
 section. It occupies vers. 15-23, and is an expansion of the 
 ἀρχιερεὺς τῶν μελλόντων ἀγαθῶν of ver. 11. 
 
 Ver. 15. And for this cause he ts the Mediator of a new 
 testament, in order that, a death having taken place for the 
 propttiation of the transgressions under the first testament, they 
 
 1 See commentary on ch. vi. 1. 
 
 ? Lachmann, following A. and other authorities, reads καὶ ὠληθινῷ, 
 which seems to be a gloss from 1 Thess. i. 9. 
 
CHAP. IX. 15. 99 
 
 which have been called may receive the promise of the eternal 
 inheritance. 
 
 The διὰ τοῦτο here must be referred backwards to the 
 preceding context." On this very account, viz. that the blood 
 of Christ has an inwardly purifying power, and such as was 
 wholly wanting in the sacrifices and purifications of the law, 
 even then for this very reason He is a διαθήκης καινῆς μεσίτης. 
 The emphasis lies on καινῆς, and the sentence might accord- 
 ingly be thus inverted: the διαθήκη of which Christ is 
 μεσίτης must therefore be a new one (see Note on ix. 1). 
 Hofmann says (Schrift. ii. 1, 298): “ We have already learned 
 that the proper meaning of διαθήκη is ‘ ordinance’ or “ settle- 
 ment, like that of the Hebrew ΤΥ, as rendered in Chaldee by 
 DP; and when Bleek maintains that the designation of Christ 
 as μεσίτης διαθήκης here proves that διαθήκη must be taken in 
 the sense of a covenant between two parties, he makes a mistake, 
 which a reference to Gal. 111. 19 would be sufficient to dispel. 
 The mediatorship of Christ is wrongly conceived as an action 
 towards both sides, by means of which a mutual agreement or 
 covenant is carried out. For, as we have seen, the καινὴ 
 διαθήκη of the prophecy cited at viii. 10 ts simply an ‘ ordi- 
 nance’ on God’s part for us, and the μεσίτης or mediator is 
 he by whom this ordinance is executed.” Against this position 
 of Hofmann’s we would remind the reader that we have 
 already (at vii. 22) proved, that in ΠΣ the notion of two 
 concurrent parties is as clearly impressed on the word as 
 possible, and that the rendering “ settlement” or “ ordinance” 
 is founded on an unproved meaning assigned to m2; the 
 only apparent justification for Hofmann’s view being, that 
 in no case could a n3 between God and man be an agree- 
 ment between two equal parties, but must necessarily be an 
 arrangement, commencing with a condescending offer on 
 
 1 Schlichting, Bohme, Bleek, would give τοῦτο a forward reference ; 
 against which Hofmann remarks, that in that case the author must 
 have written, not 0:2 τοῦτο---ἥὅπως, but did τοῦτο... ἵνα (2 Cor. xiii. 10; 
 1 Tim. 1. 16; Philem. 15). This I would hardly venture to maintain, 
 Comp. Xen. Cyrop. ii. 1, 21: of ctppanos οὐδὲ δ ἕν ἄλλο τρέφονται ἢ 
 ὅπως μαχοῦνται ὑπὲρ τῶν τρεφόντων. 
 
100 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 God’s part, to whom alone it appertains to determine the 
 conditions of mutual relationship. And here the very use 
 of the word μεσίτης shows that the writer of this epistle has 
 the ordinary meaning of n 2 in view. Whenever διαθήκη 
 and μεσίτης are used together, the μεσίτης must be (as St. 
 Paul may be said to have ruled at Gal. 111. 20) not of one 
 only (ἑνός), but a middle person between two others, acting 
 in the way of giving and taking towards both sides, and 
 therefore necessarily partaking of the character of each, 2.e. 
 in this case must be both human and divine, not merely 
 acting as God’s representative towards men, but standing 
 between both parties, and so uniting them. We ought there- 
 fore properly to have translated here, for this cause He is 
 mediator of a new covenant ; but prefer to keep the old ren- 
 dering, “ testament,” because the notion of διαθήκη = na, 
 covenant, though here retained, passes over in the follow- 
 ing sentence into that of a testamentary disposition = the 
 talmudic terms ANY, ‘pn. This ambiguity or double 
 meaning of the word Hofmann endeavours to escape, by 
 attaching both to διαθήκη and m3 an original signification, 
 embracing both meanings; and is so far’ more successful in 
 one respect than Ebrard, who would retain the meaning of 
 “ covenant” throughout the present paragraph. 
 
 But the assumed interchange of meanings attached to 
 διαθήκη is in Hofmann’s view not merely a harmless want 
 of dialectic accuracy (De Wette), or an allowable logical 
 inconsistency (Tholuck), but an unpardonable confusion of 
 thought. Such, however, in our judgment, is not the case. 
 The sacred writer thinks not in German, but in Greek, and 
 expresses himself accordingly. The Greek word διαθήκη is 
 more expressive and comprehensive than the Hebrew ΠΥ. 
 It includes and combines the notions of covenant arrange- 
 ment between two parties, and of testamentary disposition or 
 settlement. Now if only one of these two notions had been 
 applicable to the subject in hand, and the sacred writer had 
 made, nevertheless, a thoughtless and irrational use of both, 
 he would justly incur blame for such confusion of thought. 
 But if both meanings of διαθήκη are applicable, we cannot 
 
CHAP. IX. 15. 101 
 
 blame him for availing himself of the doubly significant 
 word. And they are thus applicable. The old commentator 
 Schlichting has observed already: de tali re sermo est que 
 utrique vocis significationt, et “ testamento” et “ faderi,” aliqua 
 ratione sit communis . utrobique enim, ut sive testamentum sive 
 fedus plane ratum sit, mortem accedere oportet. ‘This expla- 
 nation is, however, not perfectly satisfactory. The res com- 
 munis in the two notions of “ covenant” and “ testament” 
 which are combined in διαθήκη may be better conceived as 
 follows: In the διαθήκη of the gospel, regarded in its first 
 signification df a “ covenant” between God and man, there 
 are certain conditions and expectations which have for their 
 object a future divine blessing ; that blessing is throughout 
 the Old Testament frequently designated by the term “ in- 
 heritance” (ndn3, κληρονομία) ; and this idea of an inheritance 
 is one which has exercised a very powerful and pervading 
 influence on the minds of all the writers of the New Testa- 
 ment. The sacred writer here makes a step still further in 
 advance, and (with this notion of an inheritance in his mind) 
 employs the term διαθήκη in its second signification of a 
 testamentary disposition, and so connects the notion expressed 
 by κληρονομία with that of testamentum, being the latter one 
 of those represented by διαθήκη. Hofmann himself cannot 
 deny that such isthe case. And inasmuch as the notion of 
 a testament, i.e. of a disposition of property made by a man 
 in his lifetime to have effect only after his death, is one 
 foreign to Israelite antiquity, and yet (as Hofmann is com- 
 pelled to grant) plainly connected with διαθήκη here, the 
 conclusion is unavoidable, that an Hellenic conception is 
 attached to the word which confessedly represents the Hebrew 
 na; and so (under Hofmann’s own guidance) we come back 
 to the very “confusion” of ideas which he has so severely 
 condemned. 
 
 Both these significations, “‘ covenant” and “ testament” 
 (as represented by διαθήκη), must be referred to the common 
 notion of “ disposition” or “ settlement.” On this point we 
 are all agreed; and inasmuch as we, for our part, are per- 
 fectly prepared to acknowledge that, in the case of a covenant 
 
102 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 between God and man, the human factor must be all but 
 absorbed in the divine, it seems to me that there can be no 
 essential difference whether we say that the notion of a divine 
 “ covenant,” or that the notion of a divine “ settlement,” 
 passes over here into that of “a testamentary disposition.” 
 Not, however, that the one notion is to be regarded as here 
 substituted for the other. The sacred writer keeps them both 
 (the notion of a covenant and that of a testament) in view 
 in speaking of our Lord as διαθήκης καινῆς μεσίτης ; so that 
 all that follows is but a development of what is here in 
 thought combined. The yery use of the term κληρονομίας at 
 the end of this first sentence, shows that he regards διαθήκη 
 as a covenant, involving the promise of an inheritance: so 
 that the μεσίτης here is, on the one hand, as towards men, 
 recipient of the inheritance on their behalf ; and on the other, . 
 as towards God, fulfiller of the covenant conditions on which 
 this inheritance depends. 
 
 The clause ὅπως θανάτου γενομένου, x.T.r., declares two 
 things: first, what the Mediator has done for the accomplish- 
 ment of the divine purpose; and then what that purpose is— 
 His own pontifical self-sacrifice of blood, and the thereby 
 rendered possible entrance into the promised inheritance of 
 those who are the called. We must not render οἱ κεκλ. τ. 
 αἰων. κληρ. (with Tholuck and others’), “ those who are called 
 to the eternal inheritance” (which would be for our author too 
 harsh a construction, and one, moreover, easily misunder- 
 stood), but connect τῆς αἰων. κληρ.; per hyperbaton,” with 
 τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν as its dependent genitive; the αἰώνιος κληρο- 
 νομία being the governing thought of the clause, and there- 
 fore placed emphatically at the end. We have here again a 
 phraseology that reminds us of St. Luke, in ἐπαγγελία," 
 used not for the word of the promise, but for its object. 
 Compare Acts il. 23. 
 
 The object of the divine promise under the covenant of 
 
 1 e.g. Ebrard, and formerly the Peshito and Luther (till 1530). 
 
 2 Comp. ver. 16 and ch. xii. 11. 
 
 8 Comp. κληρονομεῖν τὴν ἐπ.) ch. vi. 12, 17; ἐπιτυχεῖν τῆς ἐπ.) Vi. 155 
 and xomicccbas τὴν éx., Χ. 36 and xi. 39. 
 
CHAP. IX. 15. 103 
 
 [ which Moses was Mediator, was an “inheritance” (m$nmy) or 
 ! ? 
 
 | 
 | 
 
 a τρί ....-νὔὕο᾿τἕοΠὁὦἑἕῥΨᾷΔΨΦΦρᾳρΨΕβΔ΄ΨὁΔὦ“«4γ“Ὕὥ«Δ«ἕ«Ψ«ἑ«ρ“ἑἕἔἁ«“σοἘΠ[υἔρΡῸπ͵τ Ο-ςὀἀωὲἑἯαιὰῆ 
 
 “ everlasting possession” (oy mins); but it soon became 
 manifest that the land of Canaan, though bearing this title, 
 could not be the abiding rest of God’s people, nor His true and 
 final dwelling-place among men,—that the αἰώνιος κληρονομία 
 of which the covenant spoke must be a future and unearthly 
 one, the right to which was to be ultimately extended from 
 Israel to all mankind, and to be realized only in the world to 
 come. ‘This “eternal inheritance,” then, is the sum total of 
 the μέλλοντα ἀγαθά of ch. ix. 11: it is the μέλλουσα οἰκου- 
 μένη of ch. 11. 5, the glorified and transfigured world of the 
 future; and the κεκλημένοι are not merely those to whom 
 the promise of this inheritance was first addressed, but all 
 members of the human family to whom, in accordance with 
 the divine purpose, its possession should be ultimately vouch- 
 safed. And Christ is the Mediator of a new covenant, 
 through which all the called among mankind are to be put in 
 possession of this inheritance; and that by means of a work 
 on His part which is also included in the divine plan—hence 
 the διὰ τοῦτο at the commencement of the sentence—namely, 
 a redeeming and atoning death — Θανάτου, γενομένου εἰς 
 ἀπολύτρωσιν τῶν ἐπὶ TH πρώτῃ διαθήκῃ παραβάσεων. 
 Christ, then, is Mediator of a new covenant, which offers 
 the promised inheritance not merely as a future expectation, 
 but as a present good; and in this consists its differentia 
 from the old covenant. But before this new covenant can 
 be established and come into operation, a death must have 
 taken place atoning for all the transgressions that have gone 
 on accumulating during the continuance of the first covenant, 
 and so capacitating the κεκλημένοι to enter at once upon the 
 inheritance thus assured and made over to them.’ Ζιαθήκη 
 is evidently here taken in the sense of testamentum. In 
 common life, an heir can only enter on his inheritance by the 
 death of the person whose will has been made in his favour. 
 But in this case it is an atoning death” which must intervene, 
 1 For this use of ἐπί = upon, alongside of, compare Winer, ὃ 48. 
 
 2 A scholion in Matthei to θανατ. yevow. remarks: ἔδει yap ἡμᾶς 
 καὶ τιμωρίαν δοῦναι ἐφ᾽ οἷς ErAnumearnoamer. 
 
104 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 a death εἰς ἀπολύτρωσιν τῶν ἐπὶ τῇ Tp. diab. παραβάσεων. 
 Hofmann’s interpretation is: “ Not men themselves, but their 
 transgressions, are here said to be redeemed: the genitive mapa- 
 βάσεων cannot signify that from which, but only and simply 
 that which is itself redeemed. We are not therefore to compare 
 (with Bleek and Kuinel) ἀφαίρεσις ἁμαρτιῶν, nor (with De 
 Wette) καθαρισμὸς ἁμαρτιῶν, but rather the phrase ἱλάσκεσθαι 
 τὰς ἁμαρτίας. It is the transgressions (παραβάσεις) themselves 
 which are regarded as having fallen under the wrath of God, 
 and so liable to punishment, and as delivered from this fall 
 and liability by the work of the Redeemer.” This is hardly 
 the right interpretation of the genitive παραβάσεων. Just as 
 we say ἐλευθερία τινος, freedom from something, κάθαρσίς 
 Twos, purification from something, and ἐλευθεροῦν, λύειν, 
 ἀπολύειν τινά τινος, instead of ἀπό Twos; and just as our 
 
 author himself speaks of a καθαρισμὸς τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν (ch. i. 3) 
 
 instead of ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν; even so here, τῶν παραβ. is 
 equivalent to ἀπὸ τ. mapa. (Tit. ii. 14) or ἐκ τ. παραβ. 
 (Pet. 1.18)s; 
 
 In thus speaking of the transgressions accumulated on 
 the first covenant, the sacred writer has Israel mainly in view 
 (who, as the people of that covenant, were destined to form 
 the first congregation under the gospel), but not Israel exclu- 
 sively, any more than at Rom. iil. 25 (πάρεσις τῶν προγε- 
 γονότων ἁμαρτημάτων). “ [16 has in his mind’s eye not merely 
 the transgressions of the present generation, but those of the 
 whole series of generations since the establishment of the cove- 
 nant of the law on Sinai, and regards the history of God's 
 relations to mankind as one great whole, of which the religious 
 history of Israel forms a typical part, exhibiting in one crucial 
 instance the incapacity of the whole human race to satisfy the 
 requirements of the divine will. From this point of view atone- 
 ment of transgressions under the law will mean the same thing 
 as atonement of the sins of men in general, regarded as violations 
 
 of the revealed will of God; and the death of Christ will be an 
 
 1 It is possible that even the τὴν ὠπολύτρωσιν τοῦ σώματος of Rom. 
 viii. 23 is to be explained in the same way as = redemption from the 
 body of death (Rom. vii. 24). 
 
 Γ 
 
 ὶ 
 
 ‘ 
 . 
 a 
 
 . 
 
 4 
 
 i 
 
 ; 
 
CHAP. IX. 15. 105 
 
 atonement not merely for sin in the abstract, but especially for 
 sin in its most aggravated form, as conscious transgression of 
 that revealed will. The special reference here made to trans- 
 gressions under the covenant of Sinai has its ground not only 
 in this, that that covenant had a real significance for mankind 
 in general, but also that the point which the sacred writer has 
 here mainly in view is the transition from it and its failures 
 to the saving dispensation of the gospel. That transition could 
 not take place without a death which should annihilate the trans- 
 gressions of the former covenant.” So Hofmann (ii. 1, 300) ; 
 and the meaning of the sacred writer could hardly be ex- 
 pressed in more appropriate terms. But still the question 
 remains, Was it then the view of the writer of this epistle, 
 that there was absolutely no forgiveness of sins whatsoever 
 under the Old Testament? Such could not possibly have 
 been his view. Both the sacrificial ritual and the book of 
 Psalms afford proof of the contrary. The ordinary sin- 
 offerings were, indeed, mainly directed to the atonement of 
 sins of ignorance (ἀγνοήματα) ; but there were other sin- 
 offerings (such as the goat offered at the new moon, passover, 
 pentecost, the feast of trumpets, and on the seventh and con- 
 cluding day of the feast of tabernacles) which had no special 
 reference to any particular class of sins, and on the head of 
 the scape-goat of the day of atonement the high priest laid 
 πάσας Tas ἀνομίας τῶν υἱῶν ᾿Ισραὴλ, καὶ πάσας τὰς ἀδικίας 
 αὐτῶν καὶ πάσας τὰς ἁμαρτίας αὐτῶν (Lev. xvi. 21).} But 
 all such atonements and remissions as these bore no com- 
 parison for depth, reality, or endurance with that which is 
 here called ἀπολύτρωσις τῶν παραβάσεων. They were re- 
 
 1 It should be observed that παράβασις as = yyy is not a Septua- 
 
 gint word. It occurs once, Ps. ci. 3, as rendering for pp. Nor is 
 the word σαραβάσεων used by our author here in order to exclude certain 
 graver kinds of sin for which (as alleged by Schlichting, Limborch, 
 and others) no atonement was provided by the law (comp. Hofmann, 
 Weiss. ii. 165). In the remarkable parallel passage, Acts xiii. 38, 39, 
 the meaning is, not that we are justified by Christ from all kinds of sin 
 which could not be forgiven under the law, but that the whole burden 
 which rested on the conscience, and which ceremonial justifications were 
 powerless to remove, is in Him taken away. 
 
106 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 stricted to the performance of ceremonial acts, which being 
 unable to give the conscience any enduring satisfaction, had 
 to be repeated year after year; and these ceremonies them- 
 selves rested on legal ordinances which restricted the promise 
 of grace and acceptance to those who belonged to the common- 
 wealth of Israel. A general act of grace, assuring the divine 
 forgiveness to all mankind, was utterly unknown under the 
 Old Testament. Before a new διαθήκη could be established, 
 there must be such a general and absolute forgiveness of sins 
 as that foretold by Jeremiah (see above, vii. 12); and in order 
 to such forgiveness, and to the reinstatement of mankind in 
 their promised inheritance, an atoning death was required. 
 
 Ver. 16. For where there is a testament, there must also a 
 necessity be understood the death of the testator. 
 
 As the former verse has an excellent parallel in Acts xiii. 
 38, 39, so is this verse not less like St. Luke both in thought 
 and expression. The phrase διατίθεσθαι διαθήκην, which 
 occurs vili. 10 and Acts 111. 25, in the sense of “ making a 
 covenant,” is here used in that of “ making a testament” or 
 “will.” Properly speaking, God (the heavenly Father) is 
 ὁ διαθέμενος, the will-maker or testator; but (inasmuch as 
 He has placed the whole inheritance destined for mankind 
 in the hands of Christ as Mediator) the διαθέμενος is here 
 our Lord, who before His passion said of Himself (St. Luke 
 xxii. 29 sqq.), Kayo διατίθεμαι ὑμῖν, καθὼς διέθετό μοι ὁ 
 Πατήρ μου, βασιλείαν---. assign to you, as the Father hath 
 assigned to me, a kingdom ; ἵνα ἔσθητε, κιτ.λ., ἐν TH βασιλείᾳ 
 pov. The “ kingdom” thus assigned to Christ, and by Him 
 assigned to us, is the eternal inheritance: consequently He 
 is the transmitter of the inheritance ; and His death being 
 necessary to that transmission, our author, in order to exhibit 
 that necessity, says here, ὅπου yap διαθήκη, K.T.r. 
 
 Jerome, following the Itala, renders thus: Ubi enim testa- 
 mentum, mors necesse est intercedat testatoris, taking φέρεσθαι 
 in the sense of γενέσθαι. So also Luther: there must of 
 necessity take place (geschehen) the death of him that maketh 
 the testament. But this rendering is incorrect. Φέρεσθαι 
 
CHAP. IX. 17. 107 
 
 may indeed be used of the advance or progress of a thing 
 or person, but not of the occurrence of a single event. A 
 better rendering would be, “ The death of the testator must be 
 a fact of common notoriety,’ and as such, need no further 
 proof (on the principle, notorium non eget probatione). We 
 _ have also the choice of another rendering, that of Liine- 
 mann, Ebrard, Bleek, De Wette, Tholuck, Bohme, Valcke- 
 naer: “ The death of the testator must be alleged” (afferri or 
 proferrt), 1.6. in a legal or forensic sense. This rendering of 
 φέρεσθαι (which is already found in Hammond, Elsner, and 
 Baumgarten) has much in its favour. So we find Acts xxv. 7 
 (text. rec.), αἰτιώματα φέρειν ; John xviii. 29, κατηγορίαν 
 κατά τινος φέρειν ; and in Demosthenes, μάρτυρα φέρειν, 
 αἰτίας φέρειν (to bring up a witness, to adduce proofs), ete. ; 
 and in Roman law, ferre sententiam, testimonium, suffragium, 
 exempla. But inasmuch as φέρεσθαι is not met with in the 
 exact sense here proposed, of alleging a matter of fact, and 
 moreover would require us to take θάνατον in a metonymic 
 sense (= the fact of the testator’s death as legal condition), 
 I prefer myself the former rendering: “ Where a testament is, 
 there must also (in order to its validity) be current as a matter 
 of notoriety the fact of the testator’s death.” Before that is 
 known and established, the testament has no legal force. 
 
 Ver. 17. For a testament ts of legal validity in the case of 
 there being some that are dead, since surely it is of no force at 
 all while he that made it is still living. 
 
 The expression ἐπὶ νεκροῖς is peculiar. A testament is 
 of force “ upon the dead,” 1.6. on condition that some persons 
 (or things) should have died (see Winer on ἐπί, §48,c). The 
 reason for employing such a mode of expression is, however, 
 plain: the sacred writer would prepare the way for what 
 follows (ver. 18 seq.) concerning the old διαθήκη, which 
 likewise was ἐπὶ νεκροῖς βαβαία, the death of the sacrificial 
 victims having been an essential condition of its establish- 
 ment. The following clause, beginning with ἐπεί, a> peals 
 to the sense of the readers of the epistle as to the y.atter of 
 fact in the case of an ordinary testament, and may be re- 
 
\ 
 
 108 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 garded as a question (Bengel, Lachmann, Hofmann, and 
 others) addressed to them. So ἐπεί elsewhere is used to 
 introduce an interrogative clause (see ch. x. 2; Rom. iii. 6; 
 1 Cor. xiv. 16 and xv. 29), and μήποτε occurs both in direct 
 (John vii. 26) and indirect (Luke iii. 15; 2 Tim. ii. 25) ques- 
 tions, and sometimes so that ποτε loses its temporal signifi- 
 cation altogether, and merely emphasizes the interrogative. 
 It is, however, unnecessary to assume such to be the case 
 here, and still less necessary to prefer, with Isidorus of Pelu- 
 sium (Ep. iv. 113), the reading μὴ τότε, which at present has 
 only one Ms. authority in its favour, the Codex Claromon- 
 tanus (D*). The order of thought is by no means tauto- 
 logical: “ Where a testament is, 1.6. im any case where a 
 testament becomes a subject of interest and discussion, it is 
 also a point assumed and notorious that the testator is him- 
 self deceased (ver. 16): for a testament has no legal validity 
 except in the case of some one’s death (ver. 17a), but may 
 be altered or destroyed at any moment during the testator’s 
 lifetime ; for indeed (as the readers must be well aware) 
 there has been no instance of a testament coming into opera- 
 tion under other circumstances” (ver. 175). But how does 
 all this apply to Christ? To this question Hofmann replies 
 (Weiss. ii. 165): “ The very notion of a διαθήκη, when taken 
 in this absolute sense, of a disposition made in respect to the 
 whole of a man’s possessions, requires as a previous condition 
 the death of him who thus disposes of his entire property; for 
 so long as the man himself lives, the possibility of his acquiring 
 yet more will remain, and any previous disposal of his pro- 
 perty may cease to be a διαθήκη in this absolute sense. And so 
 it was with Christ. So long as He continued to live in the 
 flesh, His τελείωσις was still a thing of the future. Only by 
 death could He be made perfectly free from all the bands of 
 Jleshly life, and capable of making us partakers of His own 
 glorified humanity.” This explanation of the ἀνάγκη θάνατον 
 φέρεσθαι is unsatisfactory. Why may not a man dispose 
 or nominate an heir of his whole property by anticipation 
 twenty years before his death as well as a few hours? The 
 thought, therefore, that the perfection of our Lord’s human 
 
CHAP. IX. 18. 109 
 
 nature, and by it the perfecting of the κληρονομία, was only 
 attainable by death, though in itself most true, is out of 
 place here. The death of Christ is here contemplated, in 
 the first place, simply as the previous condition, without 
 which the transference of property disposed of by will can- 
 not take effect—the διαθήκη being regarded as a testamen- 
 tary disposition. (Not, of course, that in dying Christ may 
 be thought of as losing any part of that glory of which we 
 become partakers. In first dying and then returning to the 
 Father, He is at once, and in one person, the testator who 
 leaves us the inheritance, and the executor who carries out the 
 testator’s will.) But, in the second place, if the διαθήκη be 
 also regarded as a disposition of property made by covenant, 
 the death of Christ becomes a factor in such διαθήκη in a 
 much fuller and deeper sense. It is His death alone which, 
 in accordance with the terms of the covenant, releases the 
 inheritance for us: for, first, it is the means whereby God is 
 made willing to hand over the inheritance to us sinners, or 
 whereby He creates for Himself the possibility of doing so ; 
 secondly, it is the atonement or purification which renders 
 us sinners capable of receiving the inheritance ; and thirdly, 
 it is through the effectual discharge of all obligations and 
 transgressions attached to the old covenant, the abolition of 
 that covenant and the constitution of the new. 
 
 Thus understood, the whole paragraph (vers. 15-17) is 
 an expansion of the διὰ τοῦτο of ver.15. Christ, in virtue of 
 His own blood-shedding, is Mediator of a new testamentary 
 covenant, “death” and “testament” being two correlative 
 notions: in accordance with which, the sacred writer pro- 
 ceeds to point out that even the old testamentary covenant 
 was not made effectual without a death, without a blood- 
 
 shedding. 
 
 Ver. 18. Whence neither is the first [testament] conse- 
 crated without blood. 
 
 The old covenant was also (in accordance with the double 
 sense of διαθήκη) a testamentary disposition, in so far as God 
 bound Himself by promise to bestow, on Israel continuing 
 
110 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 faithful, an “eternal inheritance” (ody nbn). (The ex- 
 pression is found in numerous places, 6.0. Ex. xxiii. 30, xxxil. 
 13, Deut. xv. 4.) And being thus a testament, it is also not 
 without such a death as a testament requires, albeit an inade- 
 quate foreshadowing of the death of the true διαθέμενος : 
 ovde’ ἡ πρώτη (διαθήκη χωρὶς αἵματος ἐγκεκαίνισται. The 
 Alexandrine word ἐγκαινίζειν answers in part to the Hebrew 
 van (to renew), and in part to 739 (ΞΞ ΠΡ, to consecrate) ; 
 whence 133M, ἐγκαινισμός, ἐγκαίνια, consecration, dedication 
 (John x. 22). ᾿Εγκαινίζειν, in this latter sense, is to solemnly 
 inaugurate or present something new as such, to put it in 
 use or actual operation. In the present passage, it is not 
 so much the ceremonial solemnity of inauguration, as the 
 inauguration itself, which the sacred writer has in view; of 
 a covenant relation between God and Israel, connected with 
 the promise of an eternal inheritance. The reference is to 
 the great covenant sacrifice of Ex. xxiv., which followed 
 immediately on the promulgation of the Sinaitic code of 
 laws (ch. xix.—xxiii.), then first committed to writing in the 
 “book of the covenant.” 
 
 Vers. 19-21. For when every precept had been spoken in 
 accordance with the law by Moses to the whole people, he took 
 the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool, 
 and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the 
 people, saying, This ts the blood of the testament which God 
 hath ordained in reference to you. Moreover, the tabernacle, 
 and all the vessels of the [divine] ministry, he likewise sprinkled 
 with the blood. 
 
 1 So Lachm. and Tisch., instead of the οὐδ᾽ of tezt. rec., following 
 A.C. Ὁ. E. I. δ΄. (ὁ. being the continuation of the Codex Vaticanus (B.) 
 by a later hand; B. concludes abruptly with the KAOA of καθαριεῖ of 
 ix. 14). All these testimonies notwithstanding, it remains uncertain 
 whether our author really wrote οὐδὲ 4 or οὐδ᾽ 4. [The Cod. Sin. has 
 οὐδ᾽ 7—TR.] There are a hundred instances in which even a Demos- 
 thenes omitted the elision for either logical or rhythmical reasons; but 
 οὐδὲ 4 appears to me here a more odious hiatus even than the οὐδὲ ὧν of 
 the second philippic (§ 1) apostrophized by Vomel. 
 
 2 διαθήκη is actually supplied by D*, E*, and Jt. 
 
CHAP. ΙΧ. 19-21. TN 
 
 Our thoughts are carried back by these words into the 
 midst of the great sacrificial action by which the covenant 
 of Sinai was inaugurated (Ex. xxiv. 1-8). Moses, after 
 coming down from the mount, had “ told the people all the 
 words of Jehovah, and all the judgments,” 1.6. the “ten words” 
 or “ commandments” (Ex. xx. 2-17), and the other funda- 
 mental laws which follow (ch. xx. 22—xxiil.); and “ the whole 
 people” (ayn-5>) had voluntarily committed themselves to the 
 obligations thus imposed, answering “ with one voice, All the 
 words which the Lord hath said will we do (ch. xxiv. 3), and 
 be obedient” (ver.7). In λαληθείσης . . . πάσης ἐντολῆς κατὰ 
 νόμον, the κατὰ νόμον (Lachm. κατὰ τὸν νόμον) is not to be 
 taken with π. ἐντ. (as in the Vulg. omni mandato legis"), 
 but with λαληθείσης, “ every commandment being spoken 
 by Moses in agreement with the law,” which is itself a body 
 of ἐντολαί (Eph. ii. 15): each of these ἐντολαί having now 
 been recited by the lawgiver in the hearing of the people, 
 and that in the exact terms in which he had himself received 
 it from the mouth of Jehovah; because the institution of a 
 covenant was in question, requiring the most careful con- 
 sideration of all the conditions proposed. That the Mosaic 
 dispensation is really to be regarded as being strictly such a 
 covenant between two parties, is evident from the repre- 
 sentation of it as a marriage contract (fedus matrimonii in 
 the language of Roman law), which repeatedly meets us in 
 the Old Testament (Jer. ii. 2; Ezek. xvi. 20; comp. Mal. 
 ii. 14). The people’s unanimous ny; (“ we will do”) on 
 that occasion concluded the covenant of which Moses was 
 mediator; and the covenant sacrifices which immediately 
 followed served to inaugurate and consecrate it with the 
 divine blessing, and by a further self-dedication on the part 
 of Israel. 
 
 The writer ‘of the epistle omits the statement found in Ex. 
 xxiv. 5, that Moses deputed young men of Israelite families 
 to “offer up burnt-offerings” (mb), and to “ sacrifice sacri- 
 fices” (o'nat); these latter being more closely defined as 
 
 1 And so also Bengel, Bleek, De Wette, and many others, ‘‘ every 
 commandment belonging to or in accordance with the law.” 
 
112 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 ‘nb ondvi, “ peace-offerings to the Lord,”! and as consisting 
 of “oxen” (88). “ Sin-” and “ trespass-offerings” are 
 not mentioned, being unknown to the pre-Mosaic time 
 (according both to the Pentateuch and the book of Job), 
 and, in fact, being later developments from the burnt-offer- 
 ings and peace-offerings of the patriarchal age. In like 
 manner, we find Moses’ father-in-law Jethro, at Ex. xviii. 
 12, taking “a burnt-offering and sacrifices” (DYN, peace- 
 offerings), and afterwards inviting Aaron and the elders of 
 Israel to the sacrificial banquet, but no mention made of ovis 
 or nxon. In both cases a thankful recognition of divine 
 mercies, and willing submission to the divine will, were the 
 feelings which primarily sought expression ; and the sin- or 
 trespass-offering, as such, would have been out of place. 
 Moreover, so far as in the sacrifices of Ex. xviii. or Ex. 
 xxiv. the need or fact of an atonement for sin required 
 recognition, such recognition might be found in the blood- 
 shedding and blood-sprinkling which were connected with 
 them. ‘The main purpose in the great covenant sacrifice of 
 Israel was, on the one hand, to set a seal on their new rela- 
 tion with Jehovah; on the other, to have that relation sealed 
 by Him: and the young men, who were perhaps first-born 
 
 1 Our English version of Ex. xxiv. 5 is not quite literal: ‘‘ which 
 offered burnt-offerings and sacrificed peace-offerings of oxen unto the 
 Lord.” It should be: ‘‘ which offered up burnt-offerings” (i.e. holocausts, 
 sacrifices wholly consumed on the altar), ‘‘ and sacrificed sacrifices” (or 
 slew victims), ‘‘ peace-offerings to the Lord, oxen.” The Vulgate ren- 
 dering is more exact than ours: ‘‘ zmmolaveruntque victimas pacificas 
 Domino, vitulos.”—TR. 
 
 2 This is not the place to explain the meaning of the sacrificial term 
 andy. But the reader may be reminded of two ancient sayings: 
 First, that of the Midrash Tanchuma : “ The Shelamim” (peace-offerings) 
 κε are great, because they make peace between Israel and their Father in 
 heaven.” Secondly, that of Guilleaume of Paris: ‘‘ Manifestum est 
 hujusmodi sacrificia participantibus imprimere familiaritatem et proximi- 
 tatem ad Deum, dum eos Dei commensales quodammodo efficiebant.” piv 
 is properly ‘‘ fulness,” ‘‘ completeness,” ‘‘ well-being ;” and thus de- 
 notes, according to the context, either a pleasant friendly feeling of one 
 towards another, or of several among themselves. 
 
 3 Compare Philo (Qu. in Ex. xxiv. 5): ‘‘ Duplex igitur genus sacri- 
 
CHAP. IX. 19-21. 113 
 
 sons,’ represented, as sacrificing priests commissioned by 
 Moses, the totality of Israel, which was likewise indicated by 
 the twelve pillars of the altar. Moses himself is the mediator 
 between God and His people, chosen for that purpose by 
 God Himself. But here it is not so much the sacramental 
 (so to speak) as the sacrificial side of his mediatorship which 
 the sacred writer has in view. 
 
 Concerning Moses’ part in the sacrificial action, the Pen- 
 tateuch relates that he first sprinkled half the blood upon 
 the altar, and then put the other half in basons, from which, 
 after reading the statutes contained in the book of the cove- 
 nant which had been already orally delivered to the people, 
 and after receiving the renewal of their vow of obedience, 
 he proceeded to sprinkle the whole congregation, saying 
 (according to the LXX.): ἰδοὺ τὸ αἷμα τῆς διαθήκης, ἧς 
 διέθετο Κύριος πρὸς ὑμᾶς περὶ πάντων τῶν λόγων τούτων. 
 The writer of the epistle substitutes here τοῦτο for ἰδοὺ (τὸ 
 αἷμαν), with conscious or unconscious reference to the sacra- 
 mental words of the holy eucharist ; while ἧς διέθετο Κύριος 
 he changes into ἧς ἐνετείλατο . . . ὁ Θεός, retaining, however, 
 the πρὸς ὑμᾶς of the LXX., where we might have expected 
 ὑμῖν. On ἐνετείλατο Bohme well remarks, Testamenti no- 
 tionem innuit ; for ἐντέλλεσθαι διαθήκην is the ordinary Sep- 
 tuagint rendering for M2 M¥, and the post-biblical term for 
 a testament or will is 7838. The substitution of ὁ Θεός is to 
 mark the sentence as belonging to the Old Testament, and 
 to avoid any confusion of thought arising from the evan- 
 gelical sense of Avpios. But the variations in matters of 
 
 ficiorum hic melius perficiatur : holocaustum videlicet in honorem patris 
 dona vix accipientis, quod nemini alii preestatur, sed ei qui honoratur ; 
 et salutare quod jam fit propter nos, qui beneficia probavimus probam- 
 usque et expectamus; reddimus enim sacrificia sanitatis et salutis, 
 universorumque bonorum Deo, qui illa dat mortali genti.” Hofmann is 
 led by the one-sidedness of his view of the meaning of m3 to deny 
 this: ‘‘ Israel” (he says) ‘‘ did not on that occasion offer sacrifices by 
 way of expressing their relation to God,” οἷο. 
 
 1 The law commanding the redemption of the first-born had not yet 
 been given, nor that for the substitution of the Levites. 
 
 VOL. Il. H 
 
114 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 fact from the Mosaic narrative are still more remarkable. 
 We must consider them in detail. 
 
 (1.) The first variation is in the clause τὸ αἷμα τῶν 
 μόσχων Kal τράγων, “ calves and goats,”"—the Pentateuch 
 speaking only of “ calves” (μόσχους, μοσχάρια) ; a circum- 
 stance noticed by Philo (Qu. in Ex. xxiv. 5): non autem agni 
 neque hedi afferuntur. The mention of ‘ goats” here by the 
 writer of the epistle is the more striking, that while, accord- 
 ing to the Mosaic law, any male of the herd or flock was 
 admissible for the burnt-offering, the goat is never men- 
 tioned as so employed, but always as a nNoN, or sin-offering, 
 and as especially subservient to the work of propitiation 
 (Num. xxviii. 80). Hence it has been concluded that this 
 trait is borrowed by the sacred writer here from the ritual 
 of the great day of atonement (ayn ny). So Bleek, De 
 Wette, Bisping, and others. For my part, I should prefer 
 to assume that μόσχοι (ταῦροι) καὶ τράγοι is used by our 
 author as a general term for all bloody sacrifices, just as he 
 uses elsewhere δῶρά τε καὶ θυσίαι for sacrifices of all kinds. 
 (2.) The second addition to the Mosaic narrative is the 
 μετὰ ὕδατος καὶ ἐρίου κοκκίνου καὶ ὑσσώπου. The bunch 
 of hyssop fastened to a stick of cedar-wood, and wrapped 
 round with scarlet wool’ to absorb the blood, is mentioned 
 as an instrument for the besprinkling of the leper at Ley. 
 xiv. 6, 7, and of one defiled by contact with a corpse at 
 Num. xix. 19; but our author here may have specially had 
 in view the sprinkling with hyssop of the blood of the 
 paschal lamb, enjoined at Ex. xii. 22. In the ordinary 
 sacrificial ritual, the hyssop was not so employed, but only 
 the blood poured out around the altar. The employment of 
 water, moreover, is mentioned only in the two cases above 
 referred to—in Lev. xiv. and Num. xix. In the case of the 
 
 1 The hyssop, according to Jewish tradition, was the plant called 
 origanum (ὀρείγωνον), 1.6. wild marjoram (in German, Wohlgemuth, or 
 Dost). See Winer sub voce, and the various opinions on this subject 
 put together in Scheiner-Hiusle’s Zeitschr. fiir die gesammte Kath. 
 Theologie, viii. 1, 1856. In medieval Latin, hyssopus is simply the instru- 
 ment of sprinkling (Du Cange s.v.). 
 
CHAP. IX. 19-21. 115 
 
 leper, we read (Lev. xiv. 1-7) that two clean birds were to 
 be taken, and one of them at the priest’s command to be 
 killed “ in an earthen vessel over running water ;” and the 
 other living bird to be dipped in the blood, along with 
 hyssop, cedar wood, and scarlet wool,—the hyssop being 
 fastened, as we have said, to the cedar-stick by means of 
 the scarlet band, so as to form an instrument for sprinkling : 
 that thereupon the leper was to be sprinkled seven times, 
 and the living bird set free. The water (which was to be 
 fresh, or “ living” water), besides its symbolical meaning, 
 would prevent the blood from coagulating,’ and increase the 
 quantity of liquid. ‘The same purpose would have been 
 served by the use of water in the great covenant sacrifice 
 of Ex. xxiv., and would indeed have rendered it necessary, 
 inasmuch as a large quantity of liquid must have been 
 required for the sprinkling of the blood on the whole body 
 of the people. This addition, therefore, to the Mosaic nar- 
 rative, whether derived from tradition or conjecture, was a 
 natural and obvious one. (3.) «Αὐτό τε τὸ βιβλίον... 
 
 ἐῤῥάντισεν" is another addition made by the sacred writer here. 
 The narrative in Exodus says nothing of the book itself 
 being sprinkled with the blood. Some have endeavoured 
 to get rid of the discrepancy by making αὐτό τε τὸ βιβλίον 
 governed like τὸ αἷμα τῶν μόσχων . .. by the participle 
 λαβών, so that the only object of ἐῤῥάντισε would be πάντα 
 τὸν λαόν. But this, beside the awkwardness of the construc- 
 tion, would only make the matter worse. For that Moses 
 actually did sprinkle the book of the covenant with the 
 sacrificial blood, might be inferred by analogy; while it 
 would involve the grossest anachronism to suppose that he 
 
 1 The coagulation of the blood was, in the ordinary sacrificial ritual, 
 prevented by stirring. Lightfoot, on St. John xix. 34, says: ‘‘ Aut 
 labitur memoria mea, aut legi alicubi apud Scriptores Hebrxos, sed infe- 
 liciter excidit locus, quod cum mora aliqua interponenda erat inter macta- 
 tionem victime et sparsionem sanguinis super altare (qualis erat mora cum 
 Moses legeret articulos feederis) commiscuerunt aquam cum sanguine ne 
 congelesceret aut coagularetur.” We can certify that the great Hebraist 
 is here mistaken as to what he supposes himself to remember, 
 
 ? All the uncials agree in reading ἐράντισεν. 
 
116 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 so treated (4) καὶ τὴν σκηνὴν δὲ καὶ πάντα τὰ σκεύη τῆς 
 λευτουργίας, which had not yet come into existence at the 
 time of the covenant sacrifice. But if we give up the un- 
 necessary assumption that the nal... «al... are cor- 
 relatives, there is nothing against our assuming that ver. 21 
 relates a subsequent but kindred transaction to that of vers. 
 19, 20; καὶ . .. δέ being equivalent to “ ahd on the other 
 hand,” or “and moreover.” (See Buttm. ὃ 149,10.) Even 
 80, a variation from the exact letter of the Thorah will still 
 remain to be accounted for. The Thorah speaks, indeed, of 
 an “anointing” of “the tabernacle, and all that is therein” 
 (σκηνὴ καὶ πάντα τὰ σκεύη αὐτῆς, Ex. xl. 9),' with odd, but 
 not with blood. The application of blood to the σκεύη τῆς 
 λειτουργίας is mentioned only in the following cases: (a.) In 
 the sin-offering, the peace-offering, and the burnt-offering, - 
 the blood was sprinkled, or rather scattered, from the bason 
 (not with the finger) “upon the altar round about.” This 
 action was called mp. (b.) In the case of every sin-offer- 
 ing the horns of the great altar were smeared with the blood, 
 which was applied by a finger dipped in the bason, and the 
 rest of the blood was poured out at the foot of the altar. 
 These actions were called respectively ΠΡ ΠΣ or IND, and 
 nav or ΠΡῚΝ", “application” and “ outpouring.” (c.) In the 
 case of the high priest’s sin-offering, for himself or for the 
 congregation, the blood was “sprinkled” (7371) seven times 
 before the veil, then “applied” (92) both to the horns of 
 the brazen altar and to those of the altar of incense, and 
 finally the remainder poured out at the foot of the brazen 
 altar. (d.) A still fuller ritual of the same kind was ob- 
 served on the day of atonement. On that day the blood of 
 the bullock (the high priest’s sin-offering) was first sprinkled 
 seven times upon the mercy-seat (Cappdreth), and the same 
 
 1 This refers, probably, to the same anointing of the tabernacle and 
 its furniture as that mentioned in Lev. viii. 10 as accompanying the 
 consecration of Aaron and his sons. Aaron’s consecration is enjoined at 
 Ex. xxix., and accomplished at Lev. viii. The anointing of the sanctuary 
 is enjoined at Ex. xl., and the most suitable time for the fulfilment of 
 stich injunction would be when we think we find it at Lev. vill. 10, * 
 
CHAP. IX. 19-21. 117 
 
 done with the blood of the goat (the people’s sin-offering) ; 
 after that, the mixed blood of both sacrifices was applied to 
 the horns of the altar of incense, and the altar itself sprinkled 
 therewith seven times. These are the only instances men- 
 tioned in the Thorah of the sprinkling with blood of the 
 vessels of the sanctuary. It might, accordingly, seem a 
 probable conjecture that the sacred writer is here consciously 
 combining other atoning rites,—first (vers. 19, 20) with the 
 covenant sacrifice (of Ex. xxiv.), and then (ver. 21) with 
 the consecration of the tabernacle (as described Ex. xl.); 
 or we might say, with Menken, that he combines the ritual 
 of the great covenant sacrifice with that of the-day of atone- 
 ment in one grand twofold representation. But the fact is 
 really otherwise. Josephus also, in describing the consecra- 
 tion of the priests (Ant. iii. 8. 6), says that Moses during 
 the seven days sprinkled not only their garments,’ and the 
 priests themselves, but also τήν Te σκηνὴν καὶ τὰ περὶ αὐτὴν 
 σκεύη, with fragrant oil, and the blood of the slain bullocks 
 and rams. If, then, the anointing of the sanctuary enjoined 
 at Ex. xl. be the same as that which accompanied the conse- 
 cration of the priests described at Lev. viii. (which is highly 
 probable: see note above), we have here, in fact, a literal 
 agreement between Josephus and the writer of this epistle 
 in reference to the same transaction ; and we are justified in 
 concluding that, where our author goes beyond the letter of 
 the Thorah, both in describing the covenant sacrifice and 
 the consecration of the tabernacle and its furniture, he 
 follows a then existing tradition, of which other traces are 
 now lost. The main point with him is evidently this: that 
 in both cases the dedication did not take place without the 
 employment of sacrificial blood. 
 
 With regard (1) to the meaning of the covenant sacrifice, 
 
 1 When Kurtz says (Mos. Opfer, p. 239) that at the consecration of 
 the priests the sacred vessels were sprinkled with the blood of atone- 
 ment, he is relying simply on the authority of Josephus, for the Thorah 
 only says that the priest’s garments were so sprinkled with blood and 
 oil,—with blood for purification from profane defilements, with oil for 
 sanctification to holy uses. 
 
118 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 I fully agree with Ebrard against Hofmann, that the dividing 
 of the blood into two portions has a reference to the twofold 
 character of the m3; and also that the blood here, as in 
 every sacrifice, has a reference to atonement. Atonement 
 (ΠἼΞ5) is indeed the fundamental thought in all sacrifices 
 expressed by the effusion of blood; and on such a basis is 
 here established, by means of the double transaction with the 
 sacrificial blood, the covenant between Jehovah and His people 
 Israel. One half is sprinkled on the place of sacrifice, to ex- 
 press the gracious relation in which God vouchsafes to enter 
 with His reconciled people; the other on the people them- 
 selves, to meet their longings for such covenant grace with the 
 assurance of its bestowal. Hofmann’s assertion (Schrifb. 11. 
 1.76; comp. Weiss. i. 137) against Kurtz, that this sprinkling 
 on the people had for its object “not atonement, but con-_ 
 secration,” makes contradictories of notions which are easily 
 combined, and which in the Thorah are synonymous (070, 
 wap, 12D): Israel is consecrated to the service of God by the 
 assurance of their reconciliation or atonement with Him; 
 being sprinkled with the blood that has been sprinkled on 
 the altar, they are united to the God with whom they have 
 been reconciled. What else can be the meaning of the οὐδὲ 
 χωρὶς αἵματος of ver. 18, than this, that the first covenant 
 was itself consecrated by the sprinkling of atoning blood 
 upon the covenant people? It was, in fact, a twofold type 
 of what in the new covenant is antitypically fulfilled, when 
 the blood of Christ first earns our pardon and redeems the 
 inheritance, and then by a personal application cleanses the 
 conscience, and admits to the inheritance each one who is 
 thus cleansed. 
 
 These considerations will enable us to understand (2) the 
 sprinkling of the blood on the book of the covenant, and sub- 
 sequently on the tabernacle and the vessels of the ministry. 
 At the consecration of Aaron and his sons, at Lev. viii. 15, 
 we read that the blood of the bullock of the sin-offering was 
 “ applied” by Moses “ with his finger” to the horns of the 
 altar “ round about” (2'2D), as elsewhere only on the day of 
 atonement, and that for the purpose of “ purifying it from 
 
CHAP. IX. 19-21. 119 
 
 sin” (88M); the rest of the blood being afterwards poured 
 out at the bottom of the altar for its sanctification (010), and 
 for “making atonement upon it” (vdy p25). It cannot 
 be that both these acts are designated here by the single 
 word ἐράντισεν, which must certainly apply to a procedure 
 with the blood similar to and connected with the sevenfold 
 sprinkling of the altar with the anointing oil (Lev. viii. 11). 
 The purpose of the sprinkling with oil was to “ hallow” or 
 “ sanctify” (vp) ; that of the application of the blood, as 
 we learn from the ritual of the day of atonement, and from 
 Ley. viii. 15, could only have been to “ atone,” or “ purify 
 from sin” (B29, NIN), and therefore also to “ sanctify” 
 (wip) ; the blood being the negative (as removing impurities), 
 the oil the positive instrument of sanctification (as symboli- 
 cally imparting grace). That the vessels of the sanctuary, 
 and the sanctuary itself, needed such purification, was the 
 result partly of their origin, as made by human hands, and 
 partly of their use, as visited or handled by the unclean. 
 The tabernacle or temple was from one point of view the 
 chosen dwelling of Jehovah among His people ; from another, 
 the dwelling-place which His people had provided for Him. 
 The sanctuary itself, and every portion of it, especially the 
 altar, had this twofold character, sacramental and sacrificial : 
 sacramental, as ministering to God’s manifestations to man ; 
 sacrificial, as subservient to man’s approaches to God. The 
 indispensable condition for their efficiency in this twofold 
 work, was purity or sanctification: when the medium itself 
 was unclean, the whole operation was vitiated; the very 
 means of approach became a wall of separation. Hence the 
 necessity of a consecration of all the holy things along with 
 that of the Aaronic priesthood, and that an atonement or 
 “ reconciliation” of the sanctuary, and especially of the 
 horns of the altar of incense, should be annually repeated 
 on the great day of atonement (Lev. xvi. 20). That the 
 same process was not repeated at the same time with the 
 altar of burnt-offering, may be accounted for by the obser- 
 vation that that altar was daily cleansed by the sacrificial 
 
 blood perpetually shed and offered upon it, and that the 
 
120 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 incense-altar which was within the sanctuary represented 
 more fully, with its incense-offering, the normal relations of 
 the covenant people to Jehovah, who, as the God of the 
 covenant, had in the great sacrificial inauguration of that 
 covenant on Mount Sinai first drawn and consecrated His 
 people to Himself. The horns of the incense-altar symbo- 
 lized the divine favour and mercy; and the annual ap- 
 plication to them of the blood of atoning sacrifices had a 
 quasi-sacramental purpose. It renewed the expression of 
 that favour to Israel, when forfeited or suspended by Israel’s 
 sin. From these considerations will readily appear why the 
 book of the covenant was also consecrated with sacrificial 
 blood, when the covenant itself was first established at Sinai. 
 That book, though containing divine words, was formed and 
 written by human hands, and as such would be affected by 
 human impurity, and need an atonement, in order to become 
 the immaculate monument of an abiding διαθήκη. The αὐτὸ 
 τὸ βιβλίον, moreover, has further reference to the following 
 verse, in which both the sprinkling of the holy things, 
 including the book, and that of the people, are shown to be 
 exemplifications of a general law. 
 
 Ver. 22. And almost everything is cleansed in blood, ac- 
 cording to the law ; and without blood-shedding remission taketh 
 not place. ' 
 
 The word σχεδόν occurs only twice elsewhere in the 
 N. T., and on both occasions is used by St. Luke (Acts 
 xiii. 44 and xix. 26) in immediate connection with the 
 adjective πᾶς. Here it takes the first place in the sentence, 
 and is separated by ἐν αἵματι from the πάντα; to which it 
 belongs. Bleek, Tholuck, and Liinemann explain this posi- 
 tion of σχεδόν by its supposed reference to both the following 
 clauses ; but Stier remarks with perfect accuracy, that while 
 the former clause is only almost, the second is quite univer- 
 sally true. Σίχεδόν therefore belongs only to the former 
 clause, but to every word of it, and therefore takes preced- 
 ence of them all: “almost might one say, that everything 
 
 is purified by the application of blood.” This is the rule: 
 
CHAP. IX. 22. 121 
 
 the κατὰ τὸν νόμον indicates the authority on which the rule 
 is based. The Thorah (ὁ νόμος) speaks indeed, in certain 
 cases, of water and fire as means of purification ; but wher- 
 ever there is a special need of cleansing, blood is invariably 
 prescribed. Hence the significant position of ἐν αἵματι 
 before πάντα here. 
 
 In the second clause it is asserted that the ethical cleans- 
 ing of individual personalities, the ἄφεσις (i.e. ἁμαρτιῶν)---ἃ 
 term of frequent occurrence in St. Luke—never takes place 
 without blood-shedding : χωρὶς aiwatexyvoias. The rule is 
 based on Ley. xvii. 11, and is thus expressed in later Jewish 
 phraseology: D732 NP MDD PX, there is no atonement except in 
 blood (alm. babli, Joma 5a). The vegetable sacrifices, or 
 unbloody oblations, called Minchah (pl. Menachoth), had no 
 atoning power ; but simply expressed a thankful recognition 
 of the divine goodness, in the offering to God of His own 
 gifts. It is only blood which is able to atone; and being 
 Jehovah’s appointed medium of atonement, it effects its pur- 
 pose on the soul (via) 5y) of the offerer by means of the soul 
 (0833) contained in itself (Lev. xvii. 11). [Zhe soul of the 
 flesh is in the blood, and I have given it unto you upon the 
 altar to make atonement for your souls; for tt is the blood which 
 maketh atonement by means of the soul.| No gift or sacrifice 
 is well pleasing to God unless the offerer be himself in a 
 state of atonement or reconciliation, and therefore the blood 
 is first poured out upon the altar before the sacrifice itself is 
 offered. The word αἱματεκχυσία is probably a composition 
 of our author’s. The question may be asked, to what action 
 it here specially refers—whether to the previous slaughter 
 of the animal, or to the presentation of its blood at the place 
 of sacrifice. For the latter view may be urged the following 
 reasons: (1) The πη in the Old Testament ritual 1165 
 outside the sacrificial action, which properly begins with the 
 priest’s reception of the blood in the sacrificial bason (n>ap 
 nin); and (2) the usual Septuagint expression for the out- 
 pouring (ΠΡ ΒΞ or ΠΡ) of the blood of the sin-offering at 
 the foot of the altar is ἐκχέειν τὸ αἷμα (παρὰ or ἐπὶ τὴν 
 βάσιν τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου). Nevertheless I regard it as more 
 
122 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 probable that the sacred writer has here in view the ΠΝ), 
 or actual slaying of the victim. Not that therefore he re- 
 gards the slaying itself as the act which makes atonement 
 (830). He does not say of the αἱματεκχυσία that it actu- 
 ally procures remission of sin, but only that without it no 
 remission is procurable, inasmuch as nothing else but the 
 slaughter of the victim could supply the offerer with that 
 soul-containing blood wherewith alone atonement can be 
 made. The consideration which mainly induces me to 
 suppose that the sacred writer is here referring (by aiwa- 
 τεκχυσία) to the non of the victim, and not to the sacri- 
 ficial πϑιβὺ of the blood, is the remarkable parallel in the 
 words of institution (τὸ ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν ἐκχυνόμενον) of the Lord’s 
 Supper (Luke xxii. 20), and the similar phrase applied to 
 the martyrdoms of the prophets at Luke xi. 90. The 
 notions of αἷμα and θάνατος are, from ver. 13 onwards, 
 closely connected throughout the whole paragraph; and in- 
 deed the blood-shedding in the antitype must, from the 
 nature of things, have had a far deeper significance than it 
 could possess in the typical sacrifice. In the case of the 
 latter, the slaying of the victim was, as we have seen, but a 
 means to an end—that of providing first blood for atonement, 
 and the flesh for sacrificial food for Jehovah on His altar. 
 It was on the victim’s part an involuntary suffering without 
 moral significance, except so far as the shadow of such sig- 
 nificance was imparted to it by the ΠΡ 50, the ceremonial 
 imposition of the offerer’s hand. The death of Christ, on 
 the other hand, was a conscious act of loving free-will, the 
 central act of His own self-sacrifice, the solution of the 
 enigma of the nn of Lev. xvii. 11, in which the saints 
 of the Old Testament had to rest with implicit faith. Of 
 the three assertions contained in vers. 18-22—“ Blood is an 
 instrument of consecration,” “ Blood is an instrument of 
 purification,” “ Blood is an instrument of propitiation,” or 
 ‘ atonement”—the second is the most important, involving 
 both the others: all consecration and all remission of sin 
 may be regarded as purification or cleansing, and as such is 
 regarded by the sacred writer here. The conclusion, how- 
 
CHAP. IX. 23. 195 
 
 ever, which he draws from thence, that blood:is, in so wide 
 an application, so universal a means of case is very 
 remarkable.’ 
 
 Ver. 23. Jt was therefore necessary that the figures of 
 the things in the heavens should be purified with these ; 
 but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than 
 these. 
 
 After ἀνάγκη οὖν we may understand either ἦν or ἐστίν. 
 (Compare viii. 3 and ix. 9.) The former (ἢν) is preferable 
 here, as the sacred writer is concluding, from the annual 
 cleansing of the sanctuary and its furniture on the day of 
 atonement, the necessity of a cleansing of the heavenly 
 things once for all, and not the repetition of such a cleans- 
 ing. From the premises laid down in the preceding verse, 
 a twofold consequence is drawn in this,—the main stress 
 being laid on its second part. “If the one is or was neces- 
 sary, then must the other be or have been necessary too.” At 
 ch. vii. 5 the Mosaic tabernacle was spoken of as ὑποδεῦῖγμα 
 καὶ σκιά of the heavenly sanctuary: the ὑποδείγματω here 
 include, with the tabernacle itself, its sacred furniture, which 
 all are types and shadows pointing onwards and upwards to 
 the realities of the heavenly world—ra ἐπουράνια, τὰ ἐν τοῖς 
 οὐρανοῖς, ipsa calestia. Those earthly types are cleansed 
 “with these” τούτοις. The plural is variously understood : 
 “with the blood and the ashes of the red heifer” (Liine- 
 mann); “with blood and the like” (De Wette); talibus 
 nempe rebus leviticis (Béhme). Liinemann’s interpretation 
 is inadmissible, as involving an inaccuracy ; the ashes of the 
 heifer having never been employed in the ceremonial cleans- 
 ing of the tabernacle. De Wette’s might be allowed, if the 
 “anointing oil” (Ley. vill. 10) had been previously alinded 
 to; but of such allusion there is here no trace. Bohme’s 15 
 too vague. The τούτοις must therefore refer simply to the 
 blood of various kinds, 1.6. of various animals,—the αἷμα 
 μόσχων καὶ τράγων, as used especially on the day of atone- 
 ment. From the cleansing of the earthly types with such 
 
 1 See Note 8, at the end of this volume. 
 
124 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 blood, he infers the cleansing of their antitypes with better 
 sacrifices—kpeittoct θυσίαις. 
 
 But how are we to understand this sacrificial cleansing 
 of the ἐπουράνια ξ (1.) Schulz, like Luther, escapes raising 
 the question by the rendering, “ But the heavenly things 
 require better sacrifices,’—a mode, however, of filling up the 
 ellipsis which, even on the supposition of a zeugma, is quite 
 inadmissible. (2.) De Wette, with others (e.g. Ebrard and 
 Liinemann), would substitute in the second clause the more 
 general notion of dedication or consecration (ἐγκαινίζεσθαι) 
 for that of cleansing (καθαρίζεσθαι) in the former. But this, 
 again, is merely to evade the difficulty: a dedication by means 
 of sacrificial blood would still involve the notion of cleansing 
 or atonement. (3.) Others (e.g. Bengel, Menken, Tholuck) 
 follow the interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas : Mundantur 
 caelestia quatenus homines mundantur a peecatis. But this, 
 after the distinction indicated above between the atonement 
 made for persons and that made for the sanctuary, would be 
 here an inadmissible guid pro quo. (4.) Akersloot adheres 
 more closely to the letter of the text, when he refers this 
 “cleansing” of the ἐπουράνια to the expulsion of Satan from 
 heaven (Luke x. 18; John xii. 31),—an interpretation which 
 Bleek is also disposed to follow, with a further reference to 
 Rev. xii. 7-9; to which we might add, “the destroying by 
 death him that had the power of death, that is, the devil,” of 
 ch. 11. 14 of our epistle. But this explanation is likewise 
 inadequate. The cleansing here meant is one of atonement, 
 and must therefore refer immediately to the renewal of right 
 relations between God and man, and not to the mere expul- 
 sion of an evil element. (5.) Hofmann, who makes the 
 heavenly sanctuary to be the glorified humanity of Christ, 
 and its extension in the church of the New Testament, ex- 
 plains this “ cleansing” as an immediate consequence of the 
 death of Christ and His return to the Father, whereby, being 
 perfected Himself in divine communion, He by that com- 
 munion perpetually renews the purification of His redeemed. 
 (Weiss. ii. 189; Schriftb. ii. 1. 307.) All which, though 
 
 quite true in itself, is not satisfactory to us as an interpre- 
 
CHAP. IX. 23. 195 
 
 tation of the present passage, inasmuch as it depends on 
 Hofmann’s peculiar view of the meaning of the heavenly 
 sanctuary, which we have shown to be inadmissible here. 
 (6.) Stier’s interpretation comes very near the truth, when 
 he says: ‘ In consequence of the presence of sin in us, the 
 holy of holies in the heavenly world could not be re-opened 
 for our approach until it had been first itself anointed with 
 the blood of atonement.” He is wrong, however, in restrict- 
 ing the ἐπουράνια here to a celestial holy of holies: the 
 “heavenly things” here spoken of include, as we have seen, 
 celestial antitypes of the earthly tabernacle as well as of its 
 inner sanctuary ; and so the question still remains: In what 
 sense could these heavenly things be said to be cleansed, not 
 in figure only, but in truth, by the atoning death and blood 
 of Jesus? Unless I be mistaken in my view of it, the 
 sacred writer’s meaning is fundamentally this: The supra- 
 mundane holy of holies, called in ver. 24 αὐτὸς ὁ οὐρανός, 
 ipsum celum, 1.6. the eternal uncreated heaven of God Him- 
 self, though in itself untroubled blessedness and light, yet 
 needed cleansing (καθαρίζεσθαι), in so far as its light of love 
 had been lost or transmuted for mankind, through the pre- 
 sence of sin, or rather had been overclouded and bedarkened 
 by a fire of wrath; and in like manner, the heavenly taber- 
 nacle, the place of God’s loving self-manifestations to angels 
 and to men, needed also a cleansing, in so far as mankind 
 through sin had rendered unapproachable to themselves this 
 their spirit’s natural and eternal home, until by a gracious 
 renewal of God’s forfeited mercy it should have been once 
 more transformed into a place for the manifestation of His 
 love and favour. In reference, therefore, to the entire τὰ 
 ἐπουράνια, t.e. both the ta ἅγια, or eternal sanctuary, and 
 the σκηνή, or heavenly tabernacle, there was required a re- 
 moval of the consequences of human sin as affecting them, 
 and a removal of the counter-workings against sin, 1.6. of 
 divine wrath, or rather (which comes to the same thing) a 
 ‘change of that wrath into renewed love. This last interpre- 
 tation assigns its full meaning to καθαρίζεσθαι, which at Ex. 
 xxix. 36 is the Septuagint rendering of S87, and at Ex. 
 
126 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 xxx. 10 that of 122. The plural κρείττοσι θυσίαις is the so- 
 called pluralis generis (Winer, xxvii. 2), or, as De Wette 
 calls it, the plural of the category. 
 
 And now, according to this interpretation, ver. 24 follows 
 quite naturally. The heavenly sanctuary needs for its puri- 
 fication a better kind of sacrifice than the animal sacrifices 
 offered under the Jaw; and this is evident from the great- 
 ness and transcendent reality of that one oblation presented 
 to the Father in the courts above. The antitypical reality 
 is alleged in confirmation of the truth of the previous inter- 
 pretation given to the type. 
 
 Ver. 24. For not into a sanctuary made with hands is 
 Christ entered, a mere counterfeit of the true, but into the 
 heaven itself, now to manifest himself in the presence of God 
 on our behalf. 
 
 We must here remind our readers that the whole para- 
 graph, vers. 13-28, is a development of the theme proposed 
 in vers. 11,12. The first sub-section of this paragraph (vers. 
 13, 14) we have found to be an expansion of one term of the 
 theme, the διὰ τοῦ ἰδίου αἵματος of ver.12a; the second sub- 
 section (vers. 15-23) to be a development of another term, 
 the ἀρχιερεὺς τῶν μελλόντων ἀγαθῶν of ver. 11. We have 
 now (in vers. 24-28) a similar expansion of the third term, 
 the εἰσῆλθεν ἐφάπαξ eis τὰ ἅγια of ver. 12. The heavenly 
 sanctuary stood in need of sublimer sacrifices than its earthly 
 type, seeing that Christ our sacrifice accomplished its purifi- 
 cation by entering not into a sanctuary made with hands like 
 that of Moses, but into the eternal, archetypal, supra-mun- 
 dane place of God Himself. 
 
 The earthly ἅγια are χειροποιητά ;' and for that very 
 reason not God’s true dwelling-place, but only ἀντίτυπα of the 
 true sanctuary. We have found τύπος, at ch. viii. 5, used in 
 the sense of an original figure—a model from which a copy 
 is made: such copy from an original (or archetype) is that 
 designated as avtituma here. Τύπος, again (as at Rom. ν. 14), 
 
 1 Compare Acts vii. 48 and xvii. 24, ὁ Θεὸς οὐκ ἐν χειροποιήτοις ναοῖς 
 κατοικεὶ. ᾿ 
 
CHAP, IX. 24. 127 
 
 is used in the sense of a prophetic foretype, of which the 
 accomplishment is reserved for the future (τύπος τῶν μελ- 
 λόντων) ; and that accomplishment is again called ἀντίτυπον 
 (antitype) : e.g. baptism, at 1 Pet. 111. 21, is in this sense an 
 ἀντίτυπον of the deluge. The earthly reflection of the 
 heavenly archetype, and the actual fulfilment of the pro- 
 phetic τύπος, are each called ὀντίτυπον. The heavenly 
 sanctuary is archetypal and eternal, the earthly is but a 
 passing shadow. Christ (ὁ Χριστός, the pre-ordained and 
 long expected one) is entered into the former—ecs αὐτὸν τὸν 
 οὐρανόν. The antithesis of this with (ἅγια) χειροποίητα 
 shows that by the ἅγια here is meant not the whole sanc- 
 tuary, including both tabernacle and holy of holies (which 
 the sacred writer distinguishes from one another at ver. 11 
 and at ch. viii. 2), but simply the latter, the inner sanctuary 
 or sanctuary proper. ‘ Heaven itself” is the highest or 
 innermost heaven, the divine place of God’s own self-mani- 
 festation in glory. Calum in quod Christus ingressus est, 
 says Sebastian Schmidt, non est ipsum calum creatum quod- 
 cunque fuerit sed est celum in quo Deus est etiam quando 
 calum creatum nullum est, ipsa gloria divina. Into this 
 divine heaven Christ is entered, νῦν ἐμφανισθῆναι τῷ Tpo- 
 σώπῳ τοῦ Θεοῦ ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν. 
 
 Hofmann objects to the rendering of De Wette and 
 many others, “in order now to appear continually,” on the 
 ground that the aor. éudavicOjvas could not be used of 
 a continuous action. But this epexegetical “ infinitive of 
 intention” (Winer, ὃ xliv. 1) is not seldom met with in the 
 aorist, in cases where the action expressed is from the nature 
 of the case continuous (e.g. Matt. xx. 28; Luke 1. 17). The 
 aorist ἐμφανισθῆναι does not indeed in itself express the con- 
 tinuousness of the self-presentation here; but that lies in and 
 is inferred from the νῦν, which undoubtedly refers to the 
 continuous present of the new dispensation (commencing 
 with Christ’s entrance into the heavenly places), in contrast 
 with the typical and shadowy past. This νῦν, therefore, is 
 no isolated point of time, but the commencement of a long- 
 linked series: Christ’s activity on our behalf before tlie 
 
128 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 Father, consisting in a perpetual presentation of Himself as 
 of Him who died for our sins and is risen again for our justi- 
 fication." 
 
 ᾿Εμφανίζειν is a verb of frequent occurrence in this 
 epistle and in the writings of St. Luke; the latter using it 
 both in the sense of making known (Acts xxiii. 22), and in 
 that of presenting oneself, or appearing (Acts xxiv. 1),—éuai- 
 νεσθαι being = ἐμφαινίζειν τινὶ ἑαυτόν. The clause might 
 be rendered in Hebrew thus: DONA ὮΒ (ΟἿ) nis ΠΕ 
 
 3, The Septuagint, however, it must be observed, (0 ᾿ 
 
 not render the 1872 of the Pentateuch (in reference to the 
 triennial appearance of the tribes of Israel in the holy place) 
 by ἐμφανισθῆναι τῷ προσώπῳ τοῦ Θεοῦ, but by ὀφθῆναι 
 ἐνώπιον ; nor is the word AN) ever applied to the entrance 
 of the legal high priest into the holy of holies. The very 
 unusualness of the term here employed indicates the infinite 
 superiority of the Antitype. The high priest of the law 
 could only enter with the blood of his sacrifices, under the 
 clouds of incense-smoke from the incense of the golden altar 
 previously carried within the veil; and when, moreover, the 
 Lord Himself appeared above the Capporeth, it was still }2¥2 
 (Ley. xvi. 2). Contrast with this obscurity of revelation the 
 ἐμφανισθῆναι (= ἐμφανῆ γενέσθαι) τῷ προσώπῳ Tod Θεοῦ 
 here! To the high priest of the Old Testament God could 
 not reveal Himself, without at the same time hiding Him- 
 self so as to make the vision supportable to mortal eyes ; but 
 between Christ and God neither cloud of incense nor cloud 
 of glory is suffered to intervene. Christ is for God simply 
 ἐμφανής, and the divine πρόσωπον has for Christ no veil : 
 He contemplates it cmmediately, and not ἐν κατόπτρῳ." 
 
 And this self-presentation of Christ before the face or 
 
 1 See Hofmann, Weiss. ii. 192. 
 
 2 Compare Philo’s interpretation of Moses’ prayer (Ex. xxxii. 13), 
 ἐμφάνισόν μοι σαυτόν : Reveal Thyself to me not by means of heaven or 
 earth, or air or water, or anything else that is merely creaturely : let 
 me not see Thy essence (or essential form, τὴν σὴν ἰδέων) in some other 
 substance, as in a mirror, but in Thyself, O God; seeing that all images 
 
 impressed upon the creature are but transitory, and only those proceed- 
 ing from the Uncreated remain for ever (i. 107. 36). 
 
 { 
 * 
 4 
 
 ΣΥΝ 
 
CHAP. IX. 25. 129 
 
 presence of God is for us, on our behalf (ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν placed 
 for the sake of emphasis at the end of the sentence). The 
 final object of His entrance as high priest and sacrifice into 
 the eternal heaven is there to appear before God for us, 
 presenting on our behalf no exhausted sacrifice, nor one of 
 transient efficacy or needing repetition, but Himself in His 
 own person, as an ever-present, ever-living victim and atone- 
 ment. And this object is attained at once, and attained for 
 ever. 
 
 Ver. 25. Nor yet (is he entered in) that he should offer 
 himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy of holies 
 year by year with alien blood. 
 
 The comparison is between the offering of the Jewish 
 high priest within the veil, and that of Christ in the eternal 
 sanctuary: the προσφέρειν ἑαυτόν here spoken of cannot 
 therefore be (as Tholuck, De Wette, Ebrard, and Liine- 
 mann suppose) the self-sacrifice of Christ upon earth, but 
 a self-presentation subsequent to that. The Jewish high 
 priest goes year by year into the typical sanctuary, ἐν (= in 
 accompaniment of or with: comp. 1 Cor. iv. 21; 1 John v. 6; 
 Lev. xvi. 3, Sept.) αἵματι ἀλλοτρίῳ, te. to offer there the 
 blood of a sacrifice which is not himself. Not so with 
 Christ. He is gone into the heavenly sanctuary once for 
 all, not to offer Himself first now, and then again some 
 time hence, and again afterwards, and so on in perpetual 
 succession; but that νῦν ἐμφαινισθῆναν once made, is an 
 act of perpetual validity and duration. Tune sepius (says 
 Schlichting) se ipsum offerre diceretur Christus, st coeptam 
 semel coram Deo apparitionem et oblationem abrumpens et 
 e sacrario egressus denuo in illud repetende oblationis causa 
 intraret, nam oblationis semel cocpte duratio seu continuatio 
 nequaguam multiplicat. So Schlichting quite correctly. 
 Hofmann, moreover, puts the argument rightly thus: Christ 
 having once entered into the presence of God, has no longer 
 something fresh to do in the discharge of His priestly ser- 
 vice: His offering being, not the blood of any other victim, 
 but Himself, He could not repeat that offering when once 
 
 VOL, 11. I 
 
130 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 made, without a repetition of His sacrificial death,—a thing 
 clearly impossible. 
 
 Ver. 26a. For otherwise it were necessary that he should 
 oftentimes suffer (death) since the foundation of the world. 
 
 The sacred writer might have said, ἐπεὶ (εἰ πολλάκις 
 προσφέροι ἑαυτόν) ἔδει ἂν αὐτὸν, K.T.r.; but to express the 
 absolute certainty of the consequence, he uses ἔδεν (oportebat) 
 without the ἄν : for otherwise (so this ἔπει, after which a 
 hypothetical sentence is to be supplied, might be rendered) 
 He would be under a necessity of ofttimes suffering (Winer, 
 p- 254). An oft-repeated self-oblation (πολλάκις προσ- 
 φέρειν ἑαυτόν) would have been impossible without an oft- 
 repeated suffering of death (πολλάκις παθεῖν). Compare 
 xiii. 12, where παθεῖν is also used of the suffering of death. 
 The writer’s meaning is not, as commonly understood, that 
 Christ, in order to offer Himself repeatedly to God, would 
 have again and again to return to this world and there suffer. 
 He does not say, as this conception of his meaning would 
 require him to say: ἔδει αὐτὸν πολλάκις παθεῖν Kal εἰσελθεῖν 
 εἰς Ta ἅγια. Every 72pm in the sanctuary had, no doubt, 
 a certain nun for its present antecedent. But the Jewish 
 high priest at his third entrance, on the day of atonement, 
 carried both the blood of the bullock and that of the goat 
 into the holy of holies, so that that third entrance had for its 
 antecedent a twofold my nv. This is the proceeding which 
 the sacred writer has here in view. Christ, he says, has 
 entered the sanctuary not with the blood of other victims, 
 but to offer up Himself. And if that self-oblation were 
 repeated, it would imply a previous repetition of the death 
 which is its necessary antecedent, 7.e. a repeated dying on 
 the Lord’s part ἀπὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου (comp. Luke xi. 50). 
 Every oblatio (such is the thought here) implies a previous 
 mactatio, every προσφέρειν a previous παθεῖν. A πολλάκις 
 προσφέρειν ἑαυτόν in eternity, would therefore imply a 
 previous πολλάκις παθεῖν in time, or, as the sacred writer 
 expresses it, “since the foundation of the world.’ The 
 train of thought is simple and logical, and it is to be hoped 
 
 ὮΝ 
 δον... 
 
CHAP. IX. 26. 19. 
 
 that no one will think again of putting the clause ἐπεὶ... 
 κόσμου between brackets, as in the editions of Griesbach and 
 Kuineel, and formerly by De Wette himself. 
 
 Such a repetition, then, of the Lord’s passion is not to be 
 thought of as possible. It could not be that Christ should 
 have ofttimes suffered since the foundation of the world, 
 and in accordance with this self-evident impossibility are the 
 actual facts of the case. 
 
 Ver. 260. But now once at the end of the ages is he made 
 manifest for the putting away of sins through the sacrifice of 
 himself. 
 
 All the latest interpreters agree that πεφανέρωται is here 
 to be understood of our Lord’s first ‘ manifestation in the 
 flesh” (1 Tim. iii. 16, comp. 1 Pet. i. 20), in antithesis to 
 the ἐκ devrépov . . . ὀφθήσεσθαι of ver. 28, and not to 
 His self-presentation before God (the ἐμφανισθῆναι of ver. 
 24), as some formerly explained it. “Ἅπαξ is here the anti- 
 thesis of πολλάκις above, ἐπὶ συντελείᾳ τῶν αἰώνων of ἀπὸ 
 καταβολῆς κόσμου ; and πεφανέρωται εἰς ἀθέτησιν ἁμαρτίας 
 διὰ τῆς θυσίας αὑτοῦ sets the Lord’s own great historical 
 self-oblation for the putting away of the world’s sin in con- 
 trast with the frequently repeated παθεῖν of the sacrificial 
 victims for atonement. These antitheses, thus complete and 
 thorough, are introduced by νῦν δέ, which we prefer to the 
 νυνὲ δέ of Lachmann and Tischendorf. (See note on viii. 6.) 
 It is to be taken not in a temporal, but an argumentative 
 sense, and the ἐπὶ συντελείᾳ τ. αἰών. resembles in meaning 
 the én’ ἐσχάτου τ. ἡμερῶν of i. 1 (comp. ix. 15). The latter 
 designation (ἔσχατον τῶν ἡμερῶν) is biblical (ὉΠ nns), 
 while συντελ. τῶν αἰών. is post-biblical, corresponding to the 
 poiyn 72 of the synagogue, which recurs frequently in the 
 συντέλεια τοῦ αἰῶνος of St. Matthew. The plural τῶν 
 αἰώνων here implies that the course of history is regarded as 
 a succession of various periods, of which the Lord’s manifes- 
 tation forms the conclusion. 
 
 “ath now appeared at the conclusion of the ages.” 
 We, with the facts of history behind us, would rather say, 
 
132 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 that Christ has appeared in the midst of the ages, and should 
 do so with equal propriety. But the primitive church took 
 naturally a different view. For her, the period between the 
 first and second coming of our Lord, which divine long-suf- 
 fering has already extended to near 2000 years, was almost 
 as a vanishing point. The foreshortening perspective of the 
 end, whose “ times and seasons” the Father had kept in His 
 own power, and the energy of hope, which looked onwards to 
 it as the one desired goal of all expectations, made the pro- 
 spective interval of waiting seem so brief. The primitive mode 
 of expression is also fully justifiable. Christ is in very deed 
 the end of the world’s history, the terminus towards which 
 all the sons of the past have been tending: the beginning ~ 
 
 of this end is the incarnation ; its consummation is the second 
 advent ;—and of these two, the former does actually divide 
 the course of history into two periods, albeit of unequal — 
 duration. The question why Christ should have been mani- 
 fested so late, is not answered here. Nor does the obvious | 
 thought here find expression, that His sacrifice has not been 
 repeated often “ since the foundation of the world,” because, 
 taking place at “ the termination of the ages,” its energetic 
 operation reaches backwards through them all. And the 
 motive for such reticence in this place, on the part of the 
 writer of the epistle, is not far to seek. His purpose being — 
 to warn the Hebrew Christians against an undue and un- — 
 christian attachment to the typical worship of their fore- — 
 fathers, he is naturally led to lay special stress on the negative — 
 and impotent character of all the types and ceremonies οὗ 
 the Old Testament, and of the whole ancient covenant itself. 
 
 At the same time it is evident, from his language at ver. 15, — | 
 concerning the relation in which the death of Christ stands 
 
 to “the transgressions under the first covenant,” that such — 
 backward-working operation of its atoning power was fully 
 recognised by Him. The same may also be inferred from 
 the absolute way in which the purpose of Christ’s entrance — 
 on the stage of history is here expressed as being εἰς abernow ν 
 captias—an entire doing away of sin, as such, in all its 
 forms and manifestations. (Compare ch. vii. 18, where the — 
 
CHAP. IX. 27, 28. 1898 
 
 annulling of the law is spoken of as the result of the sacer- 
 dotal power and operation of Christ.) 
 
 The words διὰ τῆς θυσίας αὐτοῦ are connected by many 
 interpreters (e.g. Schulz, Bohme, Tholuck) with πεφανέρωται 
 —Christ is manifested by means of His sacrifice: an inter- 
 pretation neither justified by the use of διά at vers. 12 and 
 14, nor by such alleged parallels as Rom. 11. 27 and 1 John 
 v. 6. Θυσία here denotes neither an abiding condition nor 
 an accompaniment or means of Christ’s self-manifestation, 
 but simply a gracious action, by which, after His mani- 
 festation, the Redeemer has accomplished His purpose of 
 destroying sin. 
 
 That the sacrifice of Christ is a single act, and has been 
 made once for all, is regarded as a self-evident proposition. 
 Nor is it less so that it consists in the offering up of Him- 
 self, without its being necessary (with Tholuck) to aspirate 
 the αὑτοῦ here. Had the sacred writer meant this, he would 
 rather have written θυσία ἑαυτοῦ, if indeed either 6. αὑτοῦ 
 or ἑαυτοῦ could be regarded as a suitable mode of expressing 
 immolatio sui ipsius, for which we should rather expect (in 
 accordance with vil. 27) προσφορὰ ἑαυτοῦ. 
 
 Christ, then (such is the sacred writer’s thought), has once 
 for all stepped forth from the mysterious background of 
 the divine counsels on the stage of this world’s history, in 
 order to perform one sacrifice, by which, without any repeti- 
 tion or addition to it, He has once and for ever put away 
 the condemning power of repented and forgiven sin. This 
 has been already accomplished on His first advent; and (καί) 
 nothing more remains to be done at His second coming but a 
 glorious manifestation of Himself for judgment. 
 
 Vers. 27, 28. And inasmuch as there remaineth for men 
 once to die, and thereafter judgment ; so also Christ, having 
 once been offered to bear the sins of many, shall be manifested 
 a second time without sin to those that wait for him unto sal- 
 vation. 
 
 A comparison is employed to illustrate the impossibility 
 of such a πολλάκις προσφέρειν ἑαυτόν in the heavenly world 
 
134 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 as must have been preceded by a πολλάκις παθεῖν in this, 
 The comparison is of the nature of an argument from 
 analogy ; hence in the first member, καθ᾽ ὅσον instead of 
 καθώς : the truth concerning Christ resembles and may be 
 measured by the divine ordinance concerning mankind in 
 general; and there is indeed an inward relation between the 
 two members of the parallelism. If man, as such, can die 
 but once, so must it be with Jesus Christ likewise, when He 
 takes human nature upon Him, and is made in all things 
 like unto His brethren. But this point, on which most 
 interpreters lay undue, because a one-sided emphasis, does 
 not by any means exhaust the parallel. It is the judgment 
 to come, which awaits all men beyond the grave, which is 
 here put in comparison with the second advent of the Lord 
 in glory. It follows as a result, that there can be no repeated 
 self-offering of Christ, even in heaven, between the first and 
 second Advent. As human life, with all its works, comes to 
 an end in death, and only judgment follows, so the mini- 
 sterial work of atonement accomplished by our Lord in His 
 earthly passion is now complete, and nothing remains for 
 Him to do but to return as Judge in glory (Hofmann). 
 
 Let us consider in detail, first, what is here said of man 
 as such. (1.) He has once to die. This is what as man awaits 
 him. The verb ἀποκεῖσθαι, in the sense of to lie on one 
 side, to be reserved for the future, is used in the New Testa- 
 ment both by St. Luke (xix. 20) and by St. Paul (Col. i. 5; 
 2 Tim. iv. 8). The emphatic word in the clause is ἅπαξ : 
 the having once to die, and only once, on the part of man, 
 has for its reverse or analogon the impossibility of a πολλάκις 
 παθεῖν on the part of Jesus Christ. That once appointed 
 necessity of dying is not to be followed by a second, but by a 
 κρίσις (Kp. without the article, because equivalent to κριθῆναι, 
 a being judged), not in the sense of condemnation or punish- 
 ment (as at ch. x. 27), but simply of judgment passed on the 
 deeds done in the body, whether for good or evil. This 
 κρίσις, moreover, is not a judgment passed upon the soul at 
 death, as is evident from the last clause of i. 28, and τοῖς 
 ἀνθρώποις here, but the final judgment of the last day. 
 
CHAP. IX. 27, 28. 135 
 
 Now follows, in the second place, introduced by οὕτως 
 καί," the analogous assertion concerning our Lord, (2) that 
 He could but once offer Himself in the way of suffering, 
 and that His passion will be followed hereafter by a second 
 coming for final deliverance. (a) He has once been offered— 
 ἅπαξ προσενεχθεὶς εἰς TO πολλῶν ἀνενεγκεῖν ἁμαρτίας. The 
 participial construction (προσενεχθεὶς . .. ὀφθήσεται) is not 
 intended to subordinate the former to the later event, but 
 simply to mark the closeness of the connection between the 
 future reappearance of the now hidden Saviour and His 
 former self-offering here on earth. But why does the sacred 
 writer use the passive προσενεχθείς, and not (as we might 
 have expected) ἑαυτὸν mpocevéyxas? To mark the Lord’s 
 atoning death as being, in the first instance, not so much an 
 action as a πάθημω. The passive form has here a passive, 
 not a middle sense; nor can we supply, with St. Chrysostom, 
 a vd ἑαυτοῦ after it, as if the meaning were, “ offered by 
 Himself.” Neither can we properly supply a ὑπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ, 
 though the transaction on Mount Moriah and Rom. viii. 32 
 might be cited in favour of such an interpretation. Properly 
 speaking, it is humanity itself which makes the offering, as 
 Abraham was bidden to offer up Isaac. The victim to be 
 offered is “ given” (δοθείς), or “ given up” (παραδοθείς), 
 “ by God” (ὑπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ), but not in the proper sense of 
 the term “ offered” (προσενεχθείς) by Him. At the same 
 time, it would not be more correct to supply the ellipsis by 
 ὑπὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων. Those by whom the Lord was slain 
 had no thought of an atonement ; His own gracious intention 
 and will made of His death an atoning sacrifice. While, 
 therefore, the passive προσενεχθείς refers to the demoniac 
 violence of the act of betrayal and crucifixion, the εἰς τὸ 
 πολλῶν ἀνενεγκεῖν ἁμαρτίας which follows marks the divine 
 
 1 This καί is omitted in the textus receptus by an oversight of R. 
 Stephens, ed. 1550. For the thought of death as possible for man but 
 once, compare Sophocl. Fragm. ap. Nauck (Tragicorum Grecor. Fragm.), 
 p. 114: 
 
 To ζῆν γὰρ & παῖ, παντὸς ὕδιστον γέρας" 
 Θανεῖν γον οὐκ ἔξεστι τοῖς αὐτοῖσι δίς. 
 
136 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 purpose to which that violence was made subservient. "Ave- 
 νεγκεῖν is wrongly taken here also in a sacrificial sense by the 
 Peshito and others—per semet ipsum immolavit (N31) peccata 
 multorum; Chrysostom, Gicumenius, and Theophylact vainly 
 attempting to justify the interpretation, by the view that our 
 Lord is represented as offering (or presenting) our sins to 
 the compassion of the heavenly Father, in order to their 
 forgiveness and removal. Hofmann and Liinemann, fol- 
 lowing Luther and other older interpreters, would render 
 ἀνενεγκεῖν “to remove” or “ take away,” as = ἀφαιρεῖν in 
 x. 4. But this is likewise wrong. The taking away of sin 
 is indeed a consequence of the ἀνενεγκεῖν, but is not expressed 
 in the term itself, which never has that meaning. The 
 reference in the sacred writer’s mind is to Isa. liii. 12, καὶ 
 αὐτὸς ἁμαρτίας πολλῶν ἀνήνεγκε, Where the word in the 
 original is x3, which (like αἰρεῖν) combines the meanings 
 “ bear” and “ take away” (comp. Isa. lili. 4, where the cor- 
 responding word in the parallel is 5p = φέρειν). The 
 former meaning, “ bear,” or rather “ take upon oneself” 
 (ἀνα- φέρειν), is the only one properly represented by ἀνενεγ- 
 κεῖν here. (Compare for this sense, “ take on oneself,” the 
 classical phrases κινδύνους ἀναφέρειν, to incur dangers, and 
 ἀναφέρειν κλυδῶνα, to bring on oneself a sea of troubles.) 
 We therefore render, “ in order to take upon Himself (i.e. to 
 make atonement for or bear the penalty of) the sins of many.” 
 ᾿Ανενεγκεῖν ἁμαρτίας corresponds exactly to the Hebrew Nw, 
 with following accusative of the sin whose guilt (Lev. v. 1, 
 17) or penalty (Lev. xvii. 16, xx. 19 sq., xxiv. 15) is incurred. 
 This xa, both in the Pentateuch and Ezekiel, is commonly 
 rendered in the Septuagint by λαβεῖν ἁμαρτίαν, once by 
 ἀποφέρειν, and so also by ἀναφέρειν (Num. xiv. 33 sq.). 
 That this λαβεῖν and ἀναφέρειν are to be understood of an 
 atoning “ bearing” of sin, and not of a mere “ putting 
 away,” is superabundantly evident from Ezek. iv. 4-8, where 
 the prophet’s j)y nsw is symbolically represented. It is this 
 vicarious endurance of punishment for the sins of others which 
 is spoken of by our author here as an ἀνενεγκεῖν ἁμαρτίας 
 πολλῶν, and the sense is well rendered by the ad multorum 
 
CHAP. IX. 27, 28. bay ( 
 
 exhaurienda peccata of the Itala and Vulgate. Πολλῶν is 
 here not simply “ the many,” by whom the redemption thus 
 provided is appropriated, but mankind in general, for whose 
 sake it is obtained. It is opposed to ἅπαξ, and stands for 
 πάντων, in the same way as in the sacramental words of 
 institution, τὸ περὶ πολλῶν ἐκχυνόμενον. “ All men” are in 
 fact “ many;” but the offering made on their behalf is made 
 but “ once.” 
 
 And this offering “ once” made, and once only (and 
 therefore of eternal validity), is to be followed hereafter 
 (0) by only one more manifestation of the Redeemer, and 
 that of a different kind: ἐκ δευτέρου χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας ὀφθή- 
 σεται, K.T.X. This χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας proves the correctness 
 of our interpretation of ἀνενεγκεῖν. Had ἀνεν. simply meant 
 “ to put away,” 1.6. “ destroy” sin, the χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας pre- 
 dicated of the Redeemer in His second manifestation would 
 have been unintelligible and disturbing. But when dvevey- 
 κεῖν is taken in the sense of a vicarious assumption of the 
 cuilt or penalty of sin, the unmistakeable meaning of χωρὶς 
 ἁμαρτίας will be, “ without any further sin being laid upon 
 Him,” or “ unburdened further by any sin;” and that 
 without any necessity for regarding ἁμαρτίας (with Klee, 
 Tholuck, and others) as a metonym for the “ guilt” or 
 “ penalty” incurred by “sin.” And this interpretation is 
 true in fact as well as in grammar. In his ἀνενεγκεῖν (πολ- 
 λῶν) ἁμαρτίας the sacred writer is thinking not merely of 
 the natural consequences to the Lord of glory of a union 
 with and incorporation into our sinful and suffering hu- 
 manity, not merely of sufferings endured out of sympathy 
 with us, or imposed on Him simply by the malice of Satan 
 and ungodly men, but of a real vicarious endurance of the 
 penalty of sin, imposed by the will and counsel of a heavenly 
 Father, angered indeed, but willing to show mercy. When 
 He shall appear or be manifested, i.e. “ become visible,” or 
 “become visibly present,”’ to the world of humanity a second 
 time” (ἐκ δευτέρου, as at Acts x. 15, xi. 9, and elsewhere), 
 
 1 ὀφθήσεται, in accordance with which our Lord’s second coming, 
 παρουσία, is called an ὠποκάλυψις (2 Thess. i. 7 and 1 Pet. iv. 13). 
 
138 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 then His manifestation will be, not as the Sin-bearer, but as 
 the Judge. 
 
 It is quite incredible that the sacred writer could have 
 been thinking (as Bleek imagines), not of Christ Himself, 
 but of God the Father as the future Judge. That would 
 be a sentiment directly opposed both to our Lord’s own utter- 
 ances concerning Himself, and to the whole witness of New 
 Testament Scripture, which expressly teaches that it is by 
 Christ that God will hereafter judge the world. And scarcely 
 less strange is his further imagination, that the meaning of 
 χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας should be, that when Christ re-enters the 
 world all opposition to the divine will will have so entirely 
 disappeared from the created universe, that nothing will re- 
 main obnoxious to judgment, and so the second coming be a 
 coming “without sin.” Both imaginations are refuted by 
 the passage before us. Throughout both the Old and the 
 New Testament the final manifestation of Jehovah and of 
 Christ is a judicial one with a twofold aspect, bright and 
 fiery, loving and wrathful, for reward and for vengeance; 
 and now the one aspect, now the other, is made the more pro- 
 minent. ΤῸ the suffering church which longs and prays for 
 His coming, that coming brings nyw"; to the company of her 
 oppressors, O73; to both, a due reward for the deeds done in 
 the body. He, then, who is to appear hereafter τοῖς αὐτὸν 
 ἀπεκδεχομένοις for salvation, is Christ the Judge, as at Isa. 
 xxv. 9, lii. 10, Jehovah." The very term εἰς σωτηρίαν im- 
 plies the continued existence of evil or sin, from which σωτηρία 
 is the final setting free. The ἀπεκδεχόμενοι are the faithful, 
 who cease not to desire the return of their Lord and Saviour, 
 now hidden in God,—the term being a favourite one with St. 
 Paul; comp. 1 Cor. i. 7 and Phil. ili. 20. For their sakes, 
 to deliver them from an evil world and gather them to Him- 
 self, He will break through the invisibility in which He is 
 now shrouded (comp. Isa. xiii. 19). 
 
 Some (e.g. Primasius) would connect ἀπεκδεχομένοις with 
 
 1 Chrysostom: πὼς ὀφθήσεται ; κολάζων φησίν. "AAA? οὐκ εἶπε τοῦτο, 
 ἀλλὼ τὸ φαιδρόν (id quod est letum et jucundum). Stier’s interpretation, 
 “No longer as Priest, ministering for the removal of sin, but as King, 
 
CHAP. IX. 27, 28. 139 
 
 εἰς cwtnpiav— for salvation to them that wait for Him ;” 
 and to this construction is probably due the glossematical 
 reading (adopted by Lachmann in 1831, and given up again 
 in 1850), εἰς σωτηρίαν διὰ πίστεως or διὰ πίστεως εἰς σωτη- 
 ρίαν. But the dative τοῖς αὐτὸν ἀπεκδεχομένοις is more 
 naturally referred to the main verb, and the parallelism like- 
 wise requires it. (Comp. the phrase so frequently found in 
 the Old Testament, ἐγένετό μοι εἰς σωτηρίαν, Ex. xv. 2, Isa. 
 Ixiii. 8, and frequently.) The purpose of our Lord’s first 
 manifestation is the working out of our redemption by vica- 
 rious atonement; the purpose of His second coming will be 
 the complete realization of the redemption thus obtained. 
 
 We now enter on the second half of the third section, 
 which completes the treatise that forms the central portion 
 of the epistle; and recall to the recollection of our readers 
 that each of these three sections may be distinguished by 
 one word, giving the fundamental tone of the whole division. 
 The first of these sections might thus be entitled MEAXI- 
 SEAEK (ch. vii. 1-25); the second, APXIEPETS (ch. 
 vii. 26-ix. 12); the third, EIS TON AINNA (ch. ix. 13- 
 x. 18). This third section is throughout a development of 
 the idea contained in the concluding words (ix. 12) of its 
 predecessor—aiwviay λύτρωσιν εὑράμενος. The development 
 is also threefold, carrying out and perfecting the thoughts 
 contained in the two last verses of the preceding section 
 (me 1.12}. 
 
 The eternity of the redemption obtained by Christ is 
 demonstrated, first (ix. 13, 14), with reference to the dia τοῦ 
 ἰδίου αἵματος of ver. 12, from the infinite power of cleansing 
 in His atoning blood, as the vehicle of a life supported by 
 
 casting it beneath His feet,” is perfectly correct as sentiment, but the 
 latter thought is not here expressed. 
 
 1 The most important authority for the reading d:2 πίστεως is the 
 Alexandrine Ms. ; but the learned copyist or his original indulged not 
 unfrequently in peculiar thoughts, e.g. Jas. ii. 3, ὑπὸ τὸ ὑποπόδιον (τῶν 
 ποδῶν) with reference to Ps. ex.,—a reading which Lachmann has like- 
 wise adopted in his stereotype edition. 
 
140 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 Πνεῦμα αἰώνιον, an eternal Spirit; secondly (ix. 15-23), with 
 reference to the ἀρχιερεὺς τῶν μελλόντων ἀγαθῶν of ver. 11, 
 from the testamentary consignation by His death of an 
 αἰώνιος κληρονομία, an eternal inheritance ; and thirdly (ix. 
 24-28), with reference to the εἰσῆλθεν ἐφάπαξ εἰς τὰ ἅγια 
 of ver. 12, from the absolute and conclusive validity of His 
 one atoning self-oblation, once presented by His ascension to 
 the eternal Father, after which nothing remains to be accom- 
 plished but a re-manifestation in glory to judge the universe, 
 and confer the final and eternal fruits of that oblation on the 
 whole company of His redeemed. Such are the contents of 
 the first half of the third section of this part of the epistle. 
 The description of the eternal redemption obtained by 
 Christ is now, therefore, complete; and the sacred writer 
 might, as Hofmann remarks (ii. 1, 812), have at once pro-— 
 ceeded to the practical exhortation, which commences at x. 
 19; but before doing this, he expressly demonstrates, for the 
 sake of those of his readers whose minds might still be dis- 
 quieted by their exclusion from the services and communion 
 of the Mosaic sanctuary, how all need for such services is 
 for ever passed away, now that we have Christ Himself as 
 our High Priest exalted to the right hand of God. This 
 practical purpose and meaning in the passage (x. 1-18) is 
 not to be overlooked or denied; but there is more in it than 
 that. Forming, as it does, the second half of the concluding 
 section of the main and central portion of the epistle, it 
 recapitulates the principal thoughts of the whole treatise, 
 and gives them at the same time a higher and more perfect 
 expression. These thoughts are, as Hofmann himself has 
 elsewhere observed (Hntstehung, p. 344), the three follow- 
 ing: (1.) Christ’s own sacrifice of Himself, once offered, is 
 in antithesis to the annually repeated legal sacrifices (bulls 
 and goats) of the day of atonement, the complete and only 
 adequate fulfilment of the will of God (x. 1-10). (2.) 
 Christ's priestly service, in antithesis to the daily renewed 
 and ever imperfect ministries of the legal priesthood, was 
 discharged and perfected once for all in that great pontifical 
 action; and He is henceforth a Priest upon His throne, 
 
CHAP. X. 1. 141 
 
 with God waiting as a King for the final subjugation of all 
 His enemies (x. 11-14). (9.) Christ’s atoning death is the 
 inauguration of that new and everlasting covenant, which 
 was foretold in the prophetic word as a future inward reali- 
 zation of the divine law, and assurance of the perfect forgive- 
 ness of sins, and as such exclusive of every other possible 
 offering for sin (x. 15-18). In these three thoughts we have 
 an echo of the watchwords of the whole treatise: (1.) Christ, 
 by His atoning sacrifice accomplished here below, is our 
 ᾿Αρχιερεύς ; (2.) by His royal priesthood in the courts above, 
 He is Κατὰ τὴν τάξιν Μελχισεδέκ ; and (3.) by His posi- 
 tion as Mediator and Surety of an everlasting covenant, 
 founded on a perfect remission of sins, He is a Priest εἰς τὸν 
 αἰῶνα. 
 
 This second half is attached to the former by the particle 
 yap, the reference being to the whole paragraph (ix. 24-28). 
 The principle being assumed, that the typical shadow repre- 
 sents and interprets the antitype, it is shown from the 
 inadequacy and repetitions of the sacrifices of the law, what 
 Christ has really and fully accomplished by His atoning 
 death at the altar of the cross, and His entrance thereupon 
 into the antitypical sanctuary. 
 
 Ch. x. 1. For the law having a shadow of the good things 
 that are to come, not the very image of the things, can never- 
 more year by year, with those same sacrifices which they offer 
 continually, make them that draw nigh perfect. 
 
 We follow in our translation the textus receptus, which 
 is accepted by all our now living critics, except only that 
 Bleek and Tischendorf would substitute for ἅς the attrac- 
 tional ais (so D.N. and D.E. lat. quibus offerrent). Lach- 
 mann, on the other hand, insisted on putting a full stop after 
 πραγμάτων (in the ed. of 1831), leaving out ἅς (with A, and 
 seemingly with the Peshito, Philoxenian, and Armenian 
 versions), and reading δύνανται (with A, C, and D [in the 
 latter a correction], the Peshito, and the Philoxenian ; which 
 last read with A**, ai... δύνανται. Theophylact also, 
 notwithstanding the soleccistic construction, felt bound, from 
 
142 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 the weight of Ms. authority, to accept this reading). The 
 three sentences thus produced (reduced to two by Liachmann 
 himself since 1850, by the insertion of the relative ds before 
 προσφέρουσιν) would be, as Bleek and Liinemann have 
 fully shown, nothing but miserably disjecta membra. If 
 δύνανται were the right reading, we should in any case have 
 to regard the Σ᾽ κίαν yap ἔχων ὁ νόμος as a nominative abso- 
 lute, for which one might possibly compare viii. 1 and Luke 
 xxi. 6 (Winer, ὃ 63, d; cf. Nigelsbach, Anm. p. 244). The 
 construction would be anacolouthic, like Xenoph. Cyrop. v. 4, 
 34, τῆς yap μεγίστης πόλεως Βαβυλῶνος ἐγγὺς οὖσα (the 
 province of my father being near the great city of Babylon), 
 doa μὲν ὠφελεῖσθαι ἐστιν ἀπὸ μεγάλης πόλεως, ταῦτα ἀπε- 
 λαύομεν. But apart from the harshness of construction, so 
 unlike our author’s style, the plural δύνανται is in itself 
 improbable, inasmuch as it would here be attributing to the 
 priests what is elsewhere said of the law itself, or of the 
 legal sacrifices (comp. vii. 19, ix. 9, and x. 11),—a conside- 
 ration which led Bleek, with reason, to be disposed to regard 
 it, even had it appeared in the sacred writer’s own autograph, 
 as an involuntary slip of the pen. We adhere, therefore, to 
 δύναται (with D, and as a correction EI X), and in general to 
 the reading of the tewtus receptus, thus rendered by St. Jerome, 
 in a language more capable of representing the construc- 
 tion and ordo verborum of the original than our Teutonic : 
 Umbram enim habens lex futurorum bonorum, non ipsam ima- 
 ginem rerum, per singulos annos eisdem hostiis, quas offerunt 
 indesinenter, nunquam potest accedentes perfectos facere: for 
 which the old Itala has, per singulos annos tisdem hostiis quas 
 (or after D and E, quibus) offerunt infrequentiam nunquam 
 potest accedentes emundare (after the reading καθαρίσαι of 
 D, E). The main clause of the sentence, on which the rest 
 depend, is ὁ νόμος οὐδέποτε δύναται, the participial clause 
 σκιὰν ἔχων ὁ νόμος giving the ground of this impotency. 
 The law has but a shadow (σκιά) of the good things of the 
 future world (wmbra, adwnbratie ; cf. vii. 5 and note there). 
 These good things (bona) are still future, not only from the 
 standing-point of the law, but also for us: we still “look for” 
 
CHAP; Xai: 143 
 
 them; but, for us, since Christ has become our high priest 
 (cf. note on ix. 11), they are already dynamically present 
 (vi. 5). Instead of οὐκ αὐτὴν τὴν εἰκόνα for the antithesis, 
 we might have expected οὐκ αὐτὸ τὸ σῶμα, as in the sense- 
 related passage, Col. i. 15; and the Peshito accordingly ren- 
 ders εἰκών here by substantia, Luther by “ Wesen.” But 
 such is not the true meaning of the word. Bleek, De Wette, 
 vy. Gerlach, Liinemann, and the older commentator Schlich- 
 ting, suppose εἰκών here to be the representative image by 
 which the original is symbolized or expressed. This mean- 
 ing is quite a possible one (compare the εἰκὼν τοῦ Θεοῦ of 
 Col. i. 15); but using εἰκών in this sense, the sacred writer 
 would be attributing the characteristic of being an image or 
 representation to the New Testament as well as to the Old, 
 and the οὐκ αὐτήν would be denying something of the Old 
 Testament which it affirmed of the New. His meaning con- 
 sequently would be: The law hath but a mere shadow or 
 sketch, and not even a lifelike or proper representation, a 
 mere outline (as Menken expresses it), of the pattern shown 
 to Moses on the mount. (See note on viii. 5.) It is, how- 
 ever, far more natural to assume that by εἰκών here the 
 sacred writer would designate something which characterizes 
 the New Testatment in antithesis to the law. Bengel accord- 
 ingly interprets it, Jmaginem archetypam et primam, solidam- 
 que; Bohme, Ipsas res (πράγματα) certa sua forma et effigre 
 _ preditas; Stier, The lively and express form of the heavenly 
 things ; Ebrard, The true bodily shape which properly belongs 
 to the things themselves, and not merely a shadowy image of 
 them ; and, best of all, Tholuck, The archetype itself, which 
 is the essential form of the things themselves in relation to the 
 merely typical and shadowy representation of them. We have 
 indeed to understand εἰκών here in accordance with Col. 
 iii. 10, τὸν ἀνακαινούμενον Kat’ εἰκόνα τοῦ κτίσαντος αὐτόν, 
 and with Rom viii. 9, συμμόρφους τῆς εἰκόνος τοῦ υἱοῦ. The 
 meaning in both these passages is, not that the new man is 
 only like the image of his Creator, and not like the Creator 
 Himself, but rather that the Creator Himself, the Son of 
 God Himself, is that image or original to which the new man 
 
144 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 of the resurrection is to be conformed. And so the πράγ- 
 patra here are themselves the εἰκών, the genitive (τῶν mpay- 
 μάτων) being a genitive of apposition, or, as Ebrard not 
 inaptly calls it, a genitivus substantie. The Old Testament 
 is but a shadowy and unsubstantial sketch or outline of the 
 good things of the future world, not the substantial image and 
 form, which is that of the realities themselves. ΤῸ express 
 this more clearly, the sacred writer uses not simply αὐτῶν, 
 but πραγμάτων, πρᾶγμα being the actual substance, the thing 
 itself, in contradistinction to a sketch or copy of it. These 
 πράγματα, moreover, are not, as Hofmann and Baumgarten 
 (Zech. ii. 215) maintain, the fundamental facts of the New 
 Testament, but the heavenly realities which through those 
 facts are made accessible to us, present to our faith and 
 assured to our hope. 
 
 The law being thus an unsubstantial shadow of divine 
 realities, its impotence is made every year more manifest : 
 κατ᾽ ἐνιαυτὸν ταῖς αὐταῖς θυσίαις, ἃς προσφέρουσιν εἰς τὸ 
 διηνεκὲς, οὐδέποτε δύναται τοὺς προσερχομένους τελειῶσαι. 
 The προσφέροντες (D'IP) are the priests, or rather the 
 high priests, of the law; the mpocepyopuevos are the members 
 of the congregation of Israel who bring the sacrifices (ya 
 na7pn) ; and the sacred writer says κατ᾽ ἐνιαυτόν, not καθ᾽ 
 ἡμέραν, because it is the yearly day of atonement which he 
 has in view. Many interpreters connect this κατ᾽ ἐνιαυτόν 
 with ταῖς αὐταῖς θυσίαις = ταῖς αὐταῖς κατ᾽ ἐν. θυσίαις, or 
 ταῖς αὐταῖς θυσίαις, ἃς κατ᾽ ἐν. τὰς αὐτὰς προσφέρουσιν. [So 
 the authorized English version : can never with those sacrifices 
 which they offered year by year continually.| That such a con- 
 struction is unallowable, I would not maintain: κατ᾽ ἐνιαυτόν 
 might, as not unfrequently ἀεί, ἔτι, and πολλάκις, especi- 
 ally in the poets, be thus transposed; but the construction 
 with οὐδέποτε δύναται (Ebrard, Hofmann) is more natural 
 here, and also more in accordance with the author’s meaning, 
 which is not, that the law is nevermore capable of bringing 
 to perfection by means of sacrifices which are annually re- 
 peated ; but that this its incapacity is annually manifested, 
 viz. on the great day of atonement, when a fresh cycle of 
 
CHAP. X. 1. 145 
 
 legal sacrifices commences anew. Nor is it necessary (as 
 Hofmann would do) to connect εἰς τὸ διηνεκές with τελειῶσαι. 
 Surely προσφέρειν εἰς τὸ Sunvexés, “ to offer continually” 
 or “continuously,” may be said of an unbroken series of 
 annually repeated sacrifices; and being allowable, it is, from 
 the order of the words, the more natural and obvious con- 
 struction. Bleek and Liinemann are also quite right in 
 observing that the relative sentence ἃς προσφέρουσιν would, 
 without the addition εἰς τὸ διηνεκές, be bald and unmeaning ; 
 an objection which Hofmann fails to meet successfully by 
 making προσερχόμενοι the subject of προσφέρουσιν, against 
 the usus loguendi of the epistle, which, without exception, 
 uses προσφέρειν of sacerdotal ministrations, and at vil. 25 
 distinguishes the priest from the προσερχόμενοι. Hofmann’s 
 conception of the meaning of the passage is accordingly: 
 The law is unable year by year, i.e. on the annual return of 
 the day of atonement, to make perfect for a continuance 
 them that draw nigh, by those very same sacrifices (i.e. 
 animal sacrifices) which they (the προσερχόμενον) are wont 
 at other times to offer. But had such been the sacred 
 writer’s meaning, he must surely have written, ταῖς αὐταῖς 
 θυσίαις ταῖς καθ᾽ ἡμέραν ὑπ’ αὐτῶν προσφερομέναις, or the 
 like ; perhaps ταῖς αὐταῖς θυσίαις ἃς οἱ προσερχόμενοι δια- 
 παντὸς προσφέρουσιν. But in the words actually made use 
 of by him there is nothing to indicate the thought which 
 Hofmann would find there. The incapacity of the sacrifices 
 of the day of atonement to perfect the worshippers is not 
 _ proved by their resemblance to the daily sacrifices offered by 
 inferior priests, but simply by the fact of their perpetual 
 repetition ; and Tholuck observes with striking truth, that 
 this threefold κατ᾽ ἐνιαυτόν, ταῖς αὐταῖς θυσίαις, εἰς τὸ διη- 
 νεκές, represents almost pictorially the ever self-repeating 
 cycle of those annual acts of atonement. And from this it 
 is evident that the following question must refer to those 
 annual sacrifices of the Levitical high priest, and not to the 
 daily offerings of ordinary worshippers (Hofmann), or of the 
 inferior priests, though what is truly said of the one must be 
 ἃ fortiori true of the other. 
 VOL, II. K 
 
146 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 Ver. 2. For would they not then have ceased to be offered, 
 on account of the worshippers having no more a consciousness 
 of sins after being thus once cleansed? 
 
 The reading ἐπεὶ ἂν ἐπαύσαντο, for then they would surely 
 have ceased to be offered, is that of the textus receptus accord- 
 ing to the Elzevir editt. (but not that of Rob. Stephens), of 
 Beza since 1582, the Complutensian, and other old editions. 
 It gives a well-connected sense, but has all the uncials against 
 it, and very few authorities in its favour (even the Vulgate, 
 alioquin cessassent offerrt, being somewhat doubtful). Its 
 substitution for the other reading is probably explained by 
 the fact that the latter was liable-to be misunderstood (by 
 not being taken as an interrogative), and supposed to imply 
 what was evidently (even from the following verse) not the 
 case when the epistle was written, viz. that the ceremonial of 
 the day of atonement had already ceased in Israel (Gicumen., 
 Theophyl., Mill, etc.). On the other hand, ἂν ἐπαύσ. instead 
 of ἐπαύσ. ἄν is no real difficulty—conjunctions like ἐπεί 
 readily attracting ἄν, eg. ἐπάν or ἐπῆν (cf. Rost, ὃ 120, 
 Anm. 5)—and ἐπεί is often followed by an interrogative in 
 St. Paul as well as in this epistle (ix. 17). (Comp. Klotz 
 on Dev. ii. 542.) The construction of παύεσθαι with the 
 participle is, moreover, the regular one, and like Acts v. 42, 
 οὐκ ἐπαύοντο διδάσκοντες. The combination of ἄν with the 
 historical tense (Winer, 42. 1) implies that it may be taken 
 for granted that, had those yearly repeated sacrifices been 
 able to make perfect, they would before this have ceased to 
 be offered, διὰ τὸ μηδεμίαν ἔχειν ἔτι συνείδησιν ἁμαρτιῶν 
 τοὺς λατρεύοντας ἅπαξ κεκαθαρμένους, or (as, with Lachmann 
 against Tischendorf, we should prefer to read) κεκαθαρισ- 
 μένους (so A, Οὐ, D, E, K). The τελείωσις of the worshippers 
 is the complete restoration of their peace with God; and this 
 can only be attained by the complete removal of the barrier 
 formed by sin, by making them in the fullest sense κεκαθα- 
 ρισμένους. Had this ever really been once effected for the 
 congregation of Israel by the annual sacrifices of the day of 
 atonement, no need would have been felt for a repetition of 
 them. But it was not so. 
 
CHAP, X. 3. 147 
 
 Ver. 3. Nay, but in them is involved a fresh remembrance 
 of sin every year. 
 
 It comes to the same thing whether we regard ἀλλά here 
 as referring to the negative proposition of ver. 1, and having 
 simply the meaning “ but,” or as referring to the concluding 
 words of ver. 2, dua τὸ μηδεμίαν, and having that of “ Nay 
 but,” immo: whether we render, The law can nevermore 
 make perfect them that draw nigh,.. . but there is involved 
 (in its repeated sacrifices) a renewal of the thought of sin every 
 year ; or, Would there not have been a cessation of the Levi- 
 tical sacrifices on account of the cleansing of the conscience once 
 for all by one acceptable sacrifice? Nay, but (so far is this 
 from being the case, that) there ts a fresh remembrance made 
 before God of sins every year. The latter seems to be the 
 more natural construction, and there is no valid objection 
 to it. 
 
 The word ἀνάμνησις may be understood of the publica 8. 
 solemnis commemoratio of sins made by the high priest in the 
 three formal confessions of the day of atonement, especially 
 in the third, which began thus: “ O Lord! Thy people, the 
 house of Israel, have erred, and transgressed, and sinned against 
 Thee ;” but the other interpretation of ἀνάμνησις, in memo- 
 riam revocatio, as having a wider bearing, is certainly to be 
 preferred, and may equally involve an allusion to those three 
 liturgical acts of confession. It is confirmed, moreover, by 
 a parallel usage in Philo: eg. 11. 244, 7, εὔηθες γὰρ τὰς 
 θυσίας μὴ λήθην ἁμαρτημάτων, ἀλλ᾽ ὑπόμνησιν αὐτῶν κατε- 
 σκευάζειν ; 1. 845, 27, God hath, indeed, delight in jireless 
 altars round which the choirs of virtues move, but not in those 
 (material) ones, though burning with much fire, kindled for the 
 unconsecrated sacrifices of ungodly men,—sacrifices which only 
 bring to mind (ὑπομιμνήσκουσαι) the errors and sins of each. 
 Kai yap εἶπέ που (he proceeds) Μωῦσῆς θυσίαν ἀναμιμνή- 
 σκουσαν ἁμαρτίαν (referring to Num. v. 15, where the “ offer- 
 ing of jealousy” is called θυσία μνημοσύνου ἀναμιμνήσκουσα 
 ἁμαρτίαν) ; ii. 151, 21, where it is said of the prayers of the 
 unjust and unthankful, οὐ λύσιν ἁμαρτημάτων ἀλλ᾽ ὑπό- 
 μνησιν ἐργάζονται. In a like sense, then, we are to under- 
 
148 EFISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 stand the ἐν αὐταῖς ἀνάμνησις ἁμαρτιῶν here. The γίνεται 
 added by D and other authorities is not wanted, the meaning 
 being simply that in these annually repeated sacrifices is in- 
 volved (ts inest) an annually renewed remembrance of sin. 
 The sacred writer has in view what our older theologians 
 were wont to call the usws legalis sacrificiorum, without ex- 
 cluding from view altogether the usus evangelicus. That the 
 worshippers under the law derived some spiritual benefit 
 from a faithful, loving use of the legal sacrifices, would not 
 surely have been disputed by him; but that those sacrifices 
 had in themselves any inward or inherent purifying power, 
 he could never more allow. 
 
 Ver. 4. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and 
 of goats should take away sins. 
 
 Neither the blood of the bullock nor that cf the goat (the 
 sin-offerings of the day of atonement) could, on the one 
 hand, weigh in the balance against the guilt of a human 
 soul, nor, on the other, exercise any spiritual or cleansing 
 power on the inward man. It could not take away (ἀφαιρεῖν) 
 sin, and therefore could not really make atonement. (Cf. 
 Isa. xxvii. 9, LX X., where ἀφαιρεθήσεται is the rendering of 
 nea.) It could only sanctify πρὸς τὴν τῆς σαρκὸς καθαρότητα 
 (ix. 13), by restoring the worshippers to membership and 
 communion with the congregation of Israel, 1.6. the church 
 as constituted under the Old Testament, which, confined as 
 it was to the limits and determined by the circumstances of 
 a single nationality, could have for its main characteristic 
 only sanctified nature, and not spiritual regeneration." The 
 blood of animal sacrifices offered on the altar was indeed, 
 under the Old Testament, a divinely appointed means of 
 
 1 The excursus, Quid sit sacrificium et qu sint sacrificti species, which 
 forms part of Melanchthon’s Apology for the Augsburg Confession, puts 
 it thus: Levitica illa sacrificia propitiatoria tantum sic appellabantur ad 
 significandum futurum piaculum ; propterea similitudine quadam erant 
 satisfactorie redimentes justitiam legis ne ex politia excluderentur isti qui 
 peccaverant. The older scholastic theology had affirmed with not less 
 
 truth, that these so-called sacraments of the Old Testament had no ope- 
 ration of grace propria virtute, but simply per accidens, by means of the 
 
CHAP. X. 5-7. 149 
 
 making atonement for human souls (Lev. xvii. 11, “TI have 
 given it”), but a means manifestly inadequate to accomplish 
 its end, and therefore one ordained merely by way of accom- 
 modation, and for a temporary purpose. The animal sacri- 
 fice was but a shadow, and yet, as ordained by God, a true 
 indicator and prophecy, of another sacrifice in which the 
 divine will would be fully accomplished. 
 
 Vers. 5-7. Wherefore, entering into the world, he saith, 
 Sacrifice and oblation thou willedst not, but a body preparedst 
 thou for me: in whole burnt-offerings and sin-offerings thou 
 tookest no pleasure: then I said, Lo, I am come, in the roll of 
 the book tt is written concerning me: for the sake of doing thy 
 will, O God. 
 
 The self-oblation of Christ is that perfect end to which 
 all the imperfect sacrifices of the law point onwards; and a 
 prophetic anticipation of this the sacred writer finds in the 
 citation which he makes from Ps. xl. 7-9 (ΟΥ̓. 6-8). His 
 object is not so much to prove that already in the Old Tes- 
 tament itself we find the need expressed of a better sacrifice, 
 but rather to describe in Old Testament language the self- 
 determination of Christ to present Himself in sacrifice to 
 God over against the sacrifices of the law, and so to become 
 the oblation of the New Testament, accomplishing what 
 they were unable to accomplish. In this one and (in this re- 
 spect) unique passage of Scripture, the unsatisfactory nature 
 of the legal sacrifices, and their impotence to effect any real 
 reconciliation between God and man, is set in the clearest 
 contrast with the personal self-oblation of Christ, in its 
 infinite power to accomplish the divine will by effecting 
 that reconciliation. The author, regarding it in the light 
 
 faith which they excited or maintained in the future sacrifice of the 
 cross. This conditional operation by means of the offerer’s faith was 
 called an operatio per opus operans, and as such contrasted with the in- 
 dwelling grace of the sacraments of the New Testament, to which was 
 attributed an operatio ex opere operato. Against the confusions induced 
 by this unfortunate terminology, Melanchthon directs his argument in 
 that part of his Apology. 
 
150 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 reflected upon it by the New Testament, finds in these words 
 of the typical David an utterance of his divine Antitype, 
 and of Him as εἰσερχόμενος εἰς τὸν κόσμον, 1.6. as the in- 
 carnate Messiah of the New Testament, in the year of His 
 self-determination to choose the infinite and enduring good 
 (Isa. vii. 16). Other interpretations of the εἰσερχόμενος 
 seem inadmissible: e.g. the “ about to enter,” venturus, of 
 Erasmus (there being no need to assign to the present this 
 future sense here) ; or the “ entering on the public stage of 
 the world” of Bleek and De Wette (whereas the words are 
 addressed to the Eternal Father, and not to any human 
 auditory) ; or, finally, the nascendo of Bohme, the “ about to 
 take upon Him human nature” of Hofmann, since in that 
 case the σῶμα κατηρτίσω μοι would be hardly appropriate. 
 The words, moreover (εἰσέρχεσθαι εἰς τὸν κόσμον), may be 
 understood as not referring to any single point of time. The 
 language expresses the thought and will of the incarnate 
 Saviour, in the whole of His conscious work for God. 
 Regarding this fortieth Psalm from the point of view of 
 historical criticism, its language may be assigned to David 
 at a definite period of his life. It belongs, if we assume 
 the credibility of the inscription, to the times of the per- 
 secution of Saul. Among the last Psalms of this period 
 of nearly ten years, may be placed Ps. Ixi. (a cry “ from 
 the ends of the earth,” 7.e. from Philistia, during David’s 
 second residence there), Ps. xxxi. (where David, finding 
 himself already in the secure refuge of “a strong city,” 
 ‘can praise God for His acts of marvellous loving-kind- 
 ness), and this fortieth Psalm, where, though many mercies 
 are behind him in a gracious past, he is still looking and 
 longing for the final deliverance. In these Psalms David 
 cries shame upon himself for his weakness of faith (Ps. 
 xxxi. 23), is sensible of his nearness to the promised king- 
 dom (xi. 7), and exclaims, in consciousness of his high vo- 
 cation, Lo, I come! (xl. 8): praise and thanksgiving for 
 mercies already received outweigh complaints and suppli- 
 cation for those still needed. The fortieth Psalm has one 
 peculiar feature: beginning with praise, it ends with com- 
 
CHAP, X. 5-7. ak 
 
 plaint. The psalmist has experienced the divine deliverance ; 
 he is still compassed with danger and infirmity. His faith 
 and trust in God has not disappointed him; God has put 
 into his mouth a new, triumphant song of praise for the 
 encouragement of others (vers. 1-3); he celebrates the hap- 
 piness of the man who, like himself, has put all his trust in 
 that God who has wrought so many wonders for the deliver- 
 ance of Israel. But how shall he, the psalmist, now thank 
 his Saviour? Since neither animal nor vegetable sacrifices 
 have any value in the eyes of Jehovah, he determines, 
 instead of a victim, to offer himself; and instead of vegetable 
 offering or Minchah (ob/atio), to utter words of praise. The 
 words taken by our author from this context read in the 
 original as follows (vers. 7-9 or 6-8) :— 
 
 Victim and Minchah Thou desirest not, 
 
 But ears hast Thou pierced for me ! 
 
 Burnt-offering and sin-offering Thou requirest not. 
 
 Then said I: Behold, I come 
 
 With the roll of the book which is written concerning me : 
 To do Thy will, O God, is my desire, 
 
 Yea, and Thy law within my heart. 
 
 David’s utterance here, with the promised throne of Israel 
 full in view, is the echo of that judgment which had con- 
 demned Saul: Hath the Lord delight in burnt-offerings and 
 sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to 
 obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of 
 rams! (1 Sam. xv. 22.) It is in accordance with these 
 words of the prophet Samuel, of which in a certain way the 
 whole poetry of the Psalter is an echo, that,we must under- 
 stand the > nna DN of the present passage, which, pro- 
 perly rendered, is, Aures fodisti, 1.6. concaras reddidisti mihi— 
 Ears hast Thou bored, or hollowed out, for me, 1.6. given me 
 the sense and faculty of obedience to Thy recognised will. 
 Then follows with ts David’s consequent resolution, on dis- 
 cerning, by this spiritual sense of hearing, that obedience 
 and not sacrifice is demanded by God. The “ roll of the 
 book” with which he comes is the divine Thorah, especially 
 
ΠΡ EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 (it would seem) the book of Deuteronomy, which by the 
 lee regia of ch. xvii. 14-20 is ordained to become the 
 inseparable vade mecum of the future King of Israel: the 
 2 is that of accompaniment (like Ps. Ixvi. 13)— with the 
 book-roll which is written ;” and the ὃν introduces the sub- 
 ject of the writing (as 2 Kings xxii. 13, and frequently after 
 723)—“ concerning me.” It is with the Thorah, as the written 
 embodiment of the divine will, that David (resolved to do 
 that will) now presents himself, and so doing can say (ver. 9) 
 that willing obedience is his desire, and that the Thorah is 
 not merely an outward companion, but inscribed in his heart. 
 But now comes the question, With what right does the sacred 
 writer regard these words as an utterance of Messiah on His 
 entrance into the world? Not, surely (we confidently reply, 
 against many interpreters, including Baumgarten and Masch), 
 because he regards Messiah simply as the subject of the whole 
 Psalm. A mere glance at its second half, where David 
 speaks of “ iniquities more than the hairs of my head” as 
 overwhelming him, is sufficient to disprove this. The theory 
 of a typical interpretation is manifestly the only applicable 
 one, and that with the fullest right here: (1) Because David, 
 the anointed one, now on his way to the throne—a way 
 marked by trial and suffering—is the ancestor and type of 
 Jesus Christ; (2) because the Psalm, in rejecting material 
 sacrifice, substitutes for it the spiritual offering of the New 
 Testament, whose object, truth, and end is Jesus Christ ; 
 and (3) because the passage (Ps. xl. 7-9), however inter- 
 preted, remains without a parallel in the rest of the Psalter, 
 nay, in the whole of the Old Testament,—a mysterious utter- 
 ance of the first David, which to the instructed ear is-also 
 one of the Second, his antitype: comp. St. John viii. 29 
 and xvii. 6. In the version of the Septuagint, which is also 
 a monument of Old Testament Scripture, and as such 
 regarded with reverence by the writers of the New Testa- 
 ment,—a work not without traces of the influence of the 
 Divine Spirit,—this prophetic and typical character of the 
 passage is yet more evident. For, 
 
 (1.) The ots is there rendered by σῶμα δὲ κατηρ- 
 
 ee 
 
 ~~ ΄ 
 
CHAP. X. 5-7. 153 
 ticw pot, “ A body hast Thou prepared me;” so that the 
 notion of an inborn capacity of recognising and obeying the 
 divine will is expanded into that of a body given and pre- 
 pared for self-surrender to that will. That 3QMA is an 
 error of some ancient copyist for OeknoaC QTIA (as Bleek 
 and Liinemann conjecture), is highly improbable: very few 
 mss. have the reading t/a or ὦτα, and that derived from 
 the version of Theodotion, or from the fifth and sixth ver- 
 sions in Origen’s Hexapla; whence Eusebius and Jerome, 
 aures autem perfecisti mihi; while Augustine, in the ante- 
 Hieronymian version which lay before him, found only corpus 
 autem perfecisti. Still more impossible is it that the writer 
 of our epistle should have himself accommodated the trans- 
 lation of the original to the facts of the New Testament 
 history ; such alterations and accommodations of the received 
 text, or its Septuagint translation, being unknown to writers 
 of the New Testament. We must therefore infer that the 
 Septuagint translator himself substituted, for the strange- 
 sounding and easily misunderstood wtia ὠρυξάς (διωρυξάς) 
 μοι, the σῶμα and κατηρτίσω μοι of the text; κατηρτίσω 
 being by itself an easier and more general rendering of the 
 Hebrew n 3. Again, 
 
 (2.) The rendering ἐν κεφαλίδι βιβλίου γέγραπται περὶ 
 ἐμοῦ favours the assumption that He who is here speaking is 
 the One of whose coming Moses and all the prophets had 
 spoken. Nor can the rendering of the LXX. here be on 
 grammatical grounds objected to. The κεφαλίς is the roll 
 of parchment, so called from the projecting end of the 
 cylinder (Lat. wmbilicus) on which it was rolled. The 
 Hebrew may be easily understood as sententia nominalis— 
 in volumine libri scriptum est de me; and if we take in as 
 here = cum, yet the ‘by certainly means “ concerning me,” 
 whether as the subject of a precept or that of a prophecy. 
 The latter view connects itself more naturally with the Greek 
 rendering γέγραπται περὶ ἐμοῦ, and even so might be not 
 improperly understood to apply to David as a commencing 
 fulfilment of the prophecies made to the patriarchs—the king 
 of the tribe of Judah. The sacred writer, moreover, here 
 
154 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 would seem to be quoting the LX X. from memory. The 
 LXX. has, ὁλοκαυτώματα (B ὁλοκαύτωμα) καὶ περὶ ἁμαρτίας 
 οὐκ ἐσήτησας (A*, Β, ἥτησας) ; for which our author substi- 
 tutes, without any change of sense, εὐδόκησας, or (according 
 to A, B,C, D*, E, N) ηὐδόκησας. Further, in the clause τοῦ 
 ποιῆσάι TO θέλημά Gov, ὁ Θεός pov, ἤἠβουλήθην, he leaves out 
 the two last words, and so brings τοῦ ποιῆσαι into immediate 
 grammatical dependence upon ἥκω. Taking the original 
 Hebrew text, it would indeed be possible to render (with Hof- 
 mann, Weiss. i. 158, ii. 167), “to do Thy will, O my God, 
 wherein I have great pleasure ;” but unnecessary, and some- 
 what against the usus loguendi, which employs 3 to designate 
 a person in whom one takes delight, but Ἂ or a simple infini- 
 tive, to denote the action. The abbreviation, however, in our 
 epistle (whether intentional or otherwise) serves undoubtedly 
 to heighten the christological character of the passage, and is 
 in full accord with the spirit of the original; for the divine 
 will of which the Psalmist speaks is that inscribed in the 
 Thorah, and to fulfil that will is the purport of his mission. 
 David presenting himself to God, and declaring his readiness 
 to accomplish God’s will concerning him as king of Israel, 
 speaks ἐν πνεύματι, and therefore in typically-ordered words, 
 which issue, as it were, from the very soul of the antitype, 
 the Anointed of the future, who will not only be King of 
 Israel, but also Captain of their salvation, as of that of the 
 whole world, and speaks in words which express the spiritual 
 sacrifice of heart and will in such clear antithesis to the legal 
 sacrifices as was only fully realized in the self-offering of 
 Christ, the end and antitype of all other offerings. It is not 
 as if Christ, and not David, were the speaker: David speaks; 
 but Christ, whose Spirit already dwells and works in David, 
 and who will hereafter receive from David His human nature, 
 now already speaks im him. 
 
 Now follows the sacred writer’s interpretation of this 
 mysterious and significant utterance. 
 
 Vers. 8, 9. Above, when he saith, Sacrifices, and oblations, 
 and whole burnt-offerings, and sin-offerings, thou wouldest not, 
 
 a 
 
CHAP. X. 8, 9. BSE) 
 
 neither hadst pleasure therein ; such as are offered by the law: 
 he then saith, Lo, I am come to do thy will. (So) he taketh 
 away the first, that he may establish the second. 
 
 That the sacred writer prefers, instead of the simpler and 
 more regular ἀνώτερον εἰπών .. . ὕστερον λέγει, to write 
 ἀνώτ. λέγων . . . τότε εἴρηκεν, is to be explained thus: he is 
 more concerned to emphasize the internal connection of the 
 two utterances than their temporal sequence. He places 
 both by means of λέγων. . . εἴρηκεν in one line, and marks 
 by τότε (= the 38 of the original) that the one is the con- 
 sequens of the other. For the very reason that God’s will 
 and desire is not set on material sacrifices, the coming Christ 
 declares His readiness to make an offering of Himself in 
 order to accomplish that will. The tevtus receptus has in the 
 first half of the repeated citation θυσίαν καὶ προσφοράν, and 
 ὁ Θεός in the second, both due to the conforming hand of 
 some copyist. The reading adopted (from A, C, 1) ἢ, It., and 
 Vulg.) by Lachmann and Tischendorf, θυσίας καὶ προσφοράς, 
 is more suitable to a free recapitulation: God has no pleasure 
 in any kind of material sacrifices and oblations, neither in 
 θυσίαι = pn or ob, nor in προσφοραί elsewhere called 
 δῶρα = MN, nor in ὁλοκαυτώματα = Ny, nor in περὶ 
 ἁμαρτίας = nixon. The relative sentence αἵτινες κατὰ τὸν 
 νόμον (Lachm. and Tisch. κατὰ νόμον) προσφέρονται refers 
 to all the above-named species of sacrifice, which indeed may 
 all be comprehended under the term θυσίαι (the meat-offering 
 itself, προσφορά, being also called θυσία). The relative ὅστις 
 is used instead of ὅς, to denote that the persons or things re- 
 ferred to are considered with reference to their qualities or 
 kind (Biumlein, ὃ 317). It is those very sacrifices which 
 are still offered in accordance with the law that are here 
 designated as not properly in accordance with the divine will 
 by Him, who therefore adds: Lo, 7 am come to do Thy will! 
 
 Neither αἵτινες... . προσφέρονται nor the following ἀναιρεῖ 
 TO πρῶτον. . . are to be regarded as parentheses (Liinem.) : 
 
 αἵτινες belongs to the premiss, ἀναιρεῖ forms the conclusion. 
 Neither may we supply θέλημα after τὸ πρῶτον and τὸ δεύ- 
 τερον. It is not two divine wills (a first and a second) which 
 
156 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 are here spoken of (Hofm. Weiss. ii. 167); but simply that 
 which God willeth not is opposed as “a first,” which is taken 
 away to that which He willeth as “a second,” which is estab- 
 lished and abides. What God doth not will, is the offering 
 of material sacrifices; what He wills, is the free self-oblation 
 of a rational personality. The self-oblation of Christ is 
 therefore in entire accordance with the will of God, and as 
 such is opposed to, and takes the place of, all other sacrifices, 
 animal and material. “ Jn Christum,” says Origen, “ omnis 
 hostia recapitulatur.” The antithesis of ἀναιρεῖν and ἱστάναι 
 is similar to that of xatapyeiv and ἱστῶν (ἱστάνειν) at Rom. 
 ili. 31. For the conclusion drawn by ἀναιρεῖ without ovr, 
 comp. βλέπετε in this epistle, ch. ili. 12 and xii. 25. 
 
 A new sentence now begins, but is not introduced abruptly, 
 inasmuch as the τὸ δεύτερον of this last clause is the θέλημα 
 referred to in ver. 10. 
 
 Ver. 10. In which will we have been sanctified through the 
 oblation of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 
 
 The sacred writer advances from the threshold of the 
 action prophesied of in the Psalm, to its consequences to our- 
 selves. The accomplishment of the divine will of which the 
 Psalm speaks has the salvation of all men for its end. That 
 will therefore is not, in our author’s conception, a legal or 
 primitive will, but a gracious and redeeming will. It refers 
 to another sacrifice than those of the law,—a sacrifice which 
 they could but faintly foreshadow. In this will we are or 
 have been once for all sanctified; 1.6., in the accomplishment 
 of this will is based all our sanctification, effected by the self- 
 offering of Christ, or, as it is here called, with reference to 
 the σῶμα δὲ κατηρτίσω por, an offering of the body of Christ, 
 - προσφορὰ τοῦ σώματος ᾿Ιησοῦ Χριστοῦ (omit the τοῦ of 
 the textus receptus). 
 
 Instead of σώματος, D* and E* read αἵματος, an altera- 
 tion which betrays and condemns itself. The unusual ex- 
 pression προσφορὰ τοῦ σώματος may be justified by an appeal 
 to Rom. vii. 4, Col. i. 22, and elsewhere. The sacrificial 
 death of Christ is here contemplated not (as it would be 
 
CHAP. X. 10 15% 
 
 with the reading αἵματος) from the point of view of the 
 typical ny‘nw, but from that of the miypn. The cross is the 
 altar on which He offered Himself for us as a προσφορὰν καὶ 
 θυσίαν τῷ Θεῷ, εἰς ὀσμὴν εὐωδίας (Eph. v. 2). His blood- 
 shedding was our propitiation, the offering of His body our 
 sanctification, even as in the typical sacrifices the shedding 
 of the blood of the victim was for the reconciliation of the 
 offerers with the Godhead, while the offering of the flesh of 
 the victim by the so reconciled offerers renewed and re-knit 
 their communion with God. The adverb ἐφάπαξ belongs 
 here neither to διὰ τῆς προσφορᾶς... by itself (as, for 
 example, Bloomfield), nor to it along with ἡγιασμένοι (as 
 Winer), but to the latter exclusively (so Bleek, Liinemann, 
 Hofmann, and most others) ; and this not so much because 
 it ought otherwise to have been written τῆς ἐφάπαξ (ci: 
 Winer, § 20, 2), as because in the present context it is the 
 most natural construction. That inward holiness, which the 
 sacrifices of the law with all their annual repetitions were 
 unable to produce, has been effected once for all through 
 the offering of the body of Jesus Christ. ‘The same would 
 be the case also with the other reading adopted by Tischen- 
 dorf, ἡγιασμένοι ἐσμὲν of διὰ τῆς προσφορᾶς... ἐφάπαξ: 
 here likewise we should have to supply in thought ἁγιασ- 
 θέντες, ὄντες, or γενόμενοι after of But this harsh elliptical 
 οἱ (found in the teatus receptus as presented by Stephens, but 
 omitted by Beza and the Elzevirs) spoils the rhythm of the 
 sentence, and introduces a needless tautology. It is probably 
 due (as already observed by Bleek) to a thoughtless blunder 
 of some copyist writing ἡγιασμένοι ἐσμὲν oi. 
 
 The writer of the epistle having thus shown (vers. 1-10) 
 that the self-oblation of Jesus Christ, in contrast with the 
 sacrifices of the law, was the only true realization of the 
 divine will for our sanctification, proceeds (vers. 11-14) to 
 exhibit Christ’s priestly service in contrast with the daily 
 repeated, because ever inefficient, service of the priests of 
 the law, as for ever perfected by one high-priestly act, which 
 has issued in His kingly exaltation and waiting for the final 
 subjugation of His foes. The concluding thought (1-10) 
 
158 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 was, that our sanctification as the fruit of Christ’s self-obla- 
 tion had been provided for ἐφάπαξ; and now the thought to 
 be expressed (11-14) is, that Christ’s self-oblation is μία, 
 and accomplished ἐφάπαξ: that He is henceforth seated at 
 the right hand of God, instead of ministering as a priest be- 
 fore Him, as having accomplished by His one offering all that 
 the priests of the law were unable to effect; that He is now 
 with God, ruling, not ministering, and waiting on His throne 
 for the ultimate reward of His priestly ministry (Hofmann, 
 Schrift. 1. 1. 316). With the καί of ver. 11 is introduced 
 a new contrast between the priesthood of the New Testa- 
 ment and that of the Old—the Melchizedekian or royal 
 character of the former. The priests of the law are for 
 ever engaged in unremitting but fruitless labours; the High 
 Priest of the gospel has entered into a royal and heavenly 
 rest. 
 
 Vers. 11, 12. For while every priest standeth day by day 
 ministering, and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, the 
 which nevermore can take away sins; this man, on the con- 
 trary, having offered one sacrifice on behalf of sins, sat down 
 Jor perpetuity on the right hand of God. 
 
 Authorities waver between the ἱερεύς of the textus receptus 
 and the ἀρχιερεύς of Lachmann. ‘Tischendorf in 1841 pre- 
 ferred ἀρχιερεύς, in 1849 ἱερεύς, and in 1855 (in the Triglot 
 edition) he returned to ἀρχιερεύς. One may see from this 
 wavering, that the external evidence is about equal on both 
 sides. De Wette asserts that internal probability may with 
 equal propriety be claimed for both. Bleek and Liinemann, 
 on the other hand, decide for ἀρχιερεύς, because (as they 
 say) the whole parallelism between the high priest of the 
 Old Testament and the High Priest of the New would be 
 weakened if the final conclusion were drawn from a com- 
 parison with the ordinary priests; against which De Wette 
 remarks, that the writer of the epistle advances here from 
 the special comparison with the high priest’s sacrifices on the 
 day of atonement, to a general one with those of the ordi- 
 nary priests at all times. Tholuck, in the same strain, says 
 
 << se  ἸὩΝΝῚ 
 
CHAP. X. 11, 12. 159 
 
 better: “ The same wearisome circle of ineffectual efforts 
 which has been shown to characterize the performances of the 
 high priest on the day of atonement, is now exhibited as 
 characteristic of the priestly institute in general.” And still 
 better Bohme: “ Stantibus Judeworum sacrificulis pontifex 
 calestes sedens e regione ponitur.” Hofmann also excellently: 
 “ Hitherto the argument has been, that Christ's high-priestly 
 action was the only adequate fulfilment of the divine will for 
 our sanctification, and that this has been accomplished once for 
 all; now, on the other hand, it turns on His session at the 
 right hand of God, as a proof that no further priestly mini- 
 stration on His part is necessary. The contrast, therefore, is 
 now drawn between Him and the priests of the law in general, 
 and not merely the high priest in particular.” 
 
 But apart from all such arguments, the reading ἀρχιερεύς 
 is to be rejected as an unfortunate correction made from 
 vil. 27, v. 1, viii. ὃ, and ix. 25. To say that the high priest 
 of the law stands daily ministering would be a monstrous 
 error; and we have already shown at vii. 27, that our author 
 could not have been so strangely ignorant of the law and the 
 Levitical customs as such an error would imply. Bleek’s 
 conjecture (accepted also by Liinemann), that even those 
 sacrifices which the high priest did not offer himself might 
 be attributed to him (on the principle, facit per alios, factt 
 per se), is one unsupported by Scripture or Jewish opinion. 
 On the other hand, Bleek and Liinemann’s objection, that 
 had the sacred writer meant to use ἱερεύς, he must have 
 written οἱ ἱερεῖς, and not πᾶς ἱερεύς, because it is not true 
 that every priest ministered daily, is easily answered. The 
 writer is not concerned to affirm a daily ministration on the 
 part of each individual priest: it is enough for him that the 
 ministry itself is a daily one, in which each priest takes his 
 turn by lot or order, as the case may be. That he clearly 
 has the service of the temple in view, is evident from his use 
 of the word ἕστηκεν, “to stand before the Lord” (A "385 sy) 
 being the standing term for Levitical service (Deut. x. 8 
 and xviil.7). No priest, indeed, nor any other person but the 
 king of the house of David, was permitted to sit down in 
 
160 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 the inner court, and the priests only to sit outside it when 
 engaged in the duties of the watch. 
 
 To λειτουργεῖν is added, as its principal feature, προσφέ- 
 pew with καί (= and especially). His office is to minister as 
 a priest, 7.e. especially to offer sacrifices. Of this sacrificing 
 Levitical priest the sacred writer affirms three things: (1.) 
 He offers sacrifices oftentimes, again and again (πολλάκις). 
 (2.) He offers always the same sacrifices (τὰς αὐτάς). (3.) 
 They are of such a kind (aitwes) that they cannot really take 
 away sins. Περιελεῖν is to take clean away (compare Acts 
 xxvil. 20, περιηρεῖτο πᾶσα ἐλπίς), 1.6. to put off like the gar- 
 ment which clings to the person, or the ring on the finger ; 
 as, for instance, the besetting sin of xii. 1, εὐπερίστατον 
 ἁμαρτίαν, or the besetting infirmity (περίκευται ἀσθένειαν) of 
 ver. 2. The sacred writer does not mean to say that sins 
 were not forgiven to sacrificial worshippers under the law, 
 but that the legal sacrifices had no inward spiritual power to 
 give peace to the conscience, or any assured sense of pardon, 
 purity to the heart, or any really new beginning of spiritual 
 life (ch. ix. 9). With these in their subject-matter and 
 their inadequacy, ever similar and oft-repeated sacrifices, 
 he contrasts (ver. 12) the μία ὑπὲρ ἁμαρτιῶν θυσία of Jesus 
 Christ, which (as every reader knows) is no other than Him- 
 self. The force of the antithesis does not, however, lie in 
 the participial clauses, but in those of the main sentence: 
 πᾶς μὲν ἱερεὺς ἕστηκε καθ᾽ ἡμέραν... οὗτος δὲ... εἰς TO 
 διηνεκὲς ἐκάθισεν ἐν δεξιᾷ τοῦ Θεοῦ. A glance at this anti- 
 thetical parallelism is sufticient to show that εἰς τὸ διηνεκές 
 is not to be referred to the participial sentence, as by 
 Theophylact, Castellio, Valcken., Bohme, Kuincel, and Lach- 
 mann (in which case Luther’s translation would be correct : 
 now that He has offered one sacrifice for sin, which is of 
 eternal validity [and so, according to our pointing, the English 
 version: after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever] ; 
 or, as it might be rendered better still: having offered one 
 sacrifice for sins of eternal validity), but to the final clause 
 of the main sentence. And, moreover, the process of the 
 argument is against such a construction: in vers. 1-10 the 
 
 w 
 
CHAP. X. 13. 161 
 
 main thought is indeed the sacrifice made once for all 
 (ἐφάπαξ), but now in vers. 11-14 it is the enthronement for 
 eternity. Asati. 13 the καθίζειν of the Son is opposed to 
 the ἀποστέλλεσθαι of the ministering angels, so here the 
 ministerial éornxévae of the priests on earth to the royal 
 καθίζειν of Christ in heaven, who, according to the reading 
 οὗτος (which on Ms. authority is to be preferred to the αὐτός 
 of the teat. rec.), is also a Priest; no longer indeed a mini- 
 stering, but a ruling Priest—a royal Priest—a Priest, in fact, 
 after the order of Melchizedek. Menken says well and 
 truly: The priest of the Old Testament stands timid and 
 uneasy in the holy place, anxiously performing his awful 
 service there, and hastening to depart when the service is 
 done, as from a place where he has no free access, and can 
 never feel at home; whereas Christ sits down in everlasting 
 rest and blessedness at the right hand of Majesty in the 
 holy of holies, His work accomplished, and He awaiting its 
 reward. 
 
 Ver. 13. From henceforth expecting until his enemies be 
 made the footstool of his feet. 
 
 The citation (made already, i. 13) is from the 110th 
 Psalm. It is re-introduced here to remind the readers of all 
 that has been said before of the Priest after the order of 
 Melchizedek. The words are cited in a similar way by 
 Ignatius in the Epistle to the Trallians, ch. ix. (but using 
 περιμένων instead of ἐκδεχόμενος). By the “ enemies” are 
 to be understood all opposing powers (1 Cor. xv. 23-26). 
 For their subjection He will wait (τὸ λοιπόν) all the remain- 
 ing time till the end of the present world, in whose history 
 the great turn was made by His great self-sacrifice (ch. ix. 
 26). That end will consist in His second advent (ix. 28), 
 when the victory accomplished by His death and resurrec- 
 tion will be fully realized by the separation, binding, and 
 elimination of everything in the universe opposed to God, 
 in the order described by St. Paul (1 Cor. xv.), between 
 whom and the author of our epistle here there is no contra- 
 diction, as Liinemann imagined. 
 
 VOL. 1. L 
 
162 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 But here two questions arise, demanding an answer :— 
 (1.) How can the sacred writer mean to say that Christ no 
 longer performs any priestly service, when, according to 
 viii. 1 et sq., He is the λειτουργός of a sanctuary, and hath 
 something wherewith to offer? Answer: Those statements 
 are not contradicted here, but explained to mean that the 
 heavenly priesthood of Christ, consisting solely in the pre- 
 sentation of Himself as the high-priestly sacrifice, involves 
 no changes of ministerial activity, and imposes no further 
 burden of atonement-making work; He is now and hence- 
 forth the High Priest upon His throne,—none other, in fact, 
 than the Eternal King, seated in unapproachable and ever- 
 lasting rest. But again, (2.) Is not our author’s statement 
 here inconsistent with that of St. Paul (1 Cor. xv. 23-26), 
 who makes the κατάργειν of death to be the work of Christ ? 
 A reference to ii. 14 and ix. 28 is sufficient to show that our 
 author himself could have meant no otherwise. The anti- 
 thesis on which he is here dwelling is simply between the 
 labour and passion of His earthly life, and the unchanging 
 blessedness of its perfection above. Christ no more descends 
 to fight; His strivings are over: He takes part as to His 
 whole being in the omnipotent dominion of the heavenly 
 Father, and awaits the final manifestation of His power. 
 
 Ver. 14. For by one oblation hath he perfected for per- 
 petuity them that are being sanctified. 
 
 This εἰς τὸ διηνεκές corresponds to that of ver. 12. Christ 
 is evermore enthroned, because He has perfected for ever. 
 The work of sanctification being once for all accomplished 
 by His one sacrifice, He needs not to leave any more His 
 everlasting rest in order to offer any further sacrifice. We 
 might accentuate thus, μία yap προσφορά (= for one oblation 
 hath perfected, etc.) ; but it is much more probable that in 
 the sacred writer’s mind Christ is still the subject, his pur- 
 pose being to show on what grounds, and by what right, He 
 can thus enjoy so triumphant a rest. It is because His work 
 is accomplished, and needs nothing more to complete it, nor 
 any repetition. Teredelwxer, it is perfect, requiring no addi- 
 
CHAP. X. 15-17. 163 
 
 tion; but, at the same time, it is not as to its effect a past 
 work, but one perpetually realized in those who accept it, and 
 as thereby being sanctified (τοὺς ἁγιαζομένους, pres. part.). 
 It needs therefore no repetition. The force of Hofmann’s 
 argument, against Bleek, De Wette, and others, that τοὺς 
 ἁγιαζομ. is to be understood here, not of a personal appre- 
 hension of the Lord’s redeeming work, but of reception into 
 the Christian community, I cannot see. The meaning surely 
 is similar to that of the ἁγιαζόμενοι of ii. 14, where we showed 
 that καθαρίζειν and ἁγιάζειν are synonymous. The ἁγιαζό- 
 μενοι are those who by acts of faith (comp. Acts xx. 32 and 
 Xxvl. 18, ἁγιασμέν. πίστει) make the accomplished work of 
 Christ individually their own. For this reason the sacred 
 writer says not τοὺς τελειωμένους, but τοὺς ἁγιαζομένους. 
 The being sanctified (in which is here included both imputed 
 and imparted holiness, and cleansing from sin, justification 
 and sanctification) is the subjective process by which the 
 perfected objective work of Christ is realized in believers. 
 Those who submit themselves to the gracious rule of the 
 high-priestly King, find in Him all that they need for their 
 perfecting. He has provided all that they can require by 
 His one self-sacrifice: they can add nothing to His perfect 
 work, 
 
 That so it is, is testified by the prophetic word which, in 
 foretelling the future establishment of a new covenant, 
 makes one of its characteristic notes to be an absolute for- 
 giveness of sins. 
 
 Vers. 15-17. And a witness to us hereof is also the Holy 
 Spirit: for after having said before, This is the covenant 
 which I will covenant with them after those days, the Lord 
 saith, Putting my laws upon their hearts, and on their minds 
 will I write them; and their sins and their iniquities will I 
 remember no more. 
 
 The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of prophecy, and from 
 Him comes the whole God-inspired (θεόπνευστος) written 
 word. He also in that word is the witness, that with Christ’s 
 return to the Father all is accomplished, and nothing remains 
 
164 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 to be done to procure for us inward perfecting, and a com- 
 plete restoration to communion with God. In ἡμῖν the 
 author assumes identity of faith and conviction in his readers 
 and himself. He gives an extract from the words already 
 cited (at vill. 8-12) from the prophecies of Jeremiah. The 
 words αὕτη ἡ διαθήκη... ἐπιγράψω αὐτούς are from Jer. 
 χχχὶ. 33a, and the following καὶ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν . .. ἔτι are 
 from Jer. xxxi. 34d (its final clause). Instead of the τῷ 
 οἴκῳ ᾿Ισραήλ, retained at viii. 10, we find πρὸς αὐτούς here, 
 the prophecy being thus raised above its national limitations, 
 and, as it were, universalized. Instead of διδοὺς νόμους 
 μου εἰς THY διάνοιαν αὐτῶν καὶ ἐπὶ καρδίας αὐτῶν ἐπιγράψω 
 αὐτούς, we have here, without any special motive for the 
 change, the apparently accidental inversion: διδοὺς. . . 
 ἐπὶ καρδίας αὐτῶν καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν διανοιῶν αὐτῶν ἐπιγράψω 
 αὐτούς. (Lachmann and Bleek, following A, C, D*, and 
 other authorities, read ἐπὶ τὴν διάνοιαν.) Instead of the ὅτι 
 ἵλεως ἔσομαι ταῖς ἀδικίαις αὐτῶν καὶ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν 
 (to which the tevtus receptus adds, καὶ τῶν ἀνομιῶν αὐτῶν) 
 ov μὴ μνησθῶ ἔτι, we have here the contracted sentence, καὶ 
 TOV ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν καὶ TOV ἀνομιῶν αὐτῶν οὐ μὴ μνησ- 
 θήσομαι ἔτι. The sacred writer regards the words which he 
 is citing as an utterance of the Holy Spirit, and yet deals so 
 freely with them; but this very freedom with regard to the 
 mere letter of Scripture is also a work of the Holy Spirit. 
 The prophecy thus cited consists of two parts. The first is 
 introduced by the formula peta τὸ προειρηκέναι, “ after 
 having said—before” (προ [omitted by Lachmann and Bleek, 
 after A, C, D, E, Peshito, Philoxenian, etc.] is to be taken 
 not in the sense of Rom. ix. 29, but in that of ἀνώτερον at 
 ver. 8); the second is indicated by no such corresponding 
 formula (which induced some copyists and translators to in- 
 troduce before ver. 17 a ὕστερον λέγει, τότε εἴρηκεν, or the 
 like). It is generally allowed, since Beza and Camerarius, 
 that the sacred writer uses the λέγειν ὁ Κύριος of the original 
 to introduce the second half of his citation (after having 
 said before, “ This is the covenant,” etc., the Lord goes on 
 to say, “‘ Putting my laws,” etc.). We should therefore after 
 
CHAP. X. 18. 165 
 
 λέγει Κύριος set a colon, and with Lachmann and Tischen- 
 dorf begin the following clause, Audovs, «.7.A., with a capital 
 letter, but not treat the καί at the beginning of ver. 17 in 
 the same way as, for instance, Bohme and Kiihnél. Kai 
 is indeed used by our author to introduce a fresh quotation 
 (as at i. 10, according to Bleek and Hofmann, and probably 
 also at 1. 8; see note there), but here it would be disturbing 
 to the sense to divide the promise of forgiveness of past trans- 
 gressions of the divine law from its necessary condition—the 
 writing of that law upon the heart. God the lawgiver can- 
 not deny Himself. The νόμος of the Old Testament is not 
 destroyed, but deepened and spiritualized. The law once 
 written on the heart, passes from the condition of a mere 
 γράμμα to that of πνεῦμα : man’s relation to God becomes 
 inward and spiritual, and his desire for salvation ceases to 
 demand an outward work, but concentrates its view upon the 
 grace already procured, and seeks to enter into and apprehend 
 it. This once for all justifying grace is the basis on which, 
 according to Jeremiah, the new covenant is founded. It 
 follows, therefore, plainly from this prophecy, that the new 
 covenant, of which the Mediator has appeared in the person 
 of Jesus Christ, must be the end of all the sacrifices of the 
 
 Old Testament. 
 
 Ver. 18. For where there is forgiveness of these, there is no 
 more sacrifice for sin. 
 
 Where there is an ἄφεσις τούτων (i.e. τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν Kal 
 τῶν ἀνομιῶν), 1.6. Where there is an absolute forgiveness of 
 sins, no room or necessity remains for any sin-offering, any 
 further atonement, and consequently for the legal sacrifices 
 which were instituted to meet man’s need and craving for 
 such atonement, but were unable in themselves to satisfy it. 
 
 We have now reached the conclusion of the great tripar- 
 tite treatise, which forms the central main division of our 
 epistle (vii. 1-25, vil. 26-ix. 12, and ix. 13-x. 18); “ Christ, 
 after the order of Melchizedek, High Priest for eternity,” 
 being the great theme which is here worked out. ‘The three 
 
166 EPISTLE 10 THE HEBREWS. 
 
 main thoughts developed are, as we have seen: (1) That 
 Christ’s priesthood, being of Melchizedek nature, is as highly 
 exalted above the Levitical as heaven is above earth (vii. 
 1-25); (2) that Christ has accomplished, by His one high- 
 priestly self-oblation, that which the Levitical priesthood with 
 all its sacrifices was unable to accomplish (vii. 26-ix. 12); and 
 (3) that our present and future salvation is assured in Him 
 who, as the eternal Priest upon His royal throne, awaits the 
 appointed time when He shall come again, no longer as a sin- 
 bearer, but in heavenly majesty for final judgment (ix. 13- 
 x. 18). In vii. 1-25 is shown what is meant by saying that 
 Christ is a priest after the order of Melchizedek, and not 
 after that of Aaron ; in vil. 26-ix. 12, that He is neverthe- 
 less, in virtue of His one oblation, presented in the heavenly 
 sanctuary the antitype of Aaron, whose priestly functions 
 were types and shadows of His. He is not only Priest, but 
 High Priest. And in ix. 13-x. 18 is shown, in contrast to 
 the wearisome cycle of legal sacrifices, the eternal validity 
 of the one high-priestly self-sacrifice of Christ. The latter 
 half of this third section (x. 1-18) recapitulates, as we have 
 shown, the main thoughts of the whole treatise. The high- 
 priesthood of Christ based on His one sacrifice of Himself, 
 
 its royal Melchizedek character, and the eternal validity of ' 
 
 its accomplished work, are all recapitulated and reinforced 
 by fresh appeals to Old Testament Scripture—to Ps. xl., to 
 Ps. cx., and to Jer. xxxi. It should also be observed that 
 already, as far back as ch. v. 1-10, the sacred writer began 
 preparing his readers for the developments of this treatise. 
 After showing there the essential resemblances between the 
 priesthood of Aaron and that of our Lord, he is proceeding 
 to speak of the higher dignity and Melchizedekian character 
 of the latter, when he suddenly pauses and interrupts him- 
 self. So impressed, indeed, is he with the low condition of 
 spiritual discernment in his readers, and their consequent 
 peril from temptations to apostasy, that, breaking off at the 
 point already reached (v. 10)—“‘ called by God an high 
 priest after the order of Melchizedek”—he continues with 
 a parenthetical episode of rebuke, warning, and exhortation 
 
CHAP. X. 18. 167 
 
 (extending from ν. 11 to vi. 20), and so at length, at the end 
 of the sixth chapter, returns to the theme already laid down, 
 that Christ, after the order of Melchizedek, has become an 
 high priest, and that for eternity. [Compare the κατὰ τὴν 
 τάξιν Μελχισεδὲκ ἀρχιερεὺς γενόμενος εἰς Tov αἰῶνα of vi. 20 
 with the previous προσαγορευθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἀρχιερεὺς 
 κατὰ τὴν τάξιν Μελχισεδέκ of ν. 10.] From this it will be 
 seen that there is the closest connection between the section 
 ch. v. 1-10 and the following treatise (ch. vil. 1-x. 18), 
 and that the whole section ch. v. 11—-vi. 20 is in fact an 
 episode. Moreover, if, omitting this episode, we regard v. 
 1-10 and vii. 1-x. 18 as forming one whole, then v. 1-10 
 will be the preface or introduction, and x. 1-18 the epi- 
 logue or conclusion. And if we look back further still, to 
 the commencement of the epistle, and review the whole 
 argument from the first verse to the point we have now 
 reached (ch. x. 18), we shall see that the superiority of the 
 new covenant to the old is throughout, and from all sides, 
 illustrated by the superior dignity of its Mediator. The 
 super-angelic character of the Divine Son and Prophet, in 
 comparison with whom Moses and Joshua were but servants ; 
 the high-priestly character of Him who, for our sakes, has 
 been made like unto His brethren; and the royal dignity 
 associated with it, of Him who is returned to God, and is 
 now reigning with God,—all this now stands clear before 
 our minds: the glory of the new covenant is as that of the 
 sun when he goeth forth in his strength, and the moonlight 
 
 of the old has paled away before it. 
 
THIRD PART OF THE EPISTLE. 
 
 CHAP! x. 19--Χ1Π. 
 
 THE DISPOSITION OF MIND AND MANNER OF LIFE RE- 
 QUIRED OF US IN THIS TIME OF WAITING BETWEEN 
 THE COMMENCEMENT AND THE PERFECTING OF THE 
 WORK OF OUR SALVATION. 
 
 Cuap. x. 19-39.—Ezhortation to approach the newly opened 
 heavenly sanctuary with full assurance of faith; to hold 
 fast the confession of our well-assured hope; to exercise 
 mutual vigilance over one another, in expectation of the 
 inevitable day of judgment which will overtake with its 
 penalties all those who wilfully apostatize from the once 
 received truth; and to abide in the stedfastness of former 
 days of trial, so as not finally to lose the recompense of 
 
 reward which that day will bring to those who live by 
 faith. 
 
 Gen ea LE treatise (vii. =x. 18) which forms the central 
 
 A WES main division of the epistle has suffered no inter- 
 \Z δ ΙΗ ruption from any of those episodes of exhortation 
 ~~ by which the whole of its former portion was 
 characterized. Down to ch. vii. 1, exhortation followed ex- 
 position in rapid interchange. ven (ch. v. 1-10) where 
 the sacred writer approaches the exposition of his grand 
 theme, he quickly breaks off again to pour out his heart once 
 more towards his readers in earnest admonition (ch. v. 11- 
 vi. 20). But with all this manifestation of feeling, he re- 
 
 mains throughout master of himself and of his subject. The 
 168 
 
CHAP. X. 19-21. 169 
 
 art and skill of the arrangement of the whole (whether we 
 insist on the consciousness of his scheme in the author’s own 
 mind or not) are evident from this, that the exhortation with 
 which he closed (at iv. 14-16), before entering (at v. 1-10) 
 on the main argument, is here (x. 19-23) resumed, so that 
 this third part of the epistle reaches out, as it were, a hand 
 to the first, over the central or main division. The exhorta- 
 tions κρατῶμεν τῆς ὁμολογίας and προσερχώμεθα μετὰ παῤ- 
 ῥησίας τῷ θρόνῳ τῆς χάριτος, are here repeated in προσερ- 
 χώμεθα μετ᾽ ἀληθινῆς καρδίας ἐν πληροφορίᾳ πίστεως and 
 κατέχωμεν τὴν ὁμολογίαν ; and so also the motive-giving 
 ἔχοντες of iv. 14 in the ἔχοντες οὖν of x. 19. But the renewed 
 exhortations, though in meaning and expression so like the 
 former, are given in deeper and fuller tones. They are 
 based on two motives, which we must first consider. 
 
 Vers. 19-21. Having therefore, brethren, a joyous con- 
 fidence for entrance into the holies in the blood of Jesus, 
 which he inaugurated for us a new and living way, through 
 the veil, that is, his flesh; and having a great priest over the 
 house of God. 
 
 The purpose of the whole preceding exposition, to which the 
 οὖν (of ἔχοντες οὖν) refers, may be summed up in the two fol- 
 lowing results: (1) Christ is through death, by which as our 
 high priest He effected our atonement, gone back to God; 
 and (2) He is now partaker of co-equal majesty with the 
 heavenly Father: and on the basis of that once accomplished 
 reconciliation, He rules and acts as our high-priestly inter- 
 cessor. On these two great results of the whole previous 
 exposition (vil. 1-x. 18), as on two mighty columns, the 
 sacred writer now bases the exhortations which follow, this 
 ἔχοντες being placed significantly in the foreground. We 
 Cliristians have and possess, in consequence of those two 
 great facts, Christ’s return to the Father, and His majestic 
 session at God’s right hand, a twofold position of privilege : 
 (1.) We have παῤῥησίαν εἰς τὴν εἴσοδον τῶν ἁγίων ἐν τῷ 
 αἵματι ᾿Ιησοῦ, i.e. our first privilege is a right of entrance 
 into the divine sanctuary ; and then, (2.) as a consequence 
 
170 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 of having this right, a joyous confidence to avail ourselves 
 of it. It is this feeling of confidence which is expressed in 
 παῤῥησία (comp. iii. 6 and iv. 16, and notes there). (Com- 
 pare also Isocrates, Bus. 16, παῤῥησία εἰς τοὺς θεούς.) Our 
 being entitled to enter the heavenly sanctuary, the place of 
 God’s essential presence, is a source of joyful confidence to 
 our minds: we may approach now with perfect confidence, 
 as being assured of admission. The ΦῚΡΠ 717 is now open 
 to us (comp. Gen. iii. 24). And this confidence we have ἐν 
 τῷ αἵματι ᾿Ιησοῦ. Bleek and Stier erroneously refer this ἐν 
 (in the sense of cum) to εἴσοδον (comparing ix. 25): “ for 
 entrance into the holies with the blood of Jesus, i.e. exhibit- 
 ing that blood as the ground of our reconciliation.” But 
 thus to enter the holy of holies with sacrificial blood is an ex- 
 clusively high-priestly function. Christ has done that for us 
 once for all; and we follow Him into the sanctuary, in order 
 to be with Him there in the presence of God. ᾿Εἶν must there- 
 fore be connected with παῤῥησίαν, as at Eph. iii. 12, ἐν ᾧ 
 ἔχομεν τὴν παῤῥησίαν Kat τὴν προσαγωγήν. It is the blood 
 of Christ shed for our reconciliation which is the basis and 
 the source of our confidence. Christ, in high-priestly wise, 
 has preceded us (comp. the πρόδρομος of vi. 20); we follow 
 Him along the way which He has opened and formed for us, 
 knowing ourselves to be now reconciled and sanctified by 
 the one oblation (προσφοράλ) of His blood outpoured on earth 
 and presented in heaven. The opening and formation of this 
 way of approach is expressed in the relative clause attached to 
 εἴσοδον : ἣν ἐνεκαίνισεν ἡμῖν ὁδὸν πρόσφατον καὶ Sacav—He 
 has consecrated, or inaugurated, the entrance-way (εἴσοδος). 
 ᾿Εγκαινίζειν in Hellenistic Greek is the term for dedicating 
 or setting apart for future use (so Deut. xx. 5, of the dedi- 
 cation of a newly built house). Πρόσφατος would signify 
 undoubtedly, in accordance with its etymology (like νεότομος), 
 newly slain, just killed (so in Homer, J/. xxiv. 757); but we can 
 hardly admit an allusion here to the Lord’s death (Gerhard), 
 as the etymological meaning is quite lost sight of in later 
 classical and Hellenistic usage (e.g. Deut. xxxii. 17, the word 
 is used for ‘“ new gods;” Ecclus. ix. 10, for “a new friend ;” 
 
CHAP. X. 19--21, 171 
 
 Joseph. Antig. i. 18. 38, for recent disagreement in contrast 
 with former concord). Πρόσφατος has here, therefore, 
 simply the meaning of newly made or recent: ὅδον πρόσ- 
 ῴφατον, a hitherto untrodden, newly opened way (Hofmann) ; 
 ὡς τότε πρῶτον φανεῖσαν (Theodoret). The heavenly way 
 opened for us by the entrance of Jesus Christ is com- 
 pared with that into the earthly sanctuary (ch. ix. 7 sq.)— 
 one never trodden before. No saint of the Old Testament, 
 in whatever degree he might stand of preparatory or pre- 
 venient grace, could (as Stier rightly interprets) draw nigh 
 to God so confidently, so joyously, so familiarly as we can 
 now. This new way, whose formation constitutes a broad 
 division between the Old and New Testaments, is also ζῶσα. 
 This ζῶσα is variously explained: a way “leading to life” 
 (De Wette); a “ life-giving” way (Olshausen); an “ abiding, 
 imperishable” way (Bleek), “ consisting in an act of living 
 power” (Ebrard). This last is also Stier’s interpretation : 
 “'T’o go this way is no dead work of the dead, but truth, and 
 power, and life before God.” My own interpretation was 
 formerly very like this: “The Old Testament way into the 
 sanctuary was an outward and symbolical one, earthly and 
 carnal, belonging to the present cosmical order of things ; 
 the way of the New Testament is a spiritual way, that must 
 be walked in the Spirit, and have for its ground and basis a 
 regenerate life from God.” But all this does not strike the 
 real key-note. Weiss rightly explains the ἐλπὶς ζῶσα of St. 
 Peter (which Bleek refers to here) as a hope which is an 
 effect and sign of regeneration,—“a living energy, not a life- 
 less conviction or sentiment, but one affecting and transform- 
 ing the whole inward man, and influencing every part of the 
 outward conduct.” So ζῶσα is here the antithesis of that 
 which is lifeless and powerless. The way into the sanctuary 
 of the Old Testament was simply a lifeless pavement trodden 
 by the high priest, and by him alone; the way opened by 
 Jesus Christ is one that really leads and carries all who enter 
 it into the heavenly rest, being in fact the reconciliation 
 of mankind with God, once and for ever effected by Him 
 through His ascension to the Father,—a “living way,” because 
 
172 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 one with the living person and abiding work of Jesus Christ 
 (Hofm. Schriftb. τι. 1. 320). 
 
 This entrance to the heavenly sanctuary, this new and 
 living way, Christ has opened to us—“ through the veil ”— 
 διὰ τοῦ καταπετάσματος τοῦτ᾽ ἔστιν τῆς σαρκὸς αὐτοῦ. This 
 may be explained either by a reference to St. John ii. 21, 
 where the Lord speaks of the temple of His body, or to St. 
 Matt. xxvii. 51, where the rending of the veil of the Jewish 
 temple at the time of the Lord’s death exposed to view the 
 inner sanctuary. The latter is the right reference. The 
 rending of the earthly temple-veil at the crucifixion was 
 really an emblem of that of which the sacred writer here 
 speaks. In the former passage (John ii. 21) the Lord re- 
 gards His own body as a temple indwelt by the Godhead, 
 whereas here the point of view is different. It is not as God- 
 man, but as High Priest ministering before God, that the 
 writer of our epistle is here regarding Him. While He was 
 with us here below, the weak, limit-bound, and mortal σάρξ 
 (ch. v. 7) which He had assumed for our sakes hung like a 
 curtain between Him and the divine sanctuary into which 
 He would enter; and in order to such entrance, this curtain 
 had to be withdrawn by death, even as the high priest had 
 to draw aside the temple-veil in order to make his entry to 
 the holy of holies. The Lord in death laid aside the Adamite 
 conditions of His human nature, to resume it again trans- 
 figured and glorified; and in this way He reconciled (ἀποκα- 
 τήλλαξεν) us in the body of His flesh through death (Col. 
 i. 22), so that as now between Him and God, so also between 
 God and us, the flesh should be no more a separating barrier. 
 The sacred writer’s meaning cannot be, that the new and 
 living way thus opened for us has still a καταπέτασμα through 
 which it passes; and it is therefore unallowable to connect 
 διὰ τοῦ καταπετάσματος with ὁδόν, or to supply an οὗσαν or 
 ἄγουσαν (with Bleek, De Wette, v. Gerlach, and Liinemann). 
 It is indeed through faith in Christ crucified that we enter 
 now in heart and mind the heavenly sanctuary; but the veil 
 which was rent by the Lord’s death in order to our entrance 
 was that pierced body of humiliation, which under its then 
 
CHAP. X. 19-21. 175 
 
 conditions is a thing of the past, and needs no further with- 
 drawal now. To understand οὗσαν or ἄγουσαν after ὅδον 
 would, at any rate, be lable to suggest the interpretation 
 here disclaimed, and therefore be misleading, even though 
 those who proposed the one may not all have fallen into the 
 other. We must therefore (with Schlichting, Béhme, and 
 Hofmann) connect διὰ τοῦ καταπ. with ἐνεκαίνισεν, in the 
 sense that Christ has inaugurated or opened for us the way 
 of approach to God, by passing Himself through the veil, i.e. 
 His flesh. ᾿Εγκαινίζειν is here used in the sense of opening 
 a way, or making approachable. The other construction of 
 the sentence, viz., “which [entrance] He inaugurated for us 
 a new and living way, leading or made through His flesh,” is 
 harsher, and every way less suitable. 
 
 The sacred writer proceeds to a second fact on which 
 to base his exhortation; viz. the eternal priesthood of the 
 ascended Jesus, as now exercised in the immediate presence 
 of the Father: καὶ [ἔχοντες] ἱερέα μέγαν ἐπὶ τὸν οἶκον τοῦ 
 Θεοῦ. Both in the Septuagint and Philo, ὁ ἱερεὺς ὁ μέγας 
 stands occasionally for San mon; but our author always uses 
 the composite ἀρχιερεύς, and in one place speaks of our Lord 
 as ἀρχιερέα μέγαν (ch. iv. 14). By ἱερέα μέγαν, therefore, 
 here we are to understand not simply a high priest, but one 
 who is at the same time Priest and King (sacerdos regius et 
 rex sacerdotalis, Seb. Schmidt), one who is enthroned as 
 Priest above all created heavens. The next question is, 
 What are we to understand by the οἶκος τοῦ Ocod here ? 
 Comparing iv. 14, viii. 2, ix. 11, xii. 24, and the εἴσοδον τῶν 
 ἁγίων of ver. 19, together with John xiv 2 (ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ τοῦ 
 Πατρός μου), it would seem that the heaven of glory, the 
 place of angels and blessed spirits, is what is here called 
 the house of God. A reference, on the other hand, to iii. 
 3-6 might seem to decide in favour of the church on earth, 
 as being that “house of God” in which (ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ) Moses 
 ministered as servant, but over which (ἐπὶ τὸν οἶκον) Christ 
 is placed as Son. But do these interpretations thus really 
 
 1 For the former interpretation, compare Theophylact, Bohme, Bleek, 
 De Wette, Liinemann: for the latter, Theodoret, Gicumenius, Tholuck, 
 
174 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 exclude one another? The term “house” designates both 
 the dwelling-place of the family, and the family itself. So 
 that even if the first intention of the word be here to desig- 
 nate the heavenly tabernacle (σκηνή), where God reveals 
 Himself in glory to the church triumphant, it may be held 
 to include at the same time the members of that church, the 
 company of the blessed for whom faith has been changed to 
 vision, and that without excluding even the members of the 
 church here, who are already citizens of that heavenly city. 
 (See note on xii. 22 sq.) But to have so great a Priest over 
 us in our pilgrimage towards the eternal home, and to be 
 enabled even now in prayer to reach the inmost recesses of 
 the divine sanctuary, the very heart of God, how great are 
 these privileges, how full of comfort, but also how full of 
 warning! So— 
 
 Ver. 22. Let us draw near with a true heart, in full assur- 
 ance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil con- 
 science, and our body washed with pure water. 
 
 We assume as certain, that both participial clauses de- 
 pend on προσερχώμεθα. This Bleek has elaborately proved, 
 and De Wette assents; and so the sentence is rendered in 
 the Peshito, Itala, Vulgate (as understood by Primasius), 
 and by Luther. IIpocépyec@at is a technical liturgical 
 word, and sprinkling and washing are liturgical acts of pre- 
 paration. This being clearly understood, it is a matter of 
 comparative indifference whether we put a full stop or a 
 comma at the end of ver. 22. For my own part, I should 
 prefer, with Tholuck, to place a comma only after καθαρῷ. 
 Many interpreters, however, insist on attaching the second 
 participial clause καὶ λελουμένοι, «.7.r., to κατέχωμεν, in 
 preference to προσερχώμεθα. So Erasmus, Beza, Bengel, 
 Griesbach, Kuincel, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Bohme, Schulz, 
 Ebrard, and Liinemann ; and it has even been maintained 
 that the period commencing with ἔχοντες concludes with 
 Hofmann ; and also Lactantius, Jnst. iv. 14,—a passage which, speaking 
 
 of the sempiternum sacerdotium Christi in the great and everlasting 
 temple of His church, seems to be an echo of our epistle. 
 
CHAP. X. 22. 175 
 
 πίστεως, and that both the participial clauses are to be con- 
 nected with the following κατέχωμεν. (So Hofmann, Weiss. 
 11, 234; Schriftd. 11. 2.160; and Entsteh. 345.) Both con- 
 structions seem to us unnatural in the highest degree. The 
 former separates two closely connected liturgical acts, those 
 of sprinkling and washing: the latter separates them from 
 the liturgical προσερχώμεθα. To say that the clause ἔχοντες 
 introduces the exhortation προσερχώμεθα, and the clauses 
 ἐῤῥαντισμένοι and λελουμένοι the exhortation κατέχωμεν, is 
 to misstate the relations of thought in the whole paragraph. 
 Rather say: As the double clause commencing with ἔχοντες 
 and ending with ἐπὶ τὸν οἶκον τοῦ Θεοῦ states the objective 
 privileges of the Christian covenant, by which our approach 
 to the throne of grace, or God Himself, is rendered possible ; 
 so the double clause ἐῤῥαντισμένοι and λελουμένοι, ending with 
 καθαρῷ, expresses the subjective conditions of a personal 
 apprehension of those privileges by us. The entrance to the 
 divine eternal sanctuary is henceforth opened to us, its great 
 High Priest being there as our reconciler. But how could 
 we avail ourselves of that privilege, if we approached the 
 sanctuary as still unsanctified? In reply to this question, 
 the later participial clauses tell us of a twofold sanctification 
 provided for us, which once for all has rendered it possible 
 for us to enter as hallowed persons the holy of holies. And 
 between the objective and subjective conditions of this 
 approach comes the μετὰ ἀληθινῆς καρδίας ἐν πληροφορίᾳ 
 πίστεως, stating the disposition of mind in which each act 
 of approach should be made. First, we must come “ with a 
 true heart,” 1.6. a heart entirely that which it ought to be—a 
 heart without hypocrisy, without double-mindedness ; comp. 
 the ody ada of Isa. xxxviii. ὃ (“with a perfect heart”), ren- 
 dered thus by the Septuagint, ἐν καρδίᾳ ἀληθινῆ. And 
 secondly, we must come “with full assurance of faith” 
 (comp. vi. 11), 1.6. without any disbelief or diffidence as to 
 our right of approach and certainty of acceptance, through 
 the entrance and presence of our great High Priest. Our 
 right, indeed, and fitness to draw nigh to the place of God’s 
 presence, is a far higher one than that of Israel of old when 
 
176 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 sprinkled with the blood of the covenant at the foot of 
 Sinai (ch. ix. 19), or than that of the Levitical priesthood 
 when prepared for the services of the sanctuary on the day 
 of their consecration, by being first “ washed with water” 
 (Levy. viii. 6), and then anointed on ear and hand and foot 
 with the blood of the ram of consecration (Lev. viii. 23) ; 
 who also, before every sacrificial service, had to wash hands 
 and feet in the great laver before the tabernacle (Ex. 
 xxx. 39); and whose chief, the high priest, on the day of 
 atonement, had (according to the ritual of the second temple) 
 to bathe five times, and wash hands and feet ten times. [So 
 the Talmudic tract Joma, iii. 3 (in Robert Sheringham’s 
 edition, p. 46). The Thorah (Lev. xvi.) prescribes only a 
 twofold bath—rovew τὸ capa. |] 
 
 To these merely typical and external sprinklings and 
 washings under the law, is now opposed a twofold antitypical 
 operation of divine grace, which once and for ever cleanses 
 us in body and spirit, and so provides the necessary nwIp 
 before our entrance into the heavenly wap. 
 
 We are (1) ἐῤῥαντισμένοι (for which Lachmann and 
 Tischendorf, after A, C, D*, pepavticpevor) τὰς καρδίας 
 ἀπὸ συνειδήσεως πονηρᾶς, 1.6. sprinkled as to our hearts, 
 these being the objects of the action; and with this conse- 
 quence, that they are thereby delivered from an evil con- 
 science: pavtifew ἀπό being used sensu pregnante for to 
 sprinkle, and thereby cleanse or purify; and συνείδησις 
 πονηρά for the inward consciousness of guilt or sin; for 
 “when a man’s life and action are evil, his very conscience, 
 so far as it is conscious of such il is itself πονηρά" 
 (Psychol. p. 103). It is then an Ἐ ΤΑ πν justifying and 
 sanctifying ῥαντισμός which has been vouchsafed to us, 
 namely, “ the sprinkling (ῥαντισμός) of the blood of Jesus 
 Christ” (1 Pet. 1. 2), which, having been shed for this pur- 
 pose, is called (xil. 24) “the blood of sprinkling” (αἷμα ῥαν- 
 τισμοῦ, comp. ch. ix. 14). 
 
 Again, we are (2) λελουμένον τὸ σῶμα ὕδατι καθαρῷς To 
 understand this expression with Ebrard (following Calvin 
 and Limborch, etc.) as a merely symbolical or figurative 
 
CHAP. X. 22. : 177 
 
 one for an inward and purely spiritual operation of divine 
 grace, is impossible with the antithesis so marked here of τὸ 
 σῶμα and tas καρδίας. Even Beza recognises a reference 
 to baptism, and contents himself with interpreting ὕδατι 
 καθαρῷ by Spiritus Saneti gratia. Menken, too, under- 
 stands the words as referring to baptism, without so explain- 
 ing away the water as to overlook the unio sacramentalis. 
 The appeal to Ezek. xxxvi. 25, “I will sprinkle upon you 
 pure water” (καθαρὸν ὕδωρ), in favour of the figurative 
 interpretation here is inadmissible. The prophet is indeed 
 himself speaking figuratively, and the sprinkling with him is 
 as purely figurative as the water; but it must be borne in 
 mind, that in prophecy it is not only the substantial meaning 
 but also the very form itself which is prophetic; and so here 
 in Ezekiel, then, is a real prophecy of the grace of baptism 
 as clothed in a visible sacramental form. Baptism is in the 
 New Testament a laver or bath of regeneration (ἐξ ὕδατος 
 καὶ πνεύματος) ; and the water thus specified is not only a 
 figure, but also a vehicle of the Spirit. There was likewise a 
 ὕδωρ καθαρόν under the Old Testament (ΟΡ oO), or 
 “water of holiness,” by the operation of which the adulterous 
 woman was punished for her sin (Num. v.17). From its judi- 
 cial, punitive, sin-condemning, and so sin-destroying energy, it 
 was called “ water of sanctification,” or “ pure water.” But 
 its action after all was confined to the region of the σάρξ. 
 Not so with the water of which the apostolic writer is speak- 
 ing here. It is called “ pure water” because its operation is 
 a purifying one in reference to man’s relations with God. It 
 is a purification of a spiritual nature with an outward, bodily, 
 sacramental form. The writer uses the word σῶμα, and 
 not σάρξ, with intention. The σῶμα has a twofold charac- 
 ter. It has one side which is merely outward, tangible, and 
 visible, and another beyond the range of the dissecting knife 
 and microscope which is inward and psychical, the seat and 
 organ of the animating soul. It is this internal side of the 
 σῶμα to which the sacred writer is here referring. As the 
 word of God is said (ch. iv. 12) to penetrate ἄχρι μερισμοῦ 
 ψυχῆς καὶ πνεύματος. ἁρμῶν τε καὶ μυελῶν, so the water of 
 VOL. Il. M 
 
178 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 baptism is a pure water as effecting not merely an outward 
 and ceremonial purification, but as being the sacramental 
 vehicle of an inward divine operation, by which the spiritual 
 side of this earthly σῶμα is consecrated for the future resur- 
 rection and for the present indwelling of the Holy Spirit. 
 In this way both our personal and our natural life receives 
 a special consecration for divine service and communion, 
 by which we are enabled to approach with confidence the 
 throne and presence of the Holy One. 
 
 A question remains to be answered: whether the divine 
 operation here spoken of on the συνείδησις is to be regarded 
 as extra-sacramental, and that on the σῶμα as a sacramental 
 one; or whether, as Hofmann lays down, both operations 
 are different effects of one and the same sacrament of holy 
 baptism, as consecrating both our personal and natural life 
 for that fellowship with Jesus Christ which has for its basis 
 and condition the indwelling of the Holy Spirit vouchsafed 
 by Him to His Church. I decide for the former alternative. 
 For though the believer obtains in baptism the washing away 
 of sins (Acts xxii. 16; 1 Cor. vi. 11), and although baptism as 
 the sacrament of regeneration exerts both a justifying and 
 sanctifying energy, and as such hallows both the personal or 
 moral and the natural or bodily life, yet the expression no- 
 where occurs in Scripture, that we are therein or thereby 
 “sprinkled” with the blood of Christ. To refer the ῥαντισ- 
 μὸν αἵματος of 1 Pet. i. 2 to baptism is precarious: the 
 allusion in the first instance being to Ex. xxiv. 7 sq., and 
 so rather to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper than to 
 baptism (see Weiss, Petrinischer Lehrbegrif, pp. 269-278). 
 It is therefore but a few interpreters who, like Horneius, 
 have thus referred to baptism the ἐῤῥαντισμένοι of our text, 
 the far greater number—ancients (Greek and Latin), Re- 
 formers, and post-Reformers (as Gerhard, Sebastian Schmidt, 
 etc.)—interpreting it of a purely inward and spiritual opera- 
 tion of divine grace. Had, indeed, the sacred writer meant 
 to be understood otherwise, he would surely rather have 
 given precedence to the clause which unmistakeably refers to 
 baptism, and substituted for the (in this connection) less 
 
CHAP. Χ. 23, 179 
 
 appropriate term ἐῤῥαντισμένον (“ sprinkled”), one more 
 suitable to the action implied by the terms βαπτισμός, λοῦ- 
 Tpov, ΤΌΝΔ, such as κεκαθαρισμένοι. As in reference to the 
 other sacrament we are compelled by our Lord’s teaching 
 in the 6th of St. John to recognise an extra-sacramental 
 reception of the body and blood of Christ, of which the sole 
 instrument is faith, so beside and after baptism may we like- 
 Wise recognise a purely spiritual sprinkling or washing with 
 the blood of Christ, by means of faith, of which the Christian 
 daily stands in need for the cleansing of his garments (Rev. 
 vil. 14) and for his progress in sanctification (1 John i. 7). 
 We, as Christians, are all priests, having received a sacer- 
 dotal sprinkling, and being cleansed in a sacerdotal laver,— 
 a sprinkling with the blood of Christ which imparts a joyous 
 sense of justification before God, and so daily relieves the 
 conscience from the pollution and burden of unpardoned 
 sin; and a laver of baptism whose cleansing waters have 
 penetrated not only into the depths of our moral conscious- 
 ness, but also into the very ground of our bodily nature 
 with a spiritually quickening and healing power: we there- 
 fore are sanctified, not carnally, or in mere outward show, 
 but inwardly and spiritually, and yet so that the whole of 
 our being, body, soul, and spirit, partakes of the new im- 
 pulse. Sprinkled with that blood which speaketh evermore 
 in the heavenly sanctuary, and washed with baptismal water 
 sacramentally impregnated with the same, we are at all times 
 privileged to approach by a new and living way the heavenly 
 temple, entering by faith its inner sanctuary, and, there pre- 
 senting ourselves in the presence of God. The unspeakable 
 blessings which this entry procures to us form the ground 
 (comp. iv. 14-16) of the following exhortation : 
 
 Ver. 23. Let us hold fast the confession of hope as inde- 
 fectible ; for faithful is he that hath given the promise. 
 
 Heaven is now accessible to us, but as yet only in the 
 spirit and by faith. Christ is our High Priest there, but as 
 yet unseen; we are still among those members of His family 
 whose pilgrimage is not yet over. To see Him as He is, in 
 
180 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 royal state, triumphant over every foe, and to enter on the 
 riches of our own inheritance in Him, is still for us an 
 object of hope, which as an anchor of our souls is fixed 
 already in the sanctuary above. But this hope in us (1 Pet. 
 iii. 15), like the faith from which it springs, being full of 
 joyous assurance (ch. vi. 11), cannot remain dumb; it must 
 speak, and give a reason both to friends and enemies of its 
 own existence. It utters itself in a frank confession which 
 we are to hold fast (κατέχειν ; compare iii. 6, and κρατεῖν at 
 iv. 14) : adxAwh,—so fast and stedfast (βέβαιαν, 111. 14) as 
 neither to be allured nor frightened from it, nor tempted by 
 the unpromising aspect of the present to depreciate its 
 grandeur or to doubt its reality. And of this hope we need 
 under no circumstances of discouragement be ever ashamed : 
 πιστὸς yap ὁ ἐπαγγειλάμενος, the God who has made the 
 promise on which it leans is the absolutely faithful and true 
 (Ὁ Ν 2) ; perjury or breach of promise are in the widest anti- 
 thesis to His nature (vi. 18); He must be as good as His 
 word. We are reminded here of the oft-recurring Pauline 
 formula, πιστὸς ὁ Θεός (Κύριος) : 1 Thess. v. 24; 2 Thess. 
 ii. ὃ; 1 Cor. i. 9 and x. 13, and frequently elsewhere ; pas- 
 sages which alone are sufficient to prove that hope occupies 
 as high a place in St. Paul’s theology as in that of our 
 epistle, and even as in that of St. Peter, who might be called 
 par excellence the Apostle of Hope. And how beautifully is 
 the exhortation here disposed in conformity with the Pauline 
 triad of Christian graces (1 Cor. xiii. 13; 1 Thess. i. 3, v. 8; 
 Col. i. 4)! First, the injunction to approach in the full 
 assurance of faith; then that to hold fast the confession of 
 our hope; and now a third, to godly rivalry in the manifes- 
 tations of Christian charity : 
 
 Ver. 24. And let us have regard to one another in respect 
 to a provocation unto love and good works. 
 
 This third exhortation is also subordinated to the ἔχοντες 
 οὖν... of vers. 19-21. The sacred writer is addressing all 
 his readers as brethren (ἀδελφοί, ver. 19), having in common 
 equal rights of approach to the eternal sanctuary, and to a 
 
CHAP. X. 25. 181 
 
 share in all the blessings of the household of Christ. As 
 such, they must act in a brotherly way one towards another. 
 This first and obvious meaning of the sentence is obscured by 
 the interpretation which makes the purpose of this mutual 
 observation to be a self-provoking on each man’s part 
 to imitate the love and the good deeds of his neighbour 
 (Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theophylact, Primasius, Peirce, 
 Michaelis, Bleek). The exhortation xatavoduev ἀλλ. is 
 rather in opposition to that selfish indifference to the condi 
 tion and interests of one’s neighbour which characterizes the 
 man of this world; and the παροξυσμός which is its result 
 is the only “ provocation” worthy of the Christian, a stirring 
 up the brethren to a rivalry in good works. Some commen- 
 tators (Limborch, Liinemann, and even De Wette) would 
 combine both interpretations ; but that is hardly admissible : 
 in the one case the individual παροξυσμός, as a result of 
 the κατανοεῖν ἀλλήλους, would be the chief point in view; 
 in the other, the mutual κατανοεῖν with a view to a mutual 
 παροξυσμός. The verb κατανοεῖν, as already observed (at iii. 
 1), is one specially familiar to St. Luke. Παροξυσμός recurs 
 only once in the New Testament, and again in the writings 
 of St. Luke (Acts xv. 39), but there in a bad sense, the 
 “irritation” of the dispute between St. Paul and St. Bar- 
 nabas. Here, of course, it is used in a good sense, as the 
 verb (παροξύνειν) is by Xenophon, Mem. iii. ὃ, 18. The 
 Latin rendering is “in provocationem amoris et bonorum 
 operum,” on which Bengel makes the delicate comment, cui 
 contraria provocatio odii. The substantive is indeed more 
 naturally used in a bad sense, to which an allusion is trace- 
 able here. The genitive παροξ. ἀγάπης x. καλῶν ἔργων is 
 like ἀνάστασις ζωῆς and βάπτισμα μετανοίας, and the like ; 
 it is equivalent to πρὸς, ἐπὶ, or εἰς ἀγάπην ... It is evi- 
 dent from what follows that κατανοῶμεν ἀλλήλους is to be 
 taken in the same sense as ἐπισκοποῦντες at ΧΙ]. 15, and 
 that παροξυσμός is to be understood of a friendly παρά- 
 κλησις : 
 
 Ver. 25. Not forsaking our church assembly, as is the 
 
182 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 custom with some, but using exhortation, and that so much the 
 more as ye see the day drawing nigh. 
 
 It is thus shown them what they must avoid and what 
 they must practise, in order to secure this wholesome Chris- 
 tian influence of one man upon another. They must beware 
 of laxity in attendance on religious assemblies, and en- 
 courage the practice of Christian exhortation. ᾿Επισυνα- 
 γωγή has been here interpreted of the church, e.g. by Bohme 
 in the sense: you are not to forsake the poor persecuted 
 flock, the “ societas Christiana,” but to render it faithful 
 assistance; and by Bleek: you are not to intermit your 
 charitable exertions on its behalf. But this interpretation of 
 ἐπισυναγωγή is inadmissible. The church is always styled 
 ἐκκλησία, and the term ἐπισυναγωγή is never applied to the 
 religious community, whether Jewish or Christian. It occurs 
 once only in pre-Christian literature (ἐπισυναγωγὴν τοῦ λαοῦ, 
 2 Mace. ii. 7), and is there used of the regathering of the 
 Diaspora, and only once more in that of the New Testament 
 (2 Thess. ii. 1), and there applied to the gathering together 
 of the saints around the Lord at His second coming (ἡμῶν 
 ἐπισυναγωγῆς ἐπ᾽ αὐτόν). In accordance with both these 
 passages, the meaning of ἐπισυναγωγή in our text will be an 
 assembling together for church purposes, for common worship, 
 ὦ.6. a church-assembly, but not (as Bengel and even Prima- 
 slus, with his congregationem fidelium, take it) church-fellow- 
 ship or communion. (So Tholuck, De Wette, Ebrard, Liine- 
 mann, Hofmann.) The difference between ἐπισυναγωγή and 
 συναγωγή is probably similar to that of ¥2¥ (cetus) and ND23 
 (ecclesia): ἐγκαταλείπειν τὴν ἐπισυναγ. does not mean to for- 
 sake the public assembly of the church by going out, but by 
 failure of attendance (comp. ch. xiii. 5; 2 Cor.iv.9; 2 Tim. 
 iv. 10, 16). Our author probably uses ἐπισυναγωγή here 
 simply to avoid the Judaic-sounding term cvvaywyn, which is 
 applied once only to a Christian assembly in the New Tes- 
 tament, and that in the Epistle of St. James (ii. 2). (Contrast 
 with this the συναγωγὴ τοῦ Σατανᾶ of Rev. iii. 9.) It is evi- 
 dent from the καθὼς ἔθος τισίν that it is not absolute apos- 
 tasy which the sacred writer has here in view, but simply such 
 
CHAP. X. 26. 183 
 
 negligence and lukewarmness as came perilously near it. 
 Every one, he teaches, is bound in duty to the whole congre- 
 
 gation to minister to its edification both by word and example. 
 If he neglect this, he incurs a great responsibility. And the 
 duty is enforeed he a further jean ideation-rocoures μᾶλ- 
 λον ὅσῳ βλέπετε ἐγγίζουσαν τῆν ἡμέραν, which we need not 
 to refer back with De Wette to ver. 23, nor with Bengel to 
 ver. 22. It is naturally suggested by the terms of this third 
 exhortation, with which, indeed, it is syntactically connected. 
 Let us (says the author) be the more zealous in promoting 
 an advancement of holiness amongst ourselves, the more evi- 
 dently the day of the Lord is seen to be approaching. We are 
 not to combine ὅσῳ with éyyifovcay, as if the meaning were 
 quanto propinquiorem, but with βλέπετε, as equivalent to 
 quanto magis (ὅσω = ὅσῳ μᾶλλον) videtis. Among the 
 various designations of the second advent of Christ for judg- 
 ment, this ἡ ἡμέρα (here, and 1 Cor. iii. 13) is the briefest. 
 It is the day of days, the final, the decisive day of time, the 
 commencing day of eternity, breaking through and breaking 
 up for the church of the redeemed the night of the present. 
 In βλέπετε the ἀνακοΐνωσις is exchanged for direct address. 
 The author of the epistle appeals to his readers’ own sense 
 and conviction of the approach of this great day. The day of 
 Christ, indeed, is ever nigh, continually approaching nearer : 
 we must at all times be prepared for it. But at the time 
 when this epistle was written the approaching judgment on 
 Jerusalem, of which so many signs filled the sky, brought 
 home the thought in a peculiarly vivid manner to men’s 
 minds. That judgment, indeed, though not the day itself, 
 was truly its fiery and blood-red dawn. 
 
 The approaching day is the day of Christ, who comes not 
 now for atonement, but for final judgment. Hence the 
 necessity of perseverance in fellowship with His church in 
 giving and receiving, and in mutual exhortation to love and 
 good works, is deduced from the hopeless and terrible future 
 which awaits apostasy. 
 
 Ver. 26. For tf we sin wilfully after we have received the 
 
184 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more a sacrifice for 
 sins. 
 
 ‘Apapraveiy is here the same as περιπεσεῖν at ch. vi. 6, 
 and ἀποστῆναι ἀπὸ Θεοῦ at ch. iii. 12 (comp. 2 Pet. ii. 4, and 
 ἁμαρτία at ili. 13 of our epistle). The sin meant is that of 
 apostasy; unfaithfulness to God, and to His manifestation 
 in Christ, being the ground and foundation of all other sin. 
 This sin, called also pwd in the Old Testament (e.g. Isa. Ixvi. 
 24), is committed by the man who, having from a Jew be- 
 come a Christian, willingly and knowingly forsakes the ser- 
 vices and communion of Christ’s people to make common 
 cause with the antichristian synagogue. Its special nature 
 and characteristics are unmistakeably indicated by the present 
 participle ἁμαρτανόντων, and the added clause μετὰ τὸ λαβεῖν 
 τὴν ἐπίγνωσιν τῆς ἀληθείας. The present ἁμαρτανόντων indi- 
 cates perseverance and continuance in apostasy; the sin here 
 spoken of is not a momentary or short-lived aberration from 
 which the infirm but sincere believer is speedily recalled. by 
 the convictions of the Spirit, but one wilfully persisted in: 
 the μετὰ τὸ λαβεῖν, «.7-A., expresses also the condition with- 
 out which such irrecoverable failure is not to be assumed as 
 possible, viz. a previous experience and knowledge of the 
 grace and truth of the new covenant. Neither ἐπίγνωσις 
 nor ἀλήθεια occur again in this epistle; but ἐπιγν. [τῆς] ἀλήθ. 
 recurs at 1 Tim. ii. 4 and elsewhere in the Pastoral Epistles. 
 It is sometimes said that γνῶσις is the weaker, ézruy. the 
 stronger term; γνῶσις the more general, ézruyv. the particular; 
 or that, while the former expresses an habitual state or con- 
 dition of mind, the latter denotes an active operation. The 
 truth of all which is, that ἐπίγνωσις designates an active 
 application of the mental powers to some one definite object, 
 and consequently a complete and intelligent apprehension of 
 its nature: whence it follows that we may speak of a false 
 γνῶσις, but not of a false or unreal ἐπίγνωσις. The sacred 
 writer, therefore, clearly intimates by the very choice of the 
 word that it is not a mere outward and historical knowledge 
 of which he is here speaking, but an inward, quickening, 
 believing apprehension of revealed truth. That after such 
 
 ee 
 
CHAP. X. 27. 185 
 
 apprehension of truth apostasy is possible, that even those 
 once truly converted may fall away from grace, has been 
 already shown at ch. vi. 4-8 ; and we have already come to 
 the conviction that the impossibility of renewal there pre- 
 dicated of such apostates is not to be understood as a merely 
 relative, but as an absolute impossibility. The same assertion 
 is made here. To those who after full enlightenment thus 
 fall away, all prospect of future grace and repentance is 
 foreclosed. There is but one sacrifice that can take away 
 sin. That sacrifice is the self-oblation of Jesus Christ. He 
 who knowingly and wilfully rejects that sacrifice, suppress- 
 ing by an act of self-will his own better knowledge and con- 
 victions, in order to return to the dead works and lifeless 
 service of Judaism, for him no other sacrifice for sin is kept 
 in reserve. (For ἀπολείπεται here, compare ch. iv. 6-9.) 
 The meaning is not merely that the Jewish sacrifices to 
 which the apostate is returned have in themselves no sin- 
 destroying power, nor even that there is no second sacrifice 
 additional to that of Christ, but further, that for a sinner of 
 this kind the very sacrifice of Christ itself has no more 
 atoning or reconciling power. He can hope for no more 
 forgiveness. His desperate condition is both the natural 
 consequence of his wilful error, and also a condign punish- 
 ment inflicted by a divine hand. He not only shuts out 
 himself from grace, but the door of repentance is shut 
 behind him; and he has before him only the prospect of a 
 damnation from which there is no escape. 
 
 Ver. 27. But a certain fearful expectation of a judgment 
 and jealousy of fire that one day will devour the adversaries. 
 
 Of this δέ after a negation, corresponding to the Latin 
 imo, we have already spoken at ch. ii. 5. It is a term of ex- 
 pression familiar with our author (comp. iv. 13, 15, vi. 12, 
 vii. 3, ix. 12, x. 5). “No sin-offering remains for such ; 
 nay, but rather a fearful expectation of judgment to come.” 
 This last is not to be interpreted per hypallagen ἃ5 ---- φοβερᾶς 
 ἐκδοχὴ κρίσεως : the ἐκδοχή itself is terrible; a dread and 
 shuddering anticipation of future punishment afflicts already 
 
186 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 the inmost soul of the apostate. Its awful character is 
 further intimated by the added tus: see Kiihner, ὃ 633; 
 Winer, § 25, 2; Niigelsbach, Lat. Stylistik, § 82, 3, 
 where this tis, δή τίς, guidam, is explained as making an 
 impression of grandeur and fulness by a vagueness which 
 leaves to the imagination of the auditor or reader to fill up 
 what is not expressed. So here, the awe and terror of this 
 anticipation can only be faintly imagined by the mind which 
 has not felt it, and is in itself inexpressible. This is all that 
 remains for the apostate Christian ; καὶ πυρὸς ζῆλος ἐσθίειν 
 μέλλοντος τοὺς ὑπεναντίους. We must not render this πυρὸς 
 ζῆλος (with Luther) by Feuereifer, “ fiery zeal.” The Hebrew 
 phrase is AN3p ws (fire of wrath or jealousy), but not wx nip 
 (jealousy of fire). (See Zeph.i. 18; Ezek. xxxvi. 5; Ps. Ixxix. 
 5.) Most recent interpreters, therefore (Bohme, Bleek, De 
 Wette, Liinemann), assume that the fire is here personified, 
 or regarded as an animated subject. So also Theophylact : 
 ἐψύχωσε τὸ πῦρ. This is not wrong, only behind this per- 
 sonification stands a fuller truth than behind an ordinary 
 figure of speech. We have something similar here to the 
 personification of the λόγος at ch. iv. 12. As the divine 
 Word, so this divine fire has a divine personality behind it. 
 God Himself is in Scripture both light (φῶς) and fire (zip). 
 As ἀγάπη He is light, and both as ἀγάπη and ὀργή He is 
 fire. Fire, according to the view maintained throughout 
 Scripture, occupies a mid position between light and dark- 
 ness, and ΠΝ (literally “burning heat,” from sp, incan- 
 descere) is the fiery glow both of the jealousy of love and of 
 that of indignation. The jealousy here spoken of is that 
 of the indignant Judge; the “fire” is the wrath which 
 jealousy kindles, or rather God Himself as the Πῦρ κατανα- 
 λίσκον of ch. xii. 29 (nboN we). “Jealousy of fire,” there- 
 fore, is equivalent to jealousy of wrath, or rather jealousy 
 of God, the Wrathful One. The omission of the article 
 before κρίσεως and πυρὸς μέλλοντος, κ.τ.λ., makes the image 
 more concentrated and pictorial, and the whole impression 
 more vivid. Mé)dovtos refers to the day of ver. 25, on 
 which day the long-pent-up wrath of Him who now waits to 
 
CHAP. X. 28, 29. 187 
 
 be gracious, and will have then waited so long, will at length 
 break forth with irresistible consuming power and destroy 
 all that opposes itself to God. Médrew is used of that 
 which is in the process of becoming, and whose presence, 
 therefore, is divined or felt before its actual manifestation. 
 The sacred writer has probably Isa. xxvi. 11 in view, where, 
 in the midst of a hymn-like prophecy of the restoration of 
 Israel and the destruction of their oppressors, the singer 
 bursts forth with the exclamation, “ Jehovah! uplifted is 
 Thine hand, and yet they see not. See shall they, and be 
 ashamed, for jealousy (ζῆλος) on behalf of a people (Israel), 
 yea, a fire shall devour Thine adversaries” (πῦρ τοὺς ὑπεναν- 
 τίους ἔδεται). 
 
 The greatness of the inexorable judgment which will 
 befall those who, having been among Christ’s favoured ones, 
 make Him their enemy, is now further illustrated by the 
 inexorable penalty which awaited those who wilfully and 
 obstinately violated the injunctions of the Mosaic law: 
 
 Vers. 28, 29. Hath any one despised the law of Moses, 
 without mercy he dieth under one or two witnesses: of how 
 much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, 
 who hath trampled under foot the Son of God, and accounted 
 common the blood of the covenant in which he was sanctified, 
 and insulted the Spirit of grace ? 
 
 Some eleven or twelve kinds of sin are denounced in the 
 Mosaic law as incurring the extreme penalty of death, e.g. 
 wilful murder, obstinate disobedience to parents, kidnapping, 
 adultery, etc. Here the cases had in view seem to be chiefly 
 the sins of blasphemy (Lev. xxiv. 11-16), idolatry and seduc- 
 tion thereto (Deut. xvii. 2-7), and false prophesyings (Deut. 
 xviii. 20); but especially those denounced at Deut. xvii. 2-7, 
 where the exact phrase ἐπὶ δυσὶ μάρτυσιν ἢ ἐπὶ τρισὶ μάρ- 
 τυσιν occurs as the condition required before passing sen- 
 tence of death, and the prescribed mode of carrying out 
 that sentence is characterized by more than usual harshness, 
 and is suggestive of the expression here made use of—ywpis 
 οἰκτιρμῶν. But the main point is, that there is the strictest 
 
188 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 analogy between the two-cases. Apostasy from Jehovah for 
 the service of other gods is denounced in this passage of 
 Deuteronomy as the extremest breach possible of the Mosaic 
 law, and as such visited with the extremest penalties. And 
 the like character is assigned in our epistle to the sin of 
 apostasy from Christ for the fellowship and services of anti- 
 christian Judaism, whose God even is no longer the true 
 God, inasmuch as He is not recognised as the God and 
 Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. If the apostate under the 
 Old Testament was punished with such inexorable severity, 
 how severer must be the penalty incurred by the sinner 
 under the New Testament against fuller light and holier 
 privileges? This thought is pressed home to the consciences 
 of his readers by means of the parenthetical δοκεῖτε. It 
 consists of a gradatio a minore ad majus, for which compare 
 ii. 2 and xii. 25. In ἀξιωθήσεται we are to understand God 
 Himself as the ἀξιῶν by whom all actions are weighed and 
 their worth determined (ἄξιος from ἄγειν), and the measure 
 of penalty needed to vindicate the majesty of the law laid 
 down. (Tvpwpia, punishment in the sense of vindication 
 or saving of honour, occurs only here in the New Testa- 
 ment; but compare Acts xxii. 5 and xxvi. 11.) The aorist 
 participles and their clauses describe in its essential features 
 the special sin of the apostate Christian. Ist, It is a sin 
 against the sacred person of the Mediator of the new cove- 
 nant: ὁ τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ Θεοῦ καταπατήσας. He is styled 
 “Son of God” because it is just His eternal Sonship which 
 constitutes His superiority to the mediator of the old cove- 
 nant, its prophets, and its angels. To trample Him under 
 foot—the gracious and almighty Heir of all things, who is 
 now seated at God’s right hand—what a challenge to the 
 Most High to inflict the severest and most crushing penalty ! 
 Καταπατεῖν is not merely to reject or cast away as some- 
 thing unfit for use which men carelessly tread upon (Matt. 
 v. 13; Luke viii. 5), but to trample down with ruthless con- 
 tempt as an object of scorn or hatred (Matt. vil. 6). 2dly, 
 It is a sin against the sacrifice and seal of the new covenant : 
 καὶ τὸ αἷμα τῆς διαθήκης κοινὸν ἡγησάμενος. Commen- 
 
CHAP. X. 28, 29. 189 
 
 tators vary in their interpretation of κοινόν. Some (with 
 Bleek and De Wette) render it “profane,” ‘common ;” 
 others (with Béhme, Ebrard, Liinemann), “impure,” “ un- 
 holy ;” many (with Bengel and Tholuck; see also St. Chry- 
 sostom) waver between both interpretations. The Itala and 
 Peshito render it “communem ;” the Vulgate and Luther, 
 “pollutum.” Both are grammatically admissible. We have 
 already seen at ch. ix. 13 that κοινόν (κοινοῦν = 92M) some- 
 times extends its meaning beyond its first intention—common, 
 non-sacred (Sh as opposed to wp)—to the notion of the 
 absolutely impure and unholy. The first meaning may here 
 be adhered to, the antithesis being marked by ἐν ᾧ ἡγιάσθη. 
 Is the sacrificial blood of animals under the law a sacred 
 thing (Lev. vi. 20)? has it as αἷμα ραντισμοῦ (ANN Ὁ) a 
 sanctifying power, and consequently a character especially 
 sacred ?—how much more must this be the case with that 
 blood which was poured out in the power of an eternal Spirit 
 for our reconciliation, and which as the covenant blood of 
 sprinkling of the New Testament (ch. ix. 20; Luke xxii. 20) 
 has opened for us an approach into the holy of holies! To 
 treat this blood, by a return to Judaism, as the blood of an 
 ordinary man, nay (as too likely), as that of a miseuided or 
 guilty criminal!—what a profanation of the most sacred thing, 
 what a provocation to the severest vengeance on the part of 
 Him who has thus been treated with the blackest ingratitude! 
 The words ἐν ᾧ ἡγιάσθη are wanting in A and in St. Chry- 
 sostom, but not on that account to be rejected. Lachmann 
 readmitted them to his text in 1850. Nor have they any 
 appearance of being a gloss. Neither are they to be under- 
 stood (with Stier and a reference to ver. 10) of a consecration 
 in the divine purpose and will, but of an inward experience, 
 a former sanctification of heart and life in the person of 
 the now apostate. Such an irrecoverable fall would indeed, 
 without some such gracious experience, have been impossible. 
 What was expressed by ἅπαξ φωτισθέντας καλὸν yevoa- 
 μένους Θεοῦ ῥῆμα, etc., at ch. vi. 4 sq., is expressed here by 
 the simply indispensable ἐν ᾧ ἡγιάσθη. And 3dly, There 
 is also here a sin against the Holy Ghost: καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα 
 
190 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 τῆς χάριτος évyBpicas,—that is, the sin of all sins, which, as 
 here implied, is impossible without an inward experience of 
 grace. Most moderns understand by “ Spirit of grace” here, 
 “the Spirit which is the gift of grace” (Bleek, De Wette, 
 Liinemann); but the phrase is to be interpreted (in con- 
 nection with the jn mn of Zech. xii. 10, LXX. πνεῦμα 
 χάριτος Kal οἰκτιρμῶν) as designating the Spirit as the source 
 of grace; and this interpretation is favoured by the strong 
 personal term ἐνυβρίσας. It is as a loving, living, gracious 
 Person that such despite is done to the Holy Spirit. All 
 gifts of grace under the New Testament are here summed up 
 in and referred to the πνεῦμα τῆς χάριτος. A wider anti- 
 thesis could not be imagined than this of ὕβρις and χάρις. 
 To contemn or do despite to (ἐνυβρίζειν with following accu- 
 sative as in Sophocles, Philoct. 342) this Holy Spirit is to 
 blaspheme the whole work of grace of which one has once 
 been the subject, and to exhibit it as a deception and a lie. 
 It is profanely to contradict the very truth of God, and draw 
 down upon oneself a vengeance which cannot fail : 
 
 Vers. 30, 31. For we know him that said, “ Vengeance is 
 mine. It is I that will recompense, saith the Lord.” And 
 again, “ The Lord shall judge his people.” A fearful thing it 
 is to fall into the hands of the living God. 
 
 We know—such is the main thought here—the judicial 
 earnestness and severity of God: that earnestness, that seve- 
 rity, is testified to in God’s own word, in Holy Scripture. 
 The first testimony is taken from the ndwy ops Ὁ of Deut. 
 xxxil. 35, thus rendered by the Septuagint (both B and 
 A): ἐν ἡμέρᾳ ἐκδικήσεως (so also Philo) ἀνταποδώσω. Our 
 author, adhering to the Septuagint as closely as he may, 
 renders the original with more literal fidelity: ἐμοὶ ἐκδίκησις, 
 ἐγὼ ἀνταποδώσω. So also. St. Paul, Rom. xii. 19. The 
 citation in this form may have been stereotyped by apostolic 
 example in the language of the primitive church. The addi- 
 tion λέγει Κύριος, which has all authorities in its favour at 
 Rom. xii. 19, is omitted here by D* and the oldest versions ; 
 but as the previous τὸν εἰπόντα obviously renders it super- 
 
CHAP. X. 80, 31. 191 
 
 fluous, it seems probable that the omission may have been 
 an early one, due to a sense of convenience .and propriety. 
 We decide, therefore, for its retention, with Lachmann, 
 Bleek, and others. For a like reason I would read for the 
 second citation: ὅτε κρινεῖ Κύριος τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ (with 
 D, E, K, It., Vulg.), assuming that the inconvenient ὅτι 
 was omitted (A, Peshito, Philox.), and Κύριος κρινεῖ inverted, 
 as in our present teatus receptus. ‘The original form in the 
 Septuagint, both at Deut. xxxii. 36 and Ps. cxxxy. 14, is 
 ὅτι κρινεῖ Κύριος, x.7.X. The reference in our author’s mind 
 was doubtless to the passage in Deuteronomy, as being the 
 original utterance in the Thorah. In both passages the 
 meaning of }7 in the Hebrew text is “execute judgment 
 for,” or “on behalf of,” ἐ.6. that God will avenge His people 
 on their enemies; and so the Greek translation must have 
 understood it, seeing that the parallel clause in both places 
 is καὶ ἐπὶ τοῖς δούλοις αὐτοῦ παρακληθήσεται. ‘The Sep- 
 tuagint not seldom uses κρίνειν in this sense, e.g. Ps. liv. 3, 
 κρῖνον με = κρῖνον τὴν κρίσιν μου; as also in the sense of 
 just impartial government, as in Ps. Ixxii. 2, κρίνειν τὸν λαόν 
 σου ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ. But there is no need to assume (with 
 Bleek, De Wette, Liinemann) that the writer of this epistle 
 uses the citation in a sense foreign to the original. His 
 meaning may well be, that the Lord will execute judgment 
 on behalf of His people against those who desert the sacred 
 cause, against traitors and blasphemers. So understanding 
 it, the first quotation declares that God is a just Judge,—the 
 second, on whose behalf, and only indirectly against whom, 
 His judgment will be executed. 
 
 The words φοβερὸν τὸ ἐμπεσεῖν εἰς χεῖρας Θεοῦ ζῶντος 
 form a kind of epiphonema to this terrible warning. The 
 meaning is quite different from that of 2 Sam. xxiv. 14 (1 
 Chron. xxi. 13), Ecclus. ii. 18, where David says he would 
 rather fall into the hands of God than into those of man. 
 Bonum est, says Bengel, ineidere cum fide, temere terribile. 
 The hands of God are His almighty operation, whether in 
 love or wrath. He is Θεὸς ζῶν. The energy of His action 
 is measured by the absoluteness of His energy of life. How 
 
192 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 fearful to fall into His punitive hands, who is at once 
 Almighty and the Ever-living One! 
 
 The argument now takes a similar turn to that at ch. 
 vi. 9. After depicting the miserable present and terrible 
 future of wilful apostasy, the sacred writer reminds his 
 readers of their own gracious past and of a former sted- 
 fastness, which leaves him full of hope for the future. He 
 holds before their eyes a picture of their first love. 
 
 Vers. 32, 33. But call up to remembrance the former days, 
 in which, when first enlightened, ye endured a great fight of 
 afflictions ; partly in that ye were made a gazing-stock both by 
 reproaches and tribulations, and partly in that ye became par- 
 takers of them that lived in like manner. 
 
 The imperative ἀναμιμνήσκεσθε (call up to remembrance) 
 separates more widely the present from the past than the 
 μιμνήσκεσθε of ch. xii. 3: the former is more commonly 
 followed by the accusative, the latter by the genitive, of the 
 thing to be remembered. The days which they are to call 
 to remembrance are those of their conversion,—days which, 
 in comparison with the present gloom, were days of enlighten- 
 ment (comp. ch. vi. 4 with x. 26). In those former days 
 they had endured, without losing heart or hope (that is the 
 force of ὑπομένειν), a conflict made up of, or consisting in, 
 sufferings (παθημάτων, gen. attrib.). This conflict had been 
 πολλή, manifold, both inwardly and outwardly—“ great and 
 manifold.” Compare the πολὺς πόνος of Sophocles, O. Ὁ. 
 1673. The participles in ver. 33 add some details as to the 
 nature of this conflict. It had been partly immediate in their 
 own persons, partly mediate in the person of others. The 
 idiom τοῦτο μὲν... τοῦτο δέ, partly... partly, is not met 
 with elsewhere in the New Testament, but is frequent in 
 Herodotus and elsewhere (vid. Winer, § 21, Anm. 2). The 
 verb θεατρίξεσθαι (= θέατρον γίγνεσθαι, 1 Cor. iv. 11) is 
 not found elsewhere, though Polybius frequently employs 
 ἐκθεατρίζεσθαι. Its proper signification is to be exposed in 
 the theatre for shameful punishment, or to be made a spec- 
 tacle of shame to the world, having to endure both scornful 
 
CHAP. X. 82, 33. 193 
 
 taunts (ὀνειδισμοί) and active persecution (θλίψεις). These 
 they suffered partly in their own persons, partly in the way 
 of sympathy with others, making themselves fellow-sufferers 
 with τῶν οὕτως ἀναστρεφομένων. ‘These last words cannot 
 mean, ‘those who showed the like endurance” (Bodhme, 
 Bretschneider, etc.), ὑπεμείνατε being too remote for οὕτως 
 to refer to it. Rather we must refer οὕτως (with Tholuck, 
 Bleek, De Wette, Ebrard, Liinemann) to ἐν ὀνειδισμοῖς καὶ 
 θλίψεσι. But the rendering of τῶν οὕτως ἀναστρεφομένων by 
 “them who were so used” is not adequate. *“AvaotpépeaOat 
 has throughout the New Testament and in this epistle (ch. 
 xilil. 18) an ethical significance. Nor is it ever a mere passive ; 
 e.g. ἀναστρέφεσθαι in Xen. Ages. ix. 4 is to lead a life of 
 pleasurable enjoyment, not simply to have a pleasurable 
 existence. The meaning of the phrase, therefore, is here: 
 those who, leading a Christian life, suffered the like things. 
 The taliter conversantium of the Itala and Vulgate has pro- 
 bably the same meaning, and is at any rate to be preferred to 
 the taliter patientium of Mutianus. Among the persecutions 
 and trials thus alluded to, we may reckon not only the great 
 “affliction” (ἡ θλίψις) which followed the martyrdom of 
 Stephen (Acts viii. 1, xi. 19), and the various proceedings 
 against the church by which Herod Agrippa sought to flatter 
 the religious pride and fanaticism of his subjects (Acts xii.), 
 including the martyrdom of St. James the elder, but per- 
 haps also the brief persecuting activity of the Sanhedrim 
 appointed by the Sadducean high priest Anan, between the 
 death of the Roman governor Festus and the arrival of his 
 successor Albinus, which culminated (Jos. Ant. xx. 9. 1) in 
 the martyrdom of St. James the Just; and beside these, 
 imprisonments of apostles (Acts iv. 3, v. 18), prohibitions to 
 preach in the name of Jesus (Acts iv. 18), the fanatical rage 
 of Saul (viii. 3), and his own persecutions and imprison- 
 ment as the Apostle St. Paul, ending in a final loss of per- 
 sonal liberty (Acts xxi. 27): all this had been witnessed by 
 these Hebrew Christians, and they had had therefore abun- 
 dant opportunities both of stedfastly enduring themselves, 
 and of sympathizing with others under the like circumstances. 
 VOL. TI. N 
 
194 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 They had done both, as the writer goes on to show, begin- 
 ning with the second point. 
 
 Ver. 34. For ye both showed a fellow-feeling for them that 
 were in bonds, and accepted joyfully the spoiling of your goods, 
 knowing that ye have of your own a better and an enduring 
 possession [in heaven]. 
 
 The tewtus receptus has δεσμοῖς μου (my bonds); so D***, 
 K, I, K, and many other mss. This reading is also found in 
 Clemens Alexandrinus (Strom. iv. 16. 103), and is appealed 
 to by Euthalius (οὗ. 462) in proof of the Pauline authorship of . 
 the epistle. It was preferred by Laurentius Valla (οὗ. 1467) 
 to the reading of the Vulgate, nam et vinctis compassi estis, and 
 by most post-Reformation Protestant interpreters. Among 
 the latter Seb. Schmidt rejects the Vulgate rendering with 
 the acrid remark: Vulgato errare solemne est. But the read- 
 ing δεσμίοις, on which the rendering of the Vulgate is based, 
 has weighty authorities in its favour: e.g. A and D* (all the 
 more important, as B and C, here fail us), about 12 cursives, 
 and of versions, the Vulgate, Coptic, Armenian, Peshito, Phi- 
 loxenian, Arabs Erpen., and also St. Chrysostom, Cicumen., 
 and various other Greek and Latin fathers. Another read- 
 ing is simply δεσμοῖς, without pou: this is found in Origen 
 (Ezh. ad martyr. § 44); and the rendering of the Itala, vin- 
 culis eorum, is evidently founded on it. The remark of Estius 
 is here perfectly correct, that δεσμοῖς is a faulty reading de- 
 rived from δεσμίοις, and δεσμοῖς μου an expansion of δεσμοῖς, 
 the μου being a gloss added per epexegesin. The assumption 
 that St. Paul as prisoner in Rome was the writer of this 
 epistle, would, in connection with Col. iv. 18 and other pas- 
 sages in the Epistles to the Philippians and to Philemon, natu- 
 rally suggest the μου here. It would, on the other hand, be 
 difficult to see how the reading δεσμίοις could have been de- 
 rived from δεσμοῖς μου. ‘This consideration seems to establish 
 δεσμίοις as the original reading. Critics, therefore, both earlier 
 and later, decide in favour of δεσμίοις, e.g. Grotius, Bengel, 
 Wetstein, Griesbach, Scholz, Kuinél, Lachmann, Tischendorf. 
 Matthias and Rink, on the other hand, are in favour of dec- 
 
CHAP. X. 34. 195 
 
 pots μου; Mill and Nosselt, of δεσμοῖς. The sacred writer 
 praises both their courageous active sympathy with prisoners 
 (τοῖς, generic article, those in bonds), and also the joyous resig- 
 nation with which they had taken the spoiling of their own 
 earthly possessions. Ta ὑπάρχοντά twos (as Luke xi. 21), 
 or τινί (as Luke viii. 3), is any one’s property, that of which 
 he has the disposal or the use: προσδέχεσθαι, generally, to 
 receive as an object of expectation in the future; here, as in 
 the present, to accept: and this they had done willingly (comp. 
 Luke xv. 2), with joy, μετὰ χαρᾶς (Col. i. 11), counting it an 
 honour and a grace to have thus to suffer in the cause of 
 Christ. The participial clause which follows assigns a special 
 reason for this joyous taking of the loss of earthly posses- 
 sions—the consciousness of a hold on nobler realities. ‘The 
 textus receptus reads: γινώσκοντες ἔχειν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς κρείττονα 
 ὕπαρξιν ἐν οὐρανοῖς καὶ μένουσαν. ‘The two expressions ἐν 
 ἑαυτοῖς and ἐν οὐρανοῖς are not easily combined: the one affirm- 
 ing of the treasure that it is in themselves, in their own hearts, 
 as a present spiritual possession; the other that it is laid up in 
 heaven for future inheritance. But ἐν ἑαυτοῖς has but little 
 authority in its favour. Our choice must really lie between 
 ἑαυτούς (Lachmann and Bleek, following A, N, the Itala, the 
 Vulg., and other ancient versions, though some of these, 
 including the Peshito, 25 mx, are doubtful) and ἑαυτοῖς 
 (Tischendorf, following D*, E, I, K, Chrysost., Theodoret, 
 etc.). The majority of cursive Mss. is in favour of ἑαυτοῖς. 
 Internally the reading ἑαυτούς is decidedly the inferior one, 
 as being tautological or superfluous. But with the reading 
 ἑαυτοῖς (without the prep. ἐν), the other, ἐν οὐρανοῖς, would 
 be quite compatible. This reading is found in D***, K, I, K, 
 Peshito, Philox. (Origen, Chrysostom, etc.), but is omitted 
 by A, D*, Itala, Vulgate, Kopt., Authiop. (and by various 
 fathers) : it is not easy to.account for this omission by such 
 ancient authorities if the reading were really genuine. It is 
 most probably a gloss, and as such its position varies. Chry- 
 sostom with the Peshito has it after ὕπαρξιν, Theodoret after 
 μένουσαν. It is, in fact, easily dispensed with. Every reader 
 of the epistle cannot fail to see that the substance or posses- 
 
196 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 sion spoken of is the heavenly inheritance, the world to come, 
 whose powers are already stirring within us. Ὕπαρξις is a 
 word used by St. Luke (Acts il. 45); κρείττων (κρείσσων) 
 is a favourite word with the writer of this epistle, especially 
 when speaking of heavenly things; μένουσα is equivalent to 
 the ἀσάλευτος of ch. xii. 12 and the ἄφθαρτος of 1 Pet. i. 4. 
 Instead of ἔχειν (ὑμᾶς), he says emphatically ἔχειν ἑαυτοῖς. 
 When they have deprived you of every earthly good, you 
 know that you have for your own a better and inalienable 
 possession. In this way the sacred writer raises the hearts 
 and minds whom his previous language might have depressed. 
 He has led them to the brink of a terrible precipice of 
 negligence or apostasy, down which they seemed in peril of 
 falling, and now he leads them back from it to the contem- 
 plation of their own stedfast and favoured past. 
 
 Ver. 35. Cast not away, therefore, your confidence, for it 
 hath great recompense of reward. 
 
 As ἀποβάλλειν often occurs simply in the meaning of 
 involuntary loss, the rendering of the Itala and Vulgate 
 here (to which add Peshito and other versions), Nolite amit- 
 tere, cannot be regarded as absolutely wrong: it is, however, 
 better to adhere to the original sense of the verb, and render 
 Nolite abjicere—Cast not away, like cowardly or desponding 
 soldiers, the weapons of your spiritual warfare. That joy- 
 ous confidence of faith and hope, and that boldness in con- 
 fessing Christ, which is here and elsewhere designated by 
 παῤῥησία, is indeed the Christian’s noblest weapon, both 
 offensive and defensive, against all assaults and dangers, 
 from both outward and inward temptations. Another merit 
 of this παῤῥησία is expressed in the relative clause ἥτις ἔχει 
 μισθαποδοσίαν μεγάλην (Lachm. reads μεγαλ. μισθαπ. with 
 A, D, E, N, etc.) ; it deserves to be thus held fast, because 
 so sure of a final reward: ἔχειν being here used in a sensus 
 pregnans, as in ver. 34, and μισθαποδοσία in the same sense 
 as at ch. il. 2, xi. 26 (comp. ver. 6). (The classical form of 
 the word is μισθοδοσία.) This exhortation to the Hebrews 
 thus to hold fast their παῤῥησία, is now enforced by the 
 
 —————— ν᾿ ΝδοΝ 
 
CHAP. X. 36. 197 
 
 consideration that stedfastness is an essential condition of 
 obtaining the fulfilment of the divine promise. 
 
 Ver. 36. For ye have need of stedfastness, that, doing the 
 will of God, ye may receive the promise. 
 
 The ὑπομονή here commended consists in the μὴ ἀποβάλ- 
 New τὴν παῤῥησίαν : it is only that unshaken, unyielding, 
 patient endurance under the pressure of trial and perse- 
 cution, that stedfastness of faith, apprehending present 
 blessings, and of hope, with heaven-directed eye anticipating 
 the glorious future, which obtains what it waits for. In the 
 phrase χρείαν ἔχειν the verb is generally placed second, but 
 here the substantive, to throw on it the emphasis, as well as 
 on ὑπομονῆς ---ὗὗπ. ἔχετε χρείαν. ᾿Επαγγελία is here not the 
 word of promise, but its object, the thing promised (comp. 
 ix. 15 and xi. 13, 39), 1.6. the promised reward of stedfast- 
 ness and victory in the Christian warfare (comp. the ὑπο- 
 μονῆς βραβεῖον of Clem. Rom. c. 5, and the κομίζεσθαι τὸν 
 τῆς δόξης στέφανον of 1 Pet. v. 4). The exhibition of this 
 stedfastness is further described as a doing the will of God. 
 The aorist participle ποιήσαντες is better rendered by a pre- 
 sent than by a past participle here (comp. note on ii. 10). The 
 doing the divine will and the receiving the promise are not 
 thought of as events separated in time, but as the one the 
 direct cause of the other, which accompanies and crowns it ; 
 and the will of God is not the primary original divine counsel 
 fulfilled by Christ in the work of our redemption (ch. x. 
 7-10), but a secondary will and purpose concerning us, the 
 redeemed, viz. our stedfast perseverance in faith and hope— 
 TO ἄχρι τέλους ἐγκαρτερῆσαι. The reward to be obtained is 
 the eternal inheritance (ix. 15), which indeed is ours already, 
 and of which we begin even here to taste some fruit, but the 
 possession of which is still hidden, and its enjoyment variously 
 interrupted and obscured. Its revelation will be coincident 
 with the second coming of Christ (Col. iii. 3), which will 
 complete and crown His redeeming work (ch. ix. 28). Be- 
 tween His first advent in humility and His second advent in 
 glory lies an unknown interval, during which the church, as 
 
198 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 once her now exalted Head, must be content to go the way 
 of the cross. The stedfastness of faith which she requires 
 to perform this duty, the sacred writer goes on to prove by 
 prophetic words from Old Testament Scripture. 
 
 Vers. 37, 38. ‘For yet a very little while, and he that is 
 coming shall come, and shall not tarry. But the just man 
 shall live by faith; yet if he draw back, my soul hath no 
 pleasure in him. 
 
 The words μικρὸν ὅσον ὅσον are probably a reminiscence 
 of, and it may be an allusion to, Isa. xxvi. 20: “ Go, my 
 people, within, into thy chambers, and shut the door behind 
 thee: hide thyself for a little moment (LX X. μικρὸν ὅσον 
 ὅσον), till the indignation be overpast.’ The church must 
 enclose herself, as it were, in her life of prayer while the 
 tempest of divine wrath is raging in the outer world; for 
 they only can escape from it who thus by prayer hide them- 
 selves in God. But this wrathful judgment lasts but a little 
 
 to an end, their glorification will immediately follow. This 
 μικρὸν ὅσον ὅσον, taken from the thoroughly apocalyptic 
 section of Isaiah, ch. xxiv.—ch. xxvii., is prefixed by the 
 sacred writer to a longer quotation from Hab. ii. 3, 4, in 
 which the prophet warns earnestly to prepare for the Lord’s 
 coming. It is either to be regarded as an accusative of dura- 
 tion (paulum quantillum quantillum; Winer, ὃ 36, 3 Obs.), 
 or more probably as a nominative absolute (like ἔτι μικρόν, 
 St. John xiv. 9; comp. Isa. xxix. 7 in the Hebrew), restat 
 paululum temporis. The first clause in the citation from 
 Habakkuk has for its subject in the original text the vision 
 (tn) of the fall of the Chaldean monarchy, with the glory 
 of the divine παρουσία seen in prophetic perspective imme- 
 diately behind it: “ i it linger, wait for it; for it cometh, 
 cometh: tt shall not remain behind.” The Septuagint render- 
 ing is, ἐὰν ὑστερήσῃ ὑπόμεινον αὐτὸν, ὅτι ἐρχόμενος ἥξει καὶ 
 οὐ μὴ χρονίσῃ, making the subject a person; not the vision, 
 but the Lord Himself, Jehovah or Messiah. Our author 
 
CHAP. Χ, 37, 88. 199 
 
 makes the reference to a divine person more definite by 
 adding the article, ὁ ἐρχόμενος. The day of Jehovah (the 
 Lord) becomes in the New Testament the day of Christ the 
 Judge. He is here called ὁ ἐρχόμενος, not ὁ ἐλευσόμενος, 
 because since His ascension He has been always coming, 
 His return a matter of constant expectation. Whenever He 
 comes it will be suddenly—ovd χρονιεῖ : there will be no delay 
 beyond the final term fixed by the divine wisdom, long-suf- 
 fering, and mercy. 
 
 The following words in the original text of Habakkuk 
 are: “ Puffed up with pride, his soul is not right in him 
 (spoken of the Chaldean conqueror) ; but the just man shall 
 live by his faith.’ 'The Septuagint version, on the contrary, 
 is: “ If he (the subject indicated by the pronoun is uncertain) 
 draw back (ὑποστείληται), my soul (wD) instead of wa) hath 
 no pleasure in him; but the just man shall live by (lit. out of, 
 ἐκ) his faith in me” (ἐκ πίστεώς μου). So B; whereas A 
 reads, “ but my just one (ὁ δὲ δίκαιός μου) shall live by faith.” 
 The μου, corresponding to the Hebrew suffix, is in any case 
 genuine, and ought doubtless to follow πίστεως (*n31N2). 
 MSS., versions, and fathers have this wou, some after miaTews 
 (D*, Syr., Copt., Itala, Eus., Theodoret, Cyprian, etc.), some 
 after δίκαιος (A, N*, Vulg., Armen., Clemens Alex., Beda) : 
 the texts, too, of Eusebius and Theodoret place it elsewhere, 
 after δίκαιος; and so Lachmann, Tischendorf, Bleek. It seems, 
 however, most likely that our author, whom in another place 
 we have found agreeing with St. Paul in the form of a cita- 
 tion from the Old Testament (against the Septuagint), would 
 also cite the present passage, in accordance with St. Paul’s 
 citation at Rom.i. 17 and Gal. iii. 11; and therefore we would 
 abide by the tewtus receptus (ὁ δὲ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως ζήσεται), 
 which omits the μου, with D***, E, I, K, Chrys. Damasc. (in- 
 ferior authorities, it must be allowed); μου is also struck out by 
 a second hand in N. Our author inverts the two clauses, thus 
 diverging from the verse as it stands both in the original and 
 the versions, leaving the subject of ὑποστείληται no longer 
 doubtful, and making more impressive the warning against 
 apostasy. It is also evident that, such being his purpose, é« 
 
200 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 πίστεως (as in the original and the LXX.) must be con- 
 nected with ζήσεται, not with ὁ δίκαιος, as probably we must 
 also connect it in the two Pauline citations. It is faith which 
 brings life to the just man (justified by his faith), in the 
 midst of a judgment which brings destruction to unbelievers. 
 The prophet’s meaning is the same as St. Paul’s, and as that 
 of the apostolic writer of our epistle, only that the utterance 
 of the Old Testament is here illumined by New Testament 
 light. ms (faith) is the property or condition of the γιὲ 
 or jos) (the faithful one, or believer), viz. an unshaken 
 trust in and cleaving to God’s word and grace, a stedfast 
 onward and upward glance,—a trust, fidelity, and confidence, 
 that rests upon and hides in God. If the divine word is 
 regarded as its object, this 4312s is a resting on or cleaving 
 to that word: in any case, its best rendering is “ faith,” the 
 nature of which it expresses better than the Greek πίστις, 
 as being an ἐμ-μένειν (}O"8). 
 
 The divine word of promise which the prophet had in 
 view was the overthrow of the powers of this world (con- 
 centrated in the Chaldean monarchy), and the manifestation 
 or παρουσία of Jehovah; that which the apostolic writer has 
 here before his eyes is the final triumph of the church of the 
 redeemed, and the manifestation or second advent (παρουσία) 
 of Christ. The faith, and the object of faith, is for both 
 essentially the same—an abiding, living, and life-giving trust 
 in God the Saviour, and the promised salvation which He 
 is pledged to bring. Our author adheres as closely as may 
 be, though not slavishly, to the rendering in the Septuagint. 
 If on the one hand he omits the μου (in accordance with 
 the original Hebrew), he on the other retains the δέ (not- 
 withstanding his inversion of the clauses) in its original 
 place (viz. in the second clause, which he makes the first), 
 and so is compelled to connect the two clauses by a καί 
 where δέ would otherwise have seemed more natural (καὶ 
 ἐὰν ὑποστείληται, K.T.r.). It is evident that the Septuagint 
 translator must have read maby (instead of bay); for the 
 ordinary Septuagint renderings of ἣδν are (in the Pual) 
 ἀπορεῖσθαι, and ἐκλύεσθαι, and (in Hithpael) ἐκλείπειν, and 
 
CHAP. X. 39. 20 
 
 ὀλυγοψυχεῖν, t.e. synonymes of ὑποστέλλεσθαι, the proper 
 meaning of which is, to withdraw oneself, or shrink back 
 in timidity or cowardice. (Comp. ὑποστέλλειν ἑαυτόν, Gal. 
 ii. 12.) To insert an imaginary tis (with Grotius), or an 
 ἄνθρωπος (with Winer and De Wette), before ὑποστείληται 
 (“‘ but if any man draw back”), would thoroughly pervert the 
 writer’s meaning. Thesubject in both clauses is the same— 
 the just man, the man who is justified by his faith ; and the 
 sense in which ὑποστέλλεσθαι is here used is that of not 
 keeping faith, wavering in faith, forsaking the path of faith 
 and the community of the faithful. (The just man, the man 
 accepted before God, lives by faith; but if he loses his faith, 
 and faithlessly draws back from the right path, his accept- 
 ance is forfeited.) That such apostasy is possible even for 
 those who have been truly justified, ἐ.6. for Christians who 
 have had more than a superficial experience of divine grace, 
 is one of the main points of instruction in this epistle. To 
 teach this lesson, the two clauses are inverted of the prophetic 
 utterance. The second, as it stands here, is a warning to the 
 readers of their own danger, a warning as from the mouth 
 of God Himself, a warning in a high prophetic tone. But 
 the writer, as twice before, resumes the language of comfort 
 and encouragement after words of the saddest foreboding. 
 He proceeds, therefore, with pastoral gentleness and wisdom 
 to encourage the fainthearted and establish the wavering, by 
 rousing their Christian confidence, and associating himself 
 with them as exposed to the same dangers, and courageously 
 defying them. 
 
 Ver. 39. But we are not of backsliding to perdition, but 
 of faith to the gaining of the soul. 
 
 The idiom εἶναί twos with personal subject, and a geni- 
 tive of quality, signifies to be of such or such a character, to 
 bear such or such an impress, to be in such or such a condition. 
 Compare Luke ix. 55 (text. rec.), Acts ix. 2. The Itala and 
 Vulgate supply the supposed ellipsis here by /ilii, mislead- 
 ing the old Latin commentators, e.g. Primasius, Remigius, 
 
202 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 Haymo. Mautianus’ version is much better: nos autem non 
 sumus subtractionis ad perditionem, sed fidei ad acquisitionem 
 anime. The persons meant are not Christians in general, 
 but the writer of the epistle and his readers. Our way, 
 he says, is not that cowardly shrinking back from Christian 
 faith and confession which the God of prophecy has de- 
 nounced as so infinitely hateful to Himself, and which leads 
 to destruction (ἀπώλεια, antithesis of ζωή and σωτηρία), but 
 a stedfast, abiding faith and reliance (fs), which bases 
 itself on the ζήσεται of the prophetic promise—has for its 
 end the salvation of the soul. The backslider and apostate 
 loses his soul in a miserable condition of being, which, instead 
 of the liberty of self-control, has only the unfreedom of self- 
 abandonment ; and instead of life eternal, is a never-ending 
 state of death, a being brought to naught without annihila- 
 tion. The man of faith, on the other hand, the man who 
 keeps his faith unto the end, he saves his soul, wins her 
 back as from the pit of destruction which threatened to 
 devour her, and so may be said to gain and possess her for 
 the first time as now truly his. We must beware of inter- 
 preting εἰς περίπ. ψυχῆς as if simply equivalent to εἰς περίπ. 
 ζωῆς or σωτηρίας (1 Thess. y. 9). It is the soul itself which 
 is the subject of life and salvation. Faith saves the soul, 
 because it unites her to God the Living One and the Saviour. 
 The faithless man is said to lose his soul, because, having lost 
 communion with God, he is no longer master of himself, and 
 knows that his whole personal being is henceforth exposed 
 to the divine wrath, and the evil powers which that wrath 
 unbinds. 
 
 Cuap. x1.—Fuaith, a firm, unhesitating assurance of the future 
 and the unseen, was, as the sacred history shows, from 
 the beginning the essential characteristic of every God- 
 accepted life, the condition of every divine blessing and 
 success, the strength of every spiritually heroie action or 
 suffering ; faith, namely, in the divine promises, whose 
 
CHAP. XI. 1. 203 
 
 fulfilment the fathers hailed only afar off, that having 
 been reserved for us, so that they without us could not 
 be made perfect. 
 
 Our way, our characteristic, it has just been said, is not 
 backsliding or apostasy, but faith. With this utterance of 
 Christian confidence, the sacred writer endeavoured to arouse 
 the moral courage of his readers, and lift them up with him- 
 self to higher things. He now exhibits for their instruction 
 and further encouragement the nature of that faith which 
 can thus assure to the soul her threatened life, and whose 
 possession by them and himself he, in reliance on divine 
 grace, so confidently assumes. 
 
 Ver. 1. Now faith és a confidence of things hoped for, an 
 assurance as to things that are not seen. 
 
 The teawtus receptus, till the time of Griesbach and Kuineel, 
 placed a comma after πίστις (as if the meaning of ἔστι δὲ 
 πίστις were: Now faith is; there is such a thing, such a 
 reality, as faith) ; an interpunctuation which would reduce 
 what follows to a mere apposition, instead of its being (as we 
 take it) the predicate of the sentence (for to use the comma in 
 this way, for the purpose merely of showing that the follow- 
 ing genitive, ἐλπιζομένων, depends on ὑπόστασις and not on 
 πίστις, would be a misleading employment of that lectional 
 sign). Béhme is probably the last interpreter who thus ex- 
 plains the words ἔστι δὲ πίστις, est vero Jides hoc est, non solum 
 merumve nomen sed res utique verissima. The reason which 
 he gives, that otherwise our author must have written ἡ δὲ 
 πίστις ἐστίν or πίστις δέ ἐστιν, is groundless. The verbum 
 substantivum thus placed at the beginning of the sentence has 
 by no means always this purpose (like the etymologically re- 
 lated Hebrew particle Ὁ) οἵ affirming the reality of an exist- 
 ence (comp. ch. iv. 13; Acts xiii. 15; 1 Cor. viii. 5, xv. 44; 
 Tit. 1. 10; John viii. 50; 1 John v. 16), or the certainty of 
 an occurrence (Luke xxi. 25), but is often simply the logical 
 copula, so placed for the sake of emphasis, of which, as Butt- 
 mann observes (Ausf. Gramma. i. 552), it is quite capable, and 
 
204 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 to be accentuated accordingly. In the present instance, the 
 emphasis on the ἔστι denotes certainty of connection between 
 subject and predicate, the assured truth of the affirmation 
 made. (Comp. Luke viii. 11; Acts x. 34, xix. 26; 1 Tim. 
 vi. 6; Matt. xiii. 57; Mark xii. 27; Jas. iii. 15; John v. 
 45, xiii. 16.) The sacred writer’s meaning is not, “ There is 
 such a faith, which is so and so;” but simply, “ The faith of 
 which I speak (ch. x. 39), as shared by us, has such and such 
 a character.” 
 
 The predicate following ἔστιν (thus prefixed) may be, 
 but is not necessarily, a strict definition of the subject. So 
 some interpreters take this verse as a definition proper of 
 faith in the abstract (e.g. Liinemann, after Theodoret, ὁρισά- 
 μενος αὐτήν, Thomas Aquinas, Melanchthon in the Loci, etc. 
 etc.); while others deny that it is a definition at all (e.g. 
 Erasmus, who calls it an “ encomium jidei”), or, at any rate, 
 a definition of justifying faith (so Gerhard and Sebastian 
 Schmidt). Tholuck regards it not as a general or theoretical, 
 but simply a practical definition, suited to the immediate 
 purpose ; and others as a description of what faith is—not as 
 the principle of justification in antithesis to the works of the 
 law, but simply as the spirit of trustful stedfastness, in con- 
 trast to the impatience of diffidence and despondency when 
 the promised vision is delayed (so Calvin, Hofmann, Bleek, 
 Ebrard). But surely it is not mere accidents, but consti- 
 tuents and essential characteristics, of faith which are here 
 laid down. If we would define in the most abstract way 
 possible the proper objects of faith, should we not say that 
 faith always has for its object something transcendent, either 
 beyond sense or beyond time—the glorious future, or the in- 
 finite unseen? And could the sacred writer better describe 
 faith in its relations to these objects, than by the terms which 
 he has selected here? It seems to us that a more complete 
 and accurate definition of faith, and one more generally appli- 
 cable, could not be devised than that which is here given. 
 It is a generic, not a specific definition, and was necessarily 
 conceived in these general terms: 18έ, Because the writer’s 
 purpose is to direct the minds of these Hebrew Christians to 
 
 ii 
 
CHAP. XI. 1. 205 
 
 the glorious future of the new dispensation, in such striking 
 contrast to its poor and suffering present (ch. x. 36-39) ; 
 and 2dly, To prove by historical examples, in the section of 
 his epistle which is now beginning, that it is just faith, 
 maintained against appearances, in the future and invisible 
 which in all ages has characterized God’s true servants, and 
 upheld them in acceptance and communion with Him, and 
 in a life of active obedience. At the commencement of such 
 an historical summary, a comprehensive and general defini- 
 tion of what faith is in itself, apart even from the distinctive 
 revelations of the Gospel, the entrance of which into the 
 world is described as an ἐλθεῖν τὴν πίστιν (Gal. 111. 28), was 
 the only definition suitable or possible. 
 
 It has been said that this generic definition of faith is 
 peculiar to the writer of this epistle (see Késtlin, Joh. 
 Lehrbegriff, p. 448), or that he more nearly identifies it with 
 hope (ἐλπίς) than is the case with St. Paul (Bleek, De 
 Wette), or even that he altogether confounds the two graces 
 (Weiss, Petr. Lehrbegr. p. 67). Before we can decide how 
 much there be of truth or untruth in all this, we must exa- 
 mine more closely the twofold definition of πίστις here given. 
 The very ordo verborum shows that the apostolic writer lays 
 the main stress on the objects of faith (τὰ ἐλπιζόμενα and 
 πράγματα ov βλεπόμενα), not on its inward or subjective 
 relations to them (the ὑπόστασις and the ἔλεγχος). This 
 emphasis is weakened, and the arrangement of the words 
 misunderstood, by those who would connect ἐλπιζομένων 
 πραγμάτων as adjective with substantive. (So, among the 
 ancients, Chrysostom and Cicumenius; among moderns, 
 Béhme.) We have already seen (at ch. vi. 11, comp. x. 1) 
 that πρᾶγμα sometimes denotes an historical fact, sometimes a 
 supersensuous reality: it is in the latter sense that πραγμάτων 
 is used here, and so evidently belongs more properly to the 
 οὐ βλεπομένων, in order to distinguish the unseen realities 
 which are objects of faith from the shadowy dreams which 
 are the creations of human fancy. The objects of faith 
 are partly ἐλπιζόμενα and partly πράγματα οὐ βλεπόμενα. 
 The latter is a wider, more corprehensive term than the 
 
206 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 former. It would not be true to say, with Kostlin, that the 
 two terms are equivalent, inasmuch as every unseen and 
 transcendent reality, whether past, present, or future, may 
 be regarded as an é€Azvfowevov—a matter of which the full 
 knowledge and fruition is still an object of hope and desire. 
 If so violent a confounding of ideas as this were admissible, 
 it would be no wonder if the notion of πίστις were identified 
 with that of ἐλπίς. Τὺ is indeed true that all the objects of 
 Christian hope belong to the sphere of the invisible, but it is 
 not true that all that is unseen and apprehended by faith 
 belongs to the sphere of hope. For example, the creation 
 of the world by divine power is an event of the past, and 
 as such an object of faith, though not of hope; and so also 
 the omnipresence of God, the heavenly session and reign of 
 Christ, and His present divine supra-mundane existence, are 
 supernatural facts of the invisible world, which only faith, 
 breaking through the veil of the material universe, can reach 
 and apprehend: yet they are not, properly speaking, objects 
 of hope. Moreover, whatever interpretation we may give to 
 ὑπόστασις in the first member of the definition, the slightest 
 inspection of ἔλεγχος in the second 15 sufficient to teach us 
 that the πράγματα ov βλεπόμενα are here regarded as objects 
 not of hope, but of knowledge. We now turn to the twofold 
 designation of that relation to two classes of objects in which 
 πίστις is said to consist. 
 
 First, then, faith is defined to be ἐλπιζομένων ὑπόστασις. 
 The term ὑπόστασις has various meanings: (1.) That of 
 “putting under,” as action, or of “standing under” (under- 
 standing), as condition. (2.) It denotes that which is placed 
 or stands under something else, in various applications: e.g. 
 fundamentum = substantia in the twofold signification, first 
 of the true essence or being of a thing, which stands under 
 the appearance or phenomenon, and secondly of the truth or 
 reality as opposed to mere fancies or conceptions, the body 
 as opposed to its shadow (the Latin substantia has both these 
 meanings). (3.) “Ὑπόστασιυς is sometimes used in the sense 
 of putting oneself under, or standing fast under something 
 else, and so comes to signify boldness, stedfastness, confi- 
 
CHAP. ΣΙ. 1. 207 
 
 dence. But which of these meanings has the word here ? 
 First of all, we must beware of endeavouring to unite incom- 
 patible senses, so as to get as much meaning out of or into 
 the word as possible. Take Stier, for example: “ ὑπόστασις 
 is such ‘a confidence’ as is at the same time ‘a foundation- 
 stone’ within us, on which we may build further ; it is in- 
 deed the promised future good things themselves, on which we 
 establish ourselves by faith as on a firm foundation.” Here is 
 not only a palpable confusion of “ under” (ὑπό) with “on” 
 or “over,” but also a method of interpretation which admits 
 of the insertion or extraction of every possible variety of 
 meaning. Nor is Beck’s view much less inadmissible, that 
 ὑπόστασις has here both an objective and subjective sense : 
 objective, as signifying substantial, spiritual reality; and sub- 
 jective, as signifying the inward reception which faith accords 
 to the divine reality. It is scarcely conceivable how the 
 word could be used in both these senses at the same time. 
 Setting, then, Beck’s and Stier’s and the like methods of 
 interpretation aside, only three senses remain to be assigned 
 to ὑπόστασις here: either it is used, as at ch. i. ὃ, for “ sub- 
 stance,’ whether in the sense of “essence” or in that of 
 “reality;” or for “confidence,” as at ch. 111. 14; or for 
 “foundation,” as, for instance, in the Acta Pauli et Thecle, 
 ὃ 37, οὗτος (ὁ vids τοῦ Θεοῦ) ζωῆς ἀθανάτου ὑπόστασις. 
 But as ὑπόστασις is not elsewhere used by our author in this 
 last sense of “ fundamentum,” we should only be prepared 
 to admit it here in case both the other interpretations were 
 shown to be impossible. It is maintained, however, among 
 others, by Faber Stapulensis, Calvin, Hunnius, Schulz, Stein, 
 Steugel, and Von Gerlach. The Vulgate rendering is a 
 happy correction of the confused translation in the Itala, 
 est autem fides sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum 
 non apparentium; and the profoundest, most spiritual inter- 
 pretation of the definition thus translated is to be found in 
 Dante’s Paradiso, xxiv. 52-81. There the poet-guest in 
 Paradise is, at the instance of Beatrice, examined by the 
 Apostle St. Peter as to his faith. The first question put to 
 him is, What is faith? whereupon he turns to Beatrice, and 
 
203 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 receiving from her signs of encouragement to speak his in- 
 ward mind, thus proceeds : * 
 
 ‘May grace that suffers me to make confession,” 
 Began I, ‘‘ to the great Centurion, 
 Give my conceptions all a due expression.” 
 
 And thus continued: ‘‘ As the truthful pen, 
 Father! of thy dear brother wrote of it, 
 Who put with thee Rome into the good way, 
 
 Faith is the substance of things hoped for, 
 And argument of those which are not seen ; 
 And this appears to me its quiddity.” ? 
 
 Then heard I: “ Right and truly dost thou deem, 
 If well thou understandest why he placed it 
 ’*Mong substances, and then ’mong arguments.” 
 
 Whereafter I: ‘‘ The things mysterious © 
 That here vouchsafe to me their apparition, 
 Unto all eyes below are so concealed, 
 
 That all their being lies in faith alone, 
 Whereon high Hope proceeds to base herself, 
 And so Faith takes the place and rank of substance. 
 
 And it behoveth us from our belief 
 To draw conclusions without other sight ; 
 And hence Faith takes the place of argument.” 
 
 Then heard I: “Τῇ whatever is acquired 
 Below by learning thus were understood, 
 No sophist’s subtlety would there find place.” 
 
 1] follow the translation in Goschel’s profound and interesting 
 treatise, ‘‘ Dante Alighieri’s Osterfeier im Zwillingsgestirn des himmlischen 
 Paradieses,” 1849, and would further direct the reader’s attention to 
 Goschel’s own observations and interpretations, as well as to those 
 of Philalethes (King John of Saxony) derived from Thomas Aquinas. 
 [The English rendering is chiefly taken from Longfellow.—Tr. ] 
 
 2 It is evident from this that Dante regarded Heb. xi. 1 as a strict . 
 
 definition, and that he combined the words sperandarum substantia 
 rerum. So likewise St. Jerome, in Ep. ad Gal., ‘‘ est autem fides speran- 
 darum substantia rerum, argumentum necdum apparentium ;” and so the 
 verse is interpreted by Primasius. St. Ambrose and St. Augustine 
 connect ‘‘ rerum” with “‘ non apparentium.” Dante follows his master. 
 
 St. Thomas. 
 
 — ss 
 
CHAP. XI. 1. 209 
 
 If with this we compare the interpretation of St. Thomas 
 Aquinas, as finally reduced to a scholastic form (repeated 
 subsequently by Lyra and others), [ides est habitus mentis, 
 quo inchoatur vita eterna in nobis, faciens intellectum assentire 
 non apparentibus,' we must needs acknowledge that the great 
 theological poet has here the advantage of the angelical doctor. 
 Aquinas takes substantia in the sense of principium primum, 
 a fundamental principle containing potentially all future de- 
 velopments; so that the assensus fidei is the prima inchoatio 
 rerum sperandarum, all which hoped-for things faith already 
 carries (virtute) in herself. Dante, on the other hand, takes 
 substantia in its first obvious meaning, without making it 
 simply equivalent to fundamentum. But the truth is, that if 
 ὑπόστασις be here equivalent to substantia, it must be used 
 per metonymiam, and faith be called ‘the substance of hoped- 
 for things,” because it is that condition of mind which appre- 
 hends them in their substantial reality (substantia = recepta- 
 culum substantie). So, among moderns, Beck, and somewhat 
 similarly (though yet differently) St. Chrysostom: ‘ Things 
 existing only in hope are ἀνυπόστατα, and seem to be mere 
 shadows ; but faith gives them the reality they are in need of, 
 or rather does not give them reality, but is itself their essence 
 (οὐσία). For example, the resurrection has not yet taken place, 
 and is therefore not yet a reality; but faith substantiates it in our 
 soul (ὑφίστησιν ἐν ἡμετέρᾳ ψυχῇ). Mutianus’ rendering of 
 the last words is, sed fides facit eam subsistere in anima nostra ; 
 which is correct, unless we assume that Chrysostom takes 
 ὑπόστασις first in the sense of substance or substantiation, 
 and then in that of mental apprehension or realisation—the 
 subjectio of Castellio, the “darstellung” of Menken. But 
 
 1 Compare Secunda Secundex, qu. 4, art. 1: ‘* Respondeo dicendum 
 (quod hee sit competens fidei definitio, Fides est substantia, etc.) quod 
 licet quidam dicant preedicta apostoli verba non esse fidei definitionem, 
 quia definitio indicat rei quidditatem et essentiam, ut habetur 6 Metaph. 
 text. 19, tamen si quis recte consideret, omnia ex quibus fides potest 
 definiri in preedicta descriptione tanguntur, licet verba non ordinentur 
 sub forma definitionis (chiefly inasmuch as ‘substantia et argumentum sunt 
 diversa genera non subalternatim posita’) ; sicut etiam apud Philosophos, 
 pretermissa syllogistica forma, syllogismorum principia tanguntur.” 
 
 VOL. II. oO 
 
210 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 ὑπόστασις in this last meaning (which would yield but a 
 meagre sense, as the same might be said of the power of 
 imagination or mere fancy) is found only as the name of a 
 rhetorical figure (vid. Passow, s.v.); and it is and remains 
 highly improbable that the writer of this epistle should have 
 used the word in a different sense from those found in other 
 parts of his work, or in Hellenistic writers generally. In 
 the LXX. the word has various meanings, all connected 
 with the notion of standing or standing under: e.g. Wisd. 
 xvi. 21, the manna (as the staff of Israel’s wilderness-life) 
 is called ὑπόστασις Θεοῦ, God’s “sustenance” (i.e. the food 
 supplied by Him); elsewhere it is used as = ὕπαρξις and 
 οὐσία for “substance,” in the sense of wealth or property ; 
 and finally, as the translation of ndmin and mpn for perseve- 
 rantia, endurance, patient expectation, stedfast hope. Now, 
 when we consider that ὑπόστασις is found used in this last 
 sense at ch. iii. 14 of this epistle, and as a synonym of πίστις 
 and ἐλπίς; that it is also employed by St. Paul (2 Cor. ix. 4, 
 xi. 17) as = fiducia, and that this meaning is the ordinary 
 one in which it is used by writers in the κοινὴ διάλεκτος 
 (comp. Diodor. Sic. xx. 78, where ὑποστατικός is the anti- 
 thesis of azreAmicas),—it seems scarcely doubtful that such 
 must be its meaning here, connected as it is with ἐλπιζομένων, 
 and contrasted with ὑποστολή, viz. a stedfast confidence 
 with regard to the objects of hope, in contrast to the waver- 
 ing and despondency which would faithlessly abandon them. 
 Against this being here the meaning of ὑπόστασις, I used to 
 remark formerly, that in all the instances alleged by Bleek 
 (ii. p. 463 sq.) (from other than New Testament writers) of 
 ὑπόστασις used in the sense of fiducia, the genitive dependent 
 on it always denoted the person by whom the jiducia was 
 exhibited ; e.g. ὑπόστασις αὐτοῦ, of the bravery of Horatius 
 Cocles, in Polybius. But as in one instance, at any rate, 
 the object of ὑπόστασις is expressed in the dative after ὑπό 
 (viz. Jos. Ant. xviii. 1. 6, τῆς ὑπὸ τοιούτοις ὑποστάσεως, of 
 the adherents of Judas the Galilean, who remained sted- 
 fast under the most cruel tortures), so at least in one other 
 we find it with the genitive (Ruth i. 12, where Naomi 
 
CHAP. XI. 1. Ze 
 
 exclaims: If I thought ὅτι ἔστι μοι ὑπόστασις τοῦ γενηθῆναι 
 με ἀνδρί... οουἹὰ ye wait?) We would render therefore 
 here (with Luther, Melanchthon, Grotius, Bohme, Tholuck, 
 Bleek, De Wette, Bloomfield, M‘Lean, Ebrard) unhesitat- 
 ingly: “ Faith is a confident assurance of such things as are 
 hoped for.” It is self-evident that ὑπόστασις cannot here be 
 equivalent to “hope”—‘‘an assured hope of things hoped 
 for,” what a tautology!—but to “stedfast assurance of the 
 reality of things which, being future, are objects of hope.” 
 Stedfastness, patience, confidence, courage, in opposition to 
 all that is threatening or depressing in the present, are the 
 notions here combined. 
 
 We now come to the second member of the definition 
 here given of faith: πραγμάτων ἔλεγχος οὐ βλεπομένων. 
 The term ἔλεγχος has also various meanings. (1) It may 
 signify simply a proof, e.g. τὸ mpayua τὸν ἔλεγχον δώσει 
 (Dem.)— the matter will give its own proof; or (2) the 
 process of proving, convincing, or convicting. So in the 
 LXX. it is employed as the rendering of nnn for the 
 “discovery” or “conviction” of guilt. (3) "Ελεγξις and 
 ἐλεγμός being not very usual words, ἔλεγχος is frequently 
 used for conviction in the passive sense of being convicted or 
 convinced. This is the sense intended by the argumentum of 
 the Vulgate, the convictio of Mutianus (probably also the δι). 
 of the Peshito), the demonstratio or evidentia of Calvin, the 
 firma persuasio of Hammond, the “nicht zweifelt” (doubteth 
 not) of Luther. This meaning conviction, or firm persuasion, 
 seems a natural one to assign to ἔλεγχος here, after that of 
 “confident assurance” assigned to ὑπόστασις : and in the 
 phrase εἰς ἔλεγχον πίπτειν (ἐλθεῖν) it comes very near to it. 
 But Tholuck is right (though without assigning any reason) 
 in disputing its having this meaning here. Standing thus 
 independently, ἔλεγχος can hardly have any other meaning 
 than “proof,” “evidence,” or “ certification.” We decide, 
 therefore, for this last, with Bengel, Bohme, M‘Lean, Stier, 
 Ebrard, Hofmann, and others, because in this sense it best 
 fits in with ὑπόστασις in the previous clause. Faith is its 
 own certification, its own proof or evidence of divine realities, 
 
212 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 being itself a confident assurance (ὑπόστασις) of them. It is 
 not a mere passive conviction (as Ebrard correctly observes), 
 but an active argument or evidence for their existence: it 
 proves the reality of its own objects. For faith recognises 
 itself as an operation from above; and as standing in living 
 communion with the unseen God and the invisible world, 
 it tastes the powers of the world to come (the future eon) 
 projecting themselves into the present; it discerns by an 
 actus reflexus the divine seal impressed on its operations; it 
 exhibits itself both in doing and suffering as a supernatural 
 sustaining and motive power. Faith, then, is its own proof 
 of the existence and active energy of unseen facts and rea- 
 lities, and able by its own immediate intuitions to dispense 
 with the evidence of the senses and laborious proofs of 
 reason. It carries the imperious conviction of the truth it 
 holds within itself. 
 
 If now we examine the two halves of this definition in 
 their relation to one another, we shall find that it may be 
 said that the former describes the nature of faith in accord- 
 ance with the etymon of Aayx, and the latter in accordance 
 with that of πίστις. The essential characteristic of faith 
 as M298 is stedfast, patient resting in the divine word and 
 promise (Isa. vii. 9); the essential characteristic of faith 
 as πίστις is an unhesitating conviction, or a profound sub- 
 mission to overwhelming evidence of goodness, truth, and 
 power in its object (πείθεται, faith as πίστις yields and 
 obeys; comp. Jer. xx. 7, ‘Jehovah, Thou hast persuaded 
 me, and I was persuaded ; Thou art stronger than I, and hast 
 prevailed”). Faith thus conceived is an ἔλεγχος, a proof or 
 evidence of the Unseen, inasmuch as it is a real communion 
 of the soul with that one only true Being that lies behind 
 all the phenomena of the creaturely universe. So Clemens 
 Alexandrinus truly defines faith (though his interpretation 
 is based on a false etymology) as ἡ περὶ τὸ ὃν στάσις τῆς 
 ψυχῆς ἡμῶν. The designations of faith in the Old Testa- 
 ment correspond naturally more closely to the first half of 
 this definition, denoting faith by such terms as ΠΣ, Dn, $n, 
 mp, and other synonyms of hope and trust,—terms in which 
 
CHAP. XI. 1. 213 
 
 the Old Testament, with its onward glance to an unrevealed 
 but promised glorious future, is sorich. At the same time, one 
 cannot see how any one can assert that the apostolic writer 
 almost loses the idea of faith in that of hope here, without 
 himself altogether losing sight of the second half of the defi- 
 nition. St. Paul likewise regards faith and hope as nigh- 
 related notions. When, for instance, he opposes (2 Cor. v. 
 7) πίστις to εἶδος, he makes it refer to οὐ βλεπόμενα, which 
 at the same time are ἐλπιζόμενα ; and while in one place 
 (Eph. ii. 8) he speaks of salvation as a fruit of grace through 
 faith (τῇ χάριτι ἐστὲ σεσωσμένοι διὰ τῆς πίστεως), he speaks 
 in another (Rom. vill. 24) in the same way of hope (τῇ 
 ἐλπίδι ἐσώθημεν). But though related, the notions are 
 not identical. In our present passage it is not said of faith 
 that it is μελλόντων ἐλπίς, but ἐλπιζομένων ὑπόστασις. 
 Hope is the blood-relation, because it is the offspring of 
 faith. The proper object of hope is the future; the proper 
 object of faith is the present but unseen. Hope is faith’s 
 comforter, and faith is hope’s stay. The relation between 
 them is similar to that between faith and love. Faith and 
 love are not identical, but the one is offspring of the other. 
 Faith is the root of love, love is the fruit and evidence of 
 faith; faith is love’s stay and motive power. When, there- 
 fore, the apostolic writer calls faith ἐλπιζομένων ὑπόστασις, 
 he is by no means identifying it with hope, but indicating 
 the true relation between those Christian graces. It is faith 
 which upholds and quickens hope amid all the depressing 
 influences of the present time, securing its permanence, and 
 maintaining the freshness of its bloom. In brief, it is édau- 
 ζομένων ὑπόστασις, a stedfast confidence as to things hoped 
 for. These ἐλπιζόμενα embrace the second coming of the 
 Lord in glory, and the glorification of His saints with Him 
 in His kingdom, which are objects of faith so far as faith 
 is the marrow and support of hope. To the πράγματα οὐ 
 βλεπόμενα belong the all-sufficient sacrifice of Christ and 
 its abiding efficiency, His royal session at the right hand 
 of the Eternal Majesty, and His heavenly high-priesthood ; 
 and these are all objects of faith as such. This twofold 
 
214 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 nature and character of faith, its onward look to a glorious 
 future, its conviction of the realities of an unseen present, is 
 now proved by a reference to the sacred history as recorded 
 in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. 
 
 Ver. 2. For it was this wherein good witness was borne to 
 the elders. 
 
 This use of μαρτυρεῖσθαν in the sense of being well 
 spoken of, haying a good name and reputation, is charac- 
 teristic of St. Luke (comp. Acts vi. 3, x. 22, xvi. 2, xxii. 12): 
 it occurs once in St. Paul, and once in the writings of St. 
 John. ‘One bears a favourable testimony to another,” is 
 expressed by μαρτυρεῖ τις τινί (Acts xv. 8); “one is favour- 
 ably reported of, or witnessed to, by another,” is μαρτυρεῖται 
 τινί ὑπό τινος (ὃ John 12). The matter of the witness 
 is expressed in extra-biblical Greek by the nominative or 
 accusative (6.5. μαρτυρειταί τινί τι in Dionys., μαρτυροῦμαί 
 τι in Plutarch and Lucian), or by the dative following 
 ἐπί (e.g. μαρτυροῦμαι ἐπί τινι in Athenzeus and Lucian). 
 Instead of this ἐπί τινι, our author uses διά τίνος in vers. 
 4 and 39 of this chapter, and ἔν τινὶ here (comp. 1 Tim. 
 v. 10). It is quite unnecessary to interpret this ἐν ταύτῃ, 
 with Bleek, Bloomfield, and Liinemann, after Winer, by 
 hac in fide constituti, hac fide instructi, and so separate it 
 from ἐμαρτυρήθησαι. Elsewhere in the New Testament we 
 have a similar construction, e.g. (1 Cor. xi. 22) ἐπαινεῖσθαι 
 ἔν τινι for ἐπαιν. ἐπί twos. It is the ἐν regionis, like the 
 in in Cicero’s phrase vituperart in amicitia, “to be blamed 
 in the matter of friendship.” The of πρεσβύτεροι is not to 
 be restricted to the ancient patriarchs and prophets of the 
 primeval and legal periods, but extends to all the heroes 
 and martyrs of faith under the Old Testament down to the 
 Maccabean time, who, by their fidelity and stedfastness 
 under inferior means of grace, became noble examples to the 
 younger generation (ver. 40). ΑἸ] these received honourable 
 testimony, viz. from God, and from the sacred Scriptures 
 recording their exploits and their sufferings ἐν ταύτῃ. The 
 sacred writer says purposely ἐν ταύτῃ, not ἐν αὐτῇ, to mark 
 
CHAP. XI. 3. 215 
 
 that it was in the manifestation of just such and no other 
 faith as he has been describing that they had obtained this 
 gracious testimony. After this general statement, express- 
 ing the result of a wide review of the whole Old Testament 
 history, he now proceeds to details. 
 
 Ver. 3. By faith we understand that the universe was 
 framed by the word of God, so that it was not out of things 
 that appear (to the senses) that the visible came into existence. 
 
 After the announcement in ver. 2 concerning the πρεσ- 
 βύτεροι of the Old Testament, we should have expected an 
 immediate enumeration of particular examples of heroic faith, 
 such as actually follows in ver. 4, and onwards to the end of 
 the chapter. But what is the meaning of this preceding 
 utterance concerning the creation of the world as a noii- 
 ‘menon of faith in general? Some (e.g. Brentius, J. Ὁ. 
 Michaelis, etc.) assume that the sacred writer has actually 
 here in view Adam and his immediate descendants, whose 
 faith was tried and exercised by the recognition of the divine 
 creative energy to which the visible universe around them 
 owed its origin. “Instead of mentioning Adam by name,” 
 says Stier, “the writer of the epistle speaks of the first 
 beginning of faith in mankind— faith in the Almighty 
 power of God, not as Redeemer, but as Creator.” (So 
 also Seb. Schmidt.) Bleek inclines to the same view, and 
 so likewise Hofmann, who is naturally led to take it, by his 
 own interpretation of the records of creation in the book 
 of Genesis, as describing the first impressions made under 
 divine guidance on the faith of primitive humanity by the 
 spectacle of the visible universe. This view of Hofmann’s 
 I have shown elsewhere to be insufficient. The history of 
 the work of creation in Genesis contains far more than faith, 
 however enlightened, could by itself discern. And however 
 natural the reference to Adam and his immediate descend- 
 ants may seem, it would be more likely that the sacred 
 writer, if such were his real meaning, would have said, 
 πίστει ἐνόησαν οἱ πρωτόπλαστοι, or the like, than what he 
 has written—iore: νοοῦμεν. Liinemann, taking these words 
 
216 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. Ὁ 
 
 in their wide and obvious sense, regards them as a some- 
 what disturbing addition or interpolation in the course of 
 the argument. But this judgment is an unreasonable one. 
 The appeal to the witness of Scripture to the significance 
 of faith does actually begin at ver. 2. Faith to recognise 
 the divine origin of the created universe is not expressly 
 attributed to the oldest fathers of mankind here, simply 
 because Scripture does not expressly attribute it to them ; 
 but the meaning is much the same as if it did. Scripture 
 starts with a fact which only faith can recognise: the divine 
 origin of the universe is a noiimenon of faith—of such faith 
 as patriarchs and prophets and other saints continued to 
 exhibit throughout the times of the Old Testament. St. 
 Paul employs the verb νοεῖν at Rom. 1. 20 in a similar sense 
 to that in which it is employed here. He there speaks of 
 the invisible things (τὰ ἀόρατα) of God as νοούμενα, which 
 since the creation are through creaturely phenomena me- 
 diately visible to man (καθορᾶται), while immediately dis- 
 cernible only through the agency of the νοῦς, i.e. the rational 
 and spiritual faculty, whose office and prerogative it is to 
 penetrate to and discover the divine oneness which is the 
 invisible root and origin of the manifold phenomena of the 
 visible universe. Noeiy is that rational or spiritual action 
 of thought which seeks for the ultimate roots and principles 
 of outward things; νοούμενα are those roots and principles 
 thus spiritually discerned. For such action of thought, in 
 reference to the works of God, faith is a necessary condi- 
 tion; and therefore we read here, πίστει νοοῦμεν. Faith 
 alone penetrates behind the veil; faith alone discerns the 
 origin of the universe in the word of God. That universe 
 is here (as at ch. i. 2) designated οἱ αἰῶνες ; and its pre- 
 paration, building, or framing during the great creative 
 week (making it to correspond to the divine purpose of its 
 Founder) is described as a κατηρτίσθαι (LXX. for p33, 
 Ps, Ixxxix. 88; pan, Ps. Ixxiv. 16). The phrase nx (God 
 said) recurs ten times in the first chapter of Genesis. “The 
 world came into existence by means of ten divine utterances” 
 (nD, Pirke Aboth y. 1). It was framed, as it is pre- 
 
CHAP. XI. 3. 21g 
 
 served, ῥήματι Θεοῦ. The notion of ῥῆμα Θεοῦ is narrower 
 than that of λόγος Θεοῦ (vid. Ps. xxxiii. 6, τῷ λόγῳ Κυρίου 
 οἱ οὐρανοὶ ἐστερεώθησαν) : λόγος combines the notion of that 
 which is inwardly willed with that of the will expressed 
 outwardly ; ῥῆμα has only the latter notion. (See Dihne 
 (i. 221) on the passage in Philo: διὰ ῥήματος τοῦ αἰτίου ὁ 
 σύμπας κόσμος ἐδημιουργεῖτο.)͵ God first willed -that the 
 world should be, and then gave expression to His inward 
 thought. This thought or idea of the world is in its reali- 
 sation something different from and lower than God Him- 
 self. The discerning and apprehending this is a work of 
 faith. It is not meant, of course, that faith unaided by 
 divine revelation could have discerned the fact that the 
 world was made in just six days (neither more nor less), 
 and by means of ten creative words (so many and no more); 
 but that (as we see in the old Persian and some other cos- 
 mogonies) faith could and did discern in creation the work- 
 ing out of a divine purpose and uttered will, in a fixed order, 
 and according to a certain predetermined plan. On this 
 impression or perception of inquiring faith, Scripture sets 
 its divine seal. 
 
 It is then in such a way, only discernible by the under- 
 standing of faith (intellectus ex fide), that the world came 
 into existence: εἰς τὸ μὴ ἐκ φαινομένων τὸ βλεπόμενον 
 γεγονέναι. 
 
 Instead of the τὰ βλεπόμενα of the textus receptus, we 
 read, with Lachmann (A, D*, E*, 17, It., Kopt., and several 
 Fathers), τὸ βλεπόμενον, which, as designating the visible 
 universe as one great totality (and not a plurality of indi- 
 viduals or phenomena), is at once peculiar, and more ex- 
 pressive than the plural τὰ βλεπ., and as such doubtless the 
 original reading. The variation makes no difference as to 
 the sense. The sentence is a difficult one, and interpretations 
 diverge most widely. The first question is, whether the 
 clause εἰς τὸ μή expresses a consequence or a purpose. Most 
 commentators (with Késtlin, p. 448) take the former view ; 
 Hofmann and Liinemann, perhaps more correctly, the latter: 
 for though eds, with following infinitive used as a substantive, 
 
218 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 may have merely eventual (Luke v. 17), it has much more 
 frequently final significance (comp. in this epistle, ch. 11. 17, 
 vii. 25, viii. 3, ix. 14, 28, xii. 10, xiii. 21; Luke iv. 29 (rec.) ; 
 and Acts iii. 9, vii. 19). Both senses are here combined. 
 The world came into existence by the word of God, in order 
 that it might not have a material middle cause. God’s will 
 was to be, not a mere δημιουργός, but also a κτίστης. The 
 next question is: With what must we connect the μή The 
 majority of versions (e.g. the Vulgate, Peshito, Itala, and 
 those of Erasmus, Luther, and Castellio) render as if the 
 reading were ἐκ μὴ φαινομένων. Bleek and De Wette declare 
 such a trajection to be inadmissible; Liinemann maintains 
 that it is grammatically impossible; but surely St. Chry- 
 sostom, Theodoret, Gicumenius, and Theophylact, who all 
 so construed this μή, must be allowed to have understood 
 Greek. Valckenaer likewise—no bad philologer—accepts 
 (with Camerarius) this construction, and calls it conswetam 
 Grecis transpositionem vocule negantis ; and (to cite but one 
 modern grammarian) Rost lays down (§ 135, 1), that “‘ when 
 a notion is to be emphatically denied which is expressed by 
 a noun (substantive or adjective) to which an article and a 
 preposition are attached, in such case the particle of negation 
 is placed before the article and before the preposition.” It 
 is true that in many cases the negation belongs properly to 
 the verb, even when preceded by it (e.g. Thue. 1. 5, ἡγουμένων 
 ἀνδρῶν ov τῶν ἀδυνατωτάτων) ; but in many others such a 
 combination would be quite foreign to the writer’s meaning 
 (e.g. Arrian, Exp. Alec. vii. 23,12, οὐκ ἐπὶ μεγάλοις μεγάλως 
 διεσπουδάξζετο, which does not mean, “he applied not great 
 diligence to great things,” but, “he applied great diligence 
 to things which were not great”); and in some it would be 
 mere pedantry to insist upon it (e.g. Thue. iii. 57, εἰ δὲ περὶ 
 ἡμῶν γνώσεσθε μὴ τὰ εἰκότα, ἱ.6. “things unseemly;” see 
 other examples in Poppo’s Prolegg. vol. i. p. 303). It is 
 therefore quite possible that the reading of A at 2 Macc. 
 vil. 28, οὐκ ἐξ ὄντων (instead of ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων, the reading 
 of B) ἐποίησεν αὐτὰ ὁ Θεός, is the right one, corresponding 
 
CHAP. XI. 3. 219 
 
 to the regular Hebrew idiom, 7279 xb = “ out of no-thing.”! 
 Neither is there in the clause before us any grammatical 
 necessity for connecting μή with the verb γεγονέναι, as is 
 done by Beza, Huet, Seb. Schmidt, Bengel, etc., and most 
 moderns, except only Steugel, Bretschneider, and Ebrard.? 
 The sense indeed remains, whichever way we take the μή, 
 essentially the same, and the same difficulty of interpretation 
 will have to be encountered. Whether we render the clause, 
 “ that so the visible (universe) might not (seem to) have come 
 into existence from visible things,” or“... might (be seen to) 
 have come into being out of things invisible,’ the question still 
 remains, in the case of the former rendering, “ If not from 
 visible things, from what things then did it come into being?” 
 in the case of the latter, “ What are those things invisible 
 out of which it came ?”—in both cases essentially the same 
 question. The obvious answer would be, “ Not out of visible 
 things, but from the word of God;” or, “Out of things 
 invisible, 1.6. the divine word.” But this answer is unsatis- 
 factory, although most mederns would appear to be satisfied 
 with it. For if we choose the construction ἐκ μὴ φαινομένων, 
 it does not seem that such a term as μὴ φαινόμενα, or, not to 
 insist on the plural, μὴ φαινόμενον, would be a suitable one 
 to designate the divinely but inaudibly spoken word; or if 
 we take the other construction, μὴ γεγονέναι, one does not 
 see why, the author’s intention being to deny the origination 
 of the visible universe from other visible things, he should 
 change the term, and write ἐκ φαινομένων instead of ἐκ 
 βλεπομένων, or even ἐξ ὁρατῶν. Neither do we say the 
 world came into being “ from” or “out of,” but “through” 
 
 1 Saadia says, in his Emunoth we-Dé-oth i. 4, in reference probably 
 to the Cabbalists: ‘‘I have met with people who do not indeed go so 
 far as to deny that there was a Framer of the visible universe, but who, 
 thinking it impossible that anything could have come out of nothing 
 (725 xb 425), and seeing that the Creator was the only being in 
 existence at the time of the creation, maintain that He created all things 
 out of His own substance.” 
 
 2 To whom may also be added Tholuck, of whom Krabbe writes (de 
 temporali ex nihilo Creatione, p. 20): Frustra hanc interpretationem (the 
 trajectional ἐκ 4 Dawomévwv) revocare et defendere studuit Tholuceius. 
 
220 EFISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 or “by means of,” the word of God. Shall we then assume, 
 with St. Chrysostom, Theodoret, Luther, Valckenaer, Chr. Fr. 
 Schmid, and others, that ἐκ μὴ φαινομένων is equivalent to 
 “out of nothing” or “not out of anything?” If that were 
 really the sense here, the expression chosen could hardly be 
 more unsuitable or less ambiguous; for that which does not 
 appear, or is not obvious to the senses (the antithesis shows 
 that such must be the meaning here of μὴ φαινομένων), is 
 not therefore unsubstantial, or absolutely non-existent. The 
 very opposite to this is the fundamental assumption on which 
 the doctrine of this epistle rests, viz. that the super-sensual 
 (τὰ μὴ φαινόμενα) alone has true being or reality, in accord- 
 ance with the Pauline axiom (2 Cor. iv. 18), τὰ βλεπόμενα 
 πρόσκαιρα, τὰ δὲ μὴ βλεπόμενα αἰώνια (which alone might 
 have sufficed to convince Liinemann of the unsoundness of his 
 position, that the negative particle, if meant to be attached 
 to φαινομένων, must have been ov here, and not μή). The 
 sacred writer’s meaning must then be, that the world came 
 into existence, by means of the word of God, out of the non- 
 phenomenal, or, by means of the word of God, not out of 
 the phenomenal. The question then would be: What is 
 this “non-phenomenal?” or, What is the antithesis unex- 
 pressed to that which is here called “the phenomenal?” 
 Various answers have been given. 
 
 Some interpreters have proposed the chaos which pre- 
 ceded creation—the “'Thohu wa-Bohu” of Gen. i. 2—as 
 being meant by the τὰ μὴ φαινόμενα, or as the antithesis to 
 the τὰ φαινόμενα, of which the writer of our epistle is here 
 speaking. (So Cajetan, Estius, Schlichting, Hammond, 
 Limborch, Calmet, Baumgarten, M‘Lean, etc.) The LXX. 
 rendering of 177) ἽΠΠ is, at Gen. 1. 2, ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύ- 
 actos, with which compare Wisd. xi. 18, and also Jer. iv. 23, 
 where the Sept. rendering of 172) ΠῚ is simply οὐθέν, nothing- 
 ness. The ancient Jewish interpretation of ‘“'Thohu” was 
 the absolutely formless material, or matter without any defi- 
 nite existence—matter in its non-apparent, non-phenomenal 
 condition. The Thohu of Genesis might certainly be so 
 understood without attributing to it the eternity of Plato’s 
 
CHAP. XI. 3. 221 
 
 μὴ ov, or the Hyle of Gentile philosophy ; and Philo is careful 
 on this point to avoid the imminent danger of infringing on 
 the scriptural idea of creation. But the conscientious inter- 
 preter of Scripture must refuse here to read, as it were 
 between the lines, a sense for this μὴ ἐκ φαινομένων which 
 has no support in any other passage of the New Testament, 
 and which requires careful cleansing from philosophic dross 
 in order not to be directly anti-scriptural. No objection of 
 this kind, or any derived from the analogia fidei, can be laid 
 against Ebrard’s interpretation, who explains the μὴ ἐκ φαιν. 
 with reference to the divine powers exercised in the work of 
 creation, and forming, as it were, the contents of the divine 
 ῥῆμα, nor against Tholuck’s former reference of μὴ ἐκ φαιν. 
 to “the invisible causality of the divine omnipotence.” 
 Ebrard’s words are: “The plural μὴ φαιν. cannot be taken 
 to mean mere nothingness, nor to stand for the confused and 
 extra-phenomenal realm of chaos: these μὴ φαινόμενα must 
 rather be invisible powers, to the recognition (νόησις) of 
 which the eye of faith is raised by the contemplation of the 
 visible (τὸ βλεπόμενον). This view is attractive; but I 
 hardly think we could properly say of the divine δυνάμεις 
 (which play so great a part in the system of Philo (6.0. i. 
 556. 20), and which in other systems of Jewish theology 
 are supposed to be referred to in the plural ody) that the 
 world was made (not δι’ αὐτῶν, but) ἐξ αὐτῶν. I should 
 therefore much prefer a different though similar mode of 
 interpretation, which may also be illustrated by the language 
 of Philo (ii. 261. 47), and which is found in Primasius and 
 the schoolmen (e.g. Aquinas) ; namely, that these μὴ φαινό- 
 μενα are the divine ideas from which the visible universe 
 sprang into being, and which were drawn from their divine 
 seclusion in the mind of the Creator, by means of the creative 
 word, into the region of mundane phenomenal reality. Com- 
 pare Philo 1. 4. 387 (ἐξ ὧν κόσμον νοητὸν συστησάμενος 
 ἀπετέλει τὸν αἰσθητὸν παραδείγματι χρώμενος ἐκείνῳ) and 42 
 (where he says that ὁ ἐκ τῶν ἰδεῶν κόσμος has its place in the 
 Logos), together with i. 7. 47 (ὁ ἀσώματος κόσμος ἤδη πέρας 
 εἶχεν ἱδρυθεὶς ἐν τῷ θείῳ λόγῳ, ὁ δὲ αἰσθητὸς πρὸς παρά- 
 
292 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 δευγμα τούτου ἐτελειουργεῖτο), --- thoughts which have an 
 inward and necessary connection with the great fact revealed 
 in the N. T., that God made the world by means of His 
 Logos (i. 2, comp. with John i. 3), which has now been 
 revealed to us in these last days in the person of Jesus 
 Christ. Hofmann himself, with all his antipathy to acknow- 
 ledging any relation between Alexandrinism and the New 
 Testament, comes very near to this view. 
 
 If, then, that view be correct which I have elsewhere 
 endeavoured to establish (Bibl. Psych. pp. 23, 24, etc.), that 
 it is indeed a scriptural notion, that all events in creation 
 and developments in history have had from eternity their 
 spiritual images or archetypes in the mind of God; that the 
 divine plan or idea of the universe that is to be, preceded the 
 realisation of the universe as it is; and that there is therefore 
 a world of ideas as well as a world of actualities having the 
 divine Logos for its centre and point of union ;—if this 
 notion be at once scriptural, and (with certain modifications) 
 Platonic, and Alexandrine, and if one fundamental doctrine 
 of our epistle be, that there is an archetypal heavenly world 
 containing the types and ideas of this (comp. ch. vii. 5 with 
 Philo ii. 146. 35, τῶν μελλόντων ἀποτελεῖσθαι σωμάτων 
 ἀσωμάτους ἰδέας), there does seem much to recommend the 
 view that the μὴ φαινόμενα of our text (or the antithesis 
 understood of these φαινόμενα) are the divine ideas in their 
 unrealized condition. (So Alb. Magnus, Ribera, Molina.) 
 Even Standenmaier, while making it the business of his life 
 to expose the unscriptural nature of the philosophical doc- 
 trine of ideas, and to oppose the identification of the idea 
 of the world with the divine Logos, is inclined to this view. 
 Bisping also decides for it, and it appears to me the right 
 one. 
 
 If, then, we take μὴ ἐκ φαινομένων together, the divine 
 ideas are the invisible ground and origin from which God, 
 by means of His creative word, drew forth into existence 
 the visible universe; but if we prefer to connect μή with 
 γεγονέναι (as I myself finally incline to do), we must then 
 assume an ellipsis of ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ νοητῶν, and these νοητά will be 
 
CHAP. XI. 4. 223 
 
 the same ideas as the invisible archetypes of the visible frame 
 of things derived from them. 
 
 The ordinary interpretation gives no adequate explanation 
 of the substitution in the latter clause of φαίνεσθαι for the 
 βλέπεσθαι of the former; nor with it is there any proper 
 antithesis in the ῥήματι τοῦ Θεοῦ, which is regarded as a 
 medium of creative energies, not the ground or substratum 
 of creation itself. 
 
 At the same time, we would make no rash assertion as to 
 the inner thought of the sacred writer here. Parallels from 
 Philo may easily mislead an incautious interpreter. What 
 Philo meant cosmologically is in our author’s use changed 
 and transubstantiated into theological and_ soteriological 
 meanings and applications. Whether he thought of, or 
 would admit, the cosmological meaning, is subject to doubt ; 
 but Scripture elsewhere seems to me to teach plainly enough 
 that there is an upper heavenly world containing the arche- 
 types and patterns of this (Matt. xxvi. 29). The present 
 world is anagogical, ever pointing up to higher things—avri- 
 τυπα Tov ἀληθινῶν. It is faith, and faith only, resting on 
 the revealed creative word, which penetrates through the veil 
 of phenomena to the divine super-sensual ground behind it. 
 Creation itself is a postulate of faith. The very formation 
 of the stage of human history, on which God’s dealings with 
 man have been displayed, is a fact disclosed only to faith. 
 
 Having laid down this position, the writer proceeds, with 
 the clue of Scripture statements in his hand, to review the 
 enterprises .and accomplishments of faith throughout the 
 course of sacred history. 
 
 Ver. 4. By faith Abel offered unto God a sacrifice of more 
 worth than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was 
 righteous, God bearing witness unto his gifts: and thereby he, 
 being dead, yet speaketh. 
 
 Πίστει belongs grammatically to προσήνεγκεν, but logi- 
 cally it governs the whole sentence, both character and con- 
 sequence of Abel’s conduct being referred to faith as their 
 ground and motive. It was both an act and a reward of 
 
224 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 faith, that Abel offered to God πλείονα θυσίαν παρὲ Kaiv: “a 
 greater’’ (inwardly so, potiorem), “‘ better,” “more excellent,” 
 “more effectual sacrifice” (comp. 111. 3, Matt. vi. 25, where, 
 as frequently elsewhere, πλείων is used of that which excels 
 in inward worth) “ than Cain” —“ before” or “ beyond Cain” 
 (pre Caino)—whose sacrifice (the Mincha or vegetable offer- 
 ing is called θυσία at vii. 27) had not so great, or rather no 
 value at all before God (παρὰ Κάϊν, like iii. 3, rapa Μωῦσῆν, 
 
 does not, however, require to be interpreted by assuming an. 
 
 ellipsis for παρὰ τὴν θυσίαν τοῦ K.). The relative dv ἧς is 
 to be referred to πίστει, not (as by Cramer and Hofmann) 
 to θυσίαν. Πίστις is throughout the main thought (comp. 
 iv. 7, 39). Abel offered by faith, and through faith (διὰ 
 τῆς πίστεως) he obtained the witness that he was a righteous 
 man. So he is called by the Lord’s own mouth (Matt. xxiii. 
 35; comp. 1 John iii. 12). But that this later witness is 
 not that which (as Primasius thought) is here referred to, is 
 evident from the following present participle μαρτυροῦντος 
 (instead of μαρτυρήσαντος), which along with the ἐπὶ τοῖς 
 δώροις αὐτοῦ shows that the reference is to the actual history 
 as recorded in the Old Testament: καὶ ἐπεῖδεν ὁ Θεὸς ἐπὶ 
 "ABen, καὶ ἐπὶ τοῖς δώροις αὐτοῦ (Gen. iv. 4). This “look- 
 ing” by God upon Abel and his sacrificial gift involved a 
 recognition that he was righteous; that is, so conformed in 
 disposition and conduct to the divine will, that God could 
 vouchsafe him a favourable regard. 
 
 The sacred writer but briefly recapitulates the Old Tes- 
 tament narrative, yet so as to throw considerable light upon 
 its inward significance. The terms of the narrative seem 
 to imply that the reason for the different acceptance of the 
 two offerings might be found in their external character. 
 Not, however, such a difference as suggested by the Em- 
 peror Julian, when he says, τιμότερα τῶν ἀψύχων ἐστὶ τὰ 
 ἔμψυχα τῷ ζῶντι καὶ ζωῆς αἰτίῳ Θεῷ (Cyr. Alex. contra 
 Julian.); for each brother offered of that which he pos- 
 sessed, and in accordance with his special work and calling. 
 The difference to which the narrative itself points was of 
 another kind. Abel’s sacrifice was of the firstlings (n1122) 
 
CHAP. XI. 4. 225 
 
 of his flock, but Cain’s was not an offering of first-fruits 
 (Ὁ 53 nn). Abel offered his first and best (of the firstlings 
 of his flock, and of the fat thereof); Cain offered only 
 that which came first to hand. The outward difference be- 
 tokened also an inward one. Ommne quod datur Deo (says 
 St. Gregory the Great) ex dantis mente pensatur, unde 
 scriptum est: respexit Deus ad Abel et ad munera ejus, ad 
 Cain autem et ad munera ejus non respexit. Neque enim 
 sacrum eloquium dicit: respexit ad munera Abel et ad Cain 
 munera non respeait, sed prius ait quia respexit ad Abel, ac 
 deinde subjunxit: et ad munera ejus. Ideirco non Abel ex 
 muneribus sed ex Abel munera oblata placuerunt. Abel’s 
 sacrifice was an expression of heartfelt thankfulness, or, as 
 our author says, tracing the disposition of his mind to its 
 root, an expression of his faith. But inasmuch as the rela- 
 tion between God and man had been disturbed by sin, 
 Abel’s faith exhibited itself in recognising and laying hold 
 
 of the divine mercy in the midst of wrath and judgment,— 
 "an aspect of his personal standing with regard to sacrifice, 
 which had its correlative in his offering being of a life and 
 of blood. Even Hofmann recognises in Abel’s sacrifice the 
 expression of a need of atonement felt by him. But the point 
 in the sacrifice on which he would lay stress is a different 
 one from ours. Abel, he supposes, chose for himself the call- 
 ing of a shepherd, and offered an animal sacrifice, because 
 the skins of animals were by divine appointment employed 
 to cover human nakedness. The sacrifice was at once a 
 reminiscence of, and provided a relief for, sinful shame. 
 Cain, on the other hand, in his sacrifice only thought of the 
 support of natural life by the fruits of the earth. But Hof- 
 mann will not allow the existence of any idea of substitution 
 in Abel’s mind (Schriftd. ii. 1. 141). “It was not to atone 
 for his sin, nor to avert the consequences of sin, death, that 
 Abel brought his offering, but rather to express his thank- 
 fulness for pardon already vouchsafed, and for the tokens 
 of that pardon thus graciously provided.” But it would 
 surely be a strange thing, if in the first bloody sacrifice 
 recorded in Scripture the intention should be quite different 
 
 VOL. II. Ῥ 
 
226 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 from that of all that follow. No trace is subsequently found 
 in Scripture of the meaning here attached to animal sacri- 
 fices. Nor can we well imagine that the first bloody sacri- 
 fice was offered only to express thankfulness for the pardon 
 of sin already vouchsafed, while in all later ones the offering 
 of a life and the shedding of blood was regarded as the 
 means of obtaining such pardon. Granted, too, that Abel’s 
 sacrifice, like Cain’s, was in one aspect a thank-offering, we 
 need not refuse to see that element of atonement in it which 
 formed a constituent of all sacrifices of the like kind that 
 followed. Nor can we allow the correctness of the assump- 
 tion that Abel, in choosing the employment of a shepherd, 
 thought only of providing garments of skin or wool, and_ 
 not also of making use of the milk of his flock,—a use by no 
 means forbidden before the flood. Nor, finally, if in slaying 
 his victim Abel might remember with thankfulness the 
 grace which had provided its skin as a covering for the 
 nakedness of the body and its sinful shame, can we see 
 why he might not also have thought, in shedding its life- 
 blood, of the soul’s life forfeited by sin. The doctrine that 
 the “soul” (ws) 1s in the blood, and that the blood of animal 
 sacrifices was “given” by God to make atonement for the 
 “soul” (Lev. xvii. 11), is taught in the Thorah; and in the 
 case of most animal sacrifices, the subsequent offering of the 
 fat on the altar is there expressly ordained or sanctioned. 
 If Abel had learned to perform the one rite, why might he 
 not in like manner have learned to understand the meaning 
 of the other? Sacrifice, in its complete form, proceeds on a 
 twofold assumption, or is the fruit of a twofold conviction 
 in the human mind: first, that we are not our own, but 
 God’s, and owe to Him the voluntary surrender of all that 
 we have and are, and that gratitude for ‘His mercies should 
 lead us constantly to do and express this; and secondly, that 
 man in his present sinful condition is an object of divine 
 wrath, and cannot offer any sacrifice that shall be pleasing 
 to God until his sinfulness is destroyed or taken away, 1.6. 
 has been atoned for. Both thoughts find their full expres- 
 sion only in the bloody sacrifice. The acceptance of Abel’s 
 
CHAP. XI. 4. 227 
 
 offering by Jehovah was connected with this. It is not said 
 that Abel kindled his own sacrifice: we may therefore infer 
 that the “respect” (regard or look) which Jehovah had to it 
 was a look of fire by which it was consumed (comp. Ex. xiv. 
 24). Theodotion renders, in accordance with this view, the 
 Hebrew “π᾿ yo by καὶ ἐνεπύρισεν ὁ Θεός. 
 
 And by it he, being dead, yet speaketh. Having already 
 referred δι’ ἧς in the previous clause to πίστει (as the ruling 
 notion both in this sentence and in the whole chapter), it fol- 
 lows as a matter of course that we must also refer δι’ αὐτῆς 
 here to πίστει, and not to θυσίαν. The teat. rec. reads, καὶ 
 dv αὑτῆς ἀποθανὼν ἔτι λαλεῦται, with D, KE, J, K, the majo- 
 rity of mss., and (among versions) the Itala, and possibly 
 some others which may have taken λαλεῖται in a middle sense. 
 All later critics since Griesbach (except only Mattheei) read 
 λαλεῖ with A, some twenty cursives, and probably all the 
 ancient versions except the Itala, and most commentators 
 among the fathers (e.g. Chrysostom and Theophylact). The 
 reading λαλεῖται gives no good sense: the middle, which 
 would make it equivalent to λαλεῖ, is inadmissible; and the 
 passive, = “he is honourably spoken of,” hardly less so 
 (λαλοῦμανι = λαλεῖται περὶ ἐμοῦ being nowhere met with) ; 
 and at best, this sense would be poor and unmeaning, with 
 no special force as applied to Abel. The reading λαλεῖται 
 is due in all likelihood to the prevailing interpretation among 
 the fathers, as thus echoed by Primasius: adhue loquitur, t.e. 
 interemit quidem eum corpore, sed ejus gloriam non potuit in- 
 terimere cum eo; dum enim gloria illius in toto mundo predi- 
 catur, dum laus ejus in omnium ore versatur, dum eum omnes 
 admirantur, quotidie adhue defunctus loquitur. So e.g. St. 
 Chrysostom: πῶς ἐτὶ λαλεῖ; τοῦτο (namely, τὸ λαλεῖν) καὶ 
 τοῦ ζῆν σημεῖόν ἐστιν καὶ τοῦ παρὰ πάντων ἄδεσθαι, θαυμά- 
 ζεσθαι καὶ μακαρίζεσθαι. ‘This interpretation he connects 
 with another that corresponds better with the active λαλεῖ ; 
 namely, that Abel still speaks to us by his glorious example, 
 exhorting us to follow him. (So also M‘Lean.) But how 
 poor and unmeaning is all this! The true interpretation is 
 at once suggested by a reference to the original text, Gen. 
 
228 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 iv. 10, “ Hark, thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the 
 ground ;” and to ch. xii. 24 of our epistle, where the blood of 
 Jesus that cries for mercy is contrasted with that of Abel 
 which cries for vengeance (comp. Rev. vi. 9-11), and for a. 
 divine testimony on his behalf. Is it not clear as day that 
 λαλεῖ must here express that cry of innocent blood, audible to 
 God if not to man, which proves that the righteous man even 
 after death is still an object of divine regard, is neither lost 
 nor forgotten, but lives to God still? Calvin remarks excel- 
 lently (referring to Ps. exvi. 13, Heb. 15): inde patet repu- 
 tari inter Dei sanctos quorum mors illi pretiosa est. The 
 pres. λαλεῖ may be, as Ebrard thinks, an historical present, 
 referring merely to Gen. iv. 10. But the sacred writer has 
 probably in mind the continued utterance of that cry in the 
 record of Scripture. (So Béhme.) Abel continually speaks 
 in Scripture, because God there refers to his speaking as a 
 ery which has reached His ears. It is then manifest, even 
 after death, what value his person has before God, what 
 living power resides in it still—and all that through faith ! 
 Abel’s example is now followed by Enoch’s. Abel through 
 faith lived on before God even after death; Enoch through 
 faith was delivered from the present world, without passing 
 through death at all. 
 
 Ver. 5. By faith Enoch was translated that he should not 
 see death; and was not found, because God had translated 
 him: for before translation he receiveth the testimony that he 
 had pleased God. 
 
 The sacred writer adheres closely to the words of the 
 LXX., and in the form in which they are preserved to us in 
 the text of A?: εὐηρέστησε δὲ Ενὼχ τῷ Θεῷ . . . καὶ εὐηρέοσ- 
 τησεν Evay τῷ Θεῷ καὶ οὐχ ηὑρέσκετο διότι μετέθηκεν αὐτον 
 ὁ Θεός (Gen. ν. 232,24). (Ηὑρίσκετο for the εὑρίσκετο of teat. 
 rec. is the reading of A, D, E in our text, and is adopted by 
 Bleek, Lachmann, and Tischendorf; the reading of B, on 
 the other hand, in the LXX. is εὑρίσκετο, and ὅτι instead 
 of διότι.) The literal rendering of the original Hebrew is: 
 And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, because God 
 
CHAP. XI. 5. 229 
 
 took him. As καὶ οὐχ ηὑρίσκετο is an explanatory rendering 
 of the Hebrew 12's) (comp. Gen. slii. 13, 36 ; Job vii. 8; and 
 Gesenius, Thesaur. p. 82), so μετέθηκεν αὐτόν is of InN pd: 
 God took Enoch (comp. Ps. Ixxiii. 24, xlix. 16) into heaven 
 (2 Kings ii. 8, 5). The infinitive with τοῦ (τοῦ μὴ ἰδεῖν 
 θάνατον) is a not unclassical mode of expression, and accord- 
 ing to Winer (p. 290) is in the New Testament specially 
 employed by St. Luke: it expresses either a purpose (that 
 he might not: comp. x. 7; St. Luke i. 27, v. 7, etc.) or 
 a consequence (so that he did not: comp. Acts ii. 12, vii. 
 19). The former is the more usual force of the expression, 
 and not unsuitable here. It was God’s purpose, in taking 
 Enoch away, to deliver him from the power of death, as a 
 reward of his faith in Himself the living God. This trans- 
 lation is not to be regarded as a mors quedam extraordinaria 
 (Calvin), but as a miraculous deliverance from death itself. 
 God’s purpose thereby to reward Enoch’s faith is begun to 
 be proved in the following clause: πρὸ yap τῆς μεταθέσεως 
 (αὐτοῦ is to be rejected, with Lachm. and Tisch., after A, Ὁ), 
 It., Vulg., Copt., and several cursives) μεμαρτύρηται εὐαρεσ- 
 TyKEvat' τῷ Θεῷ (textus receptus has the temporal augment 
 evnpeot., Which is usually omitted after ev and dvs, and 
 generally in the κοινὴ δίαλεκτος). The μεμαρτύρηται refers 
 evidently to the testimony of Scripture; but a question may 
 be raised, whether πρό has here temporal or local significance 
 —whether the meaning is, that before his translation Enoch 
 received the divine witness that he pleased God (Schlichting, 
 Bengel, Hofmann), or that the scriptural witness is borne 
 to him that he pleased God before the record is given of his 
 translation (so, for example, Bleek and De Wette). The 
 ordo verborum seems to favour the latter view, which indeed 
 virtually includes the former. 
 
 The Hebrew phrase “Nn-ny ySnnn (to walk with God), 
 expressive of the closest intimacy and uninterrupted com- 
 munion, occurs here only (Gen. ν. 22, 24), and at Gen. vi. 9 
 (where it is said of Noah). The Septuagint rendering in 
 both places is εὐαρεστεῖν τῷ Θεῷ, which means not only “ to 
 be well-pleasing to God,” but also “to strive to please God,” 
 
230 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 to lead a life well-pleasing to Him. Bengel compares St. 
 Paul’s use of ἀρέσκειν, 1 Cor. x. 33, Gal. i. 10. The ex- 
 pression had become a stereotyped one in reference to Enoch, 
 as one sees from Kcclus. xliv. 16, Wisd. iv. 10. Scripture 
 does not speak expressly of Enoch’s “faith:” our author 
 therefore goes on to remark that faith was the basis of his 
 God-accepted manner of life. 
 
 Ver. 6. But without faith (it is) impossible to please: for 
 he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he be- 
 cometh a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. 
 
 The ἀδύνατον clause is purposely made quite universal : 
 there is no ellipsis therefore of αὐτόν (comp. viii. 3 and ix. 23). 
 It is the general proposition on which the conclusion in refer- 
 ence to Enoch is based. (Faith essential to all well-pleas- 
 ing; Enoch pleased God; Enoch therefore had faith.) This 
 general proposition is proved by the following sentence with 
 δεῖ, which here expresses not so much a moral obligation as 
 a logical necessity. He that draweth nigh to God, ie. in 
 order to serve or hold communion with Him (προσέρχεσθαι 
 τῷ Θεῷ = ἐγγίζειν, vii. 19; λατρεύειν, xii. 28, ix. 14; 3p, 
 Ps. Ixxiii. 28, Zeph. iii. 2, comp. ch. vii. 25), must have faith, 
 or firm belief, (1) that God is, not indeed as an object of 
 sense, but as a living unseen reality with whom we may hold 
 communion, and stand in mutual relations of love and duty ; 
 and (2) he must believe that he does not draw nigh to this 
 God in vain, that His promises to them that seek Him dili- 
 gently (ἐκζητεῖν --- Heb. wn, Acts xv. 17, as &yreiv = WP) are 
 no deceptions. To such he must believe that God becomes 
 (γίνεται), not will or shall become (γενήσεται), by a law of His 
 being a μισθαποδότης, a dispenser of rewards (comp. μισθα- 
 moles x. 35, xi. 26). The being of God is a πρᾶγμα οὐ 
 βλεπόμενον ; the reward of fidelity. to Him is an ἐλπιζόμενον. 
 The one requires faith of assured conviction, the other faith 
 of confident expectation. Enoch’s deliverance from death 
 was amanifest reward of such faith. From Abel the martyr, 
 and Enoch the immortalized, the sacred writer now proceeds 
 to a third antediluvian pattern of faith—Noah the righteous. 
 
 a 
 
CHAP, XI.<7. Jo 
 
 Ver. 7. By faith Noah, having received a divine admoni- 
 tion of things not yet seen, taking forethought, builded an ark 
 for the saving of his house; through which (faith) he passed 
 judgment on the world, and became heir of the righteousness 
 which is according to faith. 
 
 The whole sentence again is dominated by the main 
 notion of πίστει, which belongs exclusively neither to εὐλα- 
 βηθείς nor to κατεσκεύασε, but to both in turn or together, as 
 the practical expression of his faith. The arrangement of 
 words in the sentence is skilful and significant ; χρηματισθείς 
 
 . . coming first, as preceding in time the εὐλαβηθείς and the 
 κατεσκεύασε, and immediately following πίστει as its occa- 
 sion and object. The divine admonition received by Noah 
 foretold the coming deluge, and the means by which he 
 might save his family. All this was for a time a μηδέπω 
 βλεπόμενον, a thing of the future (περί belongs here pro- 
 perly to χρηματισθείς : it is found indeed in Plato after 
 εὐλαβηθείς, with τὸ but not with tevos). Noah, then, after 
 receiving a divine warning concerning what for the present 
 was not an object of sight, built the ark εὐλαβηθείς. This 
 might be rendered (with Luther) “ fearing God” (edAaB. τὸν 
 Θεόν), or “reverencing the oracle” (edd. τὸν χρηματισμόν : 
 so Carpzoy, Béhme, De Wette, Hofmann). But the more 
 usual sense of εὐλαβηθείς seems here the most suitable — 
 “taking forethought,” “in anxious care,” as against the 
 threatened danger to himself and the world (so Bengel, 
 Rieger, Menken, Bleek, Ebrard, etc.). See notes on ch. v. 7, 
 8. One might indeed render it, with Liinemann, “in pious 
 forethought,” “ with religious anxiety” (viz. in reference to 
 the χρηματισμός); but even that cannot be said necessarily 
 to lie in the word εὐλαβηθείς (compare evr. at Acts xxiii. 10 
 with the patristic gloss (of St. Chrysostom, etc.) φοβηθείς, 
 and the rendering in the versions (Peshito, Itala, Vulgate), 
 metuens).. While his contemporaries, whom he did not leave 
 unwarned, went on in their heedless and carnal security, 
 Noah took all due precautions for his own safety and that 
 of his household: he built the ark. Compare for the like 
 expression 1 Pet. ii. 20; κιβωτός used in both places almost 
 
232 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 as a proper name, and therefore without the article (see my 
 Genesis, 1. 241). 
 
 The question remains, To what are we to refer δι’ ἧς 
 in the final clause, “by which he passed judgment,’ etc.? 
 Cramer, Michaelis, Bisping, Hofmann, and most ancient 
 commentators, refer it to κιβωτός. And this is not inadmis- 
 sible, as a reference to σωτηρίας would be. The building of 
 the ark was indeed an act of faith, by which Noah prac- 
 tically passed judgment on an unbelieving, mocking world. 
 But after referring δ ἧς at ver. 4 to πίστει (not to θυσίαν), 
 we cannot hesitate to do the same here (with Bengel, Menken, 
 Valckenaer, Bohme, Bleek, De Wette, M‘Lean, Ebrard, 
 Liinemann). Πίστει may, indeed, seem somewhat remote ; 
 but it gives the keynote to the sentence, which may be so 
 read as to bring it sufficiently near. It is also more fitly said, 
 that Noah condemned the world by his faith, than by his 
 building the ark. It was the faith which inspired that action 
 by which he passed judgment on the faithless generation 
 among whom he lived (comp. Matt. xii. 41 seq., and Rom. 
 i. 27). And so, the sacred writer proceeds, thus believing, 
 and giving this practical proof of his belief, he became τῆς 
 κατὰ πίστιν δικαιοσύνης κληρονόμος. The righteousness 
 κατὰ πίστιν is not different from that which is elsewhere 
 called righteousness ἐκ πίστεως. The one (ἐκ πίστεως) 
 designates faith as the source or ground of righteousness 
 (justification), the other (κατὰ πίστιν) as its necessary con- 
 dition or correlative. The “righteousness of faith” is the 
 same here as in the acknowledged writings of St. Paul, only 
 that here the doctrine and its expression are assumed as well 
 known; which need not surprise us, as this epistle is at any 
 rate later than those to the Romans and Galatians. The 
 thought, too, involved in ἐγένετο κληρονόμος is Pauline. So, 
 in Rom. i. 17, St. Paul speaks of the righteousness revealed 
 in the gospel as a δικαιοσύνη Θεοῦ. Man is heir of the 
 righteousness of faith. It is not of his own earning or 
 deserving, but a gift, a possession, which passes over to him 
 
 from a heavenly Father. Noah is the first man of whom | 
 
 the Scriptures speak as δίκαιος, and indeed as τέλειος δίκαιος 
 
 β 
 | 
 : 
 
CHAP. XI. 7. 233 
 
 (comp. Ecclus. xliv. 17; Ezek. xiv. 14, 20). The Thorah so 
 designates him at the commencement of the history of the 
 deluge (Gen. vi. 9). God’s determination to save Noah and 
 his family had its ground in the general conformity of his 
 mind and life to the divine will. But Noah’s righteousness 
 found its special manifestation in consequence of the faith 
 which received both the divine warning of approaching 
 danger and the divine promise of ultimate safety, and in- 
 spired a corresponding course of action. So (Gen. xv. 6) 
 Abram’s righteousness is indicated as the consequence of a 
 faith which unhesitatingly received the divine promise of a 
 natural heir, and of a posterity that should exceed in multi- 
 tude the stars of heaven. “ Righteous by,” or “according to 
 faith,” is not a single consequence of a single act of faith, 
 but the continuing consequence of a continyous action. But 
 the more decisive any particular trial of faith may be, the 
 more decidedly will that inward righteousness which avails 
 before God come forth into outward manifestation. In this 
 sense, then, it is said of Noah, that, believing the divine 
 warning and promise, and fulfilling the divine command, 
 strange and unexampled as it might appear, amid the ridicule 
 and mockery of a careless world, he became heir of the 
 righteousness which is determined by and conditioned through 
 faith. 
 
 Now follow (vers. 8-22) the examples of faith among 
 the postdiluvian patriarchs, the ancestors of Israel. Our 
 author began, as we have seen (ver. 3), with the invisible 
 πρᾶγμα of the creation as the first object of religious faith, 
 and then proceeded (vers. 4—7) to set before his readers the 
 three great antediluvian exemplars of faith—Abel, Enoch, 
 Noah. In virtue of his faith, the first of these offered to 
 God an acceptable sacrifice ; the second led a God-pleasing 
 life; the third received and fulfilled a divine prophetic word 
 of warning and promise. In the case of all three likewise, 
 faith found its reward. The first died, but even in death 
 was not lost to God, nor forgotten of Him; the second died 
 not at ail, but God took him, by miraculous translation, to 
 Himself; the third was wonderfully preserved in life when 
 
234 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 all the world perished. Thus all three were examples of the 
 work of faith, and of faith’s reward. From these πρεσβύτεροι 
 of the ἀρχαῖος κόσμος, the sacred writer now proceeds to the 
 πρεσβύτεροι of the postdiluvian patriarchal time. All that 
 now follows has a special reference to a people of God which 
 is hereafter to be born, redeemed, and sanctified. The promise 
 is defined with increasing clearness in its relation to Israel. 
 It concerns a land in which the patriarchs are still strangers, 
 a Son that is not yet born, a people that hereafter is to come 
 into existence. 
 
 The history of the patriarchs, as introductory to that of 
 Israel, begins with the divine command to Abram to leave 
 his country, kindred, and family, and journey towards a land 
 which the Lord will show him. 
 
 Ver. 8. By faith Abraham, when called, obeyed, in that 
 he went out to the place which he should hereafter receive for 
 an inheritance, and went forth, not knowing whither he goeth. 
 
 The life of the forefathers of the chosen people was 
 throughout a life ἐπ᾽ ἐλπίδι παρ᾽ éXwida—the present in the 
 rudest contrast to the promised future. The history of the 
 patriarchs, therefore, is rich before all others in examples of 
 faith. Abraham’s history is a continuous progress ἐκ πίστεως 
 εἰς πίστιν. It begins with the divine call, the purpose of 
 which was the formation of a God-fearing family separate 
 from the heathen world, and the nucleus of a future God- 
 chosen people. The use of the term καλούμενος here would 
 naturally be in reference to this fact (comp. Isa. xli. 9), and 
 the present participle (as again at ver. 17) has the force of 
 a synchronistic imperfect: jide quum vocaretur A. obedivit. 
 Lachmann’s reading (after A and D), ὁ καλούμενος ᾽4βρ., 
 has therefore little in its favour. It could only mean, 
 according to Greek idiom, the so-called Abraham (not. as 
 Liinemann would render it, “ Abraham who was called”) ; 
 and so it is rendered in the Itala and Vulgate, and explained 
 by Theodoret and Valckenaer, and generally by those who 
 adopt or represent this reading. (Comp. Plato, Phed. p. 
 86 D, ἐν τῷ καλουμένῳ θανάτῳ ; and Isocr. ad Nicocl. p. 45, 
 
CHAP. XI. 9. 235 
 
 Tas καλουμένας γνώμας ; Kiihner, ὃ 476, 2 Anm.) But how 
 unsuitable would be an allusion to the patriarch’s change of 
 name here, seeing that did not take place till some five-and- 
 twenty years after the departure from Haran! Therefore, 
 notwithstanding its critical recommendation, we feel com- 
 pelled to reject Lachmann’s reading, and adhere to the 
 καλούμενος of the tewtus receptus, which is also that of the 
 Peshito and of St. Chrysostom.’ A divine call was vouch- 
 safed to Abraham. He followed that call. Wherein his 
 obedience to it consisted, is expressed by the following 
 epexegetical infinitive sentence, ἐξελθεῖν εἰς τὸν (the article, 
 which is superfluous, is omitted by Lachmann, after A and 
 D) τόπον ὃν ἤμελλε (Lachmann and Tisch. read, with A, 
 D, K, ἔμελλεν) λαμβάνειν eis κληρονομίαν. He obediently 
 followed the divine call to go forth, (in that he went forth) 
 to the place which he was afterwards to receive as an inherit- 
 ance. But this divine ordinance on his behalf was only 
 made known to him after his entrance into the land of 
 Canaan (Gen. xii. 7); he knew not in going there that that 
 was the final goal of his long pilgrimage: καὶ ἐξῆλθεν μὴ 
 ἐπιστάμενος ποῦ épyetat—he went forth in obedience to the 
 divine admonition, not knowing whither he goeth. (For the 
 construction ποῦ 6. indic., comp. Acts. xx. 18, ἐπίστασθε... 
 πῶς μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν ἐγενόμην, x. 18, xv. 36; see Winer, § 41, 4.) 
 His faith was shown in his preference of the future and 
 invisible for the seen and the present, and in the blindness 
 of his confidence, or rather in that spiritual insight which 
 was contented to see and walk only by the light of God. 
 This faith found fresh exercise and trial in the land of 
 promise. 
 
 Ver. 9. By faith he sojourned as a stranger in the land of 
 promise, as if it were a foreign country, dwelling in tents with 
 Isaac and Jacob, the co-heirs with him of the same promise. 
 
 In classical usage, παροικεῖν signifies to dwell alongside 
 of or by another; in the Septuagint it represents the Hebrew 
 13 (which probably has the same root with the Latin peregri- 
 
 1 (Cod. Sin. has also xarovjeves.] 
 
236 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 nari), and is used specially of the pilgrim-life of the patriarchs, 
 and in senses derived therefrom by Philo and the Fathers. 
 In Philo, παροικεῖν, to dwell in a foreign land, is opposed to 
 κατοικεῖν, to dwell in one’s own land. (Comp. i. 511, 36; 
 310, 22; 416, 24; 417,16, etc.) Παροικεῖν is here followed 
 by εἰς, combining the notion of entrance into with that of con- 
 tinuance in the foreign country. Παρῴκησεν is = παροικεῖν 
 ἦλθεν (Philo, 1. 610, 22), eo abiit, ué illic tanquam peregrinus 
 habitaret (Valck.), several examples of which might be cited 
 from the diction of St. Luke. The most similar instance 
 would perhaps be Luke xxiv. 18, παροικεῖς εἰς ᾿Τερουσαλήμ ; 
 if better attested. Comp. also Acts vii. 4, εἰς ἣν ὑμεῖς νῦν 
 κατοικεῖτε; xii. 19, εἰς τὴν Καισάρειαν διέτριβεν ; Luke xi. 7; 
 Acts vill. 40, xvill. 21, and xix. 22, rec. Instead of εἰς τὴν 
 γῆν, we must read, with Lachmann and Tischendorf, follow- 
 ing A, I, K, and other authorities, εἰς γῆν τῆς ἐπαγγελίας. 
 (The article is wanting, as in Acts vii. 4, ἐκ γῆς Χαλδαίων. 
 It is indeed often omitted when a preposition comes before 
 two nouns, the second of which is a genitive, or when the 
 two form one notion: Winer, § 19, 2; Bernhardy, p. 321.) 
 As a strange country. So the land of promise seemed to the 
 outward eye. Abram entered it as a foreign country, subject 
 to other lords and masters, without losing heart or faith. He 
 entered and dwelt therein without having a foot-breadth 
 (comp. Acts vil. 5) which he could call his own; and even 
 after his purchase of a sepulchre at Hebron (confounded 
 with Jacob’s subsequent purchase of a similar piece of ground 
 at Sichem by St. Stephen under the pressure of his rapid 
 recapitulation, Acts vil. 16), he still dwelt as a stranger and 
 wanderer in the land promised to him for an eternal inherit- 
 ance: ἐν σκηναῖς κατοικήσας, μετὰ ᾿Ισαὰκ καὶ ᾿Ιακὼβ τῶν 
 συγκληρονόμων τῆς ἐπαγγελίας τῆς αὐτῆς. Isaac and Jacob 
 are mentioned for the present, only as it were in parentheses, 
 Abraham remaining the chief person. They are called 
 συγκληρ. τῆς ἐπ. THs αὐτῆς (instead of τῆς αὐτῆς ἐπ.; comp. 
 Luke ii. 8), not so much as being recipients of the same 
 promise as Abraham, as because its fulfilment was equally to 
 them an object of expectation. Abraham himself (and Isaac 
 
CHAP. XI. 10, | 237 
 
 and Jacob after his example) made no self-willed efforts to 
 bring about the accomplishment of the divine promises: they 
 gave up all claims for the present possession of the land, and 
 were content to wait God’s time and God’s disposal. They 
 built themselves, therefore, no houses, had no fixed dwelling- 
 place, but moved about in tents (ὉΠ) and fragile taber- 
 nacles (m3D). Our author sees the motive for this voluntary 
 life of pilgrimage on Abraham’s part in his faith and expec- 
 tation of no earthly or temporal inheritance, but of a higher 
 and celestial home. 
 
 Ver. 10. For he looked for the city that hath the true 
 foundations, whose builder and maker is God. 
 
 The promise made to the patriarchs related, so far as the 
 outward word went, simply to future possession of the land 
 of Canaan. But their inward longing in the midst of their 
 earthly pilgrimage for a fixed dwelling-place rose beyond 
 this. Unconsciously to themselves, or at any rate not with 
 full consciousness, their desires reached on and upwards to 
 the eternal city which the New Testament reveals as the 
 home and expectation of all saints. Throughout the Old 
 Testament the desire of believers is for a rest and a posses- 
 sion which is more and more clearly seen to lie beyond the 
 realm of nature and the present world. The meaning of this 
 desire is clearly revealed in the New Testament; and while 
 it already receives a partial satisfaction now in present 
 evangelical and spiritual blessings, its full contentment is 
 assured to every individual believer in a no longer distant 
 future. But even under the Old Testament this unveiling 
 began. The translation of Enoch, and afterwards of Elijah, 
 were glorious hints of a yet hidden glory. The ancient 
 belief and confession of the synagogue, which apprehended 
 the reception of all faithful Israelites into the heavenly 
 communion of the divine shechinah, and distinguished be- 
 tween Jerusalem below and Jerusalem above (nun y ody 
 and mbyn-by ody), was the outcome of revelations made 
 under the Old Testament in word and miracle. The idea 
 of a twofold Jerusalem is demonstrably older than the apos- 
 
238 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 tolic preaching; St. Paul, in exhibiting it, appealed to the 
 existing faith of Palestine, and the religious-philosophical 
 speculations of Alexandria. The one was strengthened and 
 completed, the other refined and purified, and both inter- 
 penetrated by gospel light. There can therefore be no doubt 
 that ‘the city” which the sacred writer has here in view is 
 no other than the heavenly Jerusalem, which he calls else- 
 where μέλλουσα πόλις (xiii. 14) and πόλις Θεοῦ ζῶντος (xii. 
 22). It is a city which hath “ the foundations.” In Ps. 
 Ixxxvii. it is said of the earthly Jerusalem, of θεμέλιοι αὐτοῦ 
 ἐν τοῖς ὄρεσι τοῖς ἁγίοις : and of the heavenly at Rev. xxi. 14, 
 TO τεῖχος τῆς πόλεως ἔχον θεμελίους δώδεκα. But here the 
 heavenly Jerusalem is not contrasted with the earthly city, 
 but with the frail and moveable dwellings of the patriarchs 
 in their nomad life. Θεμέλιοι is a later and less used form 
 of the plural than θεμέλια : both are found in the Septuagint. 
 The article τούς is introduced for the sake of emphasis. 
 This heavenly city alone has the true foundations which can 
 never be moved. And further, it is a city ἧς τεχνίτης καὶ 
 δημιουργὸς ὁ Θεός. As the heavenly sanctuary is one not 
 made with hands, but pitched by God Himself (viii. 2) to be 
 the archetype of the sanctuary on earth, so the heavenly city 
 here is a formation and building of God, and an archetype 
 of that earthly city which God had once so favoured with 
 His presence, and to which the hearts of the readers of this 
 epistle still so dangerously cling. God is its teyvirns, as 
 having laid down its plan, and δημιουργός, as having framed 
 it accordingly. To this true and heavenly home Abraham’s 
 faith and desires took their flight. “ He earnestly expected 
 it;” ἐκδέχεσθαι differing from δέχεσθαι, as ἐκζητεῖν does from 
 ζητεῖν. Philo says, in his manner,’ the same of the patriarchs 
 
 1 The land promised by God to Abraham (Gen. xii. 1) is, according 
 to Philo, πόλις ὠγαθὴ καὶ πολλὴ καὶ σφόδροι εὐδαίμων" τοὶ yap δῶρα τοῦ 
 Θεοῦ μεγάλα καὶ τίμια (1. 100, 44). It is that city of God to which, as 
 the one great Citizen (πολίτης), God invites him who feels himself a 
 stranger here (i. 161); for to the soul of the wise man heaven is a 
 fatherland, and earth a strange country. In heaven it feels at home, and 
 exercises its franchise (+oA/reveras) ; on earth it is a stranger (παροικεῖ) 
 
 —_—--= 
 
CHAP. XI, 10. 239 
 
 as the apostolic writer here. The promise made to them con- 
 cerned, he says, a happy spiritual city, for whose franchise 
 they longed in the mortal bodies of their earthly pilgrimage. 
 But Philo’s expressions, though remarkably similar, are yet 
 not identical with those of our author. ‘The latter has 
 carefully wiped off from the mirror of the future the ob- 
 scuring breath of philosophic speculation and allegoresis, and 
 is content to exhibit the naked spiritual truth freed from 
 all false glitter and ornamentation. And further—which is 
 the main matter—he avoids, or rather cuts through, Philo’s 
 confused mixture of physical and metaphysical, earthly and 
 spiritual, carefully distinguishing in every utterance between 
 the two economies of creation and redemption, and the two 
 worlds of nature and grace. But that nevertheless there 
 is a profound connection between the two writers and their 
 schools of thought, remains a fact of the greatest signifi- 
 cance. The gradual process of spiritual apprehension by 
 which thinkers in Israel obtained clearer views of the divine 
 purpose of redemption for themselves and mankind, was 
 one by no means broken off with the appearance of the last 
 canonical book of the Old Testament. To deny this were 
 a grave sin against historic truth, which could not remain 
 without its appropriate and self-inflicted punishment. 
 
 To Abraham’s example of faith is now added that of his 
 
 (i. 416, 38). In this sense-bound mortal body the wise man is but 
 a lodger (πατροικεῖ), but in the heavenly home he is an inhabitant 
 (zeroixei). To reach that rarpis (πατρῶω γῆ) is his constant endeavour 
 (i. 417, 16; 511, 36; 627, 20). Into that μητρόπολις of the super- 
 sensual world he will, when delivered from the bands of earth, be 
 safely conducted by the heavenly Father (i. 648, 14). The doctrine 
 of pre-existence is one of the unscriptural philosophemes which is mixed 
 up by Philo with a view that is otherwise profound and true. The 
 doctrine of ideas is also introduced. Philo’s heavenly city is a πόλις 
 νοητή, and perhaps he would therefore hardly speak of God as δηροέουργός 
 and τεχνίτης in reference to it. Both terms are, however, Philonic: 
 the first is also familiar to the Stoics and Plato. For the latter, comp. 
 Wisd. xiii. 1; and Philo, i. 47, 2, οὐ τεχνίτης μόνον ὠλλὼ καὶ πατὴρ ὧν 
 τῶν γιγνομένων ; 583, 3, ὁ γεννήσας καὶ τεχνιτεύσας πατήρ; and 583, 15, 
 he speaks of man as ἃ δηριιούργημω τοῦ τῶν καλῶν καὶ ἀγαθῶν μόνον 
 τεχνίτου. 
 
94 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 consort Sarah, because it was from the faith of each com- 
 bined that Israel was destined to spring. 
 
 Ver. 11. By faith Sarah hkewise received strength to con- 
 ceive seed even when she was past age, because she judged him 
 faithful that had promised. 
 
 All kinds of meanings have been found in the καὶ αὐτή 
 applied to Sarah here: e.g. (a) “ even Sarah, the unfruitful” 
 (Schlichting), answering to the interpolated reading Σάῤῥα 
 στεῖρα (also στεῖρω ovca and ἡ στεῖρα) of D*, Itala, Vulgate, 
 and Syr.; (Ὁ) “even Sarah, though a woman” (St. Chrysost., 
 Cicumen., Theophyl., Bohme) ; (c) “even she who had so 
 long doubted” (Bleek, De Wette, Winer, Liinemann). But 
 all these are needless glosses on the simple text; καὶ αὐτός 
 having often merely the office of extending the predicate of 
 a former sentence to a second subject: here it associates 
 with the great forefather the honoured foremother of the 
 chosen people. No New Testament writer uses αὐτός in 
 the nominative so frequently as St. Luke; and it is worth 
 observing that he uses καὶ αὐτός in a similar position to καὶ 
 αὐτή (before Σάῤῥα) here, before proper names: e.g. Luke 
 xx. 42, καὶ αὐτὸς Aavid; xxiv. 15, καὶ αὐτὸς "Incods; comp. 
 Acts vili. 13, Σίμων καὶ αὐτός. Even at i. 14 and iv. 15 
 καὶ αὐτός is simply equivalent to et ipse—he likewise. As 
 Abraham did great things by faith, so Sarah likewise, within 
 her womanly sphere, δύναμιν εἰς καταβολὴν σπέρματος ἔλα- 
 Bev. For the construction δύναμις εἰς, compare Luke v. 17, 
 δύναμις Κυρίου ἣν εἰς τὸ ἰᾶσθαι αὐτούς, which shows that 
 εἰς introduces the action which the δύναμις subserves. But 
 καταβολὴ σπέρματος expresses in Greek the act of the hus- 
 band, not of the wife. Bohme therefore, Stier, De Wette, 
 Bleek, and Liinemann propose another rendering both of 
 καταβ. and σπέρμ.---“ for the founding of a family” (comp. 
 iv. 3 and ix. 26). Reference is also made to Plato’s πρώτη 
 καταβολὴ τῶν ἀνθρώπων and γενῶν ἄρχαι καὶ καταβολαί. 
 But is it likely that the sacred writer would use καταβολὴ 
 σπέρματος in a different sense from that which the words 
 would naturally convey to every hearer and reader, from 
 
CHAP. XI. 11. 241 
 
 that in which they were taken by all the ancient commen- 
 tators, and in which they are rendered in all the ancient 
 versions? We would interpret therefore, with Gicumenius, 
 ἐδυναμώθη εἰς TO ὑποδέξασθαι παιδοποιὸν σπέρμα, or with 
 Baumgarten, εἰς τὸ δέχεσθαι σπέρμα καταβεβλημένον. That 
 this wonderful conception of Sarah’s was the result of her 
 faith, is further suggested by the addition, καὶ παρὰ καιρὸν 
 nruxias—and that in contradiction to the time of life in which 
 she then stood (comp. Rom. i. 26, xi. 24, παρὰ vow). 
 Bleek and Liinemann take it differently: and that in con- 
 tradiction to the (youthful) time of life which she had already 
 overpassed. But ἡλικία, without any addition to define its 
 meaning more closely, could only signify here the time of 
 life which Sarah had actually reached. In that sense Philo 
 speaks of Abraham and Sarah as ὑπερήλικες advanced in 
 life. “H)uvxia itself is sometimes used for old age: e.g. 71. 
 xxil. 419, where it is the parallel word to yjpas; and Plato 
 says, almost as if to elucidate this passage, οἱ δ ἡλικίαν 
 atoxot; compare also Plut. an seni respublica gerenda sté, 
 c. 8, τῶν Tap ἡλικίαν TO βῆμα καὶ τὸ στρατήγιον βαδιζόντων. 
 The reading εἰς τὸ τεκνῶσαι, with omission of καί before παρὰ 
 καιρὸν ἡλ., and the ἔτεκεν of the textus receptus after καί re- 
 tained, are attempts to get rid of or to justify the apparently 
 inconvenient but really quite suitable conjunction. Gries- 
 bach began omitting ἔτεκεν, and all later critics except 
 Matthzei have followed his example. The καί may be re- 
 garded as epewegetical—“ and indeed when past the time of 
 life ;” or as intensive—* even though she had passed the time 
 of life;” or as at the same time both epexegetical and inten- 
 sive—“and even when she had passed,” etc. (Hartung, i. 
 145). Her long barrenness would itself have required faith 
 in a promise of its removal: how much more, when her time 
 of life seemed to render it impossible! But by faith she 
 drew strength out of the divine fulness, inasmuch as she 
 accounted the God of the promise (comp. Rom. iv. 21) faith- 
 ful to the promise (comp. ch. x. 23). ‘This faith of Sarah’s, 
 answering and supporting the faith of Abraham, was now glo- 
 riously rewarded : the promise was fulfilled in over-measure. 
 VOL, 11. Q 
 
242 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 Ver. 12. Therefore were there born even of one, and him 
 as good as dead, as it were the stars of the heaven in multitude, 
 and as the sand by the shore of the sea the innumerable. 
 
 Therefore even of one. It is a consequence of Abraham’s 
 faith, and Sarah’s, that their long fruitless marriage was 
 crowned with such a reward. Faith brought them the thing 
 hoped for. This διὸ καί, thus closely combining cause and 
 effect, means and object, ground and consequence, is charac- 
 teristic both of St. Luke (Luke i. 35; Acts x. 29, xiii. 35) 
 and of St. Paul. It occurs again in our epistle at ch. xiii. 12. 
 The promise had spoken of a posterity that should be number- 
 less as the dust of the earth (Gen. xiii. 16) and as the stars 
 of heaven (Gen. xv. 5); or like the stars of heaven, and like 
 the sand onthe lip, z.e. the shore, of the sea (Gen. xxii. 17). 
 And such indeed were born to them. It is hard to decide be- 
 tween the readings ἐγεννήθησαν (textus receptus and Tischen- 
 dorf, with D***, E, J, Syr., Kopt., and various Fathers) 
 and ἐγενήθησαν (Lachmann, with A, D*, K, Itala, and 
 Vulgate). The preposition ἀπό (ἀφ᾽ ἑνός) appears to me to 
 favour the latter; with ἐγεννήθησαν one would rather have 
 expected ἐξ ἑνός. It is also uncertain whether the subject 
 of éyev. is τέκνα understood, or whether we are to regard. 
 καθὼς τὰ ἄστρα and ὡσεὶ (or ὡς ἣ) ἅμμος as virtually the 
 subject. The latter seems to be the simpler construction, 
 making καθώς, “ like as” = similes, “ those like.” We read 
 ὡς ἡ, with all the uncials, following Gen. xxii. 17 in the 
 LXX. From so seemingly insignificant, nay, lifeless 
 source (ἀφ᾽ ἑνὸς καὶ ταῦτα vevexpwpévov), has sprung in after 
 centuries a race so innumerable—the people called in their 
 own post-biblical poetry by the emblematical name ΠΡΟ 
 (where is their like? Num. xxiii. 10). Abraham the One, 
 notwithstanding his σῶμα ἤδη νενεκρωμένον (Rom. iv. 19), 
 is the father of them all. Instead of καὶ ταῦτα, St. Paul 
 always writes καὶ τοῦτο. (The textus receptus has also καὶ 
 ταῖτα at 1 Cor. vi. 8.) This καὶ ταῦτα is frequently found 
 in classical writers with the participle in the limiting sense 
 of καίπερ. Liinemann, against the usage of the language, as 
 well as against logic, finds a double allusion in it to both 
 
CHAP. XI. 13. 243 
 
 Abraham and Sarah (comp. Plato, resp. ii. p. 404 B. 
 Homer entertains his heroes at their banquets without fish, 
 καὶ ταῦτα ἐπὶ θαλάττῃ ἐν “Ελλησπόντῳ ὄντας ; Kiihner, 
 § 667, c). So here—from one, although as good as dead. 
 Isaiah (li. 1, 2) refers to this great example to cheer the 
 hopes of the remnant of Israel in their exile: Hearken to me, 
 ye that follow after righteousness, ye that seek Jehovah: look 
 forth unto the rock whence ye were hewn, and to the shaft of 
 the pit whence ye were digged. Look unto Abraham your 
 father, and unto Sarah that bare you: how he was but one when 
 7 called him, and blessed him, and increased him. Abraham 
 is here compared to a quarry from which the stones have 
 been hewn for a stately mansion, and Sarah to a mine 
 whence precious metals have been extracted. Abraham, as 
 the one father of such great multitudes, is repeatedly called 
 in Scripture “the one,” almost after the manner of a proper 
 name (7nN7, Mal. ii. 15; comp. Ezek. xxxiii. 24). 
 
 Up to this point the sacred writer has exhibited the faith 
 of the patriarchs (of Abraham, along with Isaac and Jacob) 
 in its more passive aspects, as producing humble confidence 
 in the divine promises, patient waiting for their fulfilment, 
 and resigned obedience to the divine will. Before he now 
 goes on to speak of the work of faith, in its more active cha- 
 racter, as the source of deeds of transcendent heroism, he 
 glances first at the lives’ end of the patriarchs. They saw 
 not the fulfilment of the great promise made to them, yet lost 
 not their confidence in Him who gave it, and died in the 
 faith in which they had lived, looking onward still to a 
 glorious future. 
 
 Ver. 13. According to faith died all these, as not having 
 received the promises, but (as) having seen them from afar off, 
 and saluted them, and confessed that they are strangers and 
 pilgrims upon earth. 
 
 According to faith: κατὰ πίστιν, not πίστει, by faith. 
 The dying of the patriarchs was not, like their patience and 
 obedience, a consequence of their faith, but part of the 
 sphere in which it was exercised. They died, as they had 
 
244 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 lived, in faith. The meaning of this sentence, however, is 
 not that they died without having received the promised 
 blessings, which in death they saw afar off, and saluted, ete. ; 
 for that would require us to take μὴ λαβόντες as a pluperfect, 
 and the following participles as equivalent to presents, which 
 _ is not likely to have been the writer’s intention. His meaning 
 must rather be taken to be: These all died in the attitude of 
 faith, as men who had not received, but only seen afar off, 
 etc. According to this interpretation, κατὰ πίστιν ἀπέθανον 
 is an independent sentence; and μὴ λαβόντες, K.7.r., gives 
 the ground or occasion of it,—u7 being used, not ov, because 
 these participles are causal in significance, and capable of being 
 resolved into subordinate sentences (Rost, § 135, 5). The 
 emphasis must be laid on πόῤῥωθεν αὐτὰς ἰδόντες, x.T.r., not 
 on the previous μὴ λαβόντες. As merely not having received 
 the promises, they might have died in faith, or without faith ; 
 but as being men who had seen and greeted afar off the 
 promised good, and led in consequence a pilgrim-life, they 
 died in the exercise of the same confident expectation—xata 
 πίστιν ἀπέθανον. 
 
 The ἐπαγγελίαν here referred to begin with Abraham. 
 We cannot therefore make otros πάντες refer back (with 
 (Ecumenius, Theophylact, Primasius, and others) to Abel 
 and all the fore-mentioned saints, except Enoch, but only to 
 the three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The 
 plural “ promises” might be understood of the one promise 
 made to all three of future possession of the land of Canaan ; 
 but inasmuch as it was a promise that contained in itself a 
 power of development into infinite blessings, the plural is 
 rightly used here, as subsequently at ver. 17. [Reception of 
 the promise is here, as at ix. 15, not reception of the word of 
 promise, but of the things foretold (comp. Luke xxiv. 49; 
 Acts i. 4). Lachmann’s reading (after A), προσδεξάμενοι, is 
 a poor gloss; the other reading, κομισάμενοι (comp. ver. 39), 
 is better. The addition καὶ πεισθέντες in the textus receptus 
 is another gloss connecting ἰδόντες with ἀσπασάμενοι: see the 
 commentaries of Chrysostom and (Ecumenius.] The adverb 
 πόῤῥωθεν belongs both to ἰδόντες and ἀσπασάμενοι : they saw 
 
"» 
 
 CHAP. XI. 14-16. 245 
 
 and saluted from the far distance the blessings of the future. 
 Such an ἀσπασμός we have in the mouth of the dying 
 Jacob (Gen. xlix. 18): For Thy salvation have I waited, 
 Jehovah. It is evident from the following ὁμολογήσαντες 
 that all the participles are to be taken as pluperfects: the 
 reference being, in the case of Abraham, to his calling him- 
 self πάροικος καὶ παρεπίδημος before the sons of Heth (Gen. 
 xxiii. 4); and in that of Jacob, to his language before Pharaoh 
 (Gen. xlvii. 9), when he speaks of his own and his father’s 
 homeless wandering life on earth as a pilgrimage (comp. 
 Ps. Ixix. 19, 54, xxxix. 13, and 1 Chron. xxix. 15), in con- 
 trast with the rest in God, which is the true home. It is 
 untrue to say that the patriarchs had no thoughts of another 
 world, and a life there. They were said to be gathered to 
 their fathers before their burial, and that was a reunion, not 
 of corpses, but of persons. That man did not cease to exist 
 when the present life was ended, was a belief universal in 
 the ancient world; and the patriarchs connected theirs with 
 the assurance of divine favour, and the hopes cherished by 
 the divine promises. But it lost almost all its consolation for 
 them by the chilling interposition of the notion of Hades, 
 and its lifeless gloom, over which their faith had to stretch 
 its hand. And so they died κατὰ πίστιν, believing in an 
 eternal, faithful God, the truth of His promises, and their 
 own abiding relations with Him. The object of their hopes, 
 then, was the same glorious world of the future which the 
 New Testament reveals, though for them its true character, 
 and their present hold upon it, might still be covered by an 
 impenetrable veil. The sacred writer here derives all this 
 as an inference from the terms which they used in speaking 
 of the present life—their calling themselves strangers and 
 pilgrims here. 
 
 Vers. 14-16a. For they that say such things declare plainly 
 that they are seeking after a native country. And if, indeed, 
 they were thinking of that from whence they came out, they 
 might have had opportunity to have returned. But now their 
 desire is after a better, even a heavenly (country). 
 
246 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 Those who, like Jacob, speak of their earthly life as 
 (O11) a wandering about in a foreign country, make it 
 evident, or show plainly (comp. for ἐμφανίζουσι, Acts xxiii. 
 22, and the note at ch. ix. 24), that the object of their 
 search and desires is a distant fatherland, where alone they 
 could feel at home. And if that fatherland of which they 
 thus make mention, or show that they are thinking (μνημο- 
 νεύειν, not here meminisse, as at ch. xiii. 7, Luke xvii. 32, 
 Acts xx. 31, 35, but commemorare, as at ver. 22; though we 
 might say that the two meanings are here coincident), were 
 that from which they originally came (ἐξῆλθον, or, as Lach- 
 mann, Tischendorf, Bleek, and others read, with A, D, E, 
 €£éBnoav)—namely, Therah’s country in the north-east of 
 Mesopotamia, which formed part of the primeval empire of 
 Nimrod—they might have had, at the time when they used 
 such language, an opportunity to have returned to it (εἶχον 
 av: Winer, ὃ 42, 2). But now (νῦν δέ, not νυνὶ δέ, the 
 reading of textus receptus against the Mss.) the case is other- 
 wise (νῦν is here used in its logical, not its temporal sense). 
 Their glance is forwards, not backwards. The country they 
 are longing to reach is a higher and a heavenly one. It 
 must be confessed that we nowhere read of the patriarchs, 
 that they expressed a conscious desire for a home in heaven. 
 The nearest approach to anything of the kind is in Jacob’s 
 vision of the angel-ladder, and his wondering exclamation 
 (Gen. xxviii. 17), own ayy Ar; but even there no desire is 
 expressed for an entrance into the heavenly land, but the 
 promise renewed of future possession of the earthly Canaan : 
 “ The land whereon thou sleepest will I give to thee.” Must 
 we not say, then, that here again the apostolic writer of our 
 epistle imports New Testament ideas into the histories of the 
 Old? In a certain way this is true. He does explain and 
 illustrate the promises and wishes of the patriarchs by New 
 Testament light, and gives to both an evangelical expression. 
 But in doing so, he discloses their true inward meaning. The 
 promise given to the patriarchs was a divine assurance of a 
 future rest: that rest was connected, in the first instance, 
 with the future possession of an earthly home; but their 
 
CHAP. XI. 16. 247 
 
 desire for that home was, at the same time, a longing and a 
 seeking after Him who had given the promise of it, whose 
 presence and blessing alone made it for them an object of 
 desire, and whose presence and blessing, wherever vouchsafed, 
 makes the place of its manifestation to be indeed a heaven. 
 The shell of their longing might thus be of earth, its kernel 
 
 was heavenly and divine; and as such, God Himself vouch- / 
 
 safed to honour and reward it. 
 
 Ver. 160. Wherefore God is not ashamed of them to be 
 called their God; for he did prepare for them a city. 
 
 The verb ἐπαισχύνεσθαι has here a twofold construction 
 —first with the accusative of the person (αὐτούς), and then 
 with the infinitive regarded as an accusative of the action 
 (ἐπικαλεῖσθαι). The verb ἐπικαλεῖσθαι may be taken in its 
 first obvious sense, cognominari. “The God of Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob” is a name which God gives Himself at 
 Gen. xxviii. 13, and especially at Ex. iii. 6; and which again 
 is given to Him by the patriarchs, Gen. xxxi. 5, xxxii. 10. 
 It expresses a more than outward and transient relation. 
 Those whose names are so associated with that of the Eternal 
 One, are united to Him in a covenant of life for eternity 
 (as our Lord Himself argues, Matt. xxii. 31 seq., because He 
 is the God only of the living). The same is virtually the 
 argument here—1jro/wace yap αὐτοῖς πόλιν. The aorist is 
 here used for the somewhat heavy and awkward pluperfect 
 (ἡτοιμάκει), which is frequently the case in subordinate sen- 
 tences (Winer, ὃ 40, 5; comp. Biumlein, ὃ 529), as a little 
 lower down at ver. 18 (ἐλαλήθη). The meaning is, that God 
 gave Himself, and suffered the patriarchs to give Him, that 
 name, because He had prepared a city for them in which He 
 was minded some day to receive them to Himself (Schlichting, 
 Grotius, Bohme, De Wette, Hofmann). Comp. ἑτοιμάζειν 
 at John xiv. 2,3. The city is opposed, as there the μόναι, 
 to the temporary shelter of earthly tabernacles. Philo some- 
 what paradoxically uses πολίτης of God in this sense. He 
 is the only abiding One, the true Citizen, with whom to have 
 fellowship is to have eternal life and rest. God, then, was 
 
248 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 not ashamed to be called the God of the patriarchs, because 
 He had prepared for them that eternal rest with Himself in 
 His own city. 
 
 And so the patriarchs died, as they had lived, in faith. 
 Wearied of this earthly life, death was to them a going 
 home. Having thus exhibited the reflex of the promise in 
 their disposition and character, the sacred writer goes on to 
 speak of the heroic deeds to which the same faith moved 
 them. He makes a beginning again with Abraham. 
 
 Vers. 17, 18. By faith Abraham, being tempted, hath 
 offered up Isaac; and he that had accepted the promises 
 offered up his only begotten son, he to whom it had been said, 
 “In Isaac shall be named for thee a seed.” 
 
 Abraham, in the obedience of faith, had entered the pro- 
 mised land; in the patience of faith, had spent many a long 
 decade of his earthly pilgrimage therein; in the joy of faith, 
 he had witnessed the fulfilment of the promise by which his 
 long fruitless marriage had at last been crowned; and now 
 the same faith must undergo its severest trial, in order that 
 the victory of faith may be his also. The father of the faith- 
 ful endured this trial, and came triumphant out of it. The 
 perfect tense προσενήνοχεν expresses the reality of the offer- 
 ing of Isaac on his part as an accomplished fact. Abraham 
 did indeed bring his son to the altar, and had stretched forth 
 his hand to consummate the sacrifice, when the Lord Himself 
 by His angel prevented the deed of blood, in order once for all 
 to consecrate and sanction the typical animal sacrifice in lieu 
 of that of human kind. But so far as Abraham was con- 
 cerned, the offering was made (also once for all); and the 
 participle πειραζόμενος may be taken as a synchronistic im- 
 perfect (comp. καλούμενος, ver. 8), expressing that the whole 
 action from beginning to end was on God’s part a trial of 
 His servant’s faith. The following καί is at once epexegetical, 
 -and marks the climax—Yea, offered up his only son, or was 
 engaged in offering: the imperfect προσέφερεν transports us 
 into the midst of this wondrous act of faith, in obedience to 
 a divine command which was against nature, inasmuch as it 
 
CHAP. XI. 17, 18. 249 
 
 concerned his own natural offspring, and that an only child 
 (the sacred writer here, as elsewhere, proves his independence 
 of the Septuagint, rendering, as he does, the qm of Gen. 
 xxii. 2, as also Aquila, by μονογενῆ, and not by ἀγαπητόν 
 σου, wherewith the Sept. translated their reading of the 
 original 7). The command to offer Isaac was not only 
 against nature; it was also in itself paradoxical: he is bidden 
 to do this, who with open eyes had received and accepted 
 (ἀναδεξάμενος) the divine promises,—he that had heard how 
 all were to be accomplished in this his only begotten son! 
 The πρὸς ὅν of ver. 18 is to be rendered ad quem (not de quo, 
 as by Bengel, who refers it to Isaac, and compares Luke xix. 
 9): he to whom it had been said, ὅτε ἐν ᾿Ισαὰκ κληθήσεταί 
 σοι σπέρμα. As the words in the original begin with °3, it 
 is a question whether 67. here represents this 3, or is the 
 so-called ὅτι recitativum [comp. Rom. iv. 17 (Gen. xvii. 5) ; 
 Rom. viii. 86 (Ps. xliv. 23); 1 Cor. xiv. 21 (Isa. xxviii. 11), 
 where the same question might be asked]. That the author 
 of our epistle does occasionally employ this ὅτε recitativum, 
 is evident from ch. vii. 17 and x. 8; and so likewise does St. 
 Paul, not only when introducing the oratio directa, as at 
 Rom. iii. 8, Gal. i. 23, 2 Thess. ili. 10 (comp. Luke i. 25, 
 61, iv. 21, etc.), but also in making citations from Scripture, 
 e.g. Rom. ix. 17 (Ex. ix. 16), 2 Cor. vi. 16 (Lev. xxvi. 11 
 seq.), Gal. ili. 8 (Gen. xii. 3),—a fact wrongly disputed by 
 Bleek. In the present case, it would probably be most 
 correct to say that our author adopts the 3 of the original, 
 but uses its equivalent ὅτι in the recitative sense. Three 
 interpretations might be given of these words to Abraham : 
 (1) After Isaac shall thy seed call themselves (Hofmann) ; 
 or, (2) Through Isaac shall a seed be called into existence for 
 thee (Drechsler) ; or, (8) In Isaac shall a seed be named 
 for thee, z.e. In or through Isaac shall it come to pass that 
 men shall speak of Abraham as having a seed (Bleek). 
 Against (1) may be urged, that we should have expected 
 nva to be expressed if that were the meaning (comp. Isa. 
 xliil, 7, xlviiil. 1); and again, that God’s ancient people, 
 though frequently called after Israel, Jacob, and Joseph, are 
 
250 EPISTLE TO TEE HEBREWS. 
 
 only once called after Isaac (Amos vii. 9): against (2), that 
 Np is never so absolutely used for “ call into existence” as 
 here (but comp. Isa. xli. 4 and Rom. iv. 17). I therefore 
 give the preference to (3): In Isaac shall that race which is 
 properly called the “seed of Abraham” have its origin. In 
 Isaac as a fresh starting-point shall all the blessings of the 
 covenant be concentrated. Yet this his only son, the child 
 of promise, Abraham is to sacrifice! ‘ God appeared in all 
 this,” says St. Chrysostom, “to contradict God, faith to be 
 opposed to faith, and commandment to commandment.” But 
 fearful as the paradox might seem, Abraham was obedient. 
 
 Ver. 19. Accounting that God is able to raise up even 
 from the dead; from whence he also recewed him back in a 
 Jigure. 
 
 Abraham’s faith appealed to the omnipotence of God, in 
 order not to surrender its reliance on His truth. He con- 
 sidered that God could not be unfaithful to His own pro- 
 mise, and must have ways and means to bring about its 
 accomplishment. There is no ellipsis of αὐτόν after ἐγείρειν 
 duvatos:* the sentence is first quite general, and only after- 
 wards applied to this particular instance. Abraham bethought 
 himself that God is Lord over life and death, able to kill 
 and to make alive. And so from the dead he did indeed 
 receive back his child, though only in a figure. The thought 
 is so clear, and so clearly expressed, that it seems lost labour 
 to go in search of any other interpretation. Yet, since 
 Camer. and Raphelius, various unusual interpretations of 
 παραβολή have been attempted, attributing to it here mean- 
 ings found in other derivatives from παραβάλλεσθαι. So 
 Tholuck, Whence also he carried him back in a bold adven- 
 ture; and Liinemann, Wherefore he also received him back, 
 on account of his having surrendered him (to the death of 
 sacrifice). But although παράβολος and παραβόλως have 
 the meanings, bold, adventurous, perilous, and the like, there 
 
 1 Lachmann reads, following A, ἐγεῖραι δύναται, which is inelegant, 
 unsupported by other authority, and probably derived from reminis- 
 cences of Matt. iii. 9 and Luke iii. 8. 
 
 » 
 a 
 
CHAP. XI. 19. ΘΗ 
 
 is no proof whatever that παραβολή was ever used in ἃ 
 similar sense; nor does it seem to have once occurred to 
 any of the ancient commentators, who themselves spoke 
 Greek, and heard Greek spoken, that παραβολή could here 
 have the meaning of “venture” or “surrender.” We must 
 hold, then, that such renderings are themselves too adven- 
 turous and violent to be resorted to, unless under pressure 
 of the greatest difficulty. But is there any such difficulty 
 here? Is not the meaning which παραβολή bears at ch. 
 ix. 9, and elsewhere throughout the New Testament, quite 
 admissible and intelligible in the present instance? Whence, 
 i.e. from the dead, he also received him in a figure. Some 
 (as Schulz, and before him Menken) would refer this to 
 Isaac’s birth of aged parents, because κομίζεσθαι has the 
 meaning to derive from, carry off, but not that of receiving 
 back. Yet Josephus (Ant. i. 13.4) uses the same word in 
 the same sense as our author here. Speaking of Abraham 
 and Isaac after the transaction on Mount Moriah, he says, 
 παρ᾽ ἐλπίδας ἑαυτοὺς κεκομισμένοι, preter spem sibi redditi ; 
 and in like manner Philo speaks of Joseph’s recovery by his 
 aged father as a τὸν ἀπογνωσθέντα κομίσασθαι, deploratum 
 recipere. More striking proofs that κομίζεσθαι might be used 
 here of the recovery, or taking back from the dead, of one 
 who had nearly perished in the act of sacrifice, could surely 
 not be found. We would translate, therefore: unde eum 
 etiam in parabola recepit.” It may also be a question whether 
 we are to understand ὅθεν logically in the sense of ‘“ where- 
 fore,” as in the five other places of our epistle, or locally in 
 the sense of “whence,” as we have rendered it in our trans- 
 lation. Without ἐν παραβολῇ, the rendering, Wherefore he 
 received him back again (as a reward of his faith), would 
 
 1 Except perhaps in some glossators (comp. Hesychius’ gloss on ἐκ 
 παραβολῆς" ἐκ παρωκινδυνεύριατος, and on Thucyd. i. 131), and in one 
 passage in Plutarch (Arat. ce. 22) adduced by Tholuck, δι᾿ ἑλεγμῶν καὶ 
 παραβολῶν, Where, however, the mathematical curves are meant. 
 
 2 The rendering of Itala and Vulgate is: unde eum et in parabolam 
 accepit. So in Sabatier; but the text of the Itala, as it lies before me 
 
 in Primasius and Haymo, is in parabola. Luther read, in parabolam: 
 ‘¢ Wherefore he also received him back as for a figure.” 
 
252 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 give an admissible though somewhat meagre sense. And 
 even with ἐν παραβ. most of the ancients do so interpret 
 it, regarding Isaac as given back to Abraham, and received 
 by him as a type of the Lord’s passion (Chrysostom, Cicu- 
 menius, Primasius, etc., and also Carpzov) or resurrection 
 (Theodoret and others). So quite recently Ebrard : ‘“ Where- 
 fore he received him, given back as a type of the resurrec- 
 tion.” And who could deny the typical significance of that 
 transaction on Mount Moriah? Isaac there is a standing 
 type of that Son of Abraham and Son of God who carried 
 the wood of His own cross, and was really offered upon it, 
 as in reality He also rose again. Abraham is a type of 
 that heavenly Father who for our sakes spared not His only 
 Son (Rom. viii. 32), who in His turn is the antitype both of 
 the willing self-sacrifice of Isaac, and of the thorn-crowned 
 ram that became his substitute (1 Pet. ii. 24). So, again, 
 Isaac recovered from the dead, and espoused to a virgin of 
 his father’s house, who, veiling herself, steps down from her 
 camel to meet her appointed husband, is a type of that cruci- 
 fied One who, rising from the grave, receives at His Father’s 
 hand the church of the redeemed, who then, in faith and 
 repentance, throwing herself at the feet of the ever-living 
 One, awaits His coming to fetch her home. These typical 
 significances are not to be denied; but we can hardly think 
 it probable that our author would expect such readers as 
 those whom he was addressing to discern all this unaided for 
 themselves. And this improbability is removed if we take 
 ὅθεν as simply equivalent to ἐκ νεκρῶν, and interpret ἐν 
 παραβολῇ simply from the context : he received him from the 
 dead ἐν παραβολῇ, 1.6. not in literal truth, but in a figure, as 
 one whom his father’s heart had already resigned, and from 
 whom he had felt all the bitterness of separation (Bleek, 
 De Wette, Stier, Hofmann). So Theodore of Mopsuestia : 
 ‘“ After having for a short time and in a certain way tasted 
 death, he rose again, without having really suffered death ; 
 ἐν παραβολῇ being therefore = ἐν συμβόλῳ. So Calvin: 
 Neque hee spes frustrata est Abrahamum, quia hee queedam 
 resurrectionis fuit species, quod subito liberatus fuit ex media 
 
CHAP, XI. 20. 253 
 
 morte. So Castellio, who renders ἐν mapa. by guodammodo; 
 and so Beza, who renders it by similitudine: both render- 
 ings, however, too weak to express the full meaning. Were 
 ἐν παραβολῇ merely equivalent to guasi, another term, such 
 as ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, would have expressed the meaning better. 
 What the sacred writer would say is, that Abraham received 
 back his son from the dead, not literally, ἐξ ἀναστάσεως 
 (comp. ver. 35), but ἐν παραβολῇ ἀναστάσεως. Isaac was like 
 one who had really risen again. The preposition ἐν is used 
 as at 1 Cor. xiii. 10, ἐν αἰνέγματι; or perhaps like ἐν ὑποδείγ- 
 ματι at iv. 11, so as to be equivalent to παραβολὴν ὄντα. 
 The former appears to me the better explanation, though 
 it comes to the same thing whether we say that Abraham 
 received back his son figuratively, or received him back as ὦ 
 figure. The καί (comp. vii. 4, and note there) belongs to the 
 whole clause, ἐν παρ. ἐκομίσατο, marking it as reward for 
 Abraham’s faith, that such joy was vouchsafed him after 
 such a sorrow. 
 
 The sacred writer proceeds, without further interruption, 
 with the patriarchal history. 
 
 Ver. 20. By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau even con- 
 cerning things tocome. _ 
 
 As πίστει in all these sentences belongs to the verb ex- 
 pressing the main action, so here it must be taken in imme- 
 diate connection with εὐλόγησεν (ηὐλόγησεν, Lachm., Tisch.), 
 and not with περὶ μελλόντων, which is the object of the 
 blessing, not of Isaac’s faith (πίστις περί, conviction about 
 any matter, is a classical, but not a New Testament, mode of 
 expression). Πίστει καὶ περὶ μελλόντων εὐλόγησεν is there- 
 fore not = By faith even concerning things to come Isaac 
 blessed (Liinemann); but — By faith Isaac blessed even with 
 regard to the future. The καί is not epexegetical, but inten- 
 sive, and marks Isaac’s blessing as not only an act of faith, 
 but a prophetic act of faith; the τὰ μέλλοντα, which were 
 the object of that blessing, being not merely pia desideria on 
 Isaac’s part, but the divinely ordained future revealed to 
 him by God. The blessing and the prayer of faith exercise 
 
254 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 a binding power on divine omnipotence, because the whole 
 energy of a mind instructed by the divine mind, and of a 
 will united with the divine will, is therein concentrated. So 
 was it in the case before us. The blessing of Isaac had in it 
 the wondrous power of shaping and controlling the future of 
 his posterity, because in virtue of his faith his mind and will 
 had become one with the mind and will of God Himself. 
 (Comp. Gen, xxvii. 37 with Jer. i. 10 and other passages.) 
 
 The blessing which Jacob and Esau received from their 
 father was a prophetic history of the future fortunes of two 
 great peoples. The age-long relations of Edom and Israel 
 could not be more tellingly described than as a perpetual 
 alternation of subjection, rebellion, and re-subjugation. Thou 
 shalt serve thy brother: and it shall come to pass, that when 
 thou shalt have the dominion, thou shalt break his yoke from off 
 thy neck (Gen. xxvii. 40). On Jacob’s blessings, however, 
 one dark cloud still rests: it was under an Idumean dynasty 
 that his own dominion and political independence came to a 
 close, and as yet has known no resurrection. 
 
 The sacred writer now proceeds to another prophetic bene- 
 diction—that which Jacob imparted to the sons of Joseph. 
 
 Ver. 21. By faith Jacob a-dying blessed each of the sons 
 of Joseph; and bowed himself in worship on the top of his 
 staff. 
 
 The reference is, in the first place, to the blessing of 
 Ephraim and Manasseh, recorded Gen. xlviii., and here fitly 
 connected with that bestowed on Jacob and Esau, inasmuch 
 as in both instances the second son is, against nature and 
 custom, preferred to his elder brother, and in this latter 
 instance with the full consciousness and will of the human 
 instrument of benediction. The blessing is therefore, on 
 Jacob’s part, a special act of faith. It is so in all particulars: 
 first in the assumption of his grandchildren into the number 
 of the twelve patriarchal tribes, and the giving to Joseph the 
 double portion of the first-born son which Reuben had for- 
 feited ; and then, in yet greater measure, in the crossing of 
 his hands over the heads of Joseph’s sons, in order to lay the 
 
 ————— ἣν 
 
CHAP. XI. 21. 255 
 
 right on Ephraim’s head, and the left on Manasseh,—a pro- 
 ceeding for which there was no obvious occasion. That the 
 sacred writer has here the narrative of Gen. xlviii. specially 
 in view, is evident from the use of the word ἀποθνήσκων in 
 allusion to Jacob’s own words (ver. 21), ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ἀποθνήσκω 
 (ἀποθνήσκειν = to be in the act of dying, Luke viii. 42). 
 The word ἕκαστος is used, because each child received his 
 special blessing ; Ephraim being the more favoured of the 
 two, because the dying patriarch foresaw, in the spirit of 
 prophecy, the future superiority of his tribe. The prediction 
 was not, indeed, immediately fulfilled. Manasseh, when the 
 census was made in the wilderness, still exceeded Ephraim 
 in numbers by 20,000; but Ephraim afterwards became, and 
 from the times of the judges continued to be, the greatest 
 of the northern tribes in political power and extent of terri- 
 tory, and gave its name to the later kingdom of Israel. 
 
 The other act of faith recorded of Jacob in Genesis, and 
 mentioned here, is the προσκύνησις of Gen. xlvii. 31. This 
 took place not in connection with the blessing of Ephraim 
 and Manasseh, but at the close of a previous conference 
 between the aged patriarch and his son Joseph, in which he 
 made him swear to bury him, not in Egypt, but in the grave 
 of his forefathers in the land of promise. The two acts are 
 mentioned in the reverse of their historical order (compare 
 ver. 22 of this chapter and ch. vii. 6), probably in order to 
 connect the two acts of blessing, that of the aged Isaac and 
 that of the aged Jacob. But the προσκύνησις of the latter 
 was also, in combination with the calm, unhesitating manner 
 in which Jacob’ arranged for his own burial in the distant 
 land of Canaan, an eminent act of faith. His earnest en- 
 treaty, that Joseph would solemnly promise this, showed how 
 firm his reliance was on the divine promise, that the land of 
 Canaan should be the future home and possession of his pos- 
 terity ; and when Joseph had given the promise, he further 
 showed the energy of his faith by the energy and attitude of 
 his thankful prayer. Notwithstanding the infirmities of old 
 age, and the exhaustion of approaching death, he summoned 
 all his bodily powers, and placed his aged limbs as well as he 
 
,; 358 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 could in the position of profoundest adoration. The words 
 of the original Hebrew text, which clearly express this, have 
 been frequently misunderstood. Baumgarten, for instance, 
 explains them thus: “ Jacob raising himself up, and so sit- 
 ting at the upper end of his bed, bowed his head in token of 
 worship.” But the Hebrew word is mnnv™, se prostravit, not 
 4p", 86 incurvavit (from 7p). So again Liinemann: “ Israel 
 leaned backwards over the head of his bed.” But again, se 
 prostruere is the very opposite notion to se reclinare. Hof- 
 mann’s explanation (Schri/tbew. ii. 2. 323) is the right one: — 
 “ Jacob turned round on his bed, with his face towards the 
 head of it ;” 1.6.) as we should say, turning his face to his 
 pillow, he stretched himself out in the attitude of prostrate 
 devotion. St. Jerome’s rendering at Gen. xlvii. 31 is, ado- 
 ravit Deum conversus ad lectuli caput ; but here he retains 
 that of the Itala, et adoravit fastigium virge ejus. Our 
 author follows the Septuagint, which read the noon of the 
 original differently from the Masoretes ("887 instead of 
 neon)." Many ancient commentators (though not without 
 opposition from some) find here an allusion to Joseph’s 
 staff, and suppose that his father, making on this occasion 
 a reverence to it, fulfilled the son’s prophetic dream. But, 
 as already observed by Faber Stapulensis, the Latin render- 
 ing ought to have been, not virge ejus, but virge sue: it is 
 his own staff on which Jacob is here said to have bowed 
 himself; probably that of which he speaks, Gen. xxxii. 10, 
 ἐν TH ῥάβδῳ μου διέβην τὸν ᾿Ιορδάνην τοῦτον. On this staff 
 he had leaned in his pilgrimage through life; and now 
 that he is come to the term of his pilgrimage, he bows over 
 it in worship, commending himself to that God who will 
 remain his God beyond the tomb (Hofmann). The devia- 
 tion here from the Hebrew text need not disturb us. C. E. 
 Stuart (an American divine), in the Christian Annotator for 
 Jan. 1857, remarks wel], in answer to those who think that 
 the Masoretic text should in such a case be made to yield to 
 1 Honeala (Comm. in Genesin), Faber Stapulensis, and Biesenthal in 
 
 his Rabbinical Commentary, suppose the divergence to be due to the 
 translator of a Hebrew original of our epistle. 
 
CHAP. XI. 22. : DET 
 
 the divine authority of the New Testament: “ Jacol’s faith 
 remained the same, whether he worshipped on his bed or leaned 
 upon his staff ; the apostle therefore did not think it necessary 
 to correct the Septuagint.” 
 
 The omission of Jacob’s benedictory farewell to his twelve 
 sons, in Gen. xlix., may here seem somewhat strange; and 
 the conjecture naturally suggests itself, that ᾿Ιωσήφ may 
 have been a later interpolation, or even that the sacred 
 writer may have written ἕκαστον τῶν αὐτοῦ υἱῶν Kal τῶν 
 υἱῶν ᾿Ιωσήφ. So Bohme. But this would be far too violent 
 dealing with Ms. authority, especially in an epistle which is 
 certainly not a translation from a Hebrew original. Nor is 
 the conjecture needed any way. The sacred writer (see 
 ver. 32) is quite conscious of the fragmentary character of 
 his recapitulation. Jacob’s first act of faith in blessing his 
 grandchildren (Gen. xlviii.), he seizes and makes use of for 
 his immediate purpose; the second, the blessing of the 
 twelve patriarchs (Gen. xlix.), he passes over. Gathering, 
 as it were, a few flowers by the way, he leaves the rest for 
 the research of his readers. And now, taking up the last 
 thought, the allusion in προσεκύνησεν (an additional proof 
 that such is the allusion) to Jacob’s injunctions concerning 
 his burial, he goes on to speak of a similar act of faith on 
 
 the part of Joseph. 
 
 Ver. 22. By faith Joseph, drawing to his end, made men- 
 tion of the exodus of the children of Israel, and gave command- 
 ment concerning his bones. 
 
 Neither did Joseph’s heart cleave to Egypt, though in 
 God’s providence he had come, from a slave, to be rich and 
 powerful there. His longings followed the direction of the 
 divine promises, of whose fulfilment faith assured him. If 
 he could not see that fulfilment in his lifetime, he willed 
 that his bones might ultimately rest in the land of promise, 
 when the time of that fulfilment should come. It was faith 
 that moved him to make the children of Israel swear to carry 
 his bones along with them in their then far-distant exodus 
 to the promised inheritance. In the choice of the word 
 
 VOL. IL. R 
 
258 EFISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 τελευτᾶν the author is guided, not by the thought of Joseph’s 
 eventful life (Stier), but by a reminiscence of Gen. 1. 24-26, 
 “ God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this land, 
 unto the land which He sware to Abraham” (ver. 24); in this 
 way he made mention of their future exodus (ἔξοδος, ANS). 
 (For μνημονεύειν περί twos, instead of te or τινός, see 
 Kiihner, ὃ 529, Anm. 1.) Joseph’s last will was not for- 
 gotten. Centuries after his departure, Moses carried up his 
 bones out of Egypt (Ex. xiii. 19); and their deposition at 
 Sichem is recorded at the close of the book of Joshua (xxiv. 
 32). There they rested in the land of his fathers, as in the 
 lap of the God of the promises. 
 
 The author having now passed through the book of 
 Genesis, which concludes with the embalming of the body 
 of Joseph, and its placing in a coffin, proceeds to the deeds 
 of faith recorded in Exodus, and connected therefore with 
 the person and history of Moses, whose parents, by their 
 faith, saved in their new-born child the saviour of their 
 
 people. 
 
 Ver. 23. By faith Moses, when born, was hid three months 
 by his parents, because they saw that the child was comely ; 
 and they feared not the ordinance of the king. 
 
 The royal ordinance (διάταγμα ; Lachmann’s reading, 
 δόγμα, after 34 and A, is not supported by sufficient 
 authority) was, that every male child of Israelitish parents 
 should be slain. This commandment Moses’ parents broke, 
 faith in God overmastering in their minds the fear of man. 
 The Greek word for parents is here πατέρες, which it is 
 mere perversion to render “ fathers,” and then make it refer 
 to Kohath Moses’ grandfather on his mother’s side, and 
 Amram his own father (so Bengel, Schmid, Menken, Stier, 
 etc.), to the exclusion of his mother Jochebed. How could 
 this be, when, according to Ex. ii. 2, the saving of the child’s 
 life was chiefly due to an act of faith on his mother’s part ? 
 The Septuagint, indeed, renders ἰδόντες instead of ἰδοῦσα 
 (at Ex. 11. 3), which probably suggested the πατέρες here ; 
 and yet Ezekiel, the Jewish Alexandrine tragic poet, though 
 
CHAP. XI. 23. 259 
 
 for the most closely adhering to the Alexandrine version, 
 makes Moses say, in his drama of the Exodus : 
 
 , 
 Ἔπειτα κηρύσσει μὲν “Ἑβραίων γένει: 
 4.5.) \ Che \ ’ aI’, 
 T" ἀρσενικὰ ῥίπτειν ποταμὸν εἰς βαθύῤῥοον. 
 ᾿Ενταῦθα μήτηρ ἡ τεκοῦς᾽ ἔκρυπτέ με 
 Τρεῖς μῆνας ὡς ἔφασκεν: οὐ λαθοῦσα δέ. 
 
 Nor could the writer of our epistle, though following the 
 ἰδόντες of the LXX., have meant to exclude Jochebed, nor 
 indeed does he do so: πατέρες elsewhere is not unfrequently 
 equivalent to the more usual of γονεῖς = parents, male and 
 female. Comp. not only Bleek’s citation from Parthenius, 
 οί. 10; but also Plato, Legg. p. 772 B, ἀγαθῶν πατέρων 
 φύντι : Dion. Hal. Ant. ii. 26, ἵνα σέβωσι (οἱ παῖδες) τοὺς 
 πατέρας ; and Rhet. iii. 3, ποίων τινῶν προγόνων καὶ πατέρων. 
 The πατέρες here, then, are Amram and Jochebed. These 
 hid Moses three months—zp/unvov. As both ὁ τρίμηνος 
 (Xen. hist. gree. ii. ὃ. 9) and ἡ Tpiunvos (Her. ii. 124, and 
 frequently) are used, as also τὸ τρίμηνον (see Passow), it 
 must remain uncertain, in the absence of the article, whether 
 τρίμηνον here is to be regarded as feminine or neuter. In 
 assigning a special motive for this act of faith (διότι εἶδον 
 ἀστεῖον τὸ παιδίον), the sacred writer adheres closely to the 
 wording of the Old Testament narrative, as is done also by 
 Philo: γεννηθεὶς ὁ παῖς εὐθὺς ὄψιν ἐνέφῃνεν ἀστειοτέραν ἢ 
 κατ᾽ ἰδιώτην, ὡς καὶ τῶν τοῦ τυράννου κηρυγμάτων, ἐφ᾽ ὅσον 
 οἷόν τε ἦν, τοὺς γονεῖς ἀλογῆσαι (ii. 82. 6). The infantine 
 beauty of their child appeared to them a mark of the divine 
 favour, and to prognosticate a great and illustrious future,— 
 a token that God had great things in store to accomplish by 
 him, even as He had chosen the beautiful youth Joseph to 
 be the saviour in Egypt of the house of Israel (comp. the 
 ἀστεῖον τᾷ Θεῷ of Acts vii. 20). And they feared not the 
 kings ordinance: in this particular especially they mani- 
 fested their faith. Against all appearances of possibility of 
 
 1 See my Geschichte der iiidischen Poesie, p. 212 (out of print—Tr.) ; 
 
 and compare Frankel, Ueber den Einfluss der paldstinens. Exegese auf die 
 alex. Hermeneutik, p. 116. 
 
260 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 success, they courageously disobeyed the royal injunction, 
 and performed their parental duty, looking for divine suc- 
 cour, and the fulfilment of the divine promises. And this 
 they did πίστει. Their faith was rewarded by the wonderful 
 deliverance of their child, and by a yet more wonderful 
 deliverance of the whole people through him. For the faith 
 which had animated his parents, and had been the salvation 
 of his infant life, lived on in the heart of that gracious child. 
 
 Vers. 24, 25." By faith Moses, when grown up, refused to 
 be called son of a daughter of Pharaoh; choosing rather to be 
 afflicted along with the people of God, than to have a tempo- 
 rary enjoyment derived fom sin. 
 
 The expression μέγας γενόμενος, taken from the Sept. of 
 Ex. ii. 11, is simply equivalent to the παρελθὼν εἰς ἡλικίαν 
 of Josephus, Ant. 11. 10. 1. Moses, having reached years 
 of discretion and self-responsibility, refused the honourable 
 name and position of an Egyptian prince, or member of the 
 royal family. The omission of the article before θυγατρὸς 
 Φαραώ" is intentional, to heighten the note of dignity by 
 universalizing it, as a king’s daughter is a grander sounding 
 term than the daughter of the king. All this he refused, 
 μᾶλλον ἑλόμενος συγκακουχεῖσθαι τῷ λαῷ TOD Θεοῦ, ἢ πρόσ- 
 καιρον ἔχειν ἁμαρτίας ἀπόλαυσιν. The construction (μᾶλλον) 
 αἱρεῖσθαι ἤ is a classical one: comp. Lysias, Or. ii. ὃ 62, 
 θάνατον μετ᾽ ἐλευθερίας αἱρούμενοι ἢ βίον μετὰ δουλείας. 
 The composite verb συγκακουχεῖσθαι occurs accidentally no- 
 where else in the range of Greek literature: κακουχεῖν (to 
 ill-treat), on the other hand, and its passive (to suffer ill- 
 treatment), are frequently met with: the substantive κακουχία 
 is found in AMschylus and Plato. “The people of God” is 
 
 1 The additional clause between vers. 23 and 24, found in D, E 
 (τιστι ἔξεγας yevomsvos MAVONS avinsey τὸν AlLYVUTTIOV HATAVOWY THY TATi- 
 νωσιν τῶν ὠδελῷων αὐτου), is an interpolation by a later hand (comp. 
 
 Acts vii. 23-28). It is found in the Itala, and in some mss. of the 
 Vulgate. 
 
 2 Compare Philo, ii. 85. 48, θυγατριδοῦς (6 filia nepos) τοῦ τοσούτον 
 βασιλέως. Bohme conjectures that υἱὸν duyarpés may be used here in the 
 sense of ““ daughter’s son ” = θυγωτριδοῦντο. 
 
CHAP. XI. 26. 261 
 
 the antithesis of the idolatrous Egyptian people and its 
 royal house, with all their unspeakable moral corruption. 
 The ἀπόλαυσις ἁμαρτίας is not the enjoyment of sin (gen. 
 obj.); but, as the antithesis shows, the pleasure which sin 
 provides,—namely, the sin of apostasy. For here is contrasted 
 (1) the fellowship of the people of God with this ἁμαρτία, 
 apostasy from God and from His people; and (2) the afflic- 
 tion of God’s people with the worldly ease and enjoyment 
 which such apostasy would ensure. One of Moses’ reasons 
 for refusing the enjoyments and the splendours of a courtly 
 life in Egypt is hinted in the word πρόσκαιρον. He knew 
 them to be but temporary, and to have an eternally bitter 
 end in prospect. And in that conviction consisted his faith, 
 which looked through the deceptive appearances of worldly 
 good things, to their inward and essential nothingness, and 
 to their fearful end. Therefore he suffered not himself to 
 be dazzled by.all the honours and luxury which his position 
 offered him. 
 
 Ver. 26. Accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches 
 than the treasures of Egypt: for he looked for the recompense 
 of reward. 
 
 This second participial sentence is subordinated to the 
 former, and assigns the reason which chiefly influenced 
 Moses in the choice he made. He estimated loss and gain 
 not by outward and transient appearances, but according to 
 inward truth and reality, which, though for the present 
 hidden, would one day be manifested. His judgment and 
 his deliberate choice, therefore, were fruits of faith. On the 
 one side stood the treasures of Eeypt? with their alluring 
 
 1 Comp. Philo, ii. 86: τὴν συγγενικὴν καὶ προγονικὴν ἐζήλωσε παιδείαν, 
 τὸ μὲν τῶν εἰσποιησαμένων ὠγωθοὶ, καὶ εἰ λαμπρότερα καιροῖς, νόθα εἶναι 
 ὑπολαβὼν, τὼ δὲ τῶν φύσει γονέων, εἰ καὶ πρὸς ὀλίγον ἀφανέστερα, οἰκεῖοι 
 γοῦν καὶ γνήσια. How much more simple, and at the same time how 
 much more profound, is the language of our epistle ! 
 
 5 The correct reading, which has prevailed in critical editions since 
 Griesbach, is τῶν Αἰγύπτου θησαυρῶν. The textus receptus reads τῶν ἐν 
 Αἰγύπτῳ θησ. on very uncertain authority. Lachmann’s reading (after 
 A), τῶν ἐν Αἰγύπτου θησ.; is rightly regarded by Fritzsche and Bleek as a 
 
262 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 invitations; on the other, ὁ ὀνειδισμὸς τοῦ Χριστοῦ in the 
 fellowship of the people of God. The notion of “the re- 
 proach of Christ” is not fully represented by the explanatory 
 term “ reproach on Christ’s behalf ;” an interpretation which 
 Ebrard endeavours to justify by the observation that the 
 promise made to the patriarchs, though Moses may not have 
 had any revelation on the subject, was indeed ultimately 
 fulfilled in Christ. But the writer of our epistle is no 
 modern divine, and the ultra-historical exegesis which would 
 fain make him so becomes itself thereby very unhistorical. 
 Bohme rightly refers to Acts ili. 21-23 and vii. 37, whence 
 it appears that from the New Testament point of view Moses 
 was believed not only to have hoped in the Messiah, but also 
 to have directly prophesied concerning Him. But even this 
 does not explain the genitive, “ reproach of Christ,” and still 
 less Liinemann’s interpretation, “reproach such as Christ 
 Himself endured.” Rather the ὀνειδισμὸς Χριστοῦ is, “ that 
 reproach which Christ endured in His own person, and had, 
 or has still, to endure in His members” (Bleek). But the 
 question remains, How can Moses be said to have borne the 
 reproach of Christ in this more than comparative sense ? 
 Modern exegesis was the first to put this question seriously 
 to itself, and has found for it different answers. And, 1sé, 
 the term may be justified by the typical connection between 
 Christ and His ancient people. So Hofmann, Weiss. ii. 11 
 seq. The reproach of Christ is no other than the reproach 
 
 thoughtless confusion of the two. Mutianus’ rendering, majores divitias 
 existimans thesauro Eqyptiorum improperium Christi; that of the Itala, 
 thesauris Acyyptim; and that of the Vulgate, thesauro Acgyptivrum, are 
 all probably derived from the reading ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ, which is also that of 
 St. Chrysostom. The reading A’yyptim may be an African peculiarity, 
 but is probably only a clerical blunder for Zyyptiorum. The Latin text 
 of D (E) abounds in errors evincing the ignorance of the copyist, and 
 especially in this epistle, on which, from the disfavour with which it was 
 regarded in the Latin Church, the less care would be likely to be bestowed. 
 That codex, indeed, places the epistle merely as an appendix after those 
 of St. Paul, from which it is separated by the insertion of the sticho- 
 metrical catalogue of the books of the Old and New Testament, wherein 
 its name does not even occur. 
 
CHAP. XI. 26. 263 
 
 of Israel in Egypt, that is, of Israel according to its covenant 
 vocation, not Israel according to the flesh. The reproach of 
 Israel is the same as the reproach of Christ, so far as He 
 providentially wrought in the fellowship and history of that 
 people a type of Himself. And therefore the sacred writer 
 says here, reproach of “ Christ,’ not of “ Jesus,’ —Christ 
 (Messiah) being the title by which the Son of God is set 
 forth under the Old Testament, both in its historical foresha- 
 dowings and in its prophetic word. ‘“ Reproach of Christ” 
 would accordingly be equivalent to “reproach of God’s 
 ancient covenant people,” they themselves’ being a type of 
 Christ. But, further, the explanation may be found, 2dly, 
 in the mystical unity of Christ and His people. So Stier: 
 “The whole people of God, in all ages, forms one commu- 
 nity, of which Christ is the centre; and even the saints of 
 the Old Testament were members of that one living body of 
 which He is evermore the head.” This combination of head 
 and members, of Christ and Israel, is in itself a thought 
 thoroughly scriptural; and by it must be interpreted the 
 “a say of Isa. xl.-Ixvi., and its infinitely varied modifica- 
 tions.. Nor need we, in order to justify this interpretation, 
 understand by τοῦ Χριστοῦ here merely the so-called mystical 
 Christ of 1 Cor. xii. 12, made up of the Head, together 
 with its members. Rather we would say: The reproach of 
 Christ which Moses was willing to endure, was the reproach 
 of Him who was then still to come,—the reproach which He 
 was already enduring, in virtue of His vital mystical con- 
 nection with the then members of His body. This mystical 
 interpretation includes the typical, and we therefore give it 
 decidedly the preference; but in order not to fall back into 
 the merely typical conception, it seems that we must make 
 
 1 See my Schlussbemerkungen zu Drechsler’s Comm. zu Jesaia, iii. 366. 
 ' When Meinertzhagen says (Vorlesungen iiber Werth und Bedeutung der 
 biblischen Geschichte, 1849), ‘* The Servant of Jehovah (in Isaiah) is not 
 (as it might seem) sometimes Christ, sometimes Israel, but Christ alone, 
 te. the whole Christ, Christ Himself as one with His members,” he says 
 what is quite true of the idea in itself, but not so of its development in 
 that great section of prophecy. 
 
264 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 yet a step forward, and find a yet deeper ground for this 
 assumption of the presence of Christ in the Israel of the Old 
 Testament. And this may be done by finding the explana- 
 tion of ὀνειδ. τ. Xp., 3dly, in the pre-existence of the Logos, 
 and His covenant presence in the church of ancient Israel. 
 So De Wette, and after him Tholuck. The “reproach of 
 Christ ” embraced by Moses would be the same, then, as 
 “the sufferings of Christ” fulfilled by St. Paul, in virtue of 
 His eternal presence and indwelling as the Word under both 
 Testaments. This idea of the immanence and working of 
 the Divine Logos in the history of ancient Israel appears to 
 me a necessary addition to the typical connection asserted by 
 Hofmann, and the mystical unity as maintained by Stier. 
 And even to this may be added one more thought. We 
 might find a further explanation of the “reproach of Christ ” 
 here, 4¢ily, in that continuous preparation for the incarna- 
 tion which constitutes the nucleus of the history of Israel, 
 and in accordance with which St. Augustine treats (in the 
 De Civ. Dei, lib. xvii. c. 11), de substantia populi Dei que 
 per susceptionem carnis in Christo est, and of which he says 
 there, ipse Jesus substantia populi ejus ex quo natura est carnis 
 ejus. But of all four modes of interpretation this last would 
 seem to be least likely to have been in the mind of the 
 Pauline writer of our epistle, on whose real meaning per- 
 haps 1 Cor. x. 4 (comp. 1 Pet. 1. 10 sq.) may throw most 
 light. The “reproach of Christ” would be for him the 
 reproach of the Divine Word indwelling in and united with 
 His ancient people, amongst whom He was then announcing 
 in types and prophecies His future advent in the flesh.’ 
 This reproach Moses accounted greater riches, and a surer 
 source of happiness and pleasure, than all the dignities and 
 wealth of Eeypt; for ἀπέβλεπε els τὴν μισθαποδοσίαν : he 
 looked away from the reproach as such, to the divine reward 
 beyond it. The sacred writer still lingers over this history 
 of Moses as the most eminent instrument of God under the 
 
 1 Philo likewise recognises the immanence of the Divine Logos in the 
 
 history of Israel, e.g. the pillar of cloud and fire; but the equation, 
 Logos’= Christ, is not apprehended by hin. 
 
CHAP. XI. 27. 265 
 
 Old Testament—the mediator of the law, and, through his 
 faith, the saviour of Israel. 
 
 Ver. 27. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of 
 the king ; for he endured as seeing him who ts invisible. 
 
 Taking πίστει κατέλιπεν Αἴγυπτον by itself, and bearing 
 in mind that Moses’ first recorded act, after coming to man’s 
 estate (μέγας γενόμενος), was to revenge his fellow-country- 
 man on the tyrannical Egyptian, one is naturally led to 
 refer these words to Moses’ flight into Midian; but of that 
 occasion it is expressly said that he feared (ἐφοβήθη, Ex. ii. 
 14) that his deed had come to light, and fled in consequence, 
 to escape from the wrath of Pharaoh (ἀνεχώρησεν ἀπὸ προ- 
 σώπου Φαραώ, Ex. ii. 15; comp. the ἔφυγεν of Acts vii. 29, 
 the φθάσας δὲ τὴν ὑποβουλὴν καταμαθεῖν λαθὼν ὑπέξεισε 
 of Josephus (Anéig. i. 11. 1), and the ὀργὴν ἀμείλικτον 
 βασιλέως ἀποδιδράσκων of Philo, 11. 88. 35). Attempts, 
 therefore, have frequently been made since Lyra and Cal- 
 vin, to make the words refer to the departure from Egypt 
 at the exodus. So Calvin: omnibus expensis ad secundum 
 eaitum referre malo, tune enim intrepide regis ferociam des- 
 pexit, tanta Spiritus Det virtute armatus, ut furiosam illam 
 bestiam ultro subinde lacesseret. ‘The expression κατέλιπεν 
 Αἴγυπτον does not exclude such a reference: see Josephus 
 (Ant. τι. 15. 2), κατέλιπον δὲ τὴν A. μηνὶ Ἐανθικῷ. But it 
 is surely against it, that Moses’ final departure from Egypt 
 at the exodus took place, not against, but in accordance 
 with, the wish of Pharaoh himself, although his demand 
 (Ex. xii. 31 sq.) was rather wrung from him by terror and 
 necessity than voluntarily given. ‘The expression, moreover, 
 is too individual, if applied to the exodus; in reference to 
 which Moses and Israel are always associated together 
 (comp. Isa. Ixiii. 11-14) as prince and people, shepherd and 
 flock. The chronological sequence would also be violated 
 by such an interpretation, without any assignable ground. 
 For in ver. 28 follows the celebration of the first passover 
 which preceded the exodus, and ver. 29 the passage of Israel 
 through the Red Sea, which formed its most characteristic 
 
266 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 circumstance. We must therefore renounce this means of 
 evading the difficulty. Those among later commentators 
 who have had recourse to it, are Klee, Bdhme, Bleek, Men- 
 ken (against Bengel), Bloomfield, Ebrard, Bisping, and some 
 others. Bengel, on the other hand, Rieger, Tholuck, von 
 Gerlach, and most decidedly Liinemann, adhere to the older 
 interpretation, which refers κατέλιπεν to the flight into 
 Midian. One great point in its favour is, that none of the 
 ancients, Greek and Latin, ever seem to have thought of 
 any other. The first natural impression, therefore, must 
 have been from the first very strongly for it. But how, with 
 such a reference of κατέλυπεν, are we to explain the μὴ do- 
 βηθείς Σ Liinemann’s explanation is: The fear attributed 
 to Moses in the narrative of the Pentateuch, is quite different 
 from that from which the Epistle to the Hebrews pro- 
 nounces him free. The former fear had a merely objective 
 character: it was simply a dread lest the consequences of a 
 particular act might be fatal to himself, when he found that 
 that act, contrary to his previous expectation, had become 
 known. But this kind of objective fear was quite com- 
 patible with the subjective fearlessness of which the epistle 
 speaks, in virtue of which Moses retained his conviction that 
 God had chosen him to be the deliverer of His people, and 
 feared not to renounce, amid all temptations to the contrary, 
 his allegiance to an earthly king. This interpretation of 
 the μὴ φοβηθείς, though not altogether untrue, seems, with 
 its distinction of objective fear and subjective fearlessness, 
 somewhat too artificial But we may put the matter so: 
 Would the writer of our epistle have thus expressed him- 
 self: πίστει ἔφυγεν εἰς γῆν Μαδιὰμ μὴ φοβηθεὶς τὸν θυμὸν 
 τοῦ βασιλέως ὃ The answer must be, Certainly not; the 
 truth being, that Moses “ fled” because he “ feared.” But 
 it is quite another thing to say that Moses, the son of a king’s 
 daughter, “ left” or “ forsook” (κατέλιπεν) the country, in 
 which he held so great a position, without being deterred 
 (μὴ φοβηθείς) from doing this by the wrath which such a 
 desertion of his post would entail. If such a distinction 
 between φυγεῖν, from fear, and καταλιπεῖν, without fear, still 
 
CHAP. XI. 28. 267 
 
 appear to some too subtle, the following clause nevertheless 
 will prove that something of the kind was really in the 
 mind of the sacred writer: τὸν yap ἀόρατον ὡς ὁρῶν éxap- 
 tépnoev; i.e. for he endured, was stedfast in his purpose 
 (among all the hardships of a long voluntary exile’) to 
 remain at a distance from Egypt and its king (whose wrath 
 would doubtless require his return and submission, and 
 whose grace he might have conciliated thereby), and that 
 because his inward eye was fixed upon the divine invisible 
 King (βασιλέα: so I would complete the ellipsis, with 
 Bohme). What needed he to care for the awakened wrath 
 of an earthly sovereign, when assured of the grace and pro- 
 tection of the King of heaven! The Pharaoh whom Moses 
 thus deserted died without having an opportunity of expend- 
 ing his wrath upon him; but under another Pharaoh he 
 returned, strengthened by divine revelations and communion 
 in the wilderness of Midian and Sinai, to become the saviour 
 of his people. 
 
 Ver. 28. By faith he has celebrated the passover and the 
 effusion of blood, that the destroyer of the first-born might 
 not touch them. 
 
 The assumption of Bohme, Bleek, and Liinemann, that in 
 πεποίηκεν τὲ πάσχα here the notions of celebrating and insti- 
 tuting the passover are combined, is not only of doubtful 
 correctness (De Wette), but decidedly wrong. The Hebrew 
 phrase (“n> nop ny) of which it is the rendering occurs 
 frequently (e.g. Ex. xii. 48; Num. ix.2; Josh. v.10; Matt. 
 xxvi. 18), but only in the sense of “keeping” the passover. 
 The nearly equivalent phrase is φαγεῖν τὸ πάσχα. The notion 
 may, however, be involved in the perfect πεποίηκεν, that 
 Moses’ first celebration in Egypt (the Pésach Mitzraim), as 
 a finished and accomplished fact, was the foundation and 
 inauguration of that which has continued to be observed in 
 after times” (the Pésach Ha-Déréth). The passover proper 
 
 1Comp. Jos. Ant. ii 11. 1: ἄπορός τε ὧν τροφῆς ὠπηλλάττετο τῇ 
 καρτερίᾳ καταφρονῶν. 
 
 2 Compare the προσενήνοχεν of ver. 17. [The reader must bear in 
 
268 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 was kept on the night between the 14th and 15th of Nisan: 
 to this was afterwards added the feast of Mazzoth (unleavened 
 bread), which began on the 15th, and lasted seven days. 
 This feast preserved the memory of the unleavened bread 
 which the Israelites ate in their haste as they forsook the 
 land of their captivity. Here τὸ πάσχα is the passover 
 proper, the night of preservation itself (any 5:5), with its 
 various ordinances. That original Mosaic celebration was 
 characterized by two actions in which his faith (πίστις) was 
 manifested: (1) the affusion or sprinkling of the blood of 
 the lamb on the two side posts and upper door-post of every 
 Israelite dwelling (by means of a bunch of hyssop), that 
 Jehovah, seeing it, might “ pass over” (NDB) their houses, 
 and not suffer the destroying angel to enter them (Ex. xii. 
 7, 13, 22, 23); (2) the eating of the passover in haste, with 
 loins girt, shoes on feet, and staff in hand (Ex. xii. 11), in 
 expectation of departure (ἔξοδος) at break of day. Both 
 these actions Moses enjoined and carried out in virtue of his 
 faith (πίστει), first in the divine grace which had tied itself 
 for that occasion to the apparently worthless and incongruent 
 medium of the πρόσχυσις τοῦ aiwaros,' and secondly in the 
 
 mind that, at the time when this epistle was written, the passover still 
 continued to be observed in its complete form at Jerusalem, the temple 
 then standing. In every other place except Jerusalem it was then, and in 
 every place including Jerusalem it is now (i.e. ever since the destruction 
 of the temple), observed in a modified form (πάσχα peynuovevtixev),— 
 namely, as a sacred family supper, accompanied by ancient paschal 
 prayers and hymns (among which the Haggadah, the Annunciation, or 
 showing of Ex. xiii. 8, 14, holds a chief place), the blessing and drink- 
 ing of the four paschal cups of wine, and the blessing and eating of the 
 Mazzoth (cakes of* unleavened bread), eaten partly as a continuance of 
 the ancient rite, and partly inmemory of and substitution for the omitted 
 paschal lamb.—TR. ] 
 
 1 That divine grace, when thus sacramentally manifesting itself, de- 
 mands faith, may be seen, for example, in the profane exclamation of a 
 German professor: ‘‘One must be out of one’s mind to believe that it 
 could really have been necessary for Jehovah to see the lamb’s blood on 
 the doorpost!” (Redslob, Stiftung und Grund der Passahfeier, p.45.) In 
 things divine, whatever is proposed as an object of faith, has always 
 something absurd in it for the ordinary understanding. 
 
CHAP. XI. 28. 269 
 
 approaching fact of a free exodus from the land of captivity, 
 so long promised by God, and obstinately denied by man. 
 The term here employed, πρόσχυσις τοῦ αἵματος, might 
 seem less suitable to the original action (which the use of the 
 hyssop shows to have been a sprinkling: comp. Lev. xiv. 7; 
 Num. xix. 19, 711), as to its imitation in the later rite, ac- 
 cording to which, under the second temple, the paschal blood 
 was poured out at the foot of the altar." It must, however, 
 be observed that this rite, as performed before the exile, is 
 described (2 Chron. xxx. 16, xxxv. 11) not as a Πϑ 5), out- 
 pouring, but as ἃ np, sprinkling or shedding, and that the 
 regular Septuagint rendering for the phrase o7N7nN ptr is 
 προσχέειν τὸ aiua. The following clause, ἵνα μή, K.7.r., 
 belongs only to καὶ τὴν πρόσχυσιν τοῦ αἵματος ; the atoning 
 power of the passover lying only in the sprinkling of the 
 blood, and not in the eating of it. By ὁ ὀλοθρεύων an angel 
 doubtless is intended, who served as the executioner of the 
 divine justice. In the same sense we must understand 
 Wisd. xviii. 25 and 1 Cor. x. 10, following 1 Chron. xxi. 12 
 (ἄγγελος Κυρίου ἐξοχοθρεύων) ; and so the nynwin of Ex. xii. 
 23 appears to have been already understood by Asaph when 
 he wrote Ps. Ixxviii. 49. Instead of ὀλοθρεύων, Lachmann 
 and Tischendorf write, with A, D, Τὸ, ὀλεθρεύων, which or- 
 thography is also preferred by Bleek. The Codex Alex. of 
 the Septuagint constantly substitutes ¢ in this word for the ὁ 
 of the Codex Vaticanus.t It seems hardly worth observing 
 that αὐτῶν does not belong to τὰ πρωτότοκα (firstlings of 
 men and cattle), but that τὰ πρωτ. is governed by ὀλοθρεύων, 
 αὐτῶν by θίγῃ (comp. xii. 20). Luther's rendering is quite 
 
 1 See my paper, iiber den Passaritus zur Zeit des zweiten Tempels [on 
 the Paschal Ceremonial under the Second Temple], Luther. Zeitschrift, 
 1855, 2. 
 
 * Once only it is the rendering of 7Dw, at Deut. xii. 27. 
 
 8 Compare, however, Ex. xii. 13, “" The plague shall not be upon 
 you for a destruction.” 
 
 4 The verb ὀλοθρεύεσθαι is found in a scholion to Odyss. ii. 59 (ed. 
 Dindorf, p. 82), and in those to JJ. xxiv. 39, Od. xi. 128 (ed. Dindorf, 
 p. 486). It is an Alexandrine word, but in this form only found 
 with o. 
 
270 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 correct: “that he that destroyed the first-born might not 
 touch them.” 
 
 The great paschal night? of the Old Testament, in the 
 celebrations of which the faith of Moses roused and guided 
 that of his people, is now followed by the great paschal 
 deliverance, in which the faith of all Israel was manifested 
 by their triumphant passage through the Red Sea. 
 
 Ver. 29. By faith they passed through the Red Sea as 
 through dry land ; of which making essay, the Egyptians were 
 swallowed up. 
 
 “ Awake, awake, O arm of Jehovah,” cries the prophet 
 (Isa. li. 9, 10); “ awake, as in the ancient days, in the gene- 
 rations of old. Art thou not it that hath riven Rahab, and 
 transfived the dragon? Art thou not it that hath dried up 
 the sea, the waters of the great deep ; that hath turned the 
 depths of the sea into a way for the redeemed to pass through?” 
 And again (xliil. 16, 17): “ Thus saith Jehovah, that maketh 
 a way through the sea, a path through mighty waters ; that 
 bringeth forth chariot and horse, army, and mighty ones ; they 
 sink together, they shall rise no more ; they are extinguished as 
 the tow is quenched.” It was, on the one hand, the omni- 
 potence of Jehovah which, by means of an east and north- 
 east wind, swept a furrow through the waves of the Red 
 Sea; and, on the other hand, it was the faith of Israel 
 which, trusting in that omnipotence, passed through the two- 
 fold wall of waters, which at any moment might collapse 
 upon them, as if through dry land: ὡς διὰ ξηρᾶς (γῆς). 
 So we must probably read (adding γῆς), with Lachmann, 
 Bleek, and Tischendorf, following A, D, E, the Itala, and 
 
 1 [Delitzsch writes, das alttest. Weihnachten, which, if rendered 
 literally—the Old Testament Christmas—would to an English reader be 
 unintelligible or misleading. The ‘‘ passover of Egypt” might indeed 
 in one sense be called the Christmas of the Old Testament, as being the 
 birth-night of the typical ‘‘ Son of God” (Hos. xi. 1) ; but I rather think 
 Delitzsch uses Weihnachten here, not so much in its ecclesiastical as in 
 its etymological sense, so that the proper rendering of the words would 
 be, the Holy Night of the Old Testament; but so rendered, the allu- 
 sion to Christmas would be lost.—TR.] 
 
CHAP. XI. 30. 271 
 
 the Vulgate (per aridam terram), although the Septuagint 
 reads, Ex. xiv. 29, dua ξηρᾶς (only). The sacred writer is 
 contrasting the billowy sea and the dry land, and the addi- 
 tional γῆς enhances this contrast. The relative ἧς may be 
 referred either to dua ξηρᾶς γῆς (with Bohme, Kiihnoel, Klee) 
 or to τὴν ἐρυθρὰν θάλασσαν. If it were quite certain that 
 διὰ ξηρᾶς yhs* was in the original text, the former would 
 seem to me even the more probable. The phrase πεῖράν 
 τινος λαμβάνειν may signify, (a) passively, “to have experi- 
 ence of,” as at ver. 36; or (@) actively, “ to essay or attempt,” 
 as here. The meaning, then, is: The redeemed of Jehovah 
 passed through the sea as through dry land, being assured 
 from the first of their safety. The Egyptians made the 
 attempt, not knowing what the result would be: they tried 
 what would come of this dry land, the bottom of the sea so 
 wondrously dried up, and perished in the returning waters 
 -“.)΄ατεπόθησαν. So the word 430 is rendered in the Sep- 
 tuagint (Cod. Vat.) at Ex. xv. 4, while Cod. Alexandr. has 
 κατεπόντισε. Bleek, in our present passage, would fain 
 read κατεποντίσθησαν, though on very slight Ms. authority, 
 out of deference to the Cod. Alexandr. of the LX X., which 
 represents a recension of the Greek text of the Old Testa- 
 ment very closely related (it has been supposed) to that of 
 our epistle. This relationship, however, is very doubtful. 
 
 The sacred writer now leaves the Thorah, rich as it is 
 in examples of faith, to refer to others recorded in the book 
 of Joshua, which rounds off the history of the exodus by 
 that of the conquest of the land, the second half of the 
 promised redemption. 
 
 Ver. 30. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after 
 they had been encompassed for seven days. 
 
 Πίστει is here again, as in the preceding verse, to be 
 understood of the faith of the whole people, sustained and 
 stimulated by that of Joshua. With the ark of the covenant 
 in their midst, while seven priests preceded bearing trumpets 
 of rams’ horns, they made procession in solemn silence round 
 
 1 (Cod. Sin. has γῆς.]} 
 
ΤΩ EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 the devoted city ἐπὶ ἑπτὰ ἡμέρας ---ἶον the space of seven days 
 (for ἐπί, denoting a tract of time, see Luke iv. 25; Acts xiii. 
 31, and xix. 10; Winer, p. 363). When, on the seventh day, 
 they had completed their circuit for the seventh time, the 
 priests blew their rams’ horns, and the people raised their 
 war-cry, and the walls of Jericho fell down (unsmitten by 
 “ battering-rams or engines of war,” 2 Macc. xii. 15), leaving 
 the wealthy city an easy prey. Instead of the singular, which 
 occurs twice in the book of Joshua (vi. 5, πεσεῖται (αὐτόματα) 
 τὰ τείχη ; and ver. 20, ἔπεσεν ἅπαν τὸ τεῖχος), our author uses 
 the amplifying plural (Winer, ὃ 58, 3), τὰ τείχη ἔπεσαν (for 
 so we must read, with Lachmann, Tischendorf, and Bleek,’ 
 against the ἔπεσεν of the textus receptus). For “Ἱεριχώ in- 
 stead of τῆς ‘Iep., see note to ch. vii. 9. Faith is here said to 
 be the power before which the walls of Jericho fell down, 
 because it was not the arm of flesh, and still less the trumpet- 
 blasts and war-cries of Israel, but divine omnipotence, and its 
 correlative in man—confident trust in that almighty power 
 by which the deed of wonder was accomplished. At the Red 
 Sea, Israel by faith escaped destruction from the powers of 
 nature, whereby their enemies perished; at Jericho, Israel 
 by the same faith in the divine promises obtained a glorious 
 victory. The conquest of Jericho reminds naturally of the 
 deliverance of Rahab. The sacred writer subjoins, therefore, 
 to these two acts of faith (vers. 29, 30) on the part of Israel, 
 a third (ver. 31) performed by a Gentile woman who was 
 received through her faith into Israel’s fellowship. 
 
 Ver. 31. By faith Rahab the harlot perished not with them 
 that were disobedient, because she had recewed the spies with 
 peace. 
 
 Rahab, before “ faith came,” had been no better than 
 Mary Magdalene, and is still surnamed ἡ πόρνη, to the glory 
 of that grace by which she was redeemed, so as even to be- 
 come an ancestress of the Lord and Saviour. (Πόρνη cannot, 
 as even Valcken. endeavoured to persuade himself, mean 
 cauponaria.) The other inhabitants of Jericho are called 
 
 1 Following A, D, ete. [Cod. Sin. also reads ἔπεσων.] 
 
CHAP, XI. 31. 273 
 
 ἀπειθήσαντες, because, having heard of the miraculous deal- 
 ings of God on behalf of Israel (Josh. ii. 10), they persisted 
 in their defiance, and made no submission. They fell, there- 
 fore, under the curse of utter destruction (Josh. vi. 21), 
 which Rahab escaped in virtue of her faith manifested in her 
 receiving the spies with peace, μετ᾽ εἰρήνης, with unreserved 
 and open-hearted kindness. Her doing so was not the effect 
 of a weak amiability, which would have made her a despicable 
 traitress to her friends and country, but of an assumed belief 
 that Jehovah was the God of heaven and earth, and that He 
 had given the land to His people (Josh. 11. 9). Her faith had 
 been awakened by what she in common with the rest of her 
 countrymen had heard of the wonderful acts of the God of 
 Israel : it displayed itself in her receiving and protecting the 
 Israelitish emissaries, and found its reward in becoming her 
 shield and preservation in the destruction of the city. So 
 in her case the promise was fulfilled, ὁ δίκαιος ἐκ πίστεως 
 ζήσεται (ch. x. 38). 
 
 The sacred writer, feeling how measureless would be the 
 length of his exposition of the nature and operations of faith 
 if he proceeded in detail to allege other examples from the 
 rest of the Old Testament, now therefore suddenly interrupts 
 himself. 
 
 1 St. James likewise, in the well-known passage of his epistle (ii. 25), 
 cites Rahab as an instance of justification, but ἐξ ἔργων, not ἐκ πίστεως. 
 That there is absolutely no discrepancy between his ἐξ ἔργων ἐδικαιώθη 
 and the πίστει od συνωπώλετο οὗ our epistle, and that St. James in his 
 antitheses had no reference whatever to the formulas of the Pauline 
 school, could only be maintained in the interests of a somewhat narrow- 
 minded Harmonistique. In St. Paul’s system πίστις and δικαίωσις precede 
 ἔργα, while for St. James πίστις and ἔργα precede δικαίωσις. St. Paul 
 knows of no works pleasing to God before justification; St. James makes 
 justification depend on antecedent good works. With St. Paul, justifica- 
 tion is the simple consequence of apprehending faith ; with St. James, it 
 presupposes other human performances as well. St. James regards works 
 as the ground of justification ; St. Paul neither as the whole ground nor 
 any part of it. Faith, according to St. Paul, approves itself as a new 
 divine life in the soul, fruitful in good works ; but these works are fruits 
 and consequences, not co-efficients of justification, which is simply the 
 divine correlative of a living faith. But this is a subject which we must 
 
 VOL. II. 5 
 
274 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 Ver. 32. And what shall I more say? For the time will 
 fail me if I tell of Gideon, Barak, and Samson, of Jephthah, 
 David, and Samuel, and of the prophets. 
 
 Whether λέγω, in the question καὶ τί ἔτι λέγω, is indica- 
 tive or subjunctive, cannot be positively decided. Compare, 
 for instance, 71. xi. 837, τί ἡήξομεν, with Adschyl. Hum. 754, 
 785, τί ῥέξω (where it 15 ἃ subjunctive: J sigh—what else can 
 1 do?); or Plato, Menex, p. 244 D, μηκύνεν τί δεῖ, with Eur. 
 Ton, 758, εἴπωμεν ἢ συγῶμεν ἢ τί δράσομεν ; Soph. Cid. Col. 
 τί λέξω, ποῖ φρενῶν ἔλθω ; and Plat. Legg. p. 655 B, τί πον 
 ἂν οὖν λέγωμεν τὸ πεπλανηκὸς ἡμᾶς εἶναι, (comp. Rost, ὃ 119, 
 Anm. 2). Plato has interchangeably πῶς Aéyouev— What 
 should we say? and πῶς Aéyouev—What do we say? As in 
 cases like the present, the conjunctivus deliberativus s. dubita- 
 tivus is the most natural mood, I would take it so here: And 
 what shall I more say? (καί in sense equivalent to καίτοι) 
 Lit quid adhue (better, amplius) dicam? Vulg. This self- 
 interruption on the writer’s part is rhetorical. The answer, 
 “T will rather break off at this point,” lies in the very form 
 of the question; and he can therefore at once proceed with 
 his reason for so doing: ἐπιλείψει yap με διηγούμενον ὁ χρόνος 
 
 treat of elsewhere. St. James does not for all this stand on the same 
 ground with the Judaizing opponents of the apostle of the Gentiles: he 
 belongs rather to that noblest section of Jewish Christianity which 
 admired the zeal and rejoiced in the success of the great apostle, which 
 gladly welcomed and appropriated all it could of his teaching, but which 
 could not rise at once to his level, and had not the spiritual energy and 
 courage to give to faith in its Pauline sense, and in accordance with 
 St. Paul’s teaching, its true and exclusive validity. In comparing the 
 doctrines of each with the other, we must not forget that St. James 
 the Lord’s brother was yet not an apostle, and acknowledge that his 
 most precious epistle is on this doctrine of justification one-sided; and 
 that if—nay, because—it is an integral portion of the canon, it must be 
 interpreted in subordination to the statements of St. Paul, i.e. ex analogia 
 jidei. Only do not let us maintain that such interpretation is a purely 
 historical one. Even Clemens Romanus, though a disciple of St. Paul, 
 remains far behind his master in his apprehension of this truth. His 
 ice πίστιν καὶ φιλοξενίαν ἐσώθη ‘PadB 4 πόρνη is a combination of St. Paul 
 and St. James, affording a melancholy omen of subsequent dogmatic 
 developments in the Roman church. 
 
CHAP. XI. 32. 25 
 
 περί, K.T.X..—a turn of expression borrowed from the Greek 
 orators, as the examples collected by Wetstein and Bleek 
 sufficiently prove. Compare especially Julian, Orat. i. p. 341 
 B, ἐπιλείψει με τἀκείνου διηγούμενον ὁ χρόνος. He might 
 also have written ἐπιλίποι ἄν με; ἢ but the ind. fut. is more 
 definite = longum est dicere. Time” is here not time in 
 general, but that particular portion now at the writer’s dis- 
 posal; though in phrases of this kind, which border on the 
 hyperbolical, such distinctions can hardly be said to have 
 been consciously present to the mind of the writer. The 
 author’s rhetorical power is also exhibited in the bold inver- 
 sion of ὁ χρόνος, to avoid the hiatus μὲ 6, and improve the 
 rhythm.’ The examples of heroic faith, which for want of 
 time he can only enumerate (not speak of in detail), now 
 follow at the end of the sentence, in order to be close to the 
 relative descriptive sentences which succeed. 
 
 Lachmann’s reading, περὶ Γεδεὼν, Βαρὰκ, Σ᾽ αμψὼν, 
 ᾿Ιεφθάε, Δαυείδ, τε καὶ Σαμουὴλ, καὶ τῶν mpod., arranges 
 the names in two groups—first rulers (the judges and King 
 David), and then prophets (with Samuel at their head). 
 But the reading of the teat. rec. is much better attested : 
 περὶ Γεδεὼν, Βαράκ te καὶ Σαμψὼν, καὶ ᾿Ιεφθάε, Δαβίδ τε 
 καὶ Σαμουὴλ, καὶ τῶν προφητῶν. ‘This reading makes three 
 groups: (1.) Gideon, Barak, Sampson; (2.) Jephthah, 
 David, Samuel; (8.) The prophets. And by this, notwith- 
 
 1 So also Philo, i. 867, 19, ἐπιλείψει με ἡ ἡμέρα. . . διεξιόντα ; ii. 
 593, 21, ἐὸν κατωλέγωμαι . .. ἐπιλείψει με ἡ ἡμέρα; li. 267, 24 ἐπι- 
 λείψει με ἡ ἡμέρα λέγοντα . . . ,—exactly the same turn of expression 
 as is found in Demosthenes and Libanius. (For καὶ τί λέγω, above 
 = κωίΐτοι. . . . might be compared Aristoph. Eccl. 298, καίτοι τί λέγω, 
 though λέγω there is an indicative (Yet what am I saying ?). The 
 question, indeed, is of a different kind from that in our text, and more 
 like that of the sanhedrim at John xi. 47, τί rosotwev, which does not 
 mean, What shall we do? but, What are we about ?2—implying a resolve 
 to act at once energetically. See Winer, p. 254.) 
 
 2 So, again, Philo, ii. 115, 3, ἐπιλίπω ἂν ὁ βίος τοῦ βουλομένου διηγεῖσθαι 
 ro καθέκαστα. In Dion. Halic. is found, in the same sense, ἐπιλείποι cv 
 (Winer, p. 250) ; and in Isocrates, ἐκλίποι ἄν. 
 
 5. The inversion is still more elegant in Lachmann’s reading (taken 
 from A, Ὁ), ἐπιλείψει με γάρ. [Cod. Sin. has also ἐπιλ. με yop. ] 
 
276 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 standing Liinemann’s objections, we may be content to 
 abide. The names do not follow in chronological order. 
 Gideon stands in the first group before Barak, as the greater 
 name of the two. [These three names of judges of Israel, 
 Gideon, Barak, Sampson, form a sort of rhetorical amphi- 
 macer (—v—).] In the second group (Jephthah, David, 
 Samuel), Jephthah comes first as the name of a judge; 
 and Samuel follows David, as the name of the founder 
 of the prophetic institute, in order to be near that of his 
 spiritual children (comp. Acts iii. 24). Time failing the 
 sacred writer to speak of all these in detail, he contents 
 himself with a brief summary indication of some of the 
 great achievements of their faith, as of that of others like 
 them. 
 
 Ver. 33. Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought 
 righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions. 
 
 Διὰ πίστεως belongs to the whole sentence, dependent 
 on the relative οἱ, to the end of the following verse. What 
 particular deeds of faith the author would himself attach to 
 particular names of heroes, is difficult to divine; the names 
 being given only as samples. But doubtless, in writing 
 κατηγωνίσαντο βασιλείας, he would be thinking first of the 
 judges: e.g. of Gideon, the hero of “ the day of Midian” 
 (Isa. ix. 3); of Barak (a name inseparably associated with 
 those of Deborah and Jael), the victor in the conflict with 
 the king of Hazor; of Sampson, tlie invincible avenger (so 
 long as he remained faithful to his Nazarite’s vow) of Israel 
 on the Philistines, and the first leader in the war of libera- 
 tion from the Philistine yoke (comp. Judg. xii. 5 with 
 1 Sam, vii. 12 seq.); and finally, of Jephthah, the brave 
 and eloquent maintainer of Israel’s cause against the king 
 of Ammon.! The verb καταγωνίζεσθαι belongs to the later 
 
 1 Sauer, for the Hebrew j\vinvi (Shimshon), is the same Doric- 
 Macedonic-Alexandrine peculiarity as in λήμψεται ὠνωληρφθῆναι and 
 other like forms ; the ε in ᾿Ιεφθάε is the Pathach furtivum of the Maso- 
 retes, which is sometimes expressed in the LXX. by a, sometimes by ¢, 
 often omitted altogether. 
 
CHAP. XI. 33. 20% 
 
 Greek, and has two meanings—to fight against, and to fight 
 down (subdue). Here it has the latter meaning (comp. 
 ABlian, v. ἢ. iv. 8, σὺν ὀλίγοις παμπόλλους μυριάδας κατη- 
 γωνίσατο). The clause xatny. Bac., which applies to David 
 and Samuel (as well as to the judges),—to David, who by 
 his victories over heathen nations prepared a time of peace 
 and glory under Solomon; and to Samuel, who completed 
 the work of liberation commenced by Samson,—is followed 
 by the clause εἰργάσαντο δικαιοσύνην, which is specially ap- 
 plicable to both David and Samuel. The phrase ἐργάζεσθαι 
 Sux. (here and Acts x. 35; comp. Jas. i. 20) is the Helle- 
 nistic rendering of the Hebrew pty ny and (poet.) pry ya, 
 Ps. xv. 2. It has in itself the widest ethical sense, but 
 takes a special colouring or nuance of meaning from the life 
 and circumstances of those to whom it is applied. David is 
 that king of Israel who, to the end of his life, received the 
 testimony that he had exercised ΠΡῚΝῚ ὉΞΦ (judgment and 
 justice) (2 Sam. vili. 15; 1 Chron. xviii. 14, etc.); as such, 
 he was a type of pyy ney (the righteous Branch, Jer. 
 xxiii. 5). Samuel in his old age receives from the assembled 
 people this witness: Thou hast not defrauded us, nor op- 
 pressed us, neither hast thou taken ought of any man’s hand 
 (1 Sam. xii. 4, a passage which the sacred writer seems to 
 have specially in view). David was a sample of one who, 
 in the power of faith, was a just sovereign; Samuel, in the 
 same power, of a just judge. Samuel’s name, however, 
 follows David’s, not because a judge was inferior to a king, 
 but simply to connect the mention of his name with that of 
 the prophets of the monarchy, who traced back the spring 
 of inspiration which they enjoyed to the spiritual pentecost 
 of the time of Samuel. The third clause, ἐπέτυχον éray- 
 γελιῶν, applies especially, though of course not exclusively, 
 to them. Here, as at vi. 15, it must not be understood of 
 receiving divine words of promise, but of obtaining (drawing 
 on) their fulfilment (by the magnetic power of a personal 
 faith). The plural (ἐπαγγελιῶν) is purposely used, because 
 it was not the one great final fulfilment of the promise 
 which they were permitted to see (ver. 40), but only indi- 
 
278 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 vidual or inchoate fulfilments. So Joel lived to see the 
 removal of the drought and of the plague of locusts; Isaiah 
 the wonderful deliverance of Jerusalem from Sennacherib ; 
 Jeremiah the fulfilment of the promises made to him at his 
 prophetic vocation, and the preservation of Baruch and 
 Ebedmelech ; Daniel the end of the Babylonish captivity. 
 These, and other prophets of the God of Israel, did not 
 prophesy, like Balaam, against their own will, but with 
 faithful submission to, and in communion with, the divine. 
 They therefore, even in this life, had the reward of their 
 faith, in seeing at least partial fulfilments of what they had 
 foretold. That in these descriptive clauses the sacred writer 
 mentally follows the course of sacred history, is evident from 
 the next, the fourth clause, ἔφραξαν στόματω λεόντων (D has 
 στόμα, but is unsupported by any other authority). It is 
 indeed related, both of Sampson and of David, that they 
 had fought with lions (Judg. xiv. 6; 1 Sam. xvii. 34-386) ; 
 but the wording of the clause evidently points to the mira- 
 culous deliverance of Daniel, of which it is said in the 
 LXX. version of the original narrative, that an angel 
 “ shut the mouths of the lions” (vi. 18 of LXX.'), “ be- 
 cause” (is added in ver. 23) “ he believed (ἐπίστευσεν) in 
 his God.” This angel was but the minister of God’s mercy 
 and of Daniel’s faith. It was the prophet’s faith in God 
 which made him unapproachable by the beasts of prey. 
 That Daniel's history is here especially in our author's 
 mind, is evident from what immediately follows. 
 
 Ver. 34. Quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of 
 the sword, became strong after weakness, waxed valiant in 
 battle, turned to flight armies of aliens. 
 
 Quenched the power of fire. In this, the fifth of these 
 
 1 Theodotion has here ἔκλεισεν, but at ver. 22 ἐνέφραξε τὸ στόματα 
 τῶν λεόντων, where the Sept. has καὶ σέσωκέ με ὁ Θεὸς ἀπὸ τῶν λεόντων. 
 Comp. 1 Mace. ii. 60, Δανιὴλ ἐν τῇ ἁπλότητι αὐτοῦ ἐῤῥύσθη ἐκ στόματος 
 λεόντων. [Is not Delitzsch in error here in referring to the Sept., as if 
 the reading were ἔκλεισεν ὁ ὥγγελος, x.7.A., at Dan. vi. 18, instead of 
 ὁ Θεός 9] 
 
CHAP. XI. 34. 279 
 
 relative clauses (ἔσβεσαν δύναμιν πυρός), the sacred writer 
 unquestionably alludes to the deliverance of the three con- 
 fessors (Daniel’s friends and companions) in the fiery fur- 
 nace. Here again he passes by the angelic mediation, and 
 refers the miracle to that faith of theirs, which in the utmost 
 need had so mightily laid hold of divine omnipotence. He 
 therefore says intentionally, as Theophylact observes, not 
 φλόγα, but δύναμιν πυρός. It was not only the flame, but 
 the very nature of the fire, which in the power of faith they 
 quenched and overcame, when they walked in “the midst 
 of the furnace” as in gentle soothing light and “a moist 
 whistling wind.”* In the four following clauses various 
 allusions may be traced or imagined: 6.6. in ἔφυγον στόματα 
 μαχαίρας. There may be allusion to David when pursued 
 by Saul; to Elijah and Elisha when persecuted by the rulers 
 of Israel, or beset by the armies of Syria; to Jeremiah, 
 Baruch, Ebedmelech, Gedaliah, in their various deliverances 
 in the terrible Chaldean time. In ἐδυναμώθησαν ἀπὸ ἀσθε- 
 νείας we may find a reference to such cases as that of Samp- 
 son rising in his end out of utter weakness into new strength, 
 and slaying more in his death than he had slain in his life- 
 time (Judg. xvi. 30); or of David closing so many a Psalm 
 of lamentation with words of hope and joy; or of Heze- 
 kiah’s recovery and prolonged life. In ἐγενήθησαν ἰσχυροὶ 
 ἐν πολέμῳ we might find reminiscences of narratives in the 
 book of Judges; or of David’s exultant exclamation (Ps. 
 xviil. 80), “With Thee I break through armed hosts, and with 
 my God leap over walls ;” or of heroic men and deeds of the 
 times of the monarchy. And, finally, παρεμβολὰς ἔκλιναν 
 
 1 Dan. 11. 50, LXX. It is related of one of the two Protestant 
 martyrs at Brussels (Heinrich Voes and Johann Esche), that when 
 the flames of the pile rose over his head, he cried out that ‘“‘he felt as 
 if they were strewing him with roses.”—RUDELBACH, Christliche Bio- 
 graphie, p. 269. 
 
 * Lachmann reads waxelpns [so Cod. Sin.]. The expression is taken 
 from the Old Testament, and is found in St. Luke xxi. 24. The form 
 μῥαχαίρης instead of waxalpas, like σπείρης (Acts x. 1, etc.), συνειδυίης 
 (Acts v. 2, Lachm. and Tisch.), is an Jonicism retained in the Macedo- 
 nian-Alexandrine dialect of which St. Luke is evidently fond. 
 
280 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 ἀλλοτρίων might take us back once more to the glorious fore- 
 time of Israel’s history—the deeds of Gideon in the camps of 
 the Midianites, or of Jonathan in the Philistine stronghold. 
 But it seems to me more probable, that in these four last 
 clauses (from ἔφυγον onwards), the sacred writer, without 
 excluding these older deeds of faith, had more especially the 
 Maccabean times in view: and may be particularly alluding 
 to the happy escape of Mattathias and his sons into the 
 mountains; the growing strength of their little troop, which 
 at first seemed in its weakness so insignificant; the valiant 
 deeds of Judas Maccabeus in conflict with Appollonius, 
 Seron, and others; and finally, the victorious wars waged by 
 the Asmonean heroes with the Syrian monarchy and the 
 neighbouring nationalities. That he should regard these 
 acts as triumphs of faith, need not surprise us. It has indeed 
 been recently maintained, that the glowing enthusiasm of 
 the Maccabean age was more human than divine in its cha- 
 racter and origin, more patriotic and national than theocratic 
 and religious; but the book of Daniel, in its prophetic 
 pictures of that very time, portrays a holy people of the 
 Most High at war with godless antichristian powers, and 
 assigns to its conflicts the highest significance in the pre- 
 paratory developments of the kingdom of God. I therefore 
 hold that these last four relative clauses carry on the review 
 of the ancestral achievements of Israel’s faith beyond the 
 times of the prophets and the book of Daniel, into those of 
 the first book of Maccabees, which in the Septuagint Bible 
 follows it; and this indeed is generally conceded with re- 
 gard to the two last clauses, being rendered the more certain 
 by the fact that παρεμβολή (minp),' in the double sense of 
 camp and army, is a favourite word with the writer of the 
 first of Maccabees, and that ἀλλότριοι (with ἀλλόφυλοι) 
 repeatedly occurs there as the rendering of Oo? or O23 
 (i. 38, ii. 7, comp. xv. 33). 
 
 After thus showing what great things faith in God has 
 in the heroic past been able to accomplish, the sacred writer 
 goes on to show what great things it has also suffered. 
 
 1 See Grimm on 1 Mace. iii. 3, δ 
 
CHAP. XI. 35. 281 
 
 Ver. 35. Women received their dead raised to life again ; 
 but others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they 
 might obtain a better resurrection. 
 
 It is possible that the future resurrection is here called 
 “better” in comparison with the temporal “ deliverance,” 
 which was rejected for its sake (Heinrichs, Liinemann, etc.) ; 
 but the connection of the woman of Sarepta and the Shunam- 
 mite with the Maccabean martyrs makes it far more natural 
 to refer κρείττονος ἀναστάσεως in the latter half of the 
 sentence to ἐξ ἀναστάσεως in the former. Those believing 
 women received back their children in the way of resurrec- 
 tion (ἐξ ἀναστάσεως) to an earthly life; these blood-witnesses 
 for God gave up their own lives to obtain a better resurrec- 
 tion to life eternal (so Chrysostom, Bengel, Schulz, Bohme, 
 Bleek, and most moderns). This interpretation gives also a 
 satisfactory explanation of the ἄλλοι dé: the faith of those 
 ancient women under the kingdom of the ten tribes, with its 
 temporal reward, serves to enhance the far sublimer faith of 
 the Maccabean martyrs. As γυναῖκες is the subject of the 
 first clause, it is the faith of the Shunammite herself, and of 
 the woman of Sarepta, not that of the wonder-working pro- 
 phets, to which in the first instance the restoration of their 
 children is referred. Both women showed their faith in the 
 appeal which they made to God’s servants to help them, as in 
 their previous kindness to them as messengers of God. The 
 verb λαβεῖν (alluding to the λάβε τὸν υἱόν cov of 2 Kings 
 iv. 36; comp. 1 Kings xvii. 23) acquires here (like κομί- 
 ζεσθαι, ver. 19), throvgh the context, the meaning of recipere, 
 take back again. And I see not why ἐξ ἀναστάσεως should 
 be rendered per resurrectionem (as Béohme, Bleek, Schulz, 
 De Wette, Liinemann, will have it) =through or by resurrec- 
 tion, and not rather (after the analogy of that κομίζεσθαι ἐκ 
 νεκρῶν) be understood as describing the region, so to speak, 
 from which the restored ones came: they received them back 
 from resurrection, 1.6. as those who had been raised to life 
 again. But great as was the faith of these mothers, and 
 glorious its reward even in this life, there have been other 
 mothers nobler than they who have rather seen their chil- 
 
282 EPISTLZ TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 dren die before their eyes than renounce their faith in God, 
 and His promises for the life to come. To such an instance 
 we now turn. 
 
 And others were tortured, not accepting deliverance. It 
 is universally acknowledged that the sacred writer refers, 
 with this ἄλλοι δέ, not only to the martyrdom of the aged 
 Eleazar (2 Mace. vi. 18-31), but also to that of the heroic 
 mother and her seven sons, related in the following chapter 
 (2 Macc. vii.). The antithesis of γυναῖκες and ἄλλοι δέ, as 
 well as the description, proves this reference. Both martyr- 
 doms are related with yet fuller details in the so-called fourth 
 book of Maccabees, falsely ascribed to Josephus. In that 
 book, the instrument of torture on which Eleazar and the 
 seven brethren suffer’ is called τροχός ; and from this the 
 inference is correctly drawn, that τύμπανον was the name 
 of an instrument of torture, on which the sufferers were 
 stretched like the skin of a drum (distenti sunt, Vulgate), 
 and then beaten or otherwise ill-treated, and so with various 
 refinements of cruelty brought to submission or done to 
 death. According to this, the meaning of τυμπανίζεσθαι 
 here would be, first, to be stretched on the torture-wheel 
 (κατατείνεσθαι περὶ τὸν τροχόν, or ἐπὶ τοῦ τροχοῦ ”), and then 
 (τύμπανον, from τύπτω, including the meanings “ drum” 
 and “ drum-stick”) to be thereon beaten or tortured to . 
 death ; which latter meaning is more fully expressed by 
 ἀποτυμπανίζεσθαι So died Eleazar, and so in like manner 
 the Maccabean mother and her seven sons, ov (not μή) προσ- 
 δεξάμενοι τὴν ἀπολύτρωσιν, contemning and rejecting the 
 deliverance which the heathen offered them if they would 
 but deny their faith; and that ἵνα κρείττονος ἀναστάσεως 
 Tvywow—in order to obtain a better resurrection than that 
 
 1 In 2 Mace. it is only Eleazar who dies on the τύμπανον : the seven 
 brothers are variously tortured, mutilated, flayed, roasted; and the 
 mother, according to 4 Macc., perishes in the fire. 
 
 2 Elsewhere also ἐπὶ τοῦ rp. στρεβλοῦσθαι, κατὸ τροχῶν λυγίζεσθαι. 
 
 3 566. Bleek, iii. 827; Grimm on 2 Mace. vi. 19 seq.; Passow, s.v. 
 τύμπανον. Photius’ interpretation is inexact: τὸ τοῦ dnyu/ov (the execu- 
 tioner’s) ξύλον, @ τοὺς παραδιδοροένους διεχειρίζετο, καὶ τὸ ὠποτυριπανίζειν 
 
 ἐντεῦθεν. So Pollux, viii. 71; and the Schol. to Aristoph. Plut. 476. 
 
CHAP. XI. 36. 283 
 
 of a mere return into the present life. “ The King of the 
 world,” cried the second of those sons, “ shall raise us up, 
 who have died for His laws, unto life everlasting” (εἰς αἰώνιον 
 ἀναβίωσιν ζωῆς). The third, putting out his tongue, as 
 required by his tormentors, and stretching forth his hands, 
 exclaimed, “ These I had from heaven; and for His laws I 
 despise them; and from Him I hope to receive them again” 
 (ταῦτα πάλιν ἐλπίζω κομίσασθαι). So, again, the mother 
 to her youngest son: “ Fear not this tormentor ; but, being 
 worthy of thy brethren, take thy death, that I may receive thee 
 again in mercy with thy brethren.” 
 
 Thus, with mutual encouragements, and cheered by faith- 
 inspired prospects of the life to come, they suffered for their 
 faith. That the sacred writer here confounds the martyr- 
 dom of Eleazar with that of the mother and her seven sons, 
 connot be justly said; but only that he takes from both 
 accounts a general characteristic of the spiritual wonder- 
 working power of faith. But further, when we observe that 
 
 ‘in the narrative of Eleazar’s martyrdom the word μαστιγού- 
 
 μενος occurs, and in that of the seven brethren the terms 
 μαστιξι αἰκιζόμενοι, ἐμπταιγμός, and ἐμπαίζεσθαι, and com- 
 pare these with the terms employed in the following verse, 
 we have additional evidence that he had here both ch. vi. 
 and ch. vii. of 2 Macc. in mind. 
 
 Ver. 36. Others, again, had experience of sportive 
 eruelties and scourgings ; yea, moreover, of bonds and un- 
 prisonment. 
 
 As the change from ἄλλοι μέν to ἕτεροι δέ is quite com- 
 mon in Greek, there is no need to raise here the question as 
 to a different meaning in the two words. The sacred writer 
 makes a fresh start with ἕτεροι d6é—not, however, without 
 being still influenced by the martyr-narratives of second 
 Maccabees—and continues to describe the sufferings victo- 
 riously endured by faith,—his language becoming more and 
 more condensed in expression, and passing over into the 
 so-called λέξις εἰρομένη (membratim s. incise dicere). The 
 classical πεῖραν λαμβάνειν is not here used actively (as ver. 
 
284 EPISTIE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 29), “to try,” “ make trial of,” but passively, “to be tried 
 by,” “have experience of.” ᾿Εμπαιγμοί (= Hebr. pyoubyn) 
 are not mere “ mockings,” but cruel, sportive forms of ill-treat- 
 ment of all kinds. The allusion is still to the narratives of 
 the Maccabees, for no instance of ἐμπαιγμοὶ καὶ μάστυγες 
 can be alleged from the canonical Scriptures of the Old 
 Testament. Compared, however, with such momentary 
 sufferings, “bonds and imprisonment” would seem a yet 
 harder fate; ἔτε δέ, therefore, denotes here a climax, like 
 verum etiam (comp. Luke xiv. 26; Acts ii. 26). One may 
 think of Hanani’s imprisonment by Asa (2 Chron. xvi. 10), 
 of Micaiah’s by Ahab (2 Kings xxi.), and especially of the 
 long and cruel captivities of Jeremiah. From these he 
 returns to other cruel modes of death. 
 
 Ver. 37. They were stoned, sawn asunder, tortured, died 
 by sword-slaughter ; wandered about in sheepskins, in goat- 
 skins, being destitute, afflicted, in misery. 
 
 The aorist ἐλιθάσθησαν (describing a mode of punish- 
 ment, or of judicial and extrajudicial murder, which was 
 Jewish, not heathen) transports us back to the times of the 
 Old Testament, and probably to the martyrdom of Zechariah 
 son of Jehoiada, which, as being the last event of the kind 
 mentioned in canonical Scripture (2 Chron. xxiv. 20-22), 
 our Lord connects (Matt. xxiii. 35; Luke xi. 51") with the 
 proto-martyrdom of Abel. Our author very probably also 
 refers to the fate of Jeremiah, who, according to a credible 
 tradition, was stoned? to death at Daphne (Tahpanhes) in 
 Egypt, by his fellow-countrymen, when he rebuked them 
 there for their persistent idolatry in exchanging the worship 
 of Astarte for that of Isis. Our Lord likewise speaks in 
 
 1 The text of St. Matthew has erroneously ‘‘ son of Barachias,” which 
 St. Luke omits. It is perhaps worth observing, that the fate of the 
 priestly martyr was actually repeated in the case of another Zechariah 
 (son of Baruch), who before the destruction of Jerusalem was cut down 
 by two zealots in the temple, and stoned to death.—Jos. Bell. iv. 6. 4. 
 
 2 See my Diatribe de Pseudodorothei et Pseudepiphanii vitis prophe- 
 
 tarum (second half of Comm. de Habacuci proph. vita atque xtate, 1842), 
 p: 00 5. 
 
CHAP. XI. 37, 285 
 
 the Gospel of the stoning of prophets (Matt. xxi. 35 and 
 xxili. 37; comp. Luke xiii. 84). And yet more probable is the 
 reference to Isaiah in ἐπρίσθησαν, whose murder by Manasseh 
 is attested, according to Talm. Babli, Jebamoth 190, in the 
 Megillath Jochasin (an old Jerusalem chronicle and book 
 of genealogies), and, according to Sanhedrin 1038), in the 
 Palestinian Targum to 2 Kings xxi. 16." That he was sawn 
 asunder (Pseudepiph. πρισθεὶς εἰς δύο; Gemara, 77D) is a 
 not improbable tradition, though it may have received legen- 
 dary amplifications, Sawing asunder was a species of cruelty 
 not unknown to the Jews (2 Sam. xii. 31, 77301 ow; 1 Chron. 
 xx. 8, 77302 "Ww, Aram. 1D), and worthy of a tyrant like 
 Manasseh, who filled up the measure of Judah’s sins. The 
 tradition is certainly older than the ᾿Αναβατικὸν ᾿Ησαΐου, 
 through which it became known to the fathers since the 
 times of Justin Martyr and Tertullian. 
 
 Very puzzling, certainly, is the next term ἐπειράσθησαν, 
 standing between ἐπρίσθησαν and ἐν φόνῳ μαχαίρας ἀπέ- 
 θανον. Its use here would indeed be quite intelligible, could 
 it with certainty be made out that πειρᾶν was ever used in 
 the sense of putting to the question, i.e. inflicting torture ; 
 but if employed merely in its ordinary sense of tentati sunt 
 (Ambr., Vulg.), “were put on trial,” or “tempted to apos- 
 tasy,” ἐπειράσθησαν is a very feeble and unmeaning term 
 in such a context. A twofold possibility must therefore be 
 acknowledged: 1st, Another word may have stood in the 
 
 1 This Targum has not been printed, but the passage referred to is 
 given in Assemani’s Catal. Bibl. Vat. mss. tom. i. p. 452. It runs thus: 
 ‘* When Manasseh heard the words of his prophecy, he was filled with 
 fury against him. His officers ran after the prophet, who fled from 
 them. Whereupon a palm-tree cleft open, and concealed him; but 
 carpenters came and sawed through the tree, and the blood of Isaiah 
 streamed forth on the ground.” 
 
 2 Origenes in Matt. (iii. 465, ed. De la Rue): εἰ δέ τίς οὐ προσίεται 
 τὴν ἱστορίαν dim τὸ ἐν τῷ ἀποκρύφῳ Houle αὐτὴν φέρεσθαι, πιστευσάτω τοῖς 
 ἐν τῇ Ἑβραίοις οὕτω γεγραμμένοις" ἐλιθάσθησων, ἐπρίσθησαν, ἐπειράσθησαν. 
 The Ascensio Isaiz, with Laurence’s Obss., are reprinted in Gfrorer’s 
 Prophetx Veteres Pseudepigraphi, 1840; and a German translation was 
 published in 1854, with illustrations from Jewish sources, by Jolowicz, 
 
286 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 sacred author’s autograph, which was early misread by 
 copyists. Above a dozen attempts have been made to divine 
 what such a word might be. Most of these, in form or 
 meaning, are mere monstra.'_ Only two conjectures, so far 
 as meaning is concerned, are (as Griesbach observed in the 
 larger edition of 1803-6, and the smaller one of 1805) 
 worth any consideration. These two conjectures are: (a) 
 “ They were burned,” ἐπυράσθησαν (Fr. Junius, Piscator), 
 ἐπυρώθησαν (Beza, edd. 3-5), ἐπρήσθησαν (Gataker, Colo- 
 mes.), to which may be added ἐπυρίσθησαν (Sykes, Ebrard) 
 and ἐνεπρήσθησαν or ἐνεπυρίσθησαν (Bleek); (ὁ) “ They were 
 mutilated,” ἐπηρώθησαν (Tanaquil Faber, J. M. Gesner). 
 The best of these conjectures appears to me to be ἐπρήσ- 
 θησαν, which might have been suggested by the martyrdom 
 in the τήγανον of 2 Mace. vii., and in form is much to be 
 preferred to those derived from πυράζειν, πυρίζειν, ἐμπυ- 
 ρίζειν, which in this connection would be somewhat pedantic. 
 As the Jtacismus in pronunciation certainly prevailed even 
 before the commencement of our era, ἐπρήσθησαν might 
 easily have been mistaken for a repetition of ἐπρίσθησαν, 
 and consequently corrected (not very felicitously) into ἐπει- 
 ράσθησαν. Hither, therefore, we must read ἐπρίσθησαν 
 ἐπρήσθησαν," or suppose that, 2dly, ἐπειράσθησαν may be 
 
 1 “Monsters” in form are: (a) ἐπειράθησαν, ‘‘ they were transfixed” 
 (Wakefield), better ἐπάρθησων (Beza and others), according to which 
 Luther since 1530 rendered zerstochen (the aor. pass. of πείρειν, how- 
 ever, 18 ἐπώρην, not ἐπάρθην) ; (0) ἐπέρθησων, “ they were destroyed,” 
 from πέρθειν (of which only the inf. aor. pass. σέρθαι is found, and in 
 Homer, but not ἐπέρθην) ; (6) ἐπηρειάσθησαν (Reiske), ‘‘ they were slan- 
 derously accused,” etc., from an imaginary verb ἐπηρειίάζειν (for ἐπη- 
 ρεώζειν : this conjecture ought therefore to have been ἐπηρεάσθησα»). 
 ‘‘Monsters” in signification are: (a) ἐπράθησαν (Le Moyne), ‘ they 
 were sold ;” (8) ἐσπειράθησων (Alberti), ‘ were rolled up” or ‘ together ;” 
 (v) ἐσφαιρίσθησων, ‘were bowled to death ;” (ὃ) érapsyevdnouv (Mattheei), 
 ‘were made mummies of :” this last being a bad jest. 
 
 2 How confusing the influence of this Zéacismus was on the spelling of 
 such Greek words by the copyists, may be seen in the readings ἐπιράσ- 
 θησαν ἐπιράσθησων (D; see Tischend., Cod. Clarom. pp. 523, 527) and 
 ἐπρήσθησων ἐπρήσθησαν (Codd. 110, 111). We find also in Cyril of 
 Jerusalem, ἐπρήσθησων for ἐπρίσθ. 
 
CHAP. XI. 87. 287 
 
 an interpolation, introduced perhaps by an erroneous repeti- 
 tion of ἐπρίσθησαν in some very ancient MS., which, as an 
 obvious blunder, subsequent copyists may have thought to 
 correct by substituting ἐπειράσθησαν for the second ézpic- 
 θησαν (Cod. 17 inverts the order: ἐπειράσθ. ἐπρίσθ.). It 
 might also be that ἐπειράσθησαν came into the text as a 
 gloss on the somewhat difficult word ἐπρίσθησαν. So Eras- 
 mus, who was followed by Calvin, and virtually also by 
 Beza; so likewise Grotius, Calmet, Valckenaer (sceepe evenit 
 in talibus ut simul uno in loco legantur et vox emendata et 
 vox eadem mendose scripta); and so, among recent critics, 
 Bohme. This conjecture is not slightly favoured by the fact 
 that in the Peshito (and also in Arabs Erpen.) ἐπειράσθησαν 
 is omitted ; in the Authiopic version of the Polyglott, both 
 epic. and ἐπειράσθ.: and in that edited for the Bible 
 Society, ἐπειράσθ. only. St. Chrysostom leaves both words 
 unexplained." I should therefore be disposed to conclude 
 that ἐπειράσθησαν is but an erroneous repetition of or gloss 
 upon ἐπρίσθησαν. This would reduce the forms of death 
 here mentioned to three: stoning, sawing asunder, and 
 death by the sword—év φόνῳ μαχαίρας ἀπέθανον. 
 
 The expression is taken from the Septuagint, where ἐν 
 φόνῳ μαχαίρας (A, at Deut. ΧΙ], 15, μαχαίρης) is at Ex. 
 xvii. 13, Deut. xiii. 15, xx. 13, and φόνῳ μαχαίρας at Num. 
 xxi. 24,? the rendering of 27m δ; the Hebrew phrase 
 being taken in the sense of vorante = necante ense. In the 
 kingdom of Judah only one such martyrdom by the sword 
 is mentioned —that of the prophet Urijah, whom “ they 
 fetched forth out of Egypt, and brought unto Jehoiakim, 
 who slew him with the sword” (Jer. xxvi. 23); but in the 
 kingdom of Israel, during the persecutions by the house 
 of Omri, it was quite usual (1 Kings xix. 10): “ They have 
 
 1 ἐπειράσθ. is also wanting in some (but those insignificant) Mss., in 
 
 Eusebius (Prep. xii. 19), and in Theophylact. Clem. Alex. (Strom. iv. 
 16, 104) omits ἐπρίσθ. The Liturgy of St. Chrysostom (Cod. Erl. 96) 
 has both, 
 
 2 Klsewhere ἐν τῷ στόματι μαχαίρως (Gen. xxxiv. 26), or ἐν azo. 
 fay, (Jer. xxi. 7; Ecclus. xxviii. 18) (Cod. Ephr. ῥομφαίας). 
 
288 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the 
 sword.” 
 That it is these prophets of the kingdom of Israel whom 
 the sacred writer has here specially in view, is evident from 
 the following sentence beginning with περιῆλθον. From 
 the sharp brief conflicts of various kinds of death fought out 
 courageously in the spirit of faith, he returns to the long 
 and toilsome conflicts sustained in the same spirit through a 
 wandering life of self-abnegation: περιῆλθον ἐν μηλωταῖς, 
 κιτλ. The reference seems, in the first place, to be to 
 Elijah, the history of whose life so vividly represents the 
 trials and sufferings of the genuine prophetic spirit, as that 
 of Elisha his successor its consolations and its triumphs. 
 Both prophets succeeded, by their prayers and strivings, in 
 averting its immediate doom from the kingdom of Israel, 
 and in procuring for it a long respite-time of grace and 
 prosperity. But Elijah, in obtaining this, expended a whole 
 life in uttering thunders of denunciation, and in sanguinary 
 conflicts. His life was one of perpetual voluntary penance, 
 restless wanderings, and lonely prayers, out of which from 
 time to time he would suddenly emerge with renewed 
 strength for some mighty act of faith. He was a man who 
 would fain love, but was compelled to hate; would fain 
 bless, but could only threaten or destroy; would fain have 
 been but a happy unit in the mighty congregation of 
 Jehovah’s witnesses and worshippers, but found himself in 
 his worship and his witness alone. He was an incarnation, 
 as it were, of the curse of the divine law; and as such was 
 hated, persecuted, and a burden to himself. His outward 
 appearance was in accordance with this vocation. He is 
 called, 2 Kings i. 8, “μὴν 5ya v's (a man of hair), because 
 his outer garment consisted of a rough skin, with the hair 
 turned outwards, like that of his antitype St. John the 
 Baptist, whose raiment was a covering of camel’s hair fas- 
 tened round his loins with a leathern girdle (Matt. i. 4),— 
 a mode of clothing which, we learn from Zech. xii. 4, was 
 adopted by the prophets as that best suited for their hermit 
 life of penitence, and separation from a godless world (comp. 
 
CHAP. XI. 38. 289 
 
 1 Kings xix. 13). Such a garment of hair was called μηλωτή 
 when made from the skin of the μῆλον = jx¥,'—a name 
 applied to all small cattle, whether sheep or goat.? To ἐν 
 μηλωταῖς here is added ἐν αἰγείοις δέρμασιν, not merely per 
 epexegesin, but as a kind of climax, the (generally) dark 
 goatskin having a yet more mournful and ascetic aspect 
 than the generally lighter-coloured μηλωτή (sheepskin). 
 Thus in word, deed, and appearance bearing witness against 
 the world, these saints of the Most High went on their 
 rounds of duty : ὑστερούμενοι (used here as absolutely as at 
 Luke xv. 14, Phil. iv. 12, and elsewhere), θλιβόμενοι (as at 
 2 Cor. vii. 5), κακουχούμενοι (in our epistle only). Their 
 life was one of perpetual want, oppression, misery, discom- 
 fort, and unease of every kind; but though despised and 
 hated by the world, they were highly esteemed of God. 
 
 Ver. 38. Of whom the world was not worthy: in desert 
 places wandering, and mountains, and dens, and in the caves 
 of the land. 
 
 The relative ὧν refers to those described in the clause 
 beginning with περιῆλθον. The world despised them, and 
 thought them not worthy of its regards or society ; but the 
 reverse was the truth: the world was not worthy of them, 
 and therefore God withdrew them from it. The world, in 
 persecuting and driving them into the desert, witnessed 
 against and punished itself. The participle πλανώμενοι is 
 in apposition with the subject of περιῆλθον. The read- 
 ing adopted by Lachmann, ἐπὶ ἐρημίαις," is, according to 
 Fritzsche’s correct judgment, bad Greek, ἐπί being probably 
 a gloss on ὄρεσι. The purpose of the article in ταῖς ὀπαῖς 
 τῆς γῆς can hardly be to distinguish the caves with which 
 
 1 The δ of Elijah is throughout in the Septuagint called μοηλωτή. 
 The word has hitherto been found only once in extra-biblical Greek, 
 viz. in a fragment of Philemon, ap. Poll. x. 176. For the form, see 
 Lobeck (on κηρωτή), Pathol. p. 393. 
 
 2 Clem. Rom., ὁ. 17, seems to take ρηλωταί for sheepskins exclu- 
 sively : ἐν δέρροωσιν αἰγείοις καὶ μηλωταῖς. Comp. Hippocrates, Opp. ed. 
 Littré, tom. vi. p. 356. 
 
 3 [The Cod. Sin. has also ἐπὶ ἐρημίαις. 
 
 VOL. II. ἐν 
 
290 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 the hill-country of the land of Israel abounded from all 
 other caves in other parts of the world, though, as it is 
 prophets of Israel who are here spoken of, τῆς γῆς must be 
 understood of the Holy Land, and not of the world in 
 general. Both articles, therefore, simply serve to univer- 
 salize the statement: wherever in the land of Israel a cave 
 was to be found, there these prophets of Israel sought a 
 shelter. {Σ᾿ πήλαιον is a cleft or opening in a rock which 
 ends in a chamber ; ὀπή, a cleft or opening of any kind. ] 
 The reference, again, might be to confessors of the Macca- 
 bean time, when every mountain, cave, and hollow of Judea 
 was a refuge for the fugitive o-DN; but I think it more 
 probable that the author has still the ancient prophets (sub- 
 ject of περιῆλθον) mainly in view, such as Elijah in the 
 rock of Horeb, Elisha in the solitude of Carmel, and the 
 hundred prophets concealed and nourished in two caves by 
 Obadiah. 
 
 The author breaks off here his rapid summary of Old 
 Testament history, which might be styled pre-eminently a 
 history of faith, to take one last review of the whole. 
 
 Vers. 39, 40. And these all, having obtained through faith 
 a good witness, received not the promise ; God having provided 
 something better for us, that they without us should not be 
 perfected. 
 
 Οὗτοι πάντες refers to all the above (named and not 
 named) back to Abel. Maprupnfévres is used in the same 
 sensus pregnans as ἐμαρτυρήθησαν at ver. 2 (see note 
 there). With διὰ τῆς πίστεως, faith is designated as the 
 mediate cause by which the good witness had been procured. 
 The ordo verborum, μαρτυρήθ. 6. τ. πίστ. (not ὃ. τ. πίστ. 
 μαρτυρήθ.), is intentional, and indicates that the participial 
 clause is not to be resolved by “ because,” but by “ although.” 
 The meaning is, not that they received not the promise as 
 a present blessing, because they had to earn their good 
 report through faith in the future and invisible; but that 
 although they had already obtained so good a name through 
 faith, they had nevertheless still to wait for something 
 
CHAP. XI. 39, 40. 291 
 
 better. The singular τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν (not τὰς ἐπαγγελίας *) 
 is also significant. Some promises believers under the Old 
 Testament did receive (ver. 33), but not the promise κατ᾽ ἐξ.; 
 not the promise of final salvation, or (as our author himself 
 calls it) of the eternal inheritance (ix. 15). Here, in accord- 
 ance with the context, we might say that ἡ ἐπαγγελία is 
 equivalent to the promised τελείωσις. But did we not read 
 of Abraham at vi. 15, that he has obtained this ?—ézreruyev 
 ἐπαγγελίας. True, he has obtained it, but in that world of 
 light where he is now living: he did not obtain it here on 
 earth (see note on vi. 15). The final, universal blessing 
 made known by the gospel has become the joy of all the 
 patriarchs in the heavenly world, where they are now among 
 the number of the blessed, to whom ch. xii. 23 refers as 
 πνεύματα δικαίων τετελειωμένων. And yet another question. 
 If it be said of believers under the Old Testament that they 
 had died without having received the promise, is it not also 
 implied at ch. x. 36 that for us likewise this κομίζεσθαι τὴν 
 ἐπαγγελίαν is still future? Undoubtedly it is so; but with 
 an important difference. For them final salvation was simply 
 a future good; for us it is at once present and future: pre- 
 sent, in that the whole blessing has been procured for us by 
 the self-sacrifice of Christ once for all; future, in that the 
 full development and apprehension of this blessing is not yet 
 realized (comp. ch. ix. 28 with x. 14). After this solution 
 of the two difficulties connected with ver. 39, we shall not 
 miss the sense of ver. 40, rod Θεοῦ περὶ ἡμῶν," x.7.r. Here, 
 again, two questions may be asked. One is, What is the 
 significance of κρεῖττόν te? the other, What is the force of 
 iva? Is it final, or is it explicative? Sebastian Schmidt 
 and Schlichting take it as explicative: quia Deus melius quid 
 circa nos providit, ninirum hoc, ne sine nobis εἰ consum- 
 marentur. But if the sentence with ἵνα had been so meant, 
 would it not rather have been expressed thus: ἵνα ἡμεῖς ἅμα 
 
 1 50 Lachmann, following A. [Cod. Sin. has τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν." 
 
 2 Clemens Alex., and also my manuscript of the Liturgy of St. 
 Chrysostom, connect τὴν ἐπάγγ. with rod Θεοῦ, making the following 
 προβλεὰ améevov appositional, and so disposing of the genitive absolute. 
 
292 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 σὺν αὐτοῖς τελειωθῶμεν ξ Moreover, as προβλέπεσθαι de- 
 notes a providential prearrangement, we naturally expect a 
 further statement of the purpose which such arrangement 
 has in view; and προβλεψαμένου having already its special 
 object in κρεῖττόν τι, ἵνα the more naturally retains its full 
 signification of ¢o consilio ut (comp. Winer, ὃ 44, 8). But 
 what notion did the author himself connect with κρεῖττόν 71? 
 Various replies are possible. 1st, We may interpret his 
 meaning in accordance with ch. vi. 9, where κρείττονα signi- 
 fies, “ Better things than that you should so fall away.” So 
 here it may mean, “ God having provided for us something 
 better than that they should have carried off, or already 
 enjoyed, the final blessing.” This interpretation is the pre- 
 valent one among the fathers, who commonly expound 
 ἐπαγγελία here as perfectio in resurrectione corporum, or (as __ 
 they love to express it) the investment with the stola cor- 
 poris' (Primasius), or (in more general terms) the final 
 gathering, consummation, and coronation of the redeemed 
 church.? As this will be the end of human history, after 
 which, as the Lord said (Matt. xxi. 20), there will be neither 
 marrying nor giving in marriage, we might understand the 
 κρεῖττόν te to consist in this, that the history of the race 
 should not be so suddenly cut short as would have been the 
 case had the fathers already obtained this final blessing. 
 But so narrowly eschatological a conception of the ἐπαγγελία 
 has not only against it the ἐπέτυχεν of vi. 15, but also the 
 whole drift of this epistle, which regards the final salvation 
 foretold by Jeremiah (comp. above, ch. viii. 6 seq., and 
 x. 15-18, and notes there) as already accomplished in the 
 atoning work of Christ, ending in His entrance into the 
 
 1 Qn the difference between the stola alba (Rev. vii.) as stola 
 prima, and the resurrection body as stola secunda, see my Psychologie, 
 p. 374. 
 
 2 Intellige (says St. Chrysostom) quale et quantum est, Abraham sedere 
 et Apostolum Paulum exspectantes, quando perficiaris, ut possint tunc 
 mercedem (viz. the eternal crown) recipere. Theophylact also, following 
 Chrysostom, calls the τελείωσις ‘‘ the time of the crowns.” Schlichting, 
 adopting the doctrine of the soul’s sleep in the intermediate state, inter- 
 prets τετελειωμένων Of xii. 23 by quos consummatio manet. 
 
CHAP. XI. 39, 40. 293 
 
 sanctuary of heaven, and τὸ ἔσχατον τῶν ἡμερῶν as already 
 inaugurated by His first coming into the world (ch. i. 1). 
 This commencing fulfilment of the promise, fundamental 
 and all-inclusive as it is, could not possibly be ignored by 
 the sacred writer when speaking of a κρεῖττόν τι as dis- 
 tinctively belonging to believers under the New Testament. 
 We would therefore, 2d/y, understand by κρεῖττόν τι here, 
 “something better than they (the old fathers) received,” and 
 interpret this “better thing” to be our receiving while here 
 on earth the fulfilment of the promise, which they could not 
 receive till after their departure hence, and not even then in 
 the world of spirits till after (so we are justified in complet- 
 ing the author’s thought) the descent of Christ into Hades 
 and His ascension into heaven. This κρεῖττον, then, is that 
 blessedness of which our Lord speaks, Matt. xii. 17,—that 
 final revelation of God through the Son, which puts an end 
 to all His revelations of Himself through the prophets, and 
 divides into two parts the whole history of the universe 
 (ch. i. 1),—that divine evangelical σωτηρία, which the Lord 
 and His apostles began to make known (ch. 11. 3 seq.) amid 
 effulgurations of the glories of the coming Aon. God’s pur- 
 pose in providentially reserving this revelation for us (περὶ 
 ἡμῶν, on our behalf, or in relation to us; comp. dua ὑμᾶς, 
 1 Pet. i. 20), was, Wa μὴ χωρὶς ἡμῶν τελειωθῶσιν ---ἰ αῦ the 
 saints of the Old Testament might not anticipate us in the 
 enjoyment of the blessing, but then only receive it when we 
 received it too. As the sacred writer here denies that be- 
 lievers under the Old Testament were made perfect in this 
 life, and yet speaks of them a little further on (ch. xii. 23) 
 as “ spirits perfected,” he must have assumed that the mani- 
 festation and completed work of Christ had already wrought 
 a change in their condition even beyond the tomb. Their 
 spirits (πνεύματα) had, in the world of spirits (through 
 Christ’s descent into Hades, and His ascension above the 
 heavens), already entered on the enjoyment of celestial 
 blessedness; and they are now waiting (with all who follow 
 the great High Priest through the opening made by the 
 riven veil) for the redemption of the body and the regenera- 
 
294 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 tion of the universe. On this point C. H. Riger and Ebrard 
 seem to take the right view:' “ Not without us could they 
 be made perfect, and with us they have already been per- 
 fected. Christ went to them to open for them the gates of 
 Death’s kingdom, and thence to lead them forth with Him- 
 self. And now henceforward the souls of all who die in 
 Christ go at once to Him, and enter heaven, there to await 
 re-union with the body at His second coming.” The saints, 
 then, of the Old Testament march henceforth at equal pace 
 with ourselves in the perfect way of salvation, now finally 
 made known, of which τελειωθῶσιε here denotes both begin- 
 ning and end, both root and crown. And now, with the 
 final end and its inauguration, the second coming of Christ 
 once more fully in view, the sacred writer recommences the 
 strain of exhortation which was broken off at the beginning 
 of this chapter, and moulds it in accordance with what he 
 has been saying of the powers and achievements of the 
 heroes of faith. 
 
 Caap. xi. 1-11. Evhortation and encouragement, in view of 
 such a cloud of witnesses, and of the leadership and 
 example of the Lord Jesus Himself, who in the way of 
 suffering has attained to glory, not to grow faint in the 
 conflict with sin, and not to be unmindful of that fatherly 
 
 1See my Biblische Psychologie, Ὁ. 353 seq. (Das Jenseits und die 
 Erlésung.) Even Bleek and De Wette recognise the assumption here, 
 that Christ’s victory over death and Hades had been the turning-point 
 in the (for the present only pneumatic) τελείωσις of Old Testament saints. 
 Tholuck’s error seems to be in maintaining the continued existence of 
 Hades as an intermediate place of abode for all souls, even since Christ’s 
 descent there and ascension into heaven. M*‘Lean takes a more correct 
 view, though his “‘ an alteration then took place in heaven” is not an ade- 
 quate statement of the truth. Ascendit Christus (says Thomas Aquinas 
 on the passage before us) pandens viam ante eos quam non habuerunt 
 Sancti Vet. Testamenti. He wavers, however, between referring their 
 perfectio to the beatitudo per Christum and the stola corporis. Our older 
 Protestant interpreters were hindered from taking a free view of this 
 subject by their dread of the Roman ‘‘ limbus patrum.” 
 
CHAP. XII. 1, 2. 295 
 
 love from which the discipline of suffering comes, nor of 
 those peaceable fruits of righteousness which they will 
 gather who submit themselves to it. 
 
 An exhortation to stedfastness of faith (ὑπομονή) as the 
 one condition of salvation, in view of the near approach of 
 the Lord’s return, began at ch. x.; the nature and main 
 characteristics of such faith were next exhibited both by 
 definition and example in ch. xi.; and now the exhortation 
 is resumed, with appeal to motives urged already, and super- 
 addition of others. 
 
 Ch. xii. 1, 2. Wherefore let us likewise, having gathered 
 round us such a cloud of witnesses, laying aside every en- 
 cumbering weight, and the sin which easily besetteth our way, 
 run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking up 
 to the captain and completer of our faith, even Jesus; who, 
 for the joy that was set before him, endured a cross, despising 
 shame, and is seated on the right hand of the throne of God. 
 
 In other cases, where expositions have been followed by 
 exhortations based upon them, these have been introduced 
 by Sia τοῦτο, ὅθεν, διό, and οὖν : here we have the grander- 
 sounding τουγαροῦν, which occurs but once more in the New 
 Testament (1 Thess. iv. 8), and (like the more poetical τοίγαρ) 
 always stands at the head of the sentence. It is, in fact, a 
 little group of particles forming together an energetic ergo, 
 in which τοῦ is affirmative of the matter in hand, while yap 
 introduces and οὖν proceeds to draw the conclusion. The 
 
 1 Grammarians are divided on the etymology of this enclitic τοι. 
 Some regard it as a dativus ethicus for co (Niigelsbach, Biiumlein, Rost 
 on Passow’s Lexicon); others as the ablative of the demonstrative τό 
 
 ~ (Buttmann, Thiersch) ; others as a dativus localis according to the form 
 oizot (Kiihner); others as a similar formation to the Gothic thauh, 
 German doch [English though] (Hartung) ; others as partly = τῷ hac 
 ratione, hac de causa, partly = τύ or τινί aliquo modo (Klotz). It is, 
 however, generally allowed (even by Hartung, ii. 354), that ror in τοίγαρ, 
 τοιγωροῦν, and (the first ros in) τοιγάρτοι, is equivalent to τῷ, and sig- 
 nifies ‘‘ therefore,” ‘‘on that account.” See especially Klotz on Devarius, 
 ii. 738, 
 
296 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 exhortation takes its form here from a favourite Pauline 
 figure derived from the Greek and Roman games;! one out 
 of many instances of Christianity (as the world-religion) not 
 fearing or disdaining to make use (for her own purposes, and 
 in presenting herself to the world) of Hellenic materials, as 
 well as of those derived from Hebrew Scripture or from the 
 traditions and developments of the synagogue. “ So then 
 let us run the race that is set before us with stedfast hardihood.” 
 The phrase is classical ; τρέχειν (θεῖν) ἀγῶνα, certamen currere 
 (Statius, Thed. iii. 116), being a common metaphor both in 
 prose writers and poets for encountering danger. (See Bleek 
 and Passow on τρέχειν.) Our author does not, however, use 
 it as equivalent to τρέχειν κίνδυνον, but in its proper sense of 
 running an actual race, though a spiritual one. Πρόκειται 
 ἀγών (propositum est certamen) is the regular phrase in re- 
 ference to a contest at the public games, of which the nature, 
 rules, and prizes have been formally announced, and in which 
 those competent are prepared to engage; e.g. Herod. ix. 60, 
 ἀγῶνος μεγίστου προκειμένου; Kur. Orest. 847, and elsewhere.” 
 The meaning of δι’ ὑπομονῆς is not (any more than at Rom. 
 vill. 25) “ by means of endurance,” but “ through endurance,” 
 ze. “ with endurance all through,” with endurance stedfastly 
 maintained to the end. Compare 2 Cor. v. 7, διὰ πίστεως 
 περιπατοῦμεν ; Kur. Orest. 747, dua φόβου ἔρχεσθαι, “ to be 
 always in fear;” and Thue. v. 59, διὰ φόβου εἶναι. Here 
 δι’ ὑπομονῆς refers us back to the close of ch. x. 
 
 In now turning our attention to the participial clauses 
 which intervene between the beginning and end of the main 
 sentence, we shall find ourselves justified in the expectation 
 that the figure of a race or athletic contest will not be lost 
 sight of. ‘The first of these clauses sums up the contents of 
 
 1 Comp. 1 Cor. ix. 24 seq.; and for τρέχειν, Gal. v. 7, ii. 2, Rom. ix. 
 16, Phil. ii. 16; for γυμνάζειν, 2 Tim. iv. 7. 
 
 ? A scholion in the N. T. of Joannes Gregorius (Oxonii 1703) adds 
 well: ὑπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ τοῦ ὠἀγωνοθέτον. Comp. Philo, i. 817. 39, τὸν... 
 προτεθέντοι &yave, where he also says, The Olympian contest which alone 
 is entitled to the epithet holy is not that of Elis, but ὁ περὶ κτήσεως τῶν θείων 
 καὶ ᾿Ολυρπίων as ἀληθῶς dperav. 
 
CHAPS ἘΠῚ. 2: 297 
 
 ch. xi., which it makes the motive for the present exhorta- 
 tion: τοσῦυτον ἔχοντες περικείμενον ἡμῖν νέφος μαρτύρων. 
 As in the semicircle of the theatre spectators sit on crowded 
 benches tier above tier, to watch the conflict, so have we 
 gathered round about us a νέφος paptipwy,—a close-pressed, 
 cloud-like multitude of spectators is seated and watching us 
 on either side. Herodian speaks in a similar way of περικεί- 
 μενον πλῆθος, an encompassing multitude (Hist. vii. 9. 3), 
 for νέφος is only a poetic or pictorial term for πλῆθος : comp. 
 Il. iv. 274, ἅμα δὲ νέφος εἵπετο πεζῶν, and Virgil’s rendering 
 (Ain. vii. 793), in sequitur nimbus peditum ; comp. also Philo’s 
 ἀκρίδων νέφος (11. 429. 11), and ἡ τῶν ᾿Ιουδαίων πληθὺς 
 ὥσπερ νέφος ἐπιστᾶσα. One might be tempted to regard 
 μάρτυρες here as simply equivalent to θεαταί (e.g. Philo, i. 
 317. 40), but that would be to overlook the significant use 
 of the word (μαρτυρηθέντες διὰ τῆς πίστεως) in the former 
 chapter (ch. xi. 2, 4, 5, 39). At the same time I cannot 
 avree with Liinemann in dropping the notion of “ spectators” 
 altogether, which is so strongly suggested by the word περικεί- 
 μενον, transporting us into the midst of the theatre or the 
 circus with its ring of eager lookers-on. These, then, are 
 spectators, but also something more; not mere θεαταί, but 
 also μάρτυρες, as those who themselves have borne witness 
 for God when here below, and received His witness, and now 
 act as judges and umpires for us. Once witnesses for God, 
 they are now witnesses of us their brethren: the two notions 
 are closely intertwined; and the sacred author (as Bohme 
 elegantly observes) writes simply μαρτύρων (not μαρτ. τῆς 
 πίστεως) in order not to disturb the significant ambiguity. 
 Averse as we are in general to depart from the simple sense 
 of the text of Scripture for the sake of making out a multi- 
 tude of meanings, so that “the wood” at last “is hardly to 
 be seen for trees,” we feel that in the present case the double 
 meaning unmistakeably obtrudes itself: those who were 
 witnesses of faith in the former chapter, are turned by the 
 word περικείμενον into witnesses of us in this, or rather, the 
 two applications of the word μάρτυρες are, in the writer’s 
 thought and expression, inextricably combined. The eccle- 
 
298 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 siastical use of the word martyr (blood-witness for God) pre- 
 vented the fathers from discerning the application given to it 
 by προκείμενον νέφος here. The clause must, however, be 
 carefully interpreted with reference to the closing words of 
 ch. xi. The heroes of faith whose conflicts are over, and who 
 are living now in that heavenly world into which the blood 
 of Jesus has admitted them, are not indifferent spectators 
 of what goes on here; between the church above and the 
 church below there is a real and living intercommunion (ch. 
 xii. 22 sq.). With this connection of thought the word vé¢os,* 
 as here applied, vains greatly in significance. Multitudinous 
 saints of departed generations, the spirits of the just made 
 perfect, visibly overhang the now militant church, like a thick 
 impenetrable cloud which we cannot reach to, but which en- 
 compasses us still. How solemn is the warning, yet how 
 gracious the encouragement, contained for us in the thought 
 of the awful session of that august society, the perpetual 
 contemplation of those invisible beholders! Our life here a 
 contest, its theatre the universe, the seats of the spectators 
 ranged through heaven! 
 
 The second participial clause, ὄγκον ἀποθέμενοι πάντα 
 Kal τὴν εὐπερίστατον ἁμαρτίαν, does not add a second mo- 
 tive to perseverance in Christian duty, but is part of the 
 exhortation itself, expressing the necessary condition of our 
 running well. Every encumbrance and impediment, every- 
 thing likely to occasion a fall, must be carefully got rid of. 
 The word ὄγκος" is here an ἅπαξ λεγόμενον so far as biblical 
 
 1 This metaphor likewise is more Hellenic than scriptural; for the 
 point of comparison in Isa. lx. 8, xix. 1, xli. 2, is the rapidity of approach, 
 like that of clouds driven by the wind. 
 
 2 The fathers think also of the grateful shade and the refreshing drops 
 which such a cloud might distil. But this is too much of a good thing. 
 [Perhaps the same might be said of Delitzsch’s own words in the follow- 
 ing sentence :—‘‘ How solemn is the admonition, and yet also how full of 
 comfort the encouragement, which is contained in the looks that we exchange 
 with this invisible company of spectators!” I have ventured slightly to 
 alter them in the text.—Tr. ] 
 
 3 Buttmann, with great probability, connects it with ENKQ, the 
 woot of ἤνεγχον. Griesbach notes as a conjecture ὄκνον : not bad, but 
 
CHAP. XII. 1, 2. 299 
 
 Greek is concerned ; in classical, it signifies any superfluous 
 weight or burden, e.g. of the body from stoutness or in 
 pregnancy, and is then figuratively used of bombast in dic- 
 tion or overladen rhetorical ornament, of excess in apparel, 
 ete., and in an ethical sense, of swelling pride or vanity. In 
 this last ethical application the word is here interpreted by 
 Bengel: “ laying aside all boastfulness or pride ;” but a warn- 
 ing of this kind, against spiritual high-mindedness, would 
 come in too abruptly in the present context, and the first 
 literal meaning of the word is far more natural. Hippo- 
 crates, Diodorus, Aélian, all three use ὄγκος in the sense of 
 stoutness or obesity, with special reference to gymnastic 
 exercises, as an approved method of counteracting it. Here, 
 then, it is the slowness and dulness of his readers’ minds 
 (the νωθρότης of ch. ν. 11, vi. 12), the encumbering weight 
 of Judaic notions, rites, and observances, and all that is 
 hindering their apprehension of the joyous liberty of the 
 gospel, that he bids them lay aside. This narrow-hearted, 
 double-minded, Judaizing tendency, this clinging or return- 
 ing toa foreign yoke, is that which is denounced through- 
 out our epistle as the chief peril of those to whom it is 
 addressed, as the ἁμαρτία which they have most to dread. 
 In accordance with which we may interpret εὐπερίστατον 
 ἁμαρτίαν here as more precisely defining the vaguer ὄγκον 
 πάντα. ‘The adjective εὐπερίστατος being a real ἅπαξ 
 λεγόμενον (occurring nowhere else except in a few passages 
 of St. Chrysostom, in which there is a reference to our 
 epistle), we are compelled to have recourse solely to etymo- 
 logy and context in endeavouring to ascertain its meaning. 
 All the cognate adjectives have either a passive or a middle 
 sense ;' 6.9. περίστατος, surrounding or surrounded ; ἀπερί- 
 
 unnecessary and less significant. D writes ὄνκον, an Alexandrine form. 
 See Tischend. Cod. Claromont. p. xviii. 
 
 1 To derive εὐπερίστατος from the active zepsiornus would not fur- 
 nish a suitable meaning here ; for (1) ‘‘ misleading,” ‘‘ destructive,” is a 
 sense which cannot anyhow be obtained from zegsiarnus; (2) ‘‘ change- 
 able,” ‘‘ inconstant” (mobile, leve, inconstans, siueraxivntov, Matthei), 
 is one which does not suit the present context; (3) ‘ putting” or 
 
300 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 στατος, unsurrounded, i.e. lonely, deserted ; comp. εὐκατά- 
 atatos, well-appointed, εὐμετάστατος, easily changed. Fol- 
 lowing these analogies, and assigning to εὐπερίστατος a 
 middle sense, we may render it with the Vulgate, circum- 
 stans nos peccatum, or with the Peshito, peccatum quod omni 
 tempore paratum est nobis (matjebo, from tajjeb, parare). 
 This meaning of εὐπερίστατος is here so suitable, that the 
 only difficulty is, which of its several nuances to prefer, or 
 which of the various applications of the metaphor (τὴν εὐπ. 
 ἁμαρτίαν) to regard as most appropriate. According to 
 Bleek, De Wette, Liinemann, and some older commen- 
 tators, sin is here regarded as a burdensome load or encum- 
 bering clinging garment which would impede the runner in 
 his course. In view of περικεῖσθαι at ch. v. 2, περιελεῖν at 
 x. 11, and ἀποθέμενοι here, this interpretation seems natural 
 enough, but we must beware of forcibly making that of 
 εὐπερίστατος to square with it; and περιϊστάναι is certainly 
 neither a suitable nor a usual term for the close fitting of a 
 garment. Castellio’s version is elegant, but the figure is one 
 quite beyond the present circle: nos ambiens sicut arbores 
 hedera. Valckenaer’s quod ad cingendum (et irretiendum) 
 promptum est has much to recommend it, as περιϊστάναι in 
 the sense of cingere is a common soldier’s and hunter’s 
 word; and this interpretation has among moderns been 
 adopted by Von Gerlach. But here we must have special 
 regard to the main figure, that of running on the race- 
 course ; and with this in view, St. Anselm, or the nameless 
 author of the excellent Commentary on the Pauline Epistles, 
 gives the right interpretation of the Vulgate rendering, 
 cireumstans : quod nos inigue impetit et circumvallat. Hor- 
 neius’ exposition is better still: Peccata circumcingunt curren- 
 
 ‘* placing round,” in a transitive sense, would suggest the inconvenient 
 query: What, then, is it with which sin surrounds us? A derivation 
 from the passive would also give a very unsuitable sense here: “ sin 
 that is easily avoided or escaped from.” The fragile of the Itala (which 
 seems to represent this derivation) is as bad a rendering as possible. 
 Ernesti’s is better: ‘‘ sin that is much desired or sought after ;” but still 
 unsuitable here. 
 
CHAP. XII. 1, 2. 801 
 
 tem et implicant ac supplantant, ut prorsus a cursu impediatur 
 vel in medio subsistat aut corruat. (in like manner Calvin, 
 Grotius, Limborch, and others.) It is then “ easily-beset- 
 ting sin,” 1.6. sin which besets us on all sides, puts itself 
 constantly in our way, and seeks to bring us to a dangerous 
 fall.’ It is true, indeed, that the other interpretation, quod 
 circumeingit et complectitur nos instar vestis, may seein to fit 
 better in with the meaning of ἀποθέμενοι, but the advantage 
 is only apparent; and with our interpretation the whole 
 utterance becomes yet more significant. We may compare 
 Gen. iv. 7, where sin appears, on the one hand, as an inward 
 power over which Cain is to get the mastery; on the other, 
 as a beast of prey crouching at his door, and ready to spring 
 upon him if that mastery is not gained. Here sin as inward 
 inclination, which the free-will of man can strive against 
 and subdue, is distinguished from sin as inward act or 
 habit, the consequence of evil inclination yielded to, which 
 
 1 It comes to much the same thing if we derive εὐπερίστατος (as a 
 denominativum) from περίστασις = facillime difficultates objiciens et in 
 pericula conjiciens (Bengel; and so also many other commentators after 
 Kypke, but not the more recent). The adjective ὠπερίστωατος in Polyb. 
 vi. 44. 27 (ed. Bekker), appears to be really a denominativum, not a 
 verbal adjective (ὠπερίστατοι ῥαστῶναι being opposed to μεγίσται καὶ 
 δεινότωται περιστώσεις). But this going back to so technical a term as 
 περίστασις (= συμφορώ in Stoic phraseology: the word also scems to 
 have been a favourite with Polybius) is quite unnecessary and useless. 
 We abide, therefore, by the derivation from the verb περιϊστάναι.--- ΤΠ 6 
 interpretation given to εὐπερίστατος by Salmasius, quod nos variis moles- 
 tiis occupat et turbas οἷοί, is fundamentally the same with those based 
 on its derivation from περίστασις. Bohme’s is a failure: quod bonis 
 utitur rebus circumstantibus ;—it ought to have been: que habet suisque 
 affert bonam fortunam atque voluptates. Chemnitz, Sebast. Schmidt, 
 and others derive the word from περίστασις : pessima περίστασις seu 
 corruptio nature humanz, understanding by ἁμαρτία, so designated, 
 original sin. (So Calvin, Pareus, etc.) Balduin has written on Heb. 
 xii. 1, following this interpretation. Many have followed Luther’s, sin 
 which cleaves to us (tenaciter adhexret), without troubling themselves 
 about the exact derivation. Bugenhagen, however, gave a better and 
 freer interpretation: semper oppugnans nos peccatum. CEcolampad. : 
 pece. quod nos proxime circumstat sive tenaciter nobis inheret. Grynzeus : 
 peccatum ad nos circumcingendos proclive. 
 
302 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 only awaits the favourable moment to become outwardly 
 manifest and complete man’s ruin. The same meaning 
 may be found in the clause before us. Our first duty is to 
 cast off sin as an indwelling evil, a weight and burden, a 
 cumbersome garment or tormenting chain, otherwise it will 
 soon exhibit itself in a more dangerous form, as εὐπερίστα: 
 Tos ἁμαρτία, besetting and opposing us at every turn, and 
 so ever ready to induce a fall. So St. Chrysostom (Hom. J. 
 in 2 Cor.) : εὐπερίστατον yap ἡ ἁμαρτία, πάντοθεν ἱσταμένη, 
 ἔμπροσθεν, ὄπισθεν καὶ οὕτως ἡμᾶς KataBaddovca.' 
 
 The author has now concluded the first part of the ex- 
 hortation addressed to his Hebrew readers,—viz. to run the 
 course of Christian duty set before them with stedfast 
 endurance, as under the eyes of so many invisible witnesses 
 that have accomplished the like course in days gone by, and, 
 in order to do this, to cast off manfully every encumbrance, 
 and break through the trammels and hindrances of sin. He 
 now proceeds, in the second part of his admonition, to com- 
 mend to them as the main condition of all success, as the 
 chief source of inspiration for the true athlete-temper,” and 
 as the mightiest stimulant to stedfastness of faith, an upward 
 glance to Jesus and His glorious example: looking up to faith’s 
 captain and completer Jesus. 
 
 In order to apprehend the sense in which our Lord is 
 here styled ὁ τῆς πίστεως ἀρχηγὸς καὶ τεέλειωτής, We must 
 first dispose of an inadmissible conception of the meaning of 
 ἀρχηγός, and then of an equally inadmissible conception of 
 that of τελειωτής. It is quite impossible that ἀρχηγός should 
 here signify the author, beginner, or first operator of faith in 
 us (the last representative of which view is Liinemann) : 
 we have, indeed, already seen at ii. 10 (τὸν apyny. τῆς σωτη- 
 ρίας), that ἀρχηγός there is not an equivalent of αἴτιος, but 
 rather of πρόδρομος or πρόμαχος, a forerunner or leader in 
 the fray, one who is the first to do or accomplish anything, 
 
 1 Vid. Bleek, iii. 858. 
 
 2 Vid. Harless, Predigt: Worin stehet der Muth eines wahren Chris- 
 ten? (Sermon entitled: Wherein consists the Courage of the true 
 Christian?) Sonntagsweihe, vol. iv. Sermon 5. 
 
CHAP) XIE Ἱ᾿ 2: 303 
 
 whether good or bad. So again τελείωτής does not and 
 cannot signify one who to the end has manifested faith 
 (Rieger), nor one who has attained to perfection in faith 
 (Bleek, De Wette), nor “one in whom faith appears in per- 
 fected glory” (Ebrard). Such an interpretation in all its 
 nuances is quite wrong. The word has a transitive mean- 
 ing: the perfecter or finisher of faith, He who by His work 
 of redemption has given to the heroes and soldiers of faith 
 the power and assurance of final victory. By “faith” the 
 sacred writer understands here that which he has already 
 described at ch. xi. 1 as a confident expectation of future 
 good, and vivid realization of unseen verities in the midst 
 of and against all appearances of a troubled and uncertain 
 present. In such faith Jesus has led the way for all believers 
 under the New Testament; none but He having endured 
 such sufferings with the reward of such glory kept in view! 
 In this way He is at once the captain or leader of the army 
 of faith (“the blessed company of all believers”), and also 
 the finisher or perfecter of faith itself, as having completed 
 by those sufferings and His entrance on that glory the 
 work of our salvation, which is (1 Pet. i. 9) τὸ τέλος τῆς 
 πίστεως. He is the captain of faith, because He has trod 
 the way of faith triumphantly before us, making a way for 
 those who follow; and the finisher of faith, because having 
 reached the goal Himself (an intermediate link of thought 
 which is not expressed), He leads all who follow Him to the 
 same goal.” This is the only place in the New Testament 
 in which the expressions πιστεῦσαι and πίστις are applied 
 to our Lord; but the thought is essentially the same at 
 ch. 11. 13 of our epistle, where Christ at the head of His 
 spiritual brethren is made to say, ἐγὼ ἔσομαι πεποιθὼς ἐπ᾽ 
 αὐτῷ, and ch. ill. 2, where He is spoken of as “‘ faithful to 
 
 1Comp. Mic. i. 13 (Sept.), ὠρχηγὸς ἁμαρτίας; 1 Mace. ix. 18, τῶν 
 ὠρχηγῶν τῆς κακίας. 
 
 2 The notions of τελείιωτής and βραβευτής (βραβεύς) border one on the 
 other, but without coinciding (comp. Philo, i. 151. 38, ὅτων τελειωθῆς 
 καὶ βραβείων καὶ στεφανων ἀξιωθῇς); in τελειωτής lies simply the notion 
 that He helps us to victory, not that He is the dispenser of the prize. 
 
304 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 Him that made Him” (πιστόν, x.7.r.). And why should not 
 πίστις be predicated of the incarnate Jesus? seeing that in 
 virtue of His self-exinanition (ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν, Phil. 11. 7; 
 semet ipsum exinanivit, Vulg.), during His earthly course, 
 the barrier of the present life was for a time interposed 
 between His human consciousness and His divine eternal 
 being, a barrier so condensed and darkened by the presence 
 and workings in humanity at large of God’s wrath and of 
 our sin, that till it had been actually removed by death and 
 resurrection it was only non-ewistent, even in Him, to the 
 power of that faith which out of the lowest deep of derelic- 
 tion called on the God that had seemed to have forsaken 
 Him as “My God.” When once the profound reality of 
 that κένωσις is recognised, and of the agony of sorrow and 
 death which it entailed upon the Holy One, it will excite no 
 surprise that our author should here speak of faith as having 
 been, while that κένωσις lasted, the bond of connection 
 between Jesus and the Father. 
 
 In what sense and with what right he could thus speak, 
 is exhibited in the relative sentence that follows: who for 
 the joy that lay before Him endured a cross, despising shame, 
 and is seated on the right hand of the throne of God. The 
 first half of this sentence places Jesus before our eyes as τῆς 
 πίστεως ἀρχηγόν, the second as τελευτήν of the same faith. 
 
 And, first, as to the ἀντὶ τῆς προκειμένης αὐτῷ χαρᾶς, it 
 is now generally acknowledged that it cannot mean, “ in- 
 stead of the joy which He already possessed as His own” 
 (Peshito),—7.e. the joy of His heavenly and divine life; for 
 προκειμένης looks forward to the future, not backward to 
 the past, whether a temporal past or that before all time. 
 Compare τὸν προκείμενον ἡμῖν ἀγῶνα of the previous verse, 
 and τῆς προκειμένης ἐλπίδος of ch. vi. 18. Calvin’s inter- 
 pretation—significat, quam integrum esset Christo se eximere 
 omni molestia vitamque felicem et bonis omnibus affluentem 
 degere, ipsum tamen ultro subiisse mortem acerbam et plenam 
 ignominia—is unexceptionable from a grammatical point of 
 view : comp., for example, Herod. ix. 82, ἐκπλαγεὶς τὰ προ- 
 κείμενα ἀγαθά. Nor is it inadmissible historically. Our 
 
CHAP. XII. 1, 2. 305 
 
 Lord had really to withstand the temptation of Satan that 
 He should choose the kingdoms of this world instead of the 
 cross; and the sacred writer might here be drawing a 
 parallel between Him and Moses in this respect (comp. ch. 
 xi. 24 seq.), and presenting Him as Moses’ antitype. St. 
 Chrysostom puts it somewhat differently : “ He was free not 
 to suffer unless He willed to suffer; for being free from all sin, 
 the prince of this world had no claim upon Him.” But this 
 is not so good as Calvin’s interpretation. Our Lord, though 
 sinless, had voluntarily subjected Himself by His incarna- 
 tion to the consequences and penalty of human sin. And 
 there is a third interpretation better than either. Through- 
 out our epistle the Lord’s exaltation to the right hand of 
 God is represented as the reward for His obedience to the 
 suffering of His atoning death. (Comp. especially i. 3 sq., 
 ii. 9, v. 4-10.) The interpretation, therefore, naturally 
 suggests itself which makes the second half of the relative 
 sentence explain the προκειμένη χαρά of the first, especially as 
 χαρά is used repeatedly elsewhere to express the joy of the 
 heavenly reward (Matt. xxv. 21; 1 Pet.i.8). So Hunnius 
 clearly and well: Hic pro gaudio proposito pertulit crucem, 
 id est sub certa spe subsecuturt letissini eventus, victorie et 
 gaudi, in quod per mortem suam ingressurus esset, magno 
 excelsoque animo tulit crucis supplicium, coram mundo quidem 
 ignominiosissimum sed quod incorruptibili brabeo compensatum 
 est Christo, ignominia in immensam et eternam gloriam versa 
 et absorpta. This προκειμένη χαρά is the same thing as that 
 of which the apostle speaks at Phil. ii. 6 (ica εἶναι τῷ Θεῷ), 
 as the being in a like condition to God. As it is there said 
 that He who possessed in Himself the essential form of 
 deity yet thought not the glory of deified existence, which 
 
 1 For the right interpretation of this passage see Hofmann (Schrift- 
 bew. i, 180-133; 2d ed. pp. 148-151), and Thomasius (Dogmatik ii. 
 135-141). Strictly speaking, the Itala and Vulgate rendering (of οὐχ 
 ἁρπαγμοὸν ἡγήσωτο), non rapinam arbitratus est, is better than the non 
 rapiendum sibi duxit of Thomasius ; for, though zprayxcs is properly the 
 act of seizing (das Rauben), it is used per metonymiam for the thing 
 seized, as δεσροός is for the instrument of binding. 
 
 VOL. Il. U 
 
306 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 stood before Him as the goal of His incarnate history, a 
 thing to be seized or clutched at as a prey, but an honour 
 to be earned in the way of obedience and suffering; so 
 here He willingly endures a cross and shame in order to 
 obtain the dignity of divine co-session as the promised 
 reward. The choice of the term προκειμένης is determined 
 by the previous figure of a race, and ἀντί is the preposition 
 regularly used in speaking of a price, or of the thing for 
 which a price is paid—here, the price or prize of victory. 
 (Comp. the ἀντὶ βρώσεως of ch. v. 16: Esau sold his birth- 
 right for—the price at which he valued it was—a mess of 
 pottage.) So most Roman Catholic interpreters; so also, 
 with Hunnius, Sebast. Schmidt and other Protestants (who 
 endeavour, however, to get rid of the notion of “ merit” 
 which unquestionably lies in the words); and so Tholuck, 
 De Wette, Winer, and all recent interpreters. The article 
 is purposely omitted before σταυρόν and before αἰσχύνης 
 to generalize the notion attached to each word: ὑπέμεινε 
 σταυρόν, He vouchsafed to undergo the most painful and 
 ignominious of deaths, such a death as that of the cross,— 
 αἰσχύνης καταφρονήσας, despising, disdaining to shrink from 
 any kind of shame, even that of being treated as a slave, 
 a rebel, a blasphemer ! 
 
 Having thus described Jesus as the ἀρχηγός of faith, the 
 sacred writer goes on to describe Him as faith’s τελευτής, 
 uniting both descriptions by the particle te (ἐν δεξιᾷ Te), 
 which is as great a favourite with St. Luke among writers 
 of the New Testament, as it is with Thucydides among 
 classical authors. Jesus is the perfecter (or finisher) of 
 faith, inasmuch as, being Himself made perfect through 
 faith, He henceforth reigns and rules in order to bring 
 others to the same goal—év δεξιᾷ τε τοῦ θρόνου τοῦ Θεοῦ 
 κεκάθικεν. (The Rec. has ἐκάθισεν on poor MS. authority.) 
 The meaning is not (any more than at ch. vill. 1) that our 
 Lord’s throne is placed at the right hand of the throne of 
 God, but that He sits on the right hand (of God and with 
 God) on the same throne. (Comp. Rev. iii. 21.) Having 
 fought the good fight and gained the victory (as faith’s 
 
CHAP. XII. 3. 307 
 
 ἀρχηγός), He is now set down in endless rest and infinite 
 glory, able (as faith’s τελευτής) to save εἰς τὸ παντελές 
 all who follow Him in the same way of faith. Thither- 
 wards, then, to “ fulness of joy and pleasures for evermore,” 
 “at God’s right hand” (Ps. xvi. 11), our course is to be 
 directed after Him. Participation in His yapa is dependent 
 as a necessary condition on previous participation in His 
 παθήματα (1 Pet. iv. 13). In order not to faint under the 
 one, and so lose the other, we must look stedfastly to Jesus 
 (ἀφορῶντες εἰς... ᾿Ιησοῦν). 
 
 Ebrard correctly explains the ἀπό in ἀφορᾶν (comp. 
 ἀποβλέποντες, ch. xi. 26). The verb signifies a voluntary 
 looking off from objects which involuntarily press them- 
 selves upon our view towards something else which we 
 choose to make an object of contemplation. To say that it 
 means here to turn our eyes away from the troubles and 
 discomforts of the conflict, is putting too much into the 
 word; but it certainly implies the concentration of looks in 
 one direction. In the midst of our conflict we are to look 
 up to Jesus, and the thought of His παθήματα and of His 
 victory over them will give us patience and endurance 
 under ours: 
 
 Ver. 3. For take into consideration him that hath endured 
 such contradiction from the sinners against himself, lest ye be 
 wearied, fainting in your souls. 
 
 The reason for the exhortation is given in the form of 
 renewed parenesis. We should have expected ἀναλογισά- 
 μενοι yap... οὐ καμούμεθα, or the like (for if we consider 
 flim, we shall not faint); but the sacred writer continues 
 in the imperative,’ ἀναλογίσασθε, “consider,” “ take into 
 account,” “weigh well.” After such a verb, again, we might 
 
 1 Liinemann would render γάρ here by an emphasizing ‘ yea;” but 
 the imperative is not so abruptly introduced that we really need such a 
 quidproquo. Hermann’s canon must be adhered to (see note on iii. 15, 
 16): γάρ semper reddit rationem antecedentis sententie vel expresse vel 
 intellect. 
 
308 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 have expected an impersonal object—“ weigh well the suf- 
 ferings which your Lord endured ;” but as the importance 
 of the sufferings is here so greatly enhanced by the dignity 
 of the Sufferer, he says, “‘ Consider Him”—dvandoyicacbe 
 yap τὸν τοιαύτην ὑπομεμενηκότα ὑπὸ TOV ἁμαρτωλῶν εἰς 
 αὐτὸν (Lachmann, following A, reads ἑαυτόν) ἀντιλογίαν. 
 Liinemann maintains that ἀντιλογία can only mean strictly, 
 verbal contradiction, the strife of words and arguments, and 
 not opposition of any other kind; but the Greek interpreters 
 (Chrysostom, Cicumenius, Theophylact), who spoke the lan- 
 guage, felt differently. And when, indeed, will expositors 
 learn to distinguish as they ought to do between sensus and 
 significatus,—between that which a word means properly 
 taken by itself, and the nuances of meaning it acquires in 
 usage or from context? No one disputes that ἀντιλογία 
 means properly no more than literal contradiction ; but for- 
 asmuch as the contrary word commonly precedes and results 
 in the contrary action, it comes to mean opposition of any 
 kind or degree, even up to treason and rebellion: He that 
 maketh himself a king ἀντιλέγει τῷ Καίσαρι (John xix. 12). 
 So it is here. The Lord incarnate was destined to be from 
 His earliest years among men a σημεῖον ἀντιλεγόμενον (Luke 
 il. 84), and that “ contradiction of sinners” (ἁμαρτωλοί, as, 
 for example, at Matt. xxvi. 45; compare the parallel at Luke 
 xxiv. 7) brought Him at last to a shameful and bitter death 
 on the accursed tree :' let this example, says the apostolic 
 writer here, be the object of your contemplation, and weigh 
 it well, ἵνα μὴ κάμητε ταῖς ψυχαῖς ὑμῶν ἐκλυόμενοι. 
 
 This ablative-like dative ταῖς ψυχαῖς may belong to 
 either κάμητε or ἐκλυόμενοι. For the construction with 
 κάμητε comp. Job x. 1, κάμνων τῇ ψυχῇ μου : for that with 
 ἐκλυόμενοι comp. Deut. xx. 3, Judith xiv. 6, Pol. xx. 4, eztr., 
 ov μόνον τοῖς σώμασιν ἐξελύθησαν, ἀλλὰ Kal ταῖς ψυχαῖς. 
 
 1 ΤῊ 6 old Spruchbuch (Book of Sentences) of Vridrank (Freidank) 
 says quaintly : 
 ΕἾ Twas through slanders of the tongue 
 Jesus on the cross they hung.” 
 
CHAP. XII. 4. 309 
 
 The latter construction is here demanded by the rhythm; 
 it also makes the metaphor in ἐκλυόμενοι more clear, which 
 still follows that of the race-course. As the knees are apt 
 to grow faint with the runner in the stadium, so the soul in 
 the case of the Christian athlete.t These Hebrew Chris- 
 tians must look up to the divine example of all patience in 
 order not to faint or waver in their course, for” the hardest 
 trials have not yet befallen them : 
 
 Ver. 4. Not yet have ye resisted unto® blood in your con- 
 flict with sin. 
 
 Bengel’s remark, a cursu venit ad pugilatum, is called 
 pedantic by De Wette: it is, however, correct. The meta- 
 phor is changed here precisely in the same way as at 1 Cor. 
 ix. 24-27, where St. Paul makes the transition from τρέχειν 
 to πυκτεύειν. In the words πρὸς τὴν ἁμαρτίαν ἀνταγωνιζό- 
 μενοι (which are to be taken together as in the similar con- 
 struction in the preceding verse, ταῖς guy. tm. éxd.), sin is 
 regarded as an opponent in pugilism: they are to resist tilt 
 blood flows, and not give over then. The expression is not 
 merely figurative that they have not yet resisted sin (with- 
 
 1 The Cod. Claromont. (D) presents curious variations of reading in 
 this ver. 3: ANAAOTISASOAI (without τον) τοιωυτὴν vrousucynnore 
 ΑΠΟ τῶν auaprorwy εἰ. EAYTOYS αἀντιλογίων woe un xaunts ταῖς 
 Wuxyeis υμων EKAEAYMENOI. One would naturally reckon this 
 eavtovs among the many peculiarities of this manuscript ; but traces of 
 the same error are found high up in the second century, viz. in Peshito 
 and Itala, as well as later in Theodoret and in the Cod. Amiatinus of 
 the Vulgate. Some of the strangest readings in D are found to have 
 prevailed in very early authorities. See Lagarde, De N. T. ad ver- 
 sionum orientalium fidem edendo, Berlin 1857, 4to. 
 
 2 The reading οὔπω γάρ, though not vouched by suflicient authority, 
 accords well with the context. 
 
 ° Instead of ὠντικατέστητε, Tischend. reads with reduplicated syllabic 
 angment οντεκατέστητε. Instead of μέχρις, D has μέχρι, which is also 
 found before a vowel at Luke xvi. 16. Μέχρις, indeed, is rare in the 
 New Testament (only here and at Mark xiii. 30); ἄχρις is frequently 
 met with, and in our epistle at 111, 13. Plato, according to Stallbaum, 
 uses μέχρι always, even before a vowel. 
 
310 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 out and within) to the utmost of their power: μέχρις 
 αἵματος is to be taken literally (as all agree) in reference to 
 the death of martyrdom. Their Christian profession has not 
 yet cost them their lives. ‘Ayapriéa is not here, as Liine- 
 mann supposes, inward temptations in men’s own minds to 
 apostasy, but personal wickedness in others, 7.e. in the open 
 enemies of Christianity, seeking by various kinds of violence 
 or persuasion to turn away Christians from their faith. 
 This ἁμαρτία these Hebrew Christians are to withstand 
 μέχρις θανάτου, even as the Lord withstood the contradic- 
 tion of ἁμαρτωλοί against Himself μέχρι θανάτου, θανάτου 
 δὲ σταυροῦ (Phil. ii. 8). The words of comfort in the fol- 
 lowing verse show also that it is of some sharp outward trial 
 that the sacred writer is here thinking. His assertion that 
 those to whom he writes have not yet endured any bloody 
 persecution is no argument, if rightly understood, against 
 this epistle being addressed to Hebrew Christians in Jeru- 
 salem and Palestine. It is indeed implied (ch. xiii. 7) that 
 departed members of their church had suffered martyrdom 
 in days gone by ; but those still living who are here appealed 
 to, though not without experience of persecution in their 
 own case, in the time of their first love, have now secured 
 themselves against its utmost violence by a sinful conformity 
 to the faithless world around them, and are living in a con- 
 dition dangerously near to that of apostasy. They are re- 
 fusing or fleeing from the cross, and seem quite to have 
 forgotten that the afflictions which God sends to His people 
 are a discipline of love. 
 
 Vers. 5, 6. And have (ye) clean forgotten the exhortation 
 which entereth into discourse with you as with sons: My son, 
 despise not the Lord’s chastening, neither faint when rebuked 
 by him: for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, yea, and 
 scourgeth every son whom he receiveth ? 
 
 Among more recent commentators, Tholuck, De Wette, 
 Ebrard take καὶ ἐκλέλησθε as an affirmative proposition ; 
 Bleek, Bisping, and Liinemann (with Calvin), as an inter- 
 
CHAP. XII. 5, 6. 811 
 
 rogative. The rebuke implied in the strong term ἐκλέλησθε 
 would be here so unexpectedly harsh, that we are inclined to 
 prefer the latter alternative ;+ only we would not put the note 
 of interrogation, with Liinemann, after διαλέγεται, but at 
 the end of the quotation (after παραδέχεται). Perhaps it 
 would be most correct to say that we have here an inter- 
 jectional sentence in which aftirmative and interrogative are 
 combined. Two words, παράκλησις and διαλέγεται, remind 
 us of St. Luke’s use of them in the Acts. At Acts xii, 15 
 and xy. 31, παράκλησις is used of the heart-touching words 
 of apostolic exhortation (comp. 1 Tim. iv. 13), and διαλέ- 
 γεσθαν is the standing term for St. Paul’s “reasoning” or 
 entering into a course of argument with, or of appeals to, his 
 Jewish fellow-countrymen (Acts xvi. 2, 17, xvi. 4, etc.). 
 ᾿Εκλέλησθε is a stronger term than the more usual ἐπιλέλησθε 
 (have ye, or ye.have quite forgotten, allowed to let ship quite 
 out of your minds!). It was, perhaps, suggested here by the 
 preceding ἐκλυόμενοι, as it is sometimes displaced in its turn 
 by the erroneous reading ἐκλέλυσθε. The touching encou- 
 raging appeal of holy Scripture to the heart of man is here 
 personified : it speaks to, enters into discourse with us, as with 
 maternal tenderness and anxiety for our welfare. The quo- 
 tation is from the book of Proverbs (ili, 11, 12), and the 
 personification is no doubt connected with the way in which 
 Wisdom is there, throughout the early chapters (Prov. i— 
 ix.), spoken of as a spiritual parent. The ancients were wont, 
 in consequence, to call the whole book of Proverbs Σοφία 
 (Melito ap. Eus. H.E. iv. 26), Πανάρετος Sofia (Hege- 
 sippus, and Irenzeus ap. Eus. HE. iv. 22), Παιδαγωγικὴ 
 Σοφία (St. Gregory Nazianzen); and our author, who has 
 already spoken of the divine Word as a person (ch. iv. 12), 
 here personifies not Wisdom herself, but the exhortation 
 (ἡ παράκλησις “) which she gives. Comp. also Luke xi. 49, 
 ἡ σοφία τοῦ Θεοῦ εἶπεν. The tender motherly appeal which 
 
 1 The forward position of the verb in the sentence and the omission 
 of ἤδη is also in favour of this view. 
 
 2. If St. Barnabas were the author of this epistle, he might be sup- 
 posed to be thinking of the interpretation of his own name, vids rapa- 
 
912 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 is thus introduced has an evident reference to the book of 
 Job, for which these words might serve as a motto,—Prov. 
 iii, 11 stating the problem or enigma, of which Prov. iii. 12 
 furnishes the solution; the main purpose of the book of Job 
 being to illustrate the truth that there is in the sharpest trials 
 a divine providential discipline of love which does not exclude 
 sonship. Such experience of suffering imposed by the wisdom 
 of divine love is here called "θὴρ (παιδεία), a fatherly dis- 
 cipline or process of education, and nnain (ἐλέγχεσθαι), re- 
 proof, such as makes us conscious of our faults and errors, 
 and so promotes our moral improvement. Instead of the 
 υἱέ of the LXX. our author writes (according to the best 
 MS. testimony) υἱέ μου, which is not only more tender and 
 mother-like, but also corresponds more closely to the 122 of 
 the original. Instead of μηδὲ ἐκλύου (neither faint, or give 
 up in despair), the original text has ypn-s; (murmur not, 
 show no resentment at the divine rebuke): resentment and 
 despondency have both, in times of suffering, the same mode 
 of expression—murmuring. The clause ὃν yap ἀγαπᾷ Κύριος 
 παιδεύειν follows the LXX. as represented by A; B reads 
 ἐλέγχει ; the Apocalypse, iii. 19, unites both: ἐγὼ ὅσους ἂν 
 φιλῶ ἐλέγχω Kai παιδεύω. For the clause which follows, 
 μαστιγοῖ δέ, K.T.d., the reading of the LXX. is perhaps to 
 be preferred even to that of the Masoretic text, which reads 
 TSN [ANS IN, we. and as a father with a son he taketh delight 
 (viz. in correcting him, or, in him, after correction). Instead 
 of AN} the Sept. must have read 382) (Bleek), or (the per- 
 fect ‘being inappropriate here) 383}, or, like Job v. 18 (cited 
 by Clemens Romanus, c. 56), DN, The translation of Ayq 
 could not be better: ov παραδέχεται, every son, whom He 
 accepts and receives, He makes to feel His chastening rod. 
 The main purpose which the sacred writer has here in view 
 
 κλήσεως, Which, however, is given (Acts iv. 36) not by himself, but by 
 St. Luke. 
 
 1 Philo also quotes this passage from the Book of Proverbs (i. 544), 
 adding: ‘‘ What a glorious thing, then, is chastisement and reproof! since 
 thereby our relationship of communion with God is elevated into kinships ; 
 for what can be nearer than a father is to a son, and a son to a father?” 
 
CHAP. XII. 7. 313 
 
 is to reconcile the minds of his readers to the sufferings 
 entailed by their Christian profession, that is, the cross in 
 the proper sense of the word. But all sufferings * imposed 
 by God upon His children, whether for discipline, trial of 
 faith, or witness for the truth, have this one feature in 
 common, that they are all proofs of divine love, not signs 
 of anger. Thought passes easily, therefore, from one kind 
 to another. The Christian in every trial sees a proof of the 
 Father’s loving care for his good. He must not murmur or 
 withdraw himself from it.? 
 
 Ver. 7. It ts for chastisement ye are enduring: God 
 dealeth with you as with children; for who is a son whom the 
 father chasteneth not ? 
 
 The textus receptus reads εἰ παιδείαν ὑπομένετε. This 
 reading was retained by Griesbach in the edition of 1803-6, 
 without even noticing that there was any other found in 
 mss. ‘Tischendorf has also returned to it since his edition 
 of 1849. But it is a reading as ill supported as possible. 
 It is found, according to Tischendorf, in minuscc. sat multis, 
 —but he adds (somewhat significantly) ué videtur,—and in 
 “ Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theophylact.” Estius, however, 
 had long ago rightly observed that the assertion that εἰ 
 παιδείαν is found in St. Chrysostom was a mistake, and 
 Sebast. Schmidt’s remark in answer was a very poor attempt 
 at sarcasm : bonus vir non inveniebat aliud Vulgato suo emplas- 
 trum. It is also doubtful (see Bleek) whether Tischendorf 
 is right in appealing to Theodoret. Theophylact remains, 
 then, the only undoubted witness for εἰ παιδείαν ; and he is 
 not, from the lateness of his age, of much authority. All 
 the uncials, on the other hand [including now the Cod. Sin.], 
 all ancient versions, all citations and comments in the fathers 
 (Chrysostom, Procopius, Damascenus, Gicumenius), read εἰς 
 
 παιδείαν ὑπομένετε. This reading, which is borne witness to 
 
 1 On these different kinds of suffering, see my article on Job (Hiob) 
 in Herzog’s Real-Encyclopexdie, vol. vi. p. 115 seq. 
 
 * This is Elihu’s position in the book of Job, though his arguments 
 fail to solve the problem. 
 
314 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 high up into the second century by Peshito and Itala, has 
 been rightly adopted by Mattheei, Lachmann, Theile, and 
 Buttmann, and ought not to be given up, unless it could be 
 shown that Bleek, Tholuck, De Wette, Liinemann, and 
 others are right in maintaining that it is quite inadmissible 
 from being meaningless. And it must be allowed that the 
 ancient versions appear not to have known what to make of 
 it. The Peshito, leaving out the εἰς, translates sustinete 
 igitur castigationem. ‘The old Latin versions, giving an im- 
 possible sense to εἰς, render in disciplina perseverate, for 
 which we sometimes read the more literal but unmeaning 
 in disciplinam or in doctrinam. D reads ὃν παραδέχεται εἰς 
 ITAIAIAN, taking the puzzling εἰς παιδ. into the quotation, 
 and so spoiling its sense. One thing is evident, εἰς παιδείαν 
 cannot be an ancient correction ; had it been so, the ancients 
 would have better known what to make of it; at the utmost 
 it may have been a lapsus calami (Bengel, Kuineel), like εἰς 
 ἑαυτούς, in some MS§s., at ver. 3 of this chapter. But is it, 
 then, really so unintelligible as it has been made to appear ? 
 Mattheei’s observation was quite correct, that εἰς παιδείαν is 
 equivalent to ἕνεκεν παιδείας or εἰς τὸ παιδεύεσθαι. To 
 which we may add, that εἰς is often used in a similar way to 
 indicate purpose by our author: e.g. i. 14, εἰς διακονίαν ; vi. 
 16, εἰς βεβαίωσιν ; iii. 5, εἰς μαρτύριον ; iv. 16, εἰς εὔκαιρον 
 βοήθειαν : ix. 15, εἰς ἀπολύτρωσιν : comp. also x. 19, παῤ- 
 ῥησία eis, and xi. 11, δύναμις εἰς. Ebrard accordingly 
 renders it, Be patient also for the sake of discipline ; let it 
 have the effect upon you which is designed. But the sentence 
 reads and fits into the context much better if we take 
 ὑπομένετε as an indicative: for chastisement (or discipline) 
 you are enduring ; 1.6. your heavenly Father’s purpose in 
 sending or permitting sufferings to befall you is to give you 
 that discipline of love (1D19) of which Scripture speaks. St. 
 Chrysostom explains: εἰς παιδείαν ὑπομένετε, φησί, οὐκ εἰς 
 κόλασιν, οὐδὲ εἰς τιμωρίαν, οὐδὲ εἰς τὸ κακῶς παθεῖν. 1 
 do not see what improvement could be suggested to this 
 interpretation either in thought or expression. The other 
 reading, ef παιδείαν ὑπομένετε, is certainly favoured by the 
 
CHAP. XII. 8. 315 
 
 antithesis in ver. 8, εἰ δὲ χωρίς ἐστε παιδείας ; but it has 
 this also against it, that it requires us to take ὑπομένετε in a 
 much feebler sense than it is elsewhere employed by our 
 author—viz., “if ye have to suffer, z.e. passively undergo 
 discipline,”—whereas παιδείαν ὑπομένειν can hardly mean 
 less than “to endure discipline, bear up manfully under it.” 
 With the reading εἰς, on the other hand, not only does 
 ὑπομένετε retain its full meaning of active endurance, but 
 παιδεία also that of fatherly discipline, in which it was 
 used at ver. 5; and eis παιδείαν stands as significantly at 
 the head of this clause as ws υἱοῖς at the head of the follow- 
 ing: “ Like children under the discipline of a gracious father 
 comport yourselves, for like children this Father is dealing 
 with you:” εἰς παιδείαν ὑπομένετε, ὡς υἱοῖς ὑμῖν προσφέ- 
 ρεται ὁ Θεός. The Vulvate tanquam filiis vobis offert se Deus 
 (followed by Luther) misses the sense of προσφέρεται here, 
 which, with following dative of the person, always has the 
 meaning of dealing with, behaving towards, in extra-biblical 
 Greek. 
 
 In the question which follows, τίς γάρ ἐστιν υἱὸς ὃν οὐ 
 παιδεύει πατήρ; τις is not an adjective (what son is there ?) 
 but a substantive pronoun (who is a son and exempt from 
 such discipline?). Both υἱός and πατήρ are without the 
 article to generalize the thought. The meaning is therefore, 
 Educational discipline is the end of all suffering which God 
 lays upon you; His doing so is proof of His fatherly love. 
 The sentence is not put in a conditional form, but the sense 
 is much the same as if it were, and so the writer continues 
 with the contraposition in that form. 
 
 Ver. 8. But if ye remain without chastisement, whereof 
 all’ have been made partakers, then are ye bastards, and not 
 sons. 
 
 The particle dpa introduces a natural inference or con- 
 sequence, but does not in classical Greek stand at the head 
 
 1This πάντες is the last word in the Cod. Sangermanensis (EF), 
 
 which here ends abruptly. Sabatier from this point gives only the 
 D (Cod. Claromontanus) form of the Itala. 
 
316 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 of the sentence as here." (Comp. Matt. xii. 28; Luke xi. 
 48 ; Gal. ili. 29.) He who lives without experience of this 
 fatherly discipline is no genuine child, but a νόθος of doubtful 
 parentage, of neglected education, left to himself. Phavo-. 
 rinus: νόθος ὁ μὴ γνήσιος υἱὸς GAN ἐκ Taddakidos.” The 
 original ordo verborum is probably that adopted by Lachmann 
 (from A, D, Itala, and Vulgate): dpa νόθοι καὶ οὐχ υἱοὶ ἐστε. 
 The inference drawn from the necessary reciprocity between 
 sonship and discipline is further strengthened by a reference 
 to the past history of all God’s children ; for πάντες here does 
 not mean all children in the natural sense, but all who have 
 ever stood in that spiritual relation to God: μέτοχοι γεγόνασιν 
 πάντες, “all such have had their share of discipline.” ‘The 
 special allusion is to the examples in ch. xi., and it is assumed 
 that already under the Old Testament, before the grace of an 
 all-embracing, all-renewing regeneration had been revealed 
 in the second Adam, God vouchsafed to stand towards the 
 faithful as His children in a relation of fatherly discipline 
 and love. (See this stated with regard to Israel, Deut. xiv. 
 1; with regard to individual saints under the old covenant, 
 Ps. Ixxiii. 15, Prov. xiv. 26.) All these have felt, each in 
 his own measure, the Lord’s fatherly chastening, have been 
 received into His school of affliction, and in the severest con- 
 flicts maintained their assurance of His fatherly love. To 
 this consideration, that all afflictions which befall God’s chil- 
 dren have their origin in His fatherly love, a second and a 
 third are now added (in vers. 9, 10) as additional motives to 
 
 1 The example in Lucian’s Jup. tragedus, § 51, is well known: εἰ εἰσὶ 
 βωμοὶ, εἰσὶ καὶ θεοί ὠλλὸὼ ory εἰσὶ βωροοί, εἰσὶν ὥρω καὶ θεοί. On the other 
 hand, Cogito ergo sum would be expressed in later and in modern Greek, 
 στοχάζομαι ὥρα eivi (sivas). Klotz’s notion, that ἄρω is not a proper 
 syllogistic therefore, but expresses only leviorem et liberiorem quandam 
 ratiocinationem, is certainly not justified by New Testament usage, nor 
 indeed by classical, e.g. Plato, Phexd. c. 26, οὐχ ὁρατόν" ὠειδὲς cepa. 
 
 2 We must not, of course, press the ἐκ παλλακίδος, which would lead to 
 thoughts unmeet for the subject : the sacred writer himself probably con- 
 nected with νόθοι a notion similar to that of Philo, when he says (i. 426. 
 29) of those who make the pleasures of this world their soul’s chief good, 
 that they in nothing differ from τῶν ἐκ πύρνΥ: υἱποκνηϑέντων. 
 
CHAP, XII. 9. eal, 
 
 stedfast cheerful endurance of the severest trials.) The 
 second is, that the loving correction of our heavenly Father 
 is so much the more acceptable and beneficial, as He Himself 
 is exalted above all earthly parents. 
 
 Ver. 9. Furthermore: the fathers of our flesh we once had 
 as chasteners, and we gave them reverence—shall we not much 
 rather submit ourselves to the Father of spirits and live? 
 
 Valckenaer and others would take the εἶτα here as in- 
 troducing a question—Have we then had the fathers of our 
 flesh, etc.?—a use of efta (especially in queries of admira- 
 tion or ridicule) which is not uncommon in ordinary Greek. 
 (Comp. Plato, Apol. p. 28, εἶτ᾽, οὐκ αἰσχύνει, ὦ Σώκρατες ; 
 Furthermore, art thou not ashamed .. . or, Surely then thou 
 art ashamed? Kiihner, § 835, 6.) But the assumption is 
 unnecessary, and such a construction here would be somewhat 
 affected. Besides, as Kypke and Bleek have rightly observed, 
 the following clause must, in that case, have commenced 
 differently (καὶ οὐ πολὺ μᾶλλον, instead of οὐ πολὺ [rec. 
 πολλῷ] μᾶλλον, as now). We construe εἶτα, then, as simply 
 introducing a further consideration, the main proposition of 
 a second argument which is a conclusio a minori ad majus. 
 (Comp. ch. x. 28 seq., ii. 2 seq., ix. 13 seq., xii. 25.) We 
 have already had chastisers in our natural parents, and 
 showed them in that character due childlike reverence. The 
 emphasis lies on ἐνετρεπόμεθα, which in the sense of “ caring 
 for,” “showing respect to,” is followed by τίνα (as in Sept., 
 Polybius, Dionysius, Diodorus, Plutarch) instead of τινος. 
 The imperfects εἴχομεν and ἐνετρεπόμεθα (we once had— 
 and were then accustomed so to act) refer back to the 
 lengthened period of childhood and youth which both the 
 writer and his readers had once passed through. 
 
 It is an important question, in what sense our earthly 
 parents are here called τῆς σαρκὸς ἡμῶν πατέρες, and con- 
 trasted with God as τῷ πατρὶ τῶν πνευμάτων. Quite wrong 
 is it to give the antithesis of σάρξ and πνεῦμα here a merely 
 ethical significance. So, for instance, and most decidedly, 
 Ebrard: “ σάρξ designates here, as always, the purely natural 
 
318 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 life which is the product of purely natural powers, in contrast 
 with the spiritual life which is the product of divine grace work- 
 ing wn regeneration.” Now, though it is true that the author 
 of this epistle was no stranger to the Pauline antithesis of 
 σάρξ and πνεῦμα, yet he nowhere gives it (not even at ix. 
 13 seq., where the antithesis of σάρξ is συνείδησις) a full 
 Pauline expression ; and, further, against such an ethical con- 
 ception of the antithesis here, is, 1s¢, the very form of the 
 expression, which, to convey Ebrard’s meaning, ought to have 
 been τοὺς μὲν ἡμῶν κατὰ σάρκα πατέρας. . . TO πατρὶ ἡμῶν 
 κατὰ πνεῦμα (or even τῷ πνευματικῷ); and 2dly, the sense 
 of the original Hebrew text referred to: riya $35 mmnnn aby 
 —the God of the spirits of all flesh (Num. xvi. 22, xxvii. 16). 
 The force of this second consideration Ebrard acknowledges 
 indirectly himself by arbitrarily denying that there is any 
 such reference. The Septuagint rendering, Θεὸς τῶν πνευ- 
 μάτων Kat πάσης σαρκός (they read 53) instead of 525), would 
 certainly not have been suitable for our author’s purpose; but 
 then, as we have seen, he is by no means-wholly dependent 
 on the LXX., nor is it his meaning here that even the σάρξ 
 itself (as all else that a man is or has) is not ultimately to be 
 referred to God as the final cause. But while all corporeal 
 existence comes into being through a natural process, the 
 animation of the corporeity so produced is in each case 
 an absolutely incomprehensible act of divine power, and is 
 only to be accounted for by the hypothesis of divine concur- 
 rence with the processes of nature. In virtue of this, as the 
 Author and Lord of all life, the Creator is entitled, ‘the God 
 of the spirits of all flesh.”* It is in this (in the first place 
 physical rather than ethical) sense that we are to understand 
 τῷ πατρὶ τῶν πνευμάτων here: nor is it to be denied, with 
 Bleek, De Wette, Liinemann, and others, including even the 
 Roman Catholic commentator Bisping, that the present 
 passage strongly favours thie so-called theory of Creatianism. 
 
 1 He is not called ‘‘ the God of the souls (miyp3) of all flesh ” (though 
 such a designation would not be wrong; see Ezek. xviii. 4 and Jer 
 XXXvill. 16), because it is the spirit rather than the soul which has its 
 immediate origin in God. 
 
CHAP, XII. 9. 319 
 
 Nota diligenter, says Hugo de Sancto Victore in his Questiones, 
 hance authoritatem, per quam manifeste probatur, quod anime non 
 sunt ex traduce sicut caro. Nor is the acknowledgment of this 
 to be evaded by such a conception of the antithesis as that 
 our earthly parents are the authors of our natural individual 
 existence, while God is the final cause and Creator of all 
 life ;* for it is not corporeal life as such which is here con- 
 trasted with life in general, but the σάρξ, in itself only lifeless 
 matter, with the πνεύματα as being sparks of life emitted from 
 the divine and central fire. It cannot therefore be denied 
 that, according to the statement here, we derive our σάρξ 
 mediately from our parents, and our πνεῦμα immediately 
 from God Himself. ‘ Both views, however, Creatianism and 
 Traducianism,” as a profound inquirer on these subjects has 
 observed,” “err in this, that they each insist on standing 
 alone; whereas the philosophic inquirer must not either 
 efface the difference between the Creator and the creature 
 with Traducianism on the one hand, nor conceive of it in 
 too abstract a form with Creatianism on the other. If we 
 would not do this, we must begin with the assumption that 
 the spiritual animation of every human creature requires a 
 more immediate interposition of divine power than the pro- 
 duction of the bodily part. So, as the poet sings,’ the burning 
 sun has more and closer influence in maturing the grape- 
 juice into sweet and fiery wine than it had before the juice 
 was formed. And this is the truth involved in the creatianist 
 doctrine of holy Scripture.” I cannot doubt, for my own 
 part, that the sacred writer meant what he here says of God 
 as “ the Father of spirits” in a creatianist sense. The whole 
 of Scripture, indeed, is full of the thought, that the human 
 spirit is a breath from the Almighty (Job xxiii. 4), and 
 that we are all, in regard to our spiritual part, of divine 
 
 1 See my Biblische Psychologie, Ὁ. 83. 
 
 2 Goschel in his essay, ‘‘ Der Mensch nach Leib, Seele und Geist,” 
 published with my Psychologie, Leipsic 1856, p. 13 seq. 
 
 8 Dante, Purgatorio xxv. 77 seq. Gdschel rightly finds here, in the 
 profoundest of all poets, the first reconciliation between the theories 
 of Creatianism and Traducianism., 
 
320 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 parentage (Acts xvii. 28). And inasmuch as the spirit in us, 
 in virtue of its divine kindred, has then only true life when 
 conformed to its divine original, the Scriptures of the New 
 Testament constantly speak of the ungodly man as one who 
 has no πνεῦμα, and of the regenerate man as πνευματικός : the 
 physical notion is, therefore, at the same time an ethical one; 
 and even in the present passage the notion of the derivation 
 of the human spirit from the divine is combined with that of 
 its true life being dependent on a connection maintained 
 with God its Father: Shall not we submit ourselves to the 
 Father .... and live? If we observe that God is here 
 called πατὴρ τῶν πνευμάτων, Not ἡμῶν, Nor τ. TY. τῆς σαρκός, 
 the conclusion thus drawn a minori ad majus will be twofold : 
 1st, God as Father is as much exalted above all earthly 
 fathers as the spirit is above the flesh, and a man’s personal 
 being above his natural existence ; and 2dly, God is more to 
 be honoured than any earthly parent, because the earthly 
 father is such only to this or that individual child, whereas 
 God is the Father of the whole universe of spirits: all living 
 existence, all independent life, all personal life, whether that 
 life have a bodily form of flesh and blood like men, or a 
 bodiless one like the angels, draws its origin from Him, and 
 in order to exist, or exist aright, must submit itself to His 
 fatherly discipline. For the human spirit is not an absolute 
 principle of life in man, but one dependent on God its 
 source. It lives only from and with and in Him. To submit 
 ourselves to the Father of spirits is an essential condition of 
 our life—dimotaynooucba καὶ ζήσομεν : Chv here, as at x. 38, 
 expresses true, abiding, not merely transient or apparent life, 
 life in accordance with the true idea of humanity, ze. likeness 
 to God and communion with Him. 
 
 Now follows the third consideration which furnishes yet 
 another motive for patient endurance of whatever trials God 
 may send us. 
 
 Ver. 10. For they indeed for a few days exercised dis- 
 cipline after their own liking, but he for men’s benefit, in order 
 that they may partake of his holiness. 
 
CHAP. XII. 10. ΘΟ 
 
 Tt is hard to find in the second of these sentences the 
 proper antithesis to the πρὸς ὀλίγας ἡμέρας of the first. 
 Most of the ancients, and, among moderns, Tholuck, Ebrard, 
 Bisping, conceive it thus: “The discipline of earthly parents 
 has respect only to the few days of our earthly life; God’s 
 discipline has all eternity in view, for to partake of His 
 holiness is to live for ever.” “The antithesis,” says Bisp- 
 ing, ‘is very fine;” but, at any rate, it is not exegetically 
 true, for there stands nothing about “eternity” or “ eternal” 
 in the text, nor is it suggested by τῆς ἁγιότητος, as it might 
 have been by such a term as τῆς δόξης. Nor is it quite 
 true that the discipline of earthly parents has respect in all 
 instances only to the present life (as Calvin puts it—hic de 
 economia apostolus loquitur, quemadmodum de politia solemus 
 vulgo logui). ‘The discipline of the family has a religious as 
 well as a political object, the father is at the same time 
 priest ; and to say that in the training of his children he has 
 only the “ few days” of earthly life in view, would be a very 
 one-sided statement. Bleek and Liinemann therefore take 
 another course, making πρὸς ὀλίγας ἡμέρας belong (in sense) 
 to both sentences: The discipline of earthly parents lasts 
 for a time, and is after their own liking ; God’s discipline, 
 likewise, lasts only for a time, but is for the highest benefit 
 of those who experience it (1 Pet.i. 6). But not to mention 
 other objections, the imperfect ἐπαίδευον is against this view ; 
 for, like εὔχομεν (ver. 9), it evidently refers to the period of 
 youthful training and education already past: the “few 
 days” of parental discipline were the days of our childhood, 
 and the discipline ceased when we reached years of discre- 
 tion. De Wette accordingly would put the antithesis thus: 
 “They disciplined us for the few days of childhood, God’s 
 discipline is lifelong.” But there is nothing said about 
 “lifelong discipline” here, any more than about “ eternity.” 
 The author’s true meaning appears to me to be as follows: 
 His statement may be regarded as two pairs of antitheses 
 arranged chiastically.' 1. We begin with the second pair, 
 
 1 [i.e. ‘‘ cross-wise” like the Greek letter X. The term is borrowed 
 from the Greek grammarians. ] 
 
 VOL, II. x 
 
322 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 which consists of the two phrases (that occupy the interior 
 of the twofold sentence regarded as a whole) κατὰ τὸ δοκοῦν 
 αὐτοῖς and ἐπὶ τὸ συμφέρον. Earthly parents exercise dis- 
 cipline after their human, narrow-minded, often arbitrary 
 liking, and are liable even in the best cases to errors and 
 mistakes; but God the Father has no other end in view in 
 His exercise of discipline than His children’s benefit, and 
 the means He employs are unfailingly the right ones to 
 accomplish it. It is evident, of course, that the sacred writer 
 is not here speaking of the theory of human education, but 
 of its ordinary practical character; he is not contrasting 
 good and bad modes of training, but that which is human, 
 and at the best affected by human infirmity, with that which 
 is divine, and therefore perfect. Compared with God’s, the 
 best human παιδεία is not so good as to have no shadow of 
 that fallible δοκοῦν falling on it. 2. The other pair of 
 antitheses (enclosing that we have just been considering) 
 is πρὸς ὀλίγας ἡμέρας and εἰς TO μεταλαβεῖν τῆς ἁγιότητος 
 αὐτοῦ. As in πρός the two notions are combined οὗ pur- 
 pose and duration of time, so in εἰς the notions of purpose 
 and result: πρός is used here as at ver. 11, πρὸς τὸ παρόν, as 
 at Luke viii. 13 and 1 Cor. vii. 7, πρὸς καιρόν, and as at 
 2 Cor. vii. 8, πρὸς καιρὸν ὥρας ; eis, on the other hand, has 
 a mixture of final and eventual meanings, such as we find at 
 ch. ii. 17, ix. 14, xiii. 21 (see note on ch. xi. 3): we may 
 say that πρός has here mainly reference to the time occupied, 
 εἰς to the thing accomplished. Parental παιδεία lasts but 
 for the years of youth, and then, whether successful or not, 
 comes to an end; God’s παιδεία, having for its object an 
 infallibly recognised συμφέρον, has for its result nothing 
 less than the making its subjects partakers of His holiness, 
 and as such raised above the necessity of its further appli- 
 cation. ‘Aryvorns (found also at 2 Macc. xv. 2) is a more 
 abstract term than ἁγιωσύνη, and μεταλαβεῖν is a term 
 common to our epistle and the Acts for “ partaking of” or 
 “possessing.” The result of parental training is uncertain, 
 that of divine παιδεία is infallibly glorious. In reference to 
 which latter the writer proceeds: 
 
CHAP. XII. 11. 323 
 
 Ver. 11. Now all chastisement for the present seemeth to 
 be not a matter of joy, but of grief; yet afterwards it beareth 
 peaceable fruit of righteousness unto such as are exercised 
 by it. 
 
 Almost all interpreters as with one mouth make πᾶσα 
 παιδεία here to be every kind of discipline, human or divine. 
 Only Kuincel, Klee, and Stein interpret differently ; and 
 here for once I am agreed with them, for the sacred writer 
 would surely be involving himself in self-contradiction if 
 he meant to attribute thus promiscuously a happy result to 
 both human and divine παιδεία. But as at vers. 7, 8, 
 παιδεία is used simply for divine chastisement, so here πᾶσα 
 παιδεία is every kind of chastening that comes from God ; 
 and all such providential chastening, it is said, appears at 
 first to be a sad experience. Πρὸς τὸ παρόν is a classical 
 phrase (Plato, Thucyd., Isocr.), whereas the combination of 
 εἶναι with the genitivus qualitatis (ob . . . χαρᾶς εἶναι ἀλλὰ 
 λύπης), especially in this naked form without even the addi- 
 tion of an adjective, belongs to a later phase of the language: 
 comp. ch. x. 39; Acts ix. 2, τῆς ὅδου ὄντας ; and Thue. iii. 
 70, βουλῆς wv, “being of the council,” 1.6. a member of 
 council ;—similar, but not precisely similar, examples. The 
 phrase is short and expressive. The false appearance of 
 misfortune and unhappiness is removed by a look to the end 
 of this providential discipline, and from that end a conclu- 
 sion may be drawn as to the motive of love in which it 
 originates. The figure of fruit as yielded (καρπὸν ἀπο- 
 διδόναι, as at Rev. xxii. 2) by this παιδεία may be connected 
 in thought with the previous μεταλαβεῖν (comp. 2 Tim. ii. 6, 
 τῶν καρπῶν μεταλαμβάνειν). The fruit of what seemed so 
 sad a tree is called καρπὸς εἰρηνικὸς δικαιοσύνης. The last 
 interpreters who have taken this δικαιοσύνης for a geni- 
 tivus subjects (fruit borne by righteousness) were Heinrichs, 
 Kuinel, and Klee. They were wrong of course (as is now 
 universally recognised) ; for the tree which bears this peace- 
 able fruit is παιδεία, and therefore not δικαιοσύνη. The geni- 
 tive, then, is a genitivus appositionis: this fruit of righteousness 
 is a fruit consisting in righteousness,—i.e. rigliteousness of life 
 
324 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 springing out of righteousness by faith, a righteousness from 
 which the grace working in the divine παιδεία has removed 
 all the harshness and bitterness of sin. Such fruit this 
 παιδεία yields τοῖς δ’ αὐτῆς γεγυμνασμένοις. The image 
 suggested by γυμνάζεσθαι is not so completely lost sight of 
 here as it was at ch. v. 14. This is evident from the 
 epithet εἰρηνικός, which implies a previous ἀγών, conflict. 
 The athlete strives with naked body in the school or theatre, 
 and is thereby trained for the sternest conflicts; for this 
 training or exercise γυμνάζεσθαι is the technical term. The 
 Christian, too, is exercised in the school of affliction for 
 victory over evil. When the warfare is over, he reaps 
 peaceable fruit. Castellio’s rendering of εἰρηνικός by salu- 
 taris is inadmissible; for though oy’ in Hebrew combines 
 the notions of pax and salus, these are divided again in. 
 biblical Greek into εἰρήνη and σωτηρία. Primasius effaces 
 the meaning yet more when he interprets the pacatissimum 
 of the Vulgate by gratissimum atque acceptissimum. It is 
 only a few interpreters who have discerned the antithesis 
 between εἰρηνικός and γεγυμνασμένοις, suggesting that παιδεία 
 is a γυμνασία, an ἀγών. So Gerlach, Ebrard, Bisping, and 
 especially Tholuck: “Fruit of righteousness enjoyed after 
 conflict in perfect peace.” To which we would add: Fruit 
 which consists in righteousness and whose taste is peace,—1.e. 
 perfect satisfaction and rest after strife and labour. Ζικαιο- 
 σύνη denotes the fruit as to its substance, εἰρηνικόν describes 
 the sweetness of its taste.’ 
 
 Cuar. xu. 12-17.—Further exhortation to rouse themselves 
 to courageous perseverance in their Christian course, and, 
 
 1 Jas. ili, 18, κωρπὸς δὲ δικαιοσύνης ἐν εἰρήνῃ omsiperas τοῖς ποιοῦσιν 
 εἰρήνην, is a similar passage to ours, but in one main point different. 
 The genitive is appositional as before, and zap. d:xas0c. has the same 
 meaning as in our passage; but ἐν εἰρήνη 15 not a closer definition of 
 δικαιοσύνη. It must be explained by a reference to Ps. exxvi. 6, of 
 σπείροντες ἐν δάκρυσιν: The fruit which is righteousness, perfect well- 
 being, and acceptance with-God, is sown in peace for the good of those 
 who exercise peace ; 1.6. only peace-lovers and peace-makers will reap it. 
 
CHAP. XII. 12. a20 
 
 following peace and holiness, not to suffer any impurity 
 to spring up among them, lest any, like Esau, might dis- 
 cover, too late, how miserably they had forfeited the pro- 
 mised blessing. 
 
 After exhibiting (ver. 11) the happy consequences of 
 trials patiently endured, the sacred writer renews his exhor- 
 tation : 
 
 Ver. 12. Therefore lift up the slackened hands and the 
 loosened knees. 
 
 The figures of a race and a conflict—the one requiring 
 strong hands, the other strong knees—would seem to be still 
 in the writer’s mind. And if it be uncertain whether there 
 be any conscious reference in ver. 11 to Isa. xxxii. 17 (καὶ 
 ἔσται τὰ ἔργα τῆς δικαιοσύνης εἰρήνη), there can be no doubt 
 that we have here an echo of the prophetic admonition (Isa. 
 xxxv. 3), “Strengthen the feeble hands, and make firm the 
 wavering knees,” which occurs in that section of the first part 
 of Isaiah’s prophecies (ch. xxxiv., xxxv.) which has most 
 accord with that grand second part (ch. xl.-Ixvi.), so nearly 
 related in its inner spirit to our epistle. Our author repro- 
 duces here, in his own language, the original words of the 
 prophet, as in such cases (where he does not merely cite, but 
 makes the words of Scripture his own: comp. ver. 9 of this 
 chapter and x. 37 seq.) he is wont to do, without slavishly 
 binding himself to the Septuagint. Παρειμένον (ἀνειμένον) 
 is that which hangs down slack and loosely ; παραλελυμένον, 
 that which has lost its central hold and vital strength, so as 
 to be lame and motionless. Out of this condition of collapse 
 and infirmity they are to rouse, lift up, stretch out again (?) 
 the hands and knees of their inward man (1 Pet. i. 15): 
 ἀνορθοῦν may signify either “lift up” or “lift up again,” 
 ava frequently in such verbs uniting the meanings of sursum 
 and rursum.' The duty to which the writer urges his readers 
 
 1 See on this point Winer, de verborum cum prexpositionibus composi- 
 torum in N. T. usu, part iii. p. 4: cum supera ac summa etiam prima 
 sint, consueverunt Greci ea, que primum vel prius facta essent, superis 
 assimilare, ete. 
 
326 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 is courageous self-recovery in God’s strength. The tone 
 and language are elevated accordingly ; and ver. 12 is like a 
 trumpet blast. It need not surprise us, then, if our author 
 here turns poet, and proceeds in heroic measures : 
 
 Ver. 13. Yea, make straightforward paths for your feet ; 
 so that the lame be not turned from the way, but rather be 
 healed. 
 
 The first clause, καὶ τροχιὰς ὀρθὰς ποιήσατε τοῖς ποσὶν 
 ὑμῶν (tvet—+ | -ἰ τυ || τον «2--}, is a good hexameter. 
 The words are from Prov. iv. 26: ὀρθὰς τροχιὰς ποίει σοῖς 
 ποσίν. The τοῖς ποσὶν ὑμῶν is not to be rendered “ with 
 your feet,” as by Luther, Schulz, Tholuck, Bleek, De 
 Wette, Liinemann, and others,—a rendering opposed both 
 to the original text and that of the LXX. (σοῖς ποσί, not 
 ποσί cov), and against the ἵνα of the following clause. The 
 Peshito had already given the right rendering pad, “ to” 
 or ‘for your feet ;” and so now Bohme and Ebrard, the 
 latter imitating the hexameter of the Greek text: “und fir 
 euere Iiisse bereitet euch ebene Bahnen.” 'The Hebrew words 
 5x7 Saya Dep are rendered by Bertheau: “ Weigh well that 
 thou get not ie a perverted path.” But DPB as denomina- 
 tivum (from DPB) = = to weigh, occurs only once, Ps. lviii. 3; 
 in other cases (Prov. v. 6, 21; Ps. Ixxviii. 50; Isa. xxvi. 7), 
 and here (Prov. iv. 26), tis Piel signifies to roll or level, 
 or, as at Prov. v. 6, to open a way. The proper rendering 
 would therefore be: Make level or straight (i.e. without ups 
 and downs) the path of thy foot, or for thy foot, as the Sept. 
 has it. Τροχιά corresponds exactly to the Hebrew 5iyp 
 (ndiyp), signifying first the rut or groove in which the wheel 
 runs, and then a road or path generally, but not = foot- 
 track or footstep. (Comp. Prov. iv. 27 in the Sept.: αὐτὸς 
 δὲ ὀρθὰς ποιήσει τὰς τροχιάς σου, He, i.e. God, shall make 
 thy footpaths even.) Accordingly τοῖς ποσὶν ὑμῶν is to be 
 rendered here as a dative (“for thy feet”), and that is the 
 only rendering suitable for the following ἵνα. 
 
 It is universally recognised that τὸ χωλόν is to be under- 
 stood here (not like the τὸ ἀμετάθετον of vi. 17 = “the 
 
CHAP. XII. 13. 921 
 
 unchangeableness,” but) like the τὸ ἔλασσον (“the less” = 
 that which is inferior) of vii. 7 (comp. Rev. iii. 2): the 
 meaning therefore is, whatever is lame in the Christian com- 
 munity, 1.6. the lame or halting members. The figure sug- 
 gested in the first clause is evidently carried out further here. 
 Many interpreters, following Grotius (and among the latest, 
 Schulz, Heinrichs, Bleek, De Wette, Von Gerlach, Ebrard), 
 have been misled by the antithetical (a7 to give ἐκτρέ- 
 πεσθαι the sense of “ put out of joint,’—a sense attributed 
 to it as a medical term in the last edition of Passow’s Levicon, 
 without any examples being alleged in proof. But as ἐκτρέ- 
 mea Gat is used in the pastoral epistles, which have, in respect 
 of diction, so much in common with this to the Hebrews, in 
 the sense of “turning out of the right way” (1 Tim. i. 6, 
 etc.), we need not go in search of any other, especially as 
 that which is lame already does not need to be further “ put 
 out of joint” in order to stumble or make no progress. 
 Feeling this, the interpreters referred to generally propose, 
 by way of giving a sense to what would be otherwise un- 
 meaning, to insert a “fully” or “completely” before the 
 medical signification which they assign to ἐκτρέπεσθαι. But 
 surely our rendering is intelligible enough: “ So that the 
 lame be not turned from the way, but rather (δέ = imo as at 
 11. 6, and here joined with μᾶλλον as at Luke x. 20, tewt. 
 rec. = imo potius) be healed.” ” 
 
 Had, indeed, the τοῖς ποσὶν ὑμῶν of the main sentence 
 been an ablativus instrumenti (“make straight paths with 
 your feet’’), it would have been difficult to understand the 
 iva of the following clause, for the straightforward walking 
 of one portion of the community could hardly be a cause of 
 healing to the lameness of the other. But when smooth 
 straight paths are made for the feet of all walkers (τοῖς 
 ποσίν taken as a dative), the lame are materially helped 
 thereby, being saved the danger of stumbling through the 
 
 1 [Written in 1857. ] 
 
 ? Philo also says (ii. 458. 40) that a man is to keep the straight 
 path, God’s way, ὠτρωπόν, and (ii. 456.43) wd παρ᾽ ἑκάτερα ἐντρωπό- 
 Mevov. 
 
328 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 roughness of the road, and of getting off the right way alto- 
 gether; nay, it may even be hoped that, lured by the smooth- 
 ness of the path opened for them, they may be induced to 
 walk stedfastly along it, and so at length be quite cured of 
 their lameness. The thought in the writer’s mind in using 
 the figure is first “the halting between two opinions,” 
 Judaism and Christianity (comp. χωλαΐνειν, 1 Kings xviil. 
 21), in which so many of these Hebrew Christians were 
 involved, and then the turning out of the Christian path 
 altogether in sheer apostasy. Such apostasy on the part of 
 the infirm and wavering members of the Hebrew church 
 could be prevented, and their eventual healing rendered 
 possible, only by the whole community determining to make 
 their common course of Christian action a straight and level 
 one, avoiding in future those sideward turnings and alternate 
 ups and downs in favour of the synagogue to which they 
 had been accustomed. Such a straightforward course on 
 the part of the great body of the church would have a 
 wholesome orthopedic effect on the weaker members who 
 were marching with them.’ These “lame ones” of the 
 church of Palestine are related in character to the Judaiz- 
 ing ἀσθενεῖς of the Roman community. As St. Paul in 
 his epistle to the latter, which is throughout irenic in its 
 character, repeatedly urges mutual forbearance between 
 “strong” and “ weak,” and endeavours after peace, so the 
 apostolic writer here : 
 
 Ver. 14. Peace pursue with all and sanctification, without 
 which no one shall see the Lord. 
 
 Bohme and Liinemann, etc., are quite wrong in extend- 
 ing μετὰ πάντων to all men in general, as at Rom. xii. 
 18, μετὰ πάντων ἀνθρώπων εἰρηνεύοντες. Cicumenius and 
 Theophylact, among patristic interpreters, make the same 
 mistake. The real parallel (and a very good one it is) is 
 Rom. xiv. 19, τὰ τῆς εἰρήνης διώκωμεν Kal τὰ τῆς οἰκοδομῆς 
 
 1 The ancients were wont to allege this passage against the Nova- 
 tians; but without much force of argument, inasmuch as claudi are not 
 yet lapsi. 
 
CHAP. XII. 14. 329 
 
 τῆς εἰς ἀλλήλους. Individual believers are exhorted to 
 cherish peaceful relations with all members of the com- 
 munity, even with the lame, sickly, and weak. The im- 
 provement of such is to be aimed at, not by carnal conten- 
 tion, harsh acts of judgment, or uncharitable avoidance of 
 their society, nor yet by merely setting them a good example 
 in the purity and decision of our own conduct, while coldly 
 waiting for the first advance on their side towards mutual 
 explanation or agreement, but by a διώκειν εἰρήνην on our 
 own part, 1.6. by earnest, active endeavours after a good 
 understanding, a pursuing or hunting after peace as a noble 
 prey or object of search. The καὶ τὸν ἁγιασμόν is added to 
 the anarthrous εἰρήνην, like the καὶ ταῖς ὀπαῖς of ch. xi. 38, 
 and the καὶ τὴν εὐπερίστατον ἁμαρτίαν of ch. xii. 1. Our 
 author uses the article in this way when he adds the general 
 to the particular. Εἰρήνη is a divine characteristic, a part 
 of the divine ἁγιότης. We are to follow after peace because 
 God is the God of peace, enjoying the infinite manifoldness 
 of His divine plenitude in a sabbath-like εἰρήνη, of which 
 the rainbow (ἶρις from εἴρειν) with its “oneness in the 
 manifold” is the expressive symbol." The church must 
 endeavour all she can to reproduce in herself the image of 
 that divine calm in particular, and of the divine holiness 
 in general, which is itself the absolute unclouded light, and 
 the absolute all-embracing, all-reconciling love. “Aytaopos 
 (sanctification) is the appropriation by us of the divine 
 ἁγιότης (ver. 10). The sentence concludes with a relative 
 clause which in its rhythmical elevation almost becomes a 
 trimeter: οὗ χωρὶς οὐδεὶς ὄψεται τὸν Κύριον" Only holy 
 beings can rise to the sight of the Holy One. Some (e.g. 
 Bleek)’ take τὸν Κύριον here to be Christ; others (eg. 
 
 1 See on this Rocholl, Beitrdge, p. 57. Scarce anything has been 
 said more beautifully on the subject of the divine life in modern times 
 than there. 
 
 2. χωρίς follows οὗ for the sake of the rhythm. Comp. Asch. Pers. 
 321, νωῶν δέκως δ᾽ ἦν τῶνδε χωρὶς ἔκκριτος. This position of χωρίς is much 
 more common in poets, especially the tragedians, than in prose writers. 
 
 5 De Wette even maintains that this passage has nothing to do with 
 the divine (beatific) vision. 
 
330 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 Tholuck, Jiinemann) think that it cannot be decided 
 whether Christ or God. The author uses ὁ Κύριος both of 
 God (ch. viii. 2) and of Christ (ch. ii. 3). But it is to us 
 more than probable that τὸν Κύριον is here meant of God 
 (Vulg. Deum). The ὄψεται of ch. ix. 28 is not to the 
 point, for the seeing of the Son of man at His second com- 
 ing in the clouds of heaven will be common to all, good and 
 bad: every eye shall see Him. Rev. i. 7. “The Lord” 
 (ὁ Κύριος, 17’) in Scripture is the God of the covenant of 
 redemption, who reveals Himself here in grace, and will be 
 manifested “as He is” hereafter, Whenever Scripture 
 speaks of “a seeing” as the future reward of righteousness 
 or sanctity, it is a seeing God that is meant or expressed 
 (Matt. v. 8; 1 John 111. 2; comp. Ps. xvii. 15, xlii. 3); yet 
 inasmuch as the throne of God and of the Lamb is one, the 
 seeing God is at the same time a seeing of the Lamb 
 (comp. ch. vill. 1, xii. 2 with Rev. xxii. 3 seq.). 
 
 The following participial sentence goes on to say how 
 this so indispensable peace and holiness is to be striven after 
 and secured. 
 
 Ver. 15. Watching diligently lest any one falling short of 
 the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up give 
 trouble, and thereby many be defiled. 
 
 Mutual brotherly watchfulness and discipline are here 
 enjoined, and there is no official or ministerial reference in 
 ἐπισκοποῦντες. The parallel to the exhortation here is the 
 κατανοῶμεν ἀλλήλους of ch. x. 24 (comp. iii. 12 and iv. 1). 
 The question remains, whether the clause μή τίς ὑστερῶν 
 ἀπὸ Ths χάριτος τοῦ Θεοῦ is (with the ancients, followed 
 by Bohme, Tholuck, etc.) to be completed by 7, so as to 
 form a sentence by itself, or (with Heinrichs, Bleek, Liine- 
 mann, etc.) to be regarded as the subject of ἐνοχλῇ; in whose 
 place then the quasi-appositional ῥίζα πικρίας is interposed. 
 The construction μή τις ὑστερῶν 7 is by no means inadmis- 
 sible, and is favoured strongly by the following ver. 16; but 
 considering that the sacred writer was induced to proceed as 
 he does, with resumption of the μή τις, by the passage in 
 
CHAP. XII. 15. 331 
 
 Deut. xxix. 18 (μή τις ἐστὶν ἐν ὑμῖν pita ἄνα φύουσα ἐν χολῇ 
 καὶ πικρίᾳ), it seems more natural to assume that for that 
 very reason he breaks off the sentence begun with ὠή τις 
 ὑστερῶν (without adding ἐν ὑμῖν 7), in order to complete it 
 with those words from the Thorah. The congregation of 
 Israel are there warned of the danger of evil-disposed persons 
 arising among them, whose sinful lusts would incline their 
 hearts to apostasy from Jehovah (“adding drunkenness to 
 thirst”) after the idolatries of Canaan: “ lest there be among 
 you a root bearing poison-fruit or wormwood.” So we read 
 in the original text, Deut. xxix. 18. The Septuagint, 
 according to the Vatican text, renders it, μή τις ἐστὶν ἐν 
 ὑμῖν ῥίζα ἄνω φύουσα ἐν χολῇ καὶ πικρίᾳ. Even with this 
 recension of the Septuagint before him, our author might 
 have been led by the ἐν χολῇ to choose the like-sounding 
 verb ἐνοχλῇ for his twofold subject, ὑστερῶν (τις) and 
 ῥίζα. Such alteration of passages thus made use of is no 
 uncommon phenomenon in both Old and New Testament; e.g. 
 the alterations made by Jeremiah in phrases borrowed from 
 the Thorah, and the variations in the parallel passages in 
 the second Epistle of St. Peter and in that of St. Jude.’ 
 But it is also quite possible that our author had before him 
 the Alexandrine text of the Septuagint, in which case he 
 would have read thus: μή τις ἐστὶν ἐν ὑμῖν ῥίζα πικρίας 
 ἄνω φύουσα ἐνοχλῇ καὶ πικρία, and thus have found the 
 ἐνοχλῇ ready to his hand. This is Bleek’s view, who has 
 shown (i. 8369-375) that St. Paul, in his citations from the 
 Old Testament, agrees for the most part with the Vatican 
 Ms. of the Septuagint, but the author of our epistle with 
 the Alexandrine. The correctness of this view is to me, at 
 least in the present instance, exceedingly doubtful. The 
 awkward disconnected καὶ πικρία at the end of the sentence 
 in the Alexandrine text, can only be explained by supposing 
 it based on the text represented by the Vatican ms.; and the 
 
 1 eg. Jer. xlviii. 45, where the 3p 4p’ of Num. xxiv. 17 is changed 
 into SPAR; and 2 Pet. ii. 13, where ἐν ταῖς ἁπάταις ὑμῶν answers 
 
 to the ἐν ταῖς ὠγάώπαις ὑμῶν of Jude 12. Comp. Delitzsch, Comm. on 
 Habak. pp. 13, 79, 120. 
 
332 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 conjecture is obvious, that (ῥίζα) πικρίας and ἐνοχλῇ are 
 corrections foisted into the Alexandrine recension from the 
 text of our epistle. Whence, indeed, could we suppose 
 them else to have come, especially when we consider that 
 the combination ῥίζα πικρίας and the verb ἐνοχλεῖν bear the 
 stamp of a diction closely related, to say the least, to that of 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews? (Comp. χολὴ πικρίας, Acts 
 viii. 23; ἐνοχλεῖν, Luke vi. 18, in A, B, L, al.; ὀχλεῖν, Acts 
 v. 16; and παρενοχλεῖν, Acts xv. 19.) We are, moreover, 
 accustomed to similar free variations from the Septuagint in 
 this epistle, not only in passages like ch. x. 30, nearly related 
 to others in the writings of St. Paul, but elsewhere too 
 (comp. ch. xil. 12, 13, x. 37). 
 
 The danger which the apostolic writer has here in view 
 is that from a Judaizing tendency, a looking and harking 
 back to the forms and modes of thought of the now Christ- 
 hating synagogue, which he exhorts the Hebrew church, by 
 earnest mutual watchfulness, not to suffer to spring up and 
 take root among them. The motto or signature of the new era 
 which had now commenced in Christ, was ἡ χάρις τοῦ Θεοῦ 
 —grace without the works of the law,—grace, the mortal 
 enemy of all self-righteousness, of all dead works. The 
 construction ὑστερεῖν ἀπό expresses, at any rate, more de- 
 cidedly than ὑστερεῖν cum gen. a loss incurred with conscious 
 responsibility, by one’s own fault (Bohme, Liinemann). 
 ‘Tortepav τῆς χάριτος τοῦ Θεοῦ might be one who falls short 
 or loses divine grace from causes external to himself, or 
 without special note of condemnation ; ὑστερῶν ἀπὸ .. . 15 
 one who wilfully throws away the blessing, or puts himself 
 at a distance from it. Comp. Ecclus. vii. 34, μὴ ὕστερει ἀπὸ 
 KraLovTav—remove not thyself from those that weep. Now 
 follows (or, properly speaking, is substituted for the peri- 
 phrasis ὑστερῶν, «.7.r.) a second subject, the quasi-apposi- 
 tional ῥίζα πικρίας, “ root” or plant “ of bitterness,” .6. one 
 bitterly opposing himself to the true Christian faith, and who 
 is a leader astray of others from the sincerity and simplicity 
 of their Christian profession. Thus Antiochus Epiphanes is 
 called, 1 Macc. i. 10, ῥίζα ἁμαρτωλός, a sinful root, 1.6. a 
 
CHAP. XII. 16. 333 
 
 perverter of the people of God to the sin of apostasy. Such 
 poison-plant ἄνω φύουσα, shooting up, and not eradicated in 
 time, would disturb and trouble the Christian community— 
 would “ cumber” the sacred ground (ἐνοχλεῖν = ὄχλον παρέ- 
 xew, e.g. Dan. vi. 2, L.XX., ὄχλος being taken in the sense 
 of turba, molestia). The whole community is warned to be 
 on their guard, that no such plant of evil shoot up among 
 them to their serious injury, καὶ διὰ ταύτης (Lachm., Tisch., 
 δ αὐτῆς) μιανθῶσιν πολλοί (Lachm., Tisch., οἱ πολλοί)--- 
 and thereby (or, by such means, Boéhme; per talem turbulen- 
 tum hominem) many (or, the many, the larger number of the 
 church) be involved in the like pollution: they must be on 
 their guard, lest one like Esau, that alien offshoot of the 
 patriarchal family, should be found in the midst of the 
 household of faith, 
 
 Ver. 16. Lest [there be] any fornicator or profane per- 
 son like Esau, who jor one [little] meal gave up his birth- 
 right. 
 
 There is no need to take πόρνος in any other than its 
 literal sense: The figurative, that of one who idolatrously 
 breaks covenant with God (founded on Ex. xxxiv. 15 seq. 
 and Deut. xxxi. 16, the two oldest passages in Hebrew scrip- 
 ture), is not met with in the New Testament, except in the 
 Apocalypse.’ And even taking πόρνος in its literal sense, 
 we need not (with Bleek, De Wette, Bisping, Liinemann) 
 deny its application along with βέβηλος to Esau. Had the 
 sacred writer not so meant it, he must have written μή τις 
 πόρνος ἢ 7) βέβηλος. And, indeed, the tradition of the syna- 
 gogue actually represented Esau as an unchaste person,’— 
 
 1 Even ‘‘ the wicked and adulterous generation” of Matt. xii. 39 is 
 to be taken literally. Adultery was so common among the Jews in the 
 primitive Christian era, that Johanan ben Zaccai abolished the ordeal 
 of the “ water of jealousy :” Talm. Babli. Sota 47a. Magdala was 
 notorious for the prevalence of licentiousness: Talm. Jerus. Taanith 
 69a, Echa rabbathi 69da. 
 
 2See Bereshith rabba, c. 63, f. 70d, ο. 65, ἢ. 72a; Shemoth rabba, 
 ce. 1, f. 11θα ; and Rashi on Gen, xxvi. 84. The boar was the emblem 
 of Esau as the vine was of Jacob (Ps. lxxx.). In Philo, Esau is the type 
 
334 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 a view which would naturally result from his marriages with 
 Canaanitish women; for such alliances even in the patri- 
 archal time would be regarded as a sort of πορνεία (comp. 
 Gen. xxiv. 37 with xxxiv.).' Bengel’s remark, too, is good : 
 libido et intemperantia οὐδὲ affines ;—this alone is a strong 
 argument for the literal acceptation of πόρνος. The Lord’s 
 church must be on her guard, lest any bitter shoot springing 
 up in the spiritual garden disturb her sacred peace, and lest 
 any faithless member, by indulging lusts of the flesh, have 
 forfeited his own salvation, and so become like Esau, who 
 was so profane (βέβηλος), so low-minded, so utterly lost to 
 a sense of higher things, that for one poor dish he gave up 
 or sold (ἀπέδοτο, for which Lachm. and Tisch., after A, C, 
 amédeto”) τὰ πρωτοτόκια αὐτοῦ (Lachm. and Tischend. éav- 
 tov)—the rights of the first-born to a double portion of the 
 inheritance of his father (Deut. xxi. 17), and what to the 
 mind of faith was the most precious privilege of all, the 
 continuation of that patriarchal line in which were enshrined 
 the promises. For the inheritance and pastoral wealth of 
 his father he cared not, being wildly devoted to the chase, 
 and still less for the promise made to Abraham and Isaac, 
 having no eye or heart but for the immediate present. But 
 even in the case of Esau this contempt for the future and 
 unseen good ended in despair : 
 
 Ver. 17. For ye know that also afterwards, when desiring 
 to inherit the blessing, he was rejected ; for no place of repent- 
 ance did he find, although with tears he sought it earnestly. 
 
 of the worldly mind in general, and of sensuality in particular. See 
 in Gen. xxvii. 11, “Ἢ pilosus” intemperatus libidinosusque. 
 
 1 ἹΤορνείω at Acts xv. 29 is probably to be understood as including 
 incestuous unions, the Hebr. ny yp 9953 (Lev. xviii.), which again is used 
 as equivalent to πορνεία in the widest sense. 
 
 2The form ὠπέδετο, which was still regarded by Fritzsche, Bleek, 
 and Liinemann as a misspelling, has now received a wider recognition 
 in the texts of Tischendorf and Alford, even than in that of Lachmann, 
 as belonging to the diction of the New Testament. It is an early 
 example of the transmutation of verbs in ys into barytones. See Alex. 
 Buttm. Gramm. des Neutest, Sprachgebrauchs, p. 41, Mullach, p. 261. 
 
CHAP, XII. 17. oa 
 
 Ἴστε is indicative, not imperative,—the appeal being to 
 Hebrew readers perfectly familiar with the sacred history, 
 In the dependent ὅτι clause καὶ μετέπειτα ἀπεδοκιμάσθη is to 
 be taken together: “ ye know how he was also subsequently 
 rejected,’—the rejection from the blessing corresponding to 
 and requiting his own previous rejection of the birthright, 
 and καί thus connecting cause and effect. It was not till 
 after he had seen his brother receive the blessing that he 
 discerned the value of what he had so contemptuously for- 
 feited: it became to him then an object of serious desire ὦ 
 he willed then to receive as his birthright the paternal bene- 
 diction, which, as part of his birthright, he had formerly 
 thrown away. But how are we to interpret ἀπεδοκιμάσθη ? 
 By whom was Esau rejected? Bohme and Tholuck answer, 
 “by his father;” De Wette, “by God;” Bleek and Liine- 
 mann, by both—his father and God.” This last answer 
 is the right one. Isaac’s words at Gen. xxvii. 33 show this: 
 ma Wap, he (Jacob) shall also remain blessed. The aged 
 patriarch sees a divine purpose fulfilled in the blessing of 
 which he had been the blinded instrument, whereby the 
 right of the first-born is taken from Esau, and he adds his 
 own consent thereto: ὁ πατὴρ κατὰ Θεὸν ἀπεδοκίμασεν 
 αὐτόν (Theophylact). It is further a question, whether 
 μετανοίας τόπον οὐχ εὗρεν means that he found no place for 
 change of mind on his father’s part or for repentance on his 
 own. ‘The former is the view taken by Beza, Schlichting, 
 Gerhard, Seb. Schmidt, Bohme, Tholuck, Von Gerlach, 
 and Liinemann: the latter by the fathers, Luther, Calvin, 
 Grotius, Bengel, De Wette, Bleek, Hofmann; and for this 
 we decide. ‘The very fact that the other view never seems 
 to have occurred to the fathers, though it would have served 
 their purpose better in the Novatian controversy,” is a strong 
 argument against it. Had the writer himself meant this, 
 he must have written μετανοίας τοῦ πατρός to prevent being 
 mistaken by his readers, who would naturally suppose that, 
 
 1 See Note D at the end of vol. i. on the meaning of θέλειν and 
 
 βούλεσθαι. 
 See, for instance, Theodore of Mopsuestia, ap. Fritzsche, p. 171. 
 
336 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 the sin of Esau being the only one mentioned before, the 
 repentance must be that of Esau too. The very form of 
 the phrase (μετανοίας τόπον οὐχ εὗρεν) suggests the same 
 thing, if we compare the similar expression in St. Luke 
 (Acts xxv. 16), τόπον ἀπολογίας λαμβάνειν ; for the genitive 
 μετανοίας is most naturally referred to the subject of the 
 whole sentence, viz. Esau. To which we may add, that 
 even if the term μετάνοια might be applied to a change of 
 mind or regret on Isaac’s part, that is not its regular mean- 
 ing in such a connection, to express which μεταμέλεια would 
 have been more suitable. Μετάνοια in such phrases as 
 διδόναι τόπον μετανοίας (Wisd. xii. 10, and Clem. Rom. c. 7) 
 and ἔχειν τόπον μετανοίας (Tatian, Or. ὁ. Grecos, 15) is 
 personal repentance, thorough conversion and change of life 
 (nw) ; and in this profoundly ethical meaning, in contra- 
 distinction to the weaker petapédeva, it is used throughout 
 the New Testament.1 But if μετανοίας is to be here inter- 
 preted of a repentance no longer possible on Esau’s part, it 
 follows of necessity that αὐτήν in “although seeking it ear- 
 nestly with tears” (καίπερ μετὰ δακρύων ἐκζητήσας αὐτήν), 
 is to be referred to τὴν εὐλογίαν, and not to μεταν. ; for it is 
 against the historical narrative to say that Esau sought re- 
 pentance with tears, and to take penitentia in the sense of 
 venia per penitentiam would be arbitrary. That there is 
 some inconvenience in having to go so far back for the re- 
 ference of αὐτήν is true; but that is mitigated by regarding 
 μετ. Yap τόπον οὐχ εὗρε as a parenthesis, such construction 
 being not alien from the style of our author (comp. vers. 20 
 seq. of this chapter and ch. vii. 11): “Although Esau wished 
 to inherit the blessing, he was rejected (for repentance, i.e. 
 real effectual repentance, such as would have reinstated him 
 in his former position, was not vouchsafed him), although he 
 
 1 Comp. Liv. xliv. 10, penitentiz relinquere locum, and the peni- 
 tentiz hzredi locus non est of the Digests (Pandect. Justinian.), iv. 7. 3. 
 Philo says of Cain that he was incapable of repentance—od δέχεσθαι 
 peravoay ; and, in a passage already cited by Grotius (i. 129. 45), that 
 many souls wishing to avail themselves of repentance (μετανοίᾳ χρῆσθια) 
 have not been suffered to do so by God. 
 
CHAP. XII. 18-29. Bor 
 
 prayed for it (the now forfeited blessing) with tears.” Those 
 tears expressed, indeed, sorrow for his forfeiture, but not for 
 the sinful levity by which it had been incurred. They were 
 ineffectual, because Esau was incapable of true repentance. 
 The sacred writer contemplates Esau as a type of the hope- 
 lessly apostate, the unpardonable nature of whose sin he has 
 already twice depicted. It is not meant that Hsau had him- 
 self committed that sin, but his rights as first-born are com- 
 pared to those of the Christian υἱοθεσία ; and it is intimated 
 that he who, Esau-like, throws these away for the sake of 
 worldly ease, or even sensual indulgence, will find with 
 sorrow and remorse in the end, that he has lost the blessing 
 he once had a claim to, however earnestly he may now desire 
 it, and that the door of repentance is closed upon him." 
 
 Cuap. xit. 18-29. Renewed warning against apostasy: By 
 how much more glorious the revelation of the New Tes- 
 tament (which places us in living communion with the 
 world to come) 18 than the revelation made to Israel on 
 Mount Sinai, and by how much the kingdom which can- 
 not be moved bestowed on us excels in glory the terrors of 
 the shaken earth at the giving of the law, by so much 
 greater will be our punishment if found unfaithful and 
 disobedient ; seeing that the God of the New Testament, 
 as of the Old, is a consuming fire. 
 
 The exhortation to stedfastness in faith, to peace and 
 holiness, of the preceding paragraph (vers. 12-17), is now yet 
 
 ! This passage, as is well known, was a great difficulty with Luther, 
 and has been abused (e.g. in the so-called Terministic controversy) so 
 as to limit grievously the grace of God. (See Greiff, Disp. qua sistitur 
 Paulus Heb, xii. 15-17 termino salutis humane peremtorio minime favens, 
 Jene 1734.) But before this, Sebastian Schmidt had already given the 
 right solution of such a difficulty: Est hic sermo de Esavo non quemvis 
 hominem lapsum typice representante, sed peccantem in Sp. S. a quo ad 
 quemvis mortaliter lapsum negatur Novatianis consequentia. And, we 
 may add, the difference is heaven-wide between the assumption of the 
 possibility in certain cases of a judicial hardening, and that of a derminus 
 sulutis peremtorius fixed by God for all men in the present life. 
 
 VOL. Il. > ¢ 
 
338 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 more tenderly enforced in another very skilfully constructed 
 period (vers. 18-24), in which the Sinaitic revelation of the 
 Old Testament is contrasted with the Sionitic revelation of 
 the New: the one earthly, repelling, unapproachable; the 
 other heavenly and gracious, full of attractive charm, and 
 yet so high and glorious, that, as the sacred writer goes on to 
 urge (vers. 25-29), its vindications will be the more terrible 
 in the end to those by whom its invitations are neglected or 
 
 despised. 
 
 Vers. 18, 19. For ye have not drawn near to a mountain 
 that may be touched, and to a kindled fire, and to cloud-gloom, 
 and darkness, and storm, and trumpet-sound, and a voice of 
 (spoken) words, which they that heard entreated that no more 
 speech might be addressed to them. 
 
 The word ὄρει was omitted by Lachmann (and formerly 
 by Tischendorf), following the authority of mss. of the first 
 rank (A, C [and now Cod Sin.], 17, and 47), of the most 
 ancient versions (Peshito, Itala in Cod. D, Coptic, Sahidic, 
 ZEthiopic, and the Vulgate in Cod. Amiat.), and of the 
 texts of great patristic commentators (St. Chrysostom, Pri- 
 masius, and Theophylact). Without it, the opening of the 
 sentence runs thus, οὐ yap προσεληλύθατε ψηλαφωμένῳ καὶ 
 κεκαυμένῳ πυρί, which would have to be rendered (ψηλαφώ- 
 μενον not being an appropriate epithet for the element of 
 fire), “For ye have not approached a tangible (material) and 
 five-kindled object.” But as this could only mean Mount 
 Sinai, one does not see why the author should have here 
 omitted ὄρει, which stands conspicuously in the Sav ὄρει of 
 the antithesis. We must therefore regard the omission of 
 ὄρει here as due to the mistake of a scribe so far back as the 
 second century. One omission of this kind being admitted, 
 the conjecture seems not unnatural, that another may have 
 also been made in very early times, and that the sacred 
 writer really wrote μὴ ψηλαφωμένῳ dpec— a mountain that 
 could not be touched ”—with allusion to the prohibition in 
 the Thorah cited below. This conjecture, if true, would 
 also explain why he wrote ψηλαφωμένῳ instead of ψηλαφητῷ 
 
CHAP. XII. 18, 19. 339 
 
 ὄρει. But it must nevertheless be rejected. For, 1st, had 
 the sacred writer intended a direct allusion to Ex. xix. 12 
 seq., he would not have made use of a different word from the 
 θιγεῖν and ἄψασθαι employed there by the Sept.; and 2dly, 
 as he goes on to speak, ver. 20, of the unapproachableness 
 of the mountain, there was no necessity to mention it here 
 likewise. He begins more naturally with the tangible and 
 earthly character of Sinai as contrasted with the spiritual 
 Sion, and uses ψηλαφωμένῳ instead of ψηλαφητῷ, with 
 allusion to that prohibition to touch the mount which super- 
 abundantly proved its tangible and unspiritual character. 
 In like manner, he writes (ver. 26) τὰ σαλενόμενα and Ta μὴ 
 σαλευόμενα instead of σαλευτά and ἀσαλευτά, with allusion 
 to the future catastrophe that awaits the visible universe.* 
 The description adheres closely even in diction to that of 
 the Pentateuch. Most later commentators regard κεκαυμένῳ 
 πυρί as an attributive of ὄρει (Deut. v. 23, ix. 15, iv. 11), 
 “ to a mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire” 
 (Luther); but ὄρει is so placed as if carefully to guard 
 against such a construction: the Thorah also mentions (Deut. 
 iv. 36, and elsewhere) “the great fire” as a thing by itself. 
 We therefore take xex. πυρί by itself here—“ to a kindled 
 fire,’ or “to a fire that might be kindled:” so the Vulg. et 
 accessibilem ignem; and so Bengel, Kuincel, and Bisping (the 
 latter following the Vulgate). The author uses the perfect 
 κεκαυμ. rather than the present καιομένῳ, “a kindled” in- 
 stead of “a burning” fire, to note it as a thing belonging, 
 like Mount Sinai, to the material world, or as being a merely 
 transient phenomenon. The sacred writer proceeds, with 
 allusion to Deut. iv. 11 (v. 22 in Sept., expansion of v. 19 in 
 the Heb.), καὶ γνόφῳ, καὶ σκότῳ (rec.), καὶ θυέλλῃ. Τνόφος 
 = 5»), cognate with νέφος, is cloud-gloom, or a wrack of clouds. 
 
 1 It might be difficult to cite examples of the present participle used 
 in this way for the verbal adjective in τὸς. There is, however, some 
 resemblance to the way in which {yazQ. is used here in the use of 
 ὀλόμενος as equivalent to ὀλοός, in the Latin tractandus=tractabilis, and 
 in cedens, used in the sense of nachgiebig (yielding). See Nagelsb. pp. 
 
 193-195. 
 
340 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 Σ᾿ κότος = qin is elsewhere in the New Testament τὸ σκότος, 
 but here masculine, σκότῳ, for σκότει. Lachm. and Tisch. 
 read, for σκότῳ, following A, C, D*, and other authori- 
 ties [including now the Cod. Sin.], the nearly synonymous 
 but choicer word Copy. The top of the mountain, as gazed 
 on by Israel at the giving of the Thorah, burned sith! fire ; 
 lower down it was girt with dark, inpancerable cloud, out of 
 which came (according to the Sept. rendering of Spry at Deut. 
 iv. 11 and v. 22) mutterings and bursts of storm (θύελλα), 
 like pre-announcements of divine wrath. 
 
 The description continues (ver. 19): καὶ σάλπιγγος ἤχῳ, 
 καὶ φωνῇ ῥημάτων. The cad. ἤχῳ refers to Ex. xix. 16, φωνῇ 
 τῆς σάλπιγγος ἤχει μέγα ; the Pov. ῥημάτ. to Deut. iv. 12, 
 φωνὴν ῥημάτων ὑμεῖς ἠκούσατε (ye heard a voice of words, 
 but ye saw no shape, i.e. ye only heard the voice). This - 
 articulate voice (with its accompaniments), by which the ten 
 commandments were delivered to Israel, was so awful, that 
 in mortal terror the whole people entreated Moses to inter- 
 vene (Ex. xx. 18 seq.). The relative sentence, ἧς οἱ axov- 
 σαντες παρητήσαντο μὴ προστεθῆναι αὐτοῖς λόγον, resembles 
 in expression Deut. v. 25 (22) and xviil. 16 (Sept.), Why 
 should we die? for this great fire will consume us: ἐὰν προσ- 
 θώμεθα ἡμεῖς ἀκοῦσαι τὴν φωνὴν Κυρίου τοῦ Θεοῦ ἡμῶν ἔτι. 
 It is clear from this that αὐτοῖς in our text is not to be re- 
 ferred to ῥημάτων, but back to οἱ ἀκούσαντες. The active and 
 too Hebraizing προσθεῖναι (προσθεσθαι) ἀκοῦσαι is turned 
 into a passive, μὴ προστεθῆναι (αὐτοῖς λόγον, accus. ὁ. infin. 
 after μή, a genuine Greek construction; comp. Luke xx. 27), 
 governed by παρῃτήσαντο, in the sense of imploring to be 
 excused (comp. ver. 25 and Acts xxv. 11). A double par- 
 enthesis follows, setting forth, by means of two quotations 
 from Scripture, the awful character of what Israel then 
 heard and saw. 
 
 Vers. 20, 21. (For they could not bear that ordaining 
 (word), “ And if so.much as a beast touch the mountain, it 
 shall be stoned.” And so terrible was the sight, Moses said, I 
 exceedingly fear and quake.) 
 
La) 
 
 CHAP, XII. 20, 21. 341 
 
 As διαστέλλεσθαι in the N. T. has always a middie 
 sense (6.0. Acts xv. 24), and is very rarely used as a passive 
 (= to be ordained or commanded) elsewhere (e.g. 2 Macc. 
 xiv. 28, τὰ διεσταλμένα ἀθετήσει), we would apply it here 
 (with Storr, Schulz, Heinrichs) to the divine word itself, 
 personified as an adjective: they could not bear the ordaining 
 word, Let not a beast, ete. This construction suits the con- 
 text (ἔφερον) better. It was not so much the thing com- 
 manded, as the manner in which it uttered itself, that Israel 
 shrank from. The ordinance that even a beast approaching 
 the mount was to be stoned, as guilty of an act of sacrilege, 
 made the whole prohibition, which was principally aimed at 
 human presumption (Ex. xix. 12.seq.), the more terrible, and 
 therefore is the only point mentioned here. After λιθοβολη- 
 θήσεται, Erasmus added in his text, ἢ βολίδε κατατοξευθή- 
 σεται; but this superfluous and disturbing addition being 
 destitute of sufficient Ms. authority, was properly removed by 
 Griesbach and Scholz. 
 
 Now follows within the parenthesis another paren- 
 thetical citation: καὶ (οὕτω φοβερὸν ἣν τὸ φανταζόμενον) 
 Μωυσῆς εἶπεν" "Ε κφοβος εἶμι καὶ ἔντρομος. 
 
 All translators and commentators, down to Luther and 
 Calvin, take καὶ οὕτως together as beginning a new sen- 
 tence. Beza was the first to translate and interpunctuate 
 correctly : et Moses, adeo terribile erat visum quod apparebat, 
 dizit. It also spoils the construction to take the καί (with 
 Schulz and Kuineel) as marking the climax—“ yea further, 
 so terrible:” there is indeed a climax in the thought, but 
 not one outwardly expressed. Israel could not bear what 
 they heard; and Moses too, the friend of God (so terrible 
 was the manifestation), was likewise filled with fear (τὸ 
 φανταζόμενον, that which makes itself φαντόν, visible; not 
 simply τὸ φαινόμενον, that which is manifest or appears). 
 The words ἔκφοβός (Δ évpoBos) εἰμι καὶ ἔντρομος are not a 
 literal citation from the Thorah, but it is not necessary to 
 imagine (with Erasmus, Beza, Ch. F. Schmid, Heinrichs, 
 and others) that the sacred writer is here quoting from an 
 extra-canonical book. He is simply expanding Moses’ word 
 
342 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 ἔκφοβός εἰμι (Deut. ix. 19), spoken with reference indeed to 
 a different occasion, the provocation of divine wrath by the 
 sin of the calf, but here applied to the previous terrors of 
 the law-giving. “He found” (says Stier) “in those later 
 words of Moses a hint of what had been his feelings at an 
 earlier period: if he so trembled at witnessing the first 
 violation of the covenant, how must he have been filled with 
 awe and trembling when he contemplated the terror-striking 
 majesty of its first promulgation!” I am further convinced 
 that it was our author himself who added the καὶ ἔντρομος 
 here to the ἔκφοβός εἰμι of the Pentateuch, by the circum- 
 stance that ἔντρομος occurs elsewhere in the New Testa- 
 ment only at Acts vil. 32 and xvi. 29. At Ex. ii. 6 the 
 Septuagint says of Moses at the burning bush, εὐλαβεῖτο 
 καταβλέψαι ἐνώπιον tov Θεοῦ; which St. Stephen in the 
 Acts expresses thus: ἔντρομος γενόμενος οὐκ ἐτόλμα κατα- 
 νοῆσαι,----ὃ, similar use of ἔντρομος to that which we find 
 here. The manifestations of God, both at the burning bush 
 and at Mount Sinai, were manifestations by fire, of the fiery 
 or wrathful side of His essential dowa, and the one was a 
 prelude of the other. The fear which Moses speaks of at 
 Deut. ix. 19 isa fear of the offended majesty of Jehovah— 
 of that majesty which had been revealed on Sinai. 
 
 We have now been hearing what it was to which the 
 forefathers of Israel drew nigh when they entered at Sinai 
 into covenant with God. Their drawing nigh was at the 
 same time a shrinking back, a remaining at a distance. The 
 mount of divine revelation was to them unapproachable, the 
 divine voice was full of nameless terror; and yet it was only 
 the visible and tangible forms of nature through which God 
 then manifested, and behind which He hid Himself. The 
 true and inward communion with God had not yet been 
 revealed: it was necessary that the law should first bring 
 men to a painful consciousness of the hindrances opposed to 
 such communion by sin, and their longing excited and in- 
 tensified that such hindrances might be taken away. Under 
 the new covenant we have no longer a tangible mountain as 
 the place of divine revelation, and that made only from a 
 
CHAP, XII. 22—24. 313 
 
 distance; but heaven itself, a divine and supersensual world, 
 is now thrown open, and we are permitted ourselves to 
 approach there the very throne of God: it is thrown open 
 for us by the Mediator of the new covenant, and made 
 approachable by us through His atoning blood. 
 
 Vers. 22-24. But ye are come nigh unto mount Sion, and 
 unto the city of the living God, Jerusalem the heavenly,’ and 
 to myriads, the festive assembly of angels and the church of 
 the First-born enrolled in the heavens, and to God the Judge 
 of all, and to spirits of just ones made perfect, and to the new 
 covenant’s Mediator, Jesus, and to a blood of sprinkling speak- 
 ing more mightily than Abel. 
 
 The antithesis is, not that of a drawing near under one 
 covenant, and a remaining afar off under the other (comp. 
 against this the καὶ προσήλθετε of Deut. iv. 11); but that 
 of the heaven-wide difference between the objects to which 
 approach is made. Those objects were, on the one hand, 
 things dark and terrible, to which those who drew nigh 
 feared to come nearer; on the other, they are things glorious 
 and lovely, with a gracious and attractive charm. There is, 
 moreover, a clearly-marked correspondence between the pro- 
 cesses by which either covenant is established and perfected : 
 between the law-giving on Mount Sinai, and the constitution 
 of Israel thereby to be the peculiar people of God, on the 
 one hand; and, on the other, the entrance of Christ into the 
 eternal sanctuary, and the consequent admission of the whole 
 church of the redeemed into communion with the heavenlies 
 (Eph. ii. 6). Bengel was the first to observe that these 
 “ heavenlies” (ἐπουράνια), as here enumerated, form a seven- 
 fold antithesis to the seven “ earthlics” (ἐπίγεια) to which 
 ancient Israel drew nigh at Sinai. Those seven ἐπίγεια 
 were: 1. A mountain that could be touched; 2. An en- 
 kindled fire; 3. A wrack of clouds; 4. Intense darkness; 
 5. A tempest or thunderstorm; 6. The sound of a trumpet; 
 and, 7. A terrifying voice of words. We did not lay our- 
 
 1“ TecovcwAree ἐπουρωνίῳ is, by an oversight, left untranslated in the 
 original.—TR. 
 
344 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 selves out, in commenting on the previous verses (vers. 
 16-21), to establish this sevenfold enumeration; but we 
 found other and sufficient grounds for recognising the καὶ 
 κεκαυμένῳ πυρί as a separate clause, which, if so recognised, 
 makes the ἐπίγεια as here enumerated to be precisely seven 
 in number. Turning now to the ἐπουράνια of vers. 22-24, 
 we find that in any case they are not more than eight; and 
 if we may so far anticipate as to state here our conviction 
 that ἀγγέλων πανηγύρει and ἐκκλησίᾳ πρωτοτόκων will be 
 found to be subordinate notions under the general pupiacw, 
 there are, in fact, only seven ἐπουράνια. These are: 1. 
 Mount Sion; 2. The heavenly Jerusalem; 3. Myriads of 
 angels and of the first-born; 4. God the Judge; 5. Spirits 
 of just ones perfected; 6. Jesus the Mediator; and, 7. The 
 blood of sprinkling, with its better voice than that of Abel. 
 We are convinced that this sevenfold division is a real and 
 sound one, the product of correct feeling and tact on the 
 part of the sacred writer, though, it may be, with more or 
 less unconsciousness in his own mind. Isaiah’s enumeration 
 of the seven spirits (ch. xi. 1) is evidently done with a pur- 
 pose; his subsequent enumeration of the seven kinds of 
 trees (ch. xli. 19) may not be made with such evident de- 
 sion: but in neither case is the septenary division a mere 
 accident. Spiritual products follow inward and spiritual, 
 but not always consciously-operating laws. And so it is 
 here. If we compare these two groups of sevens, it is evi- 
 dent at first sight that the first and last members in the one 
 correspond antithetically to the first and last in the other,— 
 the spiritual Mount Sion to the material Mount Sinai, and 
 the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better than that of 
 Abel to the voice of words which men trembled to hear. 
 The latter antithesis may indeed be denied, but only with 
 the loss of the simplest answer to the question, Why this 
 blood of sprinkling forms in the second group the last cate- 
 gory? Bengel pursues the investigation of these corre- 
 spondences yet further, but not without over-subtlety and 
 fancifulness. We may be content with affirming the clearly 
 antithetical relationship of the first and last members of each 
 
CHAP. XII. 22-24. 345 
 
 group. Whether, however, the arrangement of the rest 
 deserves no better commendation than that of Knapp—ordo 
 sepe promiscuus est et arbitrarius, quanquam non prorsus 
 fortuitus ; or whether, as Bleek and De Wette think, the 
 arrangement would be logically better if καὶ πνεύμασι were 
 attached to καὶ ἐκκλησίᾳ, so as to give the whole clause καὶ 
 μυριάσιν three members instead of two, will be better seen 
 hereafter. 
 
 In no other passage of our epistle do interpreters and 
 commentators leave us so much in the dark as here. The 
 more we consult them in the spirit of disciples anxious for 
 enlightenment and instruction, the less we find to carry 
 away. Take Knapp, for instance, who makes the first of 
 these seven ἐπουράνια, Mount Sion, to be economia nova in 
 orbe terrarum a Christo instructa! What does that mean ? 
 Or take Bengel, at whose feet with Menken we are glad to 
 sit, on the same point: he makes Mount Sion to be sedes 
 economic Christi, and the heavenly Jerusalem to be sedes 
 aconomie Dei. What a strange distinction! As if Sion 
 and Jerusalem could thus be separated, or as if the great 
 King, of whom Jerusalem is the city, were a different One 
 from Him whose throne is in Sion. Or turn from these to 
 Steinhofer, what help do we find in him? He explains it 
 thus in discourses otherwise so rich in exegetical pearls: 
 “We are called by the gentle voice of the gospel and the 
 grace of God to another mountain. That mountain is the 
 hill of Sion, the great and high mountain, on which is 
 reared the heavenly Jerusalem, the holy city of God and of 
 the Lamb.” But is that any real explanation? It is true 
 that prophecy, both under the Old and New Testament, 
 speaks of a future Jerusalem which is to rise high above 
 all its surroundings, whereas the present Jerusalem is sur- 
 rounded by hills higher than its own (comp. Zech. xiv. 10: 
 All the land shall be turned into a plain on the south of Jeru- 
 salem) ; but that Jerusalem, though of heavenly origin, will 
 still have an earthly site, and occupy the place of its fallen 
 predecessor; the high mountain on which it will be built 
 (Ezek. xl. 2; Rev. xxi. 10) is nowhere called Sion, nor is it 
 
346 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 anyhow a scriptural mode of expression that Jerusalem 
 stands on Mount Sion, for the simple reason that that 
 would be true of a part only, the upper city. At Mic. 
 iv. 8, “the stronghold of the daughter of Sion,” .e. the city 
 of David, is said to rise above Jerusalem like a shepherd’s 
 tower, and at Ps. Ixviii. 30 the temple likewise is said to be 
 “over Jerusalem” (Dui Sy). Even C. H. Rieger, with 
 his plain sense and deep insight, gives us but little help 
 when he suggests that “ Mount Sion” is to be here inter- 
 preted in accordance with Rev. xiv. 1, where it is said to be 
 the place in which the redeemed are gathered about the 
 Lamb. Still the question recurs: What are we, with this 
 interpretation of Σ᾿ ιὼν ὄρει; to make of the following ‘Iepouca- 
 λὴμ eroupavie? Hofmann, indeed, maintains that the Σ τὼν 
 ὄρος of Rev. xiv. 1 is the church on earth, and that the 
 meaning of the vision is, that notwithstanding the rage of 
 the dragon and the two θήρια, there is still a holy place 
 and a sacred company in the midst of which the Lamb 
 vouchsafes to dwell ;—an interpretation which destroys all 
 connection between Rev. xiv. 1 and the present passage ; 
 in which Mount Sion is, as Hofmann himself recognises 
 (Schriftb. ii. 2. 128), a heavenly not an earthly locality. 
 
 The question, therefore, seems hitherto to have remained 
 unanswered—whether “ Mount Sion” and “the heavenly 
 Jerusalem” are mere emblematical names with no special 
 difference of meaning, or are themselves expressive of two 
 distinct heavenly realities? and if the latter, in what way 
 we are to distinguish them? To this question we reply, 
 that “ Mount Sion” as the antithesis of the earthly Sinai, and 
 “the heavenly Jerusalem” as antithesis and antitype of the 
 earthly city lying below the royal palace and the temple on 
 Moriah, are to be distinguished one from the other as τὰ ἅγια 
 and ἡ σκηνή at vill. 1, 2, and ix. 11, 12 (see notes there), so 
 that the heavenly Mount Sion with its celestial sanctuary, 
 and the heavenly Jerusalem, the holy city, between which 
 and the sanctuary there is no longer any wall of partition, 
 are (though distinguishable in thought and expression, yet) 
 practically and essentially one and the same. Sion is 
 
CHAP. XII. 22-24, 347 
 
 throughout the Old Testament vpn 1m, the holy mountain, 
 with which the rarely mentioned temple-mountain Moriah is 
 regarded as identical, or included with it under the same 
 designation; and in the heavenly antitype all difference 
 and distinction between palace and temple have finally dis- 
 appeared: Jehovah, who once vouchsafed to make His 
 throne here below the mercy-seat of the earthly sanctuary, 
 has now His throne of heavenly majesty in the eternal, super- 
 celestial temple, and there the High Priest after the order 
 of Melchizedek is seated in glory at His right hand. The 
 place of the throne of the King of glory is at once temple 
 and palace (comp. the wip 52.7 of Ps. xi. 4); and, in brief, 
 Mount Sion here is “the place of God” (δῷ, Mic. 1. ὃ, 
 Isa. xxvi. 21), or, more strictly speaking, “the place of the 
 divine doxa” (Ezek. iii. 12), of the φῶς ἀπρόσιτον in which 
 “the blessed and only Potentate” (1 Tim. vi. 15) dwells in 
 sacred seclusion from the world of His creatures. This 
 “place” has no fixed sensible locality, but is the self-mani- 
 festation of the essential glory of the Godhead, and is here 
 called 3uév because it is the antitype of the royal city of 
 David under the old covenant, “the place” into which the 
 Son of David, the Christ of God, the divine and human 
 Object of all the promises, has entered for us, fulfilling by 
 His session and co-session there the prophesied eternity of 
 David’s throne (comp. e.g. Isa. ix. 6 with Luke i. 32 seq.). 
 It is likewise called ὄρος, not only to indicate its elevation 
 above the created universe, but also above the heavenly 
 Jerusalem, the sacred community of all the redeemed, as 
 the bright and glorious hill rising in the midst of the holy 
 city on which the blissful gaze of the inhabitants is fixed 
 for ever. The city itself is called Jerusalem (Ἱερουσαλήμ; 
 the form of the name in St. Luke, St. Paul, and the Apo- 
 calypse’) as the city of accomplished and assured peace, 
 the object of desire to all saints under the Old Testament ; 
 and πόλις Θεοῦ ζῶντος, as being the city whose builder and 
 
 1 The other evangelists, Matthew, Mark, and John, have every- 
 
 where (except Matt. xxiii. 37) the form “Ἱεροσόλυμα. See Alex. Butt- 
 mann, Gramm. des Neutest. Sprachgebrauchs, p. 16. 
 
348 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 maker is God, the city which has in her midst the Mount 
 of Sion, and the glorious loving presence of the thrice-holy 
 King, of God and of the Lamb, and of the seven Spirits 
 which are before the throne. It is called ἐπουράνιος as 
 being supersensuous and altogether heavenly, nay, exalted 
 above all lower heavens, and therefore supra-celestial. The 
 sacred writer is here thinking of the city, in the first place, 
 apart from its inhabitants, which he goes on to enumerate. 
 
 The following verse (for ver. 23 ought to begin with the 
 words καὶ μυριάσιν ἀγγέλων) admits of various modes of in- 
 terpunctuation : 
 
 I. Kai μυριάσιν ἀγγέλων πανηγύρει, Kat. . . 
 (a) Καὶ μυριάσιν, ἀγγέλων πανηγύρει, καὶ . « « 
 (6) Καὶ μυριάσιν ἀγγέλων, πανηγύρει, καὶ. .. 
 II. Καὶ μυριάσιν ἀγγέλων, πανηγύρει καὶ . .. 
 III. Καὶ μυριάσιν, ἀγγέλων πανηγύρει καὶ . .. 
 
 The first interpunctuation (I. καὶ μυριάσιν ἀγγέλων πανη- 
 γύρει, Kab...) is that of Erasmus and of Tischendorf in the 
 edition of 1849. It is inexact, and leaves the internal rela- 
 tions of the words to one another undetermined. It would 
 require such a reading as that of D*, καὶ μυρίων, or καὶ 
 μυριάδων. The ambiguity is removed by the two following, 
 (a) and (8); the former of which makes ἀγγέλων πανηγύρει 
 in apposition with μυριάσιν : and to countless thousands, a 
 festive gathering of angels. (‘This interpunctuation is that of 
 Griesbach and Kuinoel). The other mode (8), καὶ pup. 
 ἀγγέλων, πανηγύρει, makes πανήγ. in apposition with pup. 
 ayy.: and to myriads of angels, a festive gathering. (This 
 is in accordance with the interpretation of Gicumenius and 
 Theophylact.) Very little objection can be made to (a), 
 except that it makes καὶ μυριάσιν too isolated; but (8), 
 which isolates πανηγύρει, is a very tasteless division. The 
 second form of interpunctuation (II. καὶ μυριάσιν ἀγγέλων, 
 πανηγύρει καὶ . . . = and to myriads of angels, to the festive 
 gathering and church of the first-born, etc.) is that of the 
 Elzevirs, Beza, Joannes Gregorius, and Matthei; making 
 a new member of the sentence begin with πανήγυρις. This 
 
CHAP. XII. 22-24, 349 
 
 [which is also the punctuation followed by the English 
 Authorized version] is likewise adopted by two modern com- 
 mentators, Liinemann and Hofmann: the former remarking 
 that πανήγυρις here denotes the totality of the redeemed as 
 a festive gathering, while ἐκκλησία designates them as a 
 united society. Hofmann observes (Schrz/tb. 11. 2. 129) that 
 πανήγυρις is the equivalent of the Hebrew myy or ΠῚ 
 (“solemn assembly”), 6.9. Joel i. 14, and ἐκκλησία of Sap,— 
 the one denoting an assembly for worship, the other a poli- 
 tically ordered community. But the combination Sap) moyy 
 is nowhere met with in the Old Testament, and my is only 
 once rendered by πανήγυρις in the LXX.; and there is this 
 further against thus connecting πανήγυρις with ἐκκλησία, that 
 it disturbs the symmetry of the sentence, of which every other 
 member begins with καί. It only remains, therefore, to take 
 the third interpretation, which is that of Bengel, Lachmann, 
 and Theile, viz. καὶ μυριάσιν, ἀγγέλων πανηγύρει καὶ exk., 
 κιτιλ. : “ And to myriads, the festive assembly of the angels, 
 and the church of the first-born.” Bleek also decides in its 
 favour with the pertinent remark, that this punctuation is 
 the only one which assigns its proper significance to μυριάσιν 
 placed thus in the foreground. The sacred writer first says, 
 Ye are come unto myriads, and then defines of what those 
 myriads consist, namely, of angels in the first place (comp. 
 Deut. xxxiil. 2), and of the true Israel in the second (comp. 
 Num. x. 36). Πανήγυρις is a solemn assembly of a whole 
 people, especially on some festive occasion; and Ambrose 
 renders accordingly, e¢ decem millibus letantium angelorum 
 (Augustine, evuliantium). The angelic life in the divine 
 presence is a never-ceasing festival; the angel choirs are re- 
 presented in Scripture as perpetually engaged in antiphonal 
 songs of praise, or in movements of a sacred dance to heavenly 
 music ;* for, though incorporeal and without bodily organs, 
 they are yet not formless nor incapable of expressing them- 
 selves in manifold ways towards God and one another. 
 
 With these myriads of angels the sacred writer associates 
 other myriads, those of the church of the first-born—éx«rynola 
 
 1 Cant. vii. 1 [A. V. vi. 13]. 
 
350 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 πρωτοτόκων ἀπογεγραμμένων ἐν οὐρανοῖς. The ordo verborum 
 (ἀγγέλων πανηγύρει καὶ ἐκκλησίᾳ πρωτοτόκων) is chiastic. 
 But who are these πρωτότοκοι ἢ and why are they thus 
 associated with the angels? And further, why is “ God the 
 Judge of all” named between “ the church of the first-born” 
 and “the spirits of just men made perfect?” These three 
 closely connected questions form together one of the most 
 difficult enigmas of our epistle. De Wette, regarding the 
 πρωτότοκοι (like many other interpreters) as the first-fruits 
 of Christianity (Rev. xiv. 4; 2 Thess. ii. 13), or of the whole 
 creation (Jas. 1. 18, comp. the context of Rom. viii. 23), 
 defines them to be “the dead in Christ, especially those per- 
 haps who have been glorified with the martyr’s crown, and 
 who are now associated as the first-born of the church with 
 the other sons of God in blissful communion with God and - 
 His Christ (ch. xiii. 7, comp. x. 32).” This interpretation, 
 so far as it identifies the πρωτότοκοι (followed by κριτῇ Θεῷ 
 πάντων) with the martyrs, might be thought to find some 
 support in Rey. vi. 9 seq., where the souls of them that have 
 been slain διὰ τὴν μαρτυρίαν ἣν ἔσχον appeal to the just 
 judgment of God; but De Wette rightly abstains from such 
 reference, as there is no such connection of ideas in the 
 present passage. The interpretation is further rendered 
 inadmissible by the ἀπογεγραμμένων ἐν οὐρανοῖς. It is those 
 who are still living here on earth to whom our Lord says 
 (Luke x. 20), χαίρετε ὅτι τὰ ὀνόματα ὑμῶν ἐγράφη (Tisch. 
 ἐγγέγρωπται) ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς. The first-born are here 
 designated by a term familiar to St. Luke (comp. Luke ii. 1, 
 iii. 5) as enrolled in the heavenly registers; but he whose 
 name is entered in the bock of life is not yet, according to 
 the uniform usage of Scripture, in full possession, but still in 
 the condition of one ordained εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον, Acts ΧΗ]. 48 
 (comp. Isa. iv. 3): eternal blessedness is sealed to and en- 
 tailed upon him. For this reason we cannot consider the 
 πρωτότοκοι here as identical with the 144,000 gathered about 
 the Lamb on the heavenly Sion in Rev. xiv.; the sacred 
 name which they bear upon their foreheads belonging to 
 their insionia of glory, and not merely constituting their 
 
CHAP. XII. 22-24. 01 
 
 title to it. For the same reason it is equally, nay, still 
 more inadmissible, to identify them with the patriarchs and 
 saints of the Old Testament, as Liinemann does, making the 
 “spirits of just men perfected” to designate the departed 
 saints of the Christian dispensation. We conclude, there- 
 fore, that by ἐκκλησία πρωτοτόκων the present living church 
 is meant. And this interpretation is further supported by 
 the following considerations: (1) It accounts for the use of 
 the term ἐκκλησία, which is always applied in Scripture to 
 the religious community here on earth. (In Ps. Ixxxix. 6, 
 Sept., the ἐκκλησία ἁγίων are not angels, but men.) (2) It 
 accounts for the use of the epithet ἀπογεγραμμένων ἐν 
 ovpavots, designating that which is here the chief point, the 
 invisible, heavenly character of the true church of the New 
 Testament. (3) It accounts, further, for the use of the term 
 πρωτοτόκων to designate Christians, a term suggested by 
 the previous warning not to be like Esau who despised his 
 πρωτοτύκια, or, as Kuinoel expresses it, ut Christiant contra 
 ἀπιστίαν muniantur et bona sua (τὰ mpwrToToKia αὐτῶν) nosse 
 discant. The sacred writer is not here making a distinction 
 between Christians of an earlier and a later generation, but 
 he calls all Christians as such, and as heirs of the heavenly 
 inheritance, πρωτότοκοι; not without a possible allusion to the 
 ancient rights of the first-born to priesthood and royalty, so 
 that the term itself may be a hint of what St. John expresses, 
 Rey. 1. 6, ἐποίησεν ἡμᾶς βασιλείαν, ἱερεῖς τῷ Θεῷ καὶ πατρὶ 
 αὐτοῦ. The spiritual right of primogeniture in Christians is 
 here set in contrast to the right of the first-born in Israel, and 
 the church of the New Testament is contrasted with that of 
 the Old: all members of the one have those πρωτοτόκια as a 
 personal and individual right which belong only to certain 
 individuals in the other, and the first-born who compose the 
 church are not enrolled, like those of Israel (Num. iii. 42), 
 in an earthly register, but in heaven itself. (4) This inter- 
 pretation will also account for the myriads of angels and the 
 myriads of the first-born being thus classed together, the one 
 being, according to ch. i. 14, λειτουργικὰ πνεύματα who 
 minister to the other. The heavenly πανήγυρις and the 
 
352 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 earthly ἐκκλησία are thus intimately combined. (5) Finally, 
 this interpretation will account for the subsequent clause, 
 καὶ κριτῇ Θεῷ πάντων, the key to which is found in the 
 κύριος κρινεῖ τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ of ch. x. 30. The mention of 
 the ecclesia militans suggests the thought of her enemies 
 and persecutors, who by allurements and threatenings would 
 make her untrue to her faith, and of the just Judge, who is 
 God of all things and all creatures (πάντων is here to be 
 taken as a neuter), to whom she may confidently commit her 
 cause, because standing in so intimate and filial a relation to 
 Him. He who is thus in communion with the Judge and 
 God of all may expect from Him a righteous vindication 
 against all wrong-doers and oppressors. The very word 
 προσεληλύθατε implies indeed an entrance into intimate 
 communion with the things and persons named. And how | 
 naturally follows the clause, καὶ πνεύμασι δικαίων TeTeevw- 
 μένων It is the spirits of the perfected righteous who are 
 the chief witnesses to and partakers of the comfort derived 
 from communion with the righteous Judge. The persons 
 meant are neither exclusively the righteous of the new dis- 
 pensation (Bengel, Rieger, Ltinemann, etc.) nor (nay, still 
 less) exclusively those of the old (Bleek, De Wette), but 
 both together (Béhme, Kuinoel, Tholuck, Bisping), all the 
 righteous, accounted such before God, from Abel (ch. xi. 4) 
 onwards, but persecuted and treated as criminals by the 
 world. They are now πνεύματα; spiritual beings freed from 
 the assaults and defilements of the flesh, and τετελειωμένοιυ, 
 “ perfected ones,” who have attained the end and purpose of 
 their calling and of their endeavours, the way of suffering 
 along which they marched to reach it now lying for ever- 
 more behind them. The meaning of δικαίων τετελειωμένων 
 is not that their righteousness is now perfected (Luther), 
 but that the divine purpose concerning them is now fully 
 attained. And this their “ perfection” is the work of Christ, 
 obained by Him in the way of suffering and obedience for 
 all who follow Him. He is the ἀρχηγός of σωτηρία and 
 δόξα to them all (ch. 11. 10, v. 7-9, vii. 28). And this was 
 the case even with the saints of the Old Testament. “ With- 
 
CHAP, XII. 22—24. 303 
 out us,” as we read ch. xi. 4, “they could not be perfected.” 
 Their perfection was brought to them by the descending and 
 ascending Jesus (Eph. iv. 10). This connection of thought 
 is implied in the following clause: καὶ διαθήκης νέας μεσίτῃ 
 ᾿Ιησοῦ. As the thought of the militant and suffering church 
 on earth led to that of the Judge, the God of all, by whom 
 their wrongs would be one day avenged, so that of the spirits 
 of the just made perfect in heaven to the thought of Him 
 to whose redeeming saving work they owed their perfecting. 
 
 And to the Mediator of a new covenant, Jesus. Instead of 
 the καινῆς of ch. ix. 15 we read here νέας, which is elsewhere 
 used occasionally as the antithesis of παλαιός (comp. Luke 
 v. 39; 1 Cor. v. 7; and especially Col. iii. 9 seq.). We 
 have already remarked on ch. viii. 13 that καινός corresponds 
 to the Latin novus, véos to recens. The covenant is called 
 véa as of recent formation, and also as of ever fresh and 
 vigorous youth in contrast to the old, which was now anti- 
 quated and about to disappear. The Mediator of this cove- 
 nant is called “ Jesus.” The sacred writer loves that name, 
 and by it designates the Lord both as the Perfected One (ch. 
 ii. 9, 10) and the Perfecter (ch. xii. 2), and again (ch. vii. 
 22) as the jidejussor or Surety of the better covenant. The 
 name Jesus is in itself more significant than that of Christ, 
 containing as it does the divine name Jehovah, and desig- 
 nating the divine work accomplished by the incarnate Son as 
 the work of salvation. The sacred writer, therefore, expressly 
 calls the Mediator of the new covenant to which we belong 
 by this His saving name, and lays especial emphasis upon it, 
 as the highest pledge of the grace and glory of the covenant 
 at the head of which He stands. 
 
 The mention of the covenant is naturally followed by 
 that of the blood which sealed it.—And to the blood of 
 sprinkling speaking more mightily than Abel. We read above 
 (ch. ix. 18, 22) that no διαθήκη is inaugurated without blood, 
 and no forgiveness of sin vouchsafed without bloodshedding. 
 As Moses, the mediator of the Old Testament, finds an 
 infinitely exalted antitype in Jesus, the Mediator of the New 
 Testament, so the blood of sprinkling under the one, by 
 
 VOL. II. 2 
 
354 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 which the covenant was sealed at the foot of Sinai, finds its 
 antitype in another sprinkling of blood sealing a new cove- 
 nant under the other (ch. ix. 19). It is common to the 
 blood-sprinkling under both Testaments that it is the medium 
 whereby the apprehension of the promises proper to either 
 covenant is realized. Both sprinklings (as is implied in the 
 very word ῥαντισμός) subserve a gracious purpose on the 
 part of the Maker of the covenant. The otherwise ill- 
 supported reading of the teat. rec. κρείττονα (“ better things”) 
 is therefore unnecessary ; and the meaning of κρεῖττον λα- 
 λοῦντι is simply that the gracious-speaking blood of Jesus is 
 more powerful, more penetrating, more prevailing, than the 
 voice of martyred Abel’s blood calling for vengeance on his 
 slayer (παρὰ τὸν "Αβελ, or, according to another reading, 
 mapa To” ABeX = τὸ Tov” ABerX: comp. ch. ix. 4, xi. 30, etc.)._ 
 The blood of Jesus is not merely the blood of a righteous 
 man whom God does not forget even when dead, but the 
 blood of One who has passed through death into the imme- 
 diate presence of God, and is now seated on a mediatorial 
 and high-priestly throne. The antithetic parallelisms in this 
 passage began with the spiritual Mount Sion opposed to the 
 tangible Mount Sinai; they now conclude with the blood of 
 sprinkling speaking more mightily than Abel’s, opposed to 
 the φωνὴ ῥημάτων, ἧς οἱ ἀκούσαντες παρῃτήσαντο μὴ προσ- 
 τεθῆναι αὐτοῖς λόγον. That the sacred writer is fully 
 conscious of this antithesis is evident from the following 
 verse : 
 
 Ver. 25. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if 
 they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much 
 more shall not we escape, tf we turn away from him that 
 speaketh from heaven. 
 
 The word βλέπετε is spoken, as it were, with the warn- 
 ing of an upraised finger, and is not only more energetic, 
 but seems to be brought more closely home to the reader, 
 than if οὖν, igitur, or some other inferential particle had been 
 added (as to this, see notes on ch. ui. 12); for if it ran 
 βλέπετε οὖν, it might be imagined that the warning was 
 
CHAP. XII. 25. 355 
 
 connected with od yap προσεληλύθατε . « . ἀλλὰ προσελη- 
 AVOate,—that which is general in the antithesis thus taking 
 precedence of mere details. But as βλέπετε stands alone, 
 it is evident that the author looks upon “ him that speaketh,” 
 whom he warns his readers not to refuse, as standing in 
 the closest connection with the blood that speaketh, the 
 blood of the Mediator of the new covenant, mentioned. in 
 the verse preceding. But that which follows, giving the 
 grounds for this warning, appears to oppose any such con- 
 nection. Yor (1) although some might imagine that it was - 
 Moses who, as ὁ ἐπὶ γῆς χρηματίζων, is contrasted with Jesus 
 (e.g. Chrys.: τίνα λέγει ; ἐμοὶ δοκεῖ Μωυσῆν), this view must 
 at once appear to be untenable ; for the hypothetical antece- 
 dent, εἰ yap ἐκεῖνοι οὐκ ἔφυγον (Recept., Griesb., Kn., Theile; 
 on the contrary, Lachm., Tischend., according to A,C, .. . 
 ἐξέφυγον) τὸν ἐπὶ (τῆς, Recept., expunged by Griesb.) γῆς 
 παραιτησάμενοι χρηματίζοντα; or, as with Lachm., Tischend., 
 according to A, C, D, M, the words are to be placed, ἐπὶ γῆς 
 παραιτησάμενοι τὸν χρηματίζοντα (a favourite hyperbaton 
 with our author; see note on ch. ix. 15) ;—this hypothetical 
 antecedent, I say, refers most unquestionably to ver. 19 (ὁ), 
 in which God and not Moses is the object of the παραιυτεῖ- 
 σθαι; for the people, on the contrary, entreated to have Moses 
 as χρηματίζων, declining to hear directly the divine and too 
 terrible φωνὴ ῥημάτων. The sense of the ἔφυγον or ἐξέφυ- 
 yov is, that in spite of their refusal they were not able to 
 escape, but had to meet, as best they could, the divine 
 voice. But even if we allow that ἐκφεύγειν. (φεύγειν) means 
 the same as in ch. ii. 3 (if they did not escape punish- 
 ment), inasmuch as the author, looking at the fact that they 
 desired to have nothing to do with the divine voice, finds 
 prefigured therein their subsequent refractoriness against 
 the revealed will of God (Bl.),—still this freer interpretation 
 of the reference to ver. 19 makes God Himself, and none 
 other, “ Him that spake upon earth.” On the other hand, 
 (2) it appears to be no less untenable to understand Jesus 
 as the λαλῶν. For the λαλῶν is unquestionably the same 
 person who is afterwards called ὁ ἀπ᾽ οὐρανῶν, sc. ypy- 
 
356 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 patifov. But how can Jesus be the speaker from heaven, 
 to whom the shaking of the earth at the giving of the law 
 is ascribed in ver. 26? There is, indeed, a pre-existence of 
 Jesus in Old Testament history, but latent as regards any 
 manifested presence. But placing the giving of the law and 
 the terrible phenomena of nature which accompanied it in 
 connection with the pre-existence of Jesus would be a most 
 confused idea, and the context in which the author expressed 
 it would render the confusion still worse. Also, if Jesus is 
 to be looked upon as λαλῶν, how unseemly the climax would 
 be: πολλῷ (Lachm., Tisch., πολὺ) μᾶλλον ἡμεῖς, sc. οὐκ 
 ἐκφεύξομεθα, how much more shall we not escape! equivalent 
 to: how much less shall we escape! (Winer, p. 557.) That 
 the speaking of Jesus should be less to be refused than the 
 speaking of God, or that the opposition to Jesus’ speaking | 
 should be followed by more unavoidable punishment than 
 the opposition to God’s speaking, would be a fundamentally 
 mistaken proposition, based on an entirely unscriptural view 
 of the mutual relations between Jesus and God. How then 
 are we to understand it? If ὁ ἐπὶ γῆς χρηματίζων cannot 
 be Moses, and also ὁ λαλῶν and consequently ὁ am’ οὐρανῶν 
 χρηματίζων cannot be Jesus; and if, on the other hand, τὸν 
 λαλοῦντα must stand in connection with αἵματι pavt. xp. 
 λαλοῦντι παρὰ Tov’A.—what are the antitheses intended by 
 the author? Grotius affords us the correct hint as to where 
 we are to look for them: “ Non distinguit eum cui parendum 
 sit, sed modum quo is se revelavit.” “ He that spake on 
 earth” is God on Sinai, and He that speaketh from heaven 
 is God in Christ. This is the view of most modern exposi- 
 tors; but the question why God in Christ is styled ὁ ἀπ᾽ 
 οὐρανῶν is answered in various ways. By no means is it, 
 because Christ came down from heaven, .6. did not enter 
 humanity in the natural human mode (Thol.); or, because 
 the interpreter whom God sent us was the Son of God, and 
 not a mere man like Moses on Sinai (Liinem.) ; for, since 
 the Son of God appeared ἐπὶ γῆς, but God spake on Sinai,’ 
 
 1 Hence the words ὉΠ jo MINA, proverbial in the language of 
 the synagogue, that the Thorah is of heavenly origin. 
 
CHAP, XII. 25. B08 
 
 ἐξ οὐρανοῦ (Ex. xx. 22; Deut. iv. 36; Neh. ix. 13), without 
 coming down into the midst of Israel, the conception of 
 the contrast would be a wrong one. De Wette also is of 
 opinion that the construction of the contrast is not quite 
 suitable on account of Christ having actually appeared upon 
 earth. The contrast is, however, in fact, as suitable as pos- 
 sible, if only it be rightly understood. “The author intends 
 to say ”—this is Bleek’s final conclusion—“ that God mani- 
 fested Himself to the people of Israel on earth by causing 
 His law to be announced to them by angels on Sinai, but 
 now speaks to us continually from heaven through the 
 Saviour exalted to His right hand.” This is at least an 
 intimation of the true view. We are not now considering 
 the earthly ministry of Christ in the days of His flesh, the 
 ἀρχὴ of the history of salvation, which is spoken of in ch. i. 
 2,i1.1-4. The Sinaitic manifestation of God belonging to 
 past times, and the revelation of God continually made to 
 Christ’s church, are here contrasted with one another. In 
 the former case, it was He who had come to earth who 
 spake to Israel: but, He through whom God speaks to us, is 
 He that has ascended up to heaven, who, after His ministry 
 on earth had ceased, was exalted to heaven above all (Hofm. 
 Entst. p. 847). In the former case, having come down 
 
 1 Also in Jobn iii. 31, De Wette considers the antithesis inaccurate, 
 but in this case, as in the one we are considering, from not understand- 
 ing it. All that John says in this passage about himself as being dif- 
 ferent from Jesus the Son of God, applies in the strictest sense to John 
 as a prophet. A prophet does not come down from heaven, but is 
 raised from the earth to the position which he fills without being re- 
 moved from the earth. He brings with him no knowledge of heavenly 
 things, but this knowledge comes down to him from above ; and, inas- 
 much as he does not receive these heavenly things without a certain re- 
 fraction of the earthly atmosphere, and his apprehension of the Infinite 
 is only its reflection in the finite, his prophesying still remains a λαλεῖν 
 ἐκ τῆς γῆς. But, contrary to this, the testimony of Jesus is that of 
 a heavenly person, who has not merely had the heavenly things made 
 visible and audible to Him, but has Himself seen and heard them ere 
 Ile came down to earth. If, in the passage we are considering, Moses 
 and Jesus were contrasted with each other, the antithesis would be of 
 a similar kind, 
 
358 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 upon the summit of the material mount, God employed the 
 darkness, the fire, and the storm, both to manifest and also 
 to veil Himself, and made Himself audible in the fearful 
 roar of the φωνὴ ῥημάτων which could not be escaped from. 
 But in the latter case, heaven itself, which has been disclosed 
 and made attainable to us by Jesus, the Mediator of the new 
 covenant, and consequently the kingdom of light, love, and 
 peace now opened to us, is the place from which God speaks 
 to us in the αἷμα pavticpot which speaks powerfully, but with 
 the power of love,—in the blood which has opened for our 
 High Priest, and for us through Him, a way into the heavenly 
 holiest of holies (ch. ix. 12, x. 19),—in the blood which He shed 
 for us here below as if in the temple-porch, still, however, 
 again assuming it with the aim of offering the sacrifice of 
 Himself in the sanctuary (ch. viii. ὃ, ix. 25),—in the blood 
 which is sprinkled from heaven on our hearts (ch. x. 22 ; 
 1 Pet. i. 2), and purifies our consciences (ch. ix. 14). Now 
 if the Israelites, although they refused Him that was audible 
 on earth, were nevertheless, after Moses’ intervention as 
 mediator, compelled to remain on Sinai and to meet the 
 fearful phenomena which accompanied the divine speaking : 
 how much less shall we escape, if we turn away from Him 
 that makes Himself audible from heaven! (ἀποστρέφεσθαι 
 twa, as if ἀποτρεπεσθαι, aversari aliquem; v. Kiihner, 
 § 551, note 3.1) The question now arises, what the terrible 
 things will be, which we also shall not escape, but shall be 
 compelled against our will to endure, if we refuse to hear 
 the voice of God the Saviour in the same way as the Israel- 
 ites refused the voice of God the Lawgiver. This question is 
 answered in vers. 26-29. Just as the Old Testament mani- 
 festation of God was accompanied by a shaking of the earth, 
 so also is the New Testament revelation; but it will be of a 
 different and more comprehensive character, and by it the 
 heavenly kingdom will be brought into realization, and all 
 those to whom God’s heavenly voice in the gospel is repug- 
 nant will be buried under the ruins of the old world. 
 
 1 Theile’s interpretation incorrectly places a note of interrogation 
 after ὠποστρεφόμενοι, as if it had been πέσῳ and not πολλῷ. 
 
CHAP. XII. 26. 359 
 
 Ver. 26. Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he 
 hath promised, saying, Yet once more 1 shake not the earth 
 only, but also the heaven. 
 
 On the occasion of the lawgiving from Sinai, which was 
 only an earthly, temporal self-attestation, and a preparatory 
 representation of the salvation of the future in the new birth 
 of Israel as a national community, God spake ἐπὶ γῆς and 
 shook τὴν γῆν. The sentence takes the form of a penta- 
 meter: οὗ ἡ φωνὴ τὴν γῆν ἐσάλευσε τότε. In the Sept. 
 account of the giving of the law this shaking of the earth 
 is not mentioned; for at Ex. xix. 18 (“the whole mount 
 quaked greatly”) the LXX. rendering has λαός instead of 
 ὄρος. But the sacred writer’s knowledge of Holy Scripture 
 was not (as we have seen) derived exclusively from the 
 LXX.; and, moreover, the fact that in the giving of the 
 law on Sinai the earth shook at the presence of Jehovah is 
 elsewhere attested. The word chosen to describe the shaking 
 (ἐσάλευσε) points us to Deborah’s song (Judg. v. 4, 5: γῆ 
 ἐσείσθη... ὄρη ἐσαλεύθησαν ; 5} = 1H from oot), The 
 τότε is contrasted with the νῦν. Instead, however, of going 
 on with νῦν δὲ ére ἅπαξ σείσει, x.7.X., the author prefers to 
 continue with the prophetic words (Hagg. 11. 6) which give 
 assurance of this event of the last times, introducing them 
 with νῦν, as he is able to do, because they not only promise 
 something which applied to New Testament times and was 
 then valid, but also were issued in the times of the second 
 temple, and therefore on the threshold, as it were, of both 
 the Old and New Testament wons. ᾿Επήγγελται --- that 
 is, God, who once made Himself heard on earth, but now 
 from heaven—is perf. pass., in a medial signification, as in 
 Rom. iv. 21; λεγῶν -- ΝΟ, as Luke i. 63, and frequently 
 in the New Testament, especially in Luke. The divine 
 promise thus introduced was given through Haggai in sor 
 rowful times. A new temple had arisen out of the ruins of 
 the old, but those who had beheld the temple of Solomon 
 were compelled to mourn; the house of David had again 
 come out of their prison, but had only attained to a dominion 
 in subordination to the Persian empire. At a time like this, 
 
360 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 which seemed to frustrate the highly-raised hopes of the 
 returned captives, Haggai predicted, in regard to this poor 
 temple, that it was destined to be the place of Jehovah’s 
 final manifestation; and, in regard to the fallen house of 
 David, that, whilst the thrones of the Gentiles should be 
 overthrown, this house should, as Jehovah’s signet, outlast 
 them all. In the development of the plan of salvation, it 
 was Haggai’s special vocation to predict that the great con- 
 summation was to be attached to the second temple, and the 
 world-wide rule of the house of David to be realized in the 
 line of Zerubbabel. But when the prophets prophesy of the 
 last times, they all agree in representing the final manifes- 
 tation of God’s power as the transcendent antitype of that 
 which once took place during the period of the Mosaical 
 deliverance (Mic. vii. 15). As, according to Hab. iii., when 
 Jehovah shakes the kingdoms of the world, the earth is © 
 shaken as it was when He advanced towards His people 
 coming out of Egypt and met them on Sinai; so also 
 Haggai (ch. ii. 6 f.) predicts a shaking of the whole crea-. 
 tion and of the world of nations, by which the house of God 
 shall become an assembling-place for the nations and their 
 noblest possession, and the house of David shall be God’s 
 signet, which is henceforth inseparably borne by Him, and 
 with which He henceforth seals inviolably all that He or- 
 dains in the world.’ ‘ Yet once, it is a little while, and I will 
 shake (σείσω, for which in our passage, rightly, σείω) the 
 heavens, and the oe and the sea, and the dry land; and I will 
 shake all nations.” The time mentioned, Ἱ 87 DyD ΤΠ Thy, 
 is amplified from } Oyo Thy (Hos. i. 4), aa declares, as Hit- 
 zig and Hofmann (Weiss. i. 330) rightly understand it, two 
 different points: (1) That the period between the now and 
 the predicted great change of the world will be only one 
 period—that is, one uniform epoch—which will not be again 
 divided into several others; and (2) that this epoch will be 
 a short one. Our author omits “the sea” and “the dry 
 land,” and lays an emphasis on the word “ heaven” by add- 
 
 1 Similarly, but somewhat differently, in Hofmann (Schriftb. ii. 2. 
 590 f.). 
 
CHAP. XII. 26. 361 
 
 ing ov μόνον... . ἀλλὰ, in order to place the great final 
 event in a position of superiority in the contrast with the 
 former event on Sinai. In his rendering of the words 
 x’ ΡΟ mmx Ty, he follows the LXX., the ἔτε ἅπαξ of 
 which (nnw as e.g. Ex. xxx. 10) has against it the xn pyn, 
 which is perhaps on this account left untranslated : he does 
 not, however, refuse to make use of it; for the event which 
 the prophet predicts is, in fact, that in which the commence- 
 ment on Sinai—the theocratical national relation which then 
 began (expressed for the first time, Ex. xv. 17, 18, cf. xix. 5) 
 —was finally consummated. Added to this, the catastrophe 
 which Haggai predicts is predicted by other prophets not 
 only as the destruction of the former heavens and the former 
 earth and the creation of new (Isa. Ixv. 17, cf. xix. 5), but 
 also as the repetition on a grander scale of the event on 
 Sinai ; for, e.g., according to Zech. xiv., it will come to pass, 
 that Jehovah will be King of all the earth (ver. 9), when 
 He appears, and all the saints with Him (ver. 5), as He had 
 appeared on Sinai with ten thousands of saints (Deut. 
 xxxiii. 2). We need not (with Hengst.’) assume to the 
 credit of our author that he does not notice further the ἔτι 
 ἅπαξ of the prophecy, but only reverts to it in ver. 27 by 
 quoting its accidental commencement; but, on the other 
 hand, we willingly allow that his allegation of proofs does 
 not entirely stand or fall with the ἔτη ἅπαξ of the LXX. 
 For Haggai, at all events, says that the kingdom of God, 
 in its New Testament, world-embracing glory, will proceed 
 from an universal shaking of the world. And if the pro- 
 phet’s words, ὙΠ ΠΝ. ὉΠ ΤΙΣ vA oN, are compared with 
 the NWN WS of Deborah’s song, it is evident that this shak- 
 ing of the earth at the time of Moses was only a limited 
 prefigurative commencement, in comparison with the much 
 mightier one which will take place at the end of time. The, 
 as it were, polar relation of the final consummation of the 
 kingdom to the foundation of the kingdom on Sinai is a 
 matter of fact. The author now hails the ἔτει ἅπαξ as an 
 
 1 Christology (edit. 1), iii. 351, after an unprejudiced explanation of 
 Haggai’s words in their own connection. 
 
362 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 appropriate expression to describe the mutual relation of the 
 two homogeneous events. In this sense he continues : 
 
 Ver. 27. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the re- 
 moving of those things that are shaken, as of things that are 
 made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. 
 (Or) And the word, “ Yet once more,” signifieth the change of 
 those thinas which may be shaken, as made in order that those 
 things which cannot further be shaken may remain. 
 
 When God yet once more shakes not the earth only, but 
 also heaven,—yet once more, and consequently not again, so 
 that this shaking, as a conclusive event, makes a separation 
 between the things which can, and the things which cannot, 
 be shaken,—this will be the final change of the world, pointed 
 to in the és ἅπαξ, the unavoidable, certain, and now im- 
 pending change of the variable into the invariable, which 
 was aimed at in the creation (Hofmann, Entst. 347). The 
 article τὴν in τῶν cad. τὴν μετάθεσιν (instead of which, 
 Lach., according to A, C, τὴν τῶν cad. μετάθ.), which is 
 wanting in D%, is indispensable. And it can be convincingly 
 proved that the motive clause beginning with ἵνα does not 
 belong to μετάθεσιν (Β]., De W., Liinem., and among the 
 ancients, Theodor., Oekum., and many others), but to πεποιη- 
 μένων. For (1) by joining the ἵνα with μετάθεσιν, ὡς πεποιη- 
 μένων would stand by itself as nothing but an explanatory 
 addition to τῶν σαλευομένων, stating why that which is sub- 
 ject to the shaking can thus be shaken and will be changed. 
 But even the new heavens and new earth are creature- 
 like, created (8752 °23, Isa. Ixv. 17) and made (YY 38 WR, 
 Isa. Ixvi. 22), new Beations moulded on the base of the old 
 (2 Pet. iii. 7); πεποιημένων, therefore, does not include in 
 itself the characteristics of that which is perishable, and 
 consequently does not afford by itself any sufficient state- 
 ment of cause. (2) If, therefore, it is explained “ as made iz 
 order that those things which cannot further be shaken may 
 remain” (Gr., Bg., Thol., etc.), we by no means obtain, as 
 Liinem., asserts, an obscure idea. For the end of the six 
 days’ work of creation is, as the author himself teaches in 
 
CHAP. XII. 27. 363 
 
 ch. iv., the beginning of a (now introduced) historical pro- 
 gress of that which is created: this progress has, as the 
 aim and end of its course, a final sabbath, and henceforth 
 immutable eternal rest. Moreover, as the whole of the 
 apostolic preaching teaches, all things both on heaven and 
 earth were created ἐν Χριστῷ and εἰς Χριστόν, that is, with 
 the aim that in Him all things should be gathered together 
 into one blessed and glorious kingdom of God (Col. i. 16; 
 Eph. i. 10). There can therefore, we think, be no clearer 
 and truer idea than this, that God from the very first created 
 that which is changeable with the purpose of establishing 
 the continuance of that which is immutable by setting it 
 free from the changeable elements: this is equally clear and 
 true as that the law from Sinai (to which many expositors 
 erroneously refer the μετάθεσις), the old covenant, and the 
 Israclitish national form of salvation, are divine transitional 
 constitutions which aimed from the very first at spiritual 
 freedom, an antitypical consummation, an abolition of human 
 limitations ; in short, that the provisional should be replaced 
 by the complete, the temporal by the eternal. It is not the case, 
 as Bl. is of opinion, that this view places ὡς πεποιημένων .. . 
 μὴ σαλευόμενα outside the scriptural argument of the author ; 
 the statement that ére ἀπαξ points to τῶν can, τὴν μετάθεσιν, 
 needed, in order to describe this μετάθεσις as the final one, 
 the supplementary addition which is afforded in ὡς πεποιη- 
 μένων, k.7..: this points to the change of the σαλευόμενα 
 which was intended in the creation, and therefore follows 
 from their very nature. The neuter plural of the subj., 
 τὰ μὴ σαλευόμενα, is joined with the singular of the pred., 
 μείνη, as in Acts 1. 18, xvi. 24 (v. Winer, ὃ ὅδ. 3); also the 
 perf. follows the conj. aor., as e.g. in Acts ix. 17 (v. Winer, 
 § 41. ὁ. 1). It cannot be denied that there is something 
 stiff and inapposite in the motive clause, because the σαλευό- 
 μενα and not the μὴ σαλευόμ. are not placed in any internal 
 causal relation to each other. On this account there is much 
 in favour of understanding μένειν as manere aliquem (aliquid), 
 a signification which does not indeed occur in our epistle, but 
 
 is found in Acts xx. 5, 23, and frequently in the LX-X.: “In 
 
364 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 order that they (the mutable things) may await the immutable | 
 things” (Paul Bauldry, 1699, Bohme, Kiihnoel, Klee, etc.). 
 That the present incessant alternation of arising and passing 
 away, coming and going, meeting and parting, should create 
 and intensify a longing after that which is immutable and 
 everlasting, is an idea that is perfectly true; and all that 
 Paul teaches (Rom. viii. 18—25) as to even the unconscious 
 creation being subjected to vanity ἐπ᾽ ἐλπτίδι, would here be 
 brought to a brief and general proposition which extends 
 back beyond the fall of man to the creation itself. But in 
 a connection where the mutable and immutable are con- 
 trasted with one another, it is, nevertheless, far more probable 
 that μένειν, as in Acts xxvii. 41, ἔμεινεν ἀσάλευτος, should 
 express the idea of remaining instead of that of awaiting. 
 And in Isa. Ixvi. 22 it is said of the new heaven and the | 
 new earth, OY, μένει, they remain. Because the mode of 
 the creation was determined through the counsel of re- 
 demption with a foresight of the fall, the mutable things 
 were first brought into existence in order that, at the end of 
 time, the immutable things may remain. These immutable 
 things are the basis and essence of the mutable, and are 
 thus purified and cleared of their husk and dross. This 
 final revolution is pointed to in the ἔτε ἅπαξ. Heaven and 
 earth shall be shaken so that they tremble, σαλευθήσονται 
 (Luke xxi. 26), the thrones of the kingdoms of the world 
 fall, and the power of the world is destroyed. And on these 
 ruins, from their hitherto hidden interior, there arises a 
 βασιλεία adoddevtos—a both fearful as well as beneficial end 
 of the present course of the world—which is closely impend- 
 ing enough to be ready, as promised, for those who even now 
 have their home in the yet invisible immutable kingdom, 
 and, in the obedience of faith, mark the words of Him that 
 speaketh from heaven. 
 
 Ver. 28. Wherefore, we receiving a kingdom which cannot 
 be moved, let us have grace (thankfulness) whereby we may 
 serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. 
 
 The ideas, that the immutable things which remain con- 
 
CHAP. XII. 28. 365 
 
 stitute a βασιλεία, namely, the heavenly kingdom now made 
 manifest in its pure nature, and as having attained to a 
 victorious and sole rule, and that the church of Christ now 
 living and moving amid heavenly things will be the heir of 
 this Bacieva,—these secondary ideas are connected by the 
 author with ἵνα μείνῃ, so that, without particularly expressing 
 them, his exhortation to a thankful and reverent conduct is 
 grounded partly thereon with διό, and partly therefrom with 
 βασιλείαν ἀσάλευτον παραλαμβάνοντες. Luther correctly 
 translates, ‘ Darum, dieweil wir empfahen ein unbeweglich 
 Reich,” just as in the English version; but Calvin and 
 others, on the -contrary, incorrectly understand it in the 
 sense of fide apprehendentes, so that the participial sentence 
 does not give the motive for the exhortation, but belongs to 
 it. This interpretation is incorrect, because παραλαμβάνειν 
 βασιλείαν (ἀρχήν) is the usual RA for regnum capessere ; 
 and, added to this, the explanation must here be guided by 
 the passage in Dan. vii. 18, where it is said that, after the 
 removal of the four kingdoms of this world, the saints of 
 the Most High shall possess the kingdom: καὶ παραλήψονται 
 τὴν βασιλείαν Cu) ἈΞ) ἅγιοι ὑψίστου. The term 
 βασιλεία, like regnum, signifies both the commonwealth 
 united under the unity of a kingly sway, and also the 
 kingly sway itself with the commonwealth under it ; here it 
 has the latter signification, and the βασιλεία is understood 
 as not merely the kingdom of which we are destined to 
 become citizens, but as the regal glory in which we are to 
 share. Because, therefore, this kingly exaltation of the 
 church of Christ will result from the universal and final 
 shaking of the world which is impending, we should, exhorts 
 the author, entertain and show thankfulness whereby we 
 may serve. We must read ἔχωμεν and λατρεύωμεν, as also 
 in ch. iii. 7, vi. 1, xii. 12, where διό is followed by an exhor- 
 tation: the LA ἔχομεν (thus, It., Vulg., Luther, Calvin, 
 and others) and λατρεύομεν (Complut., Plant., Bg., Matth. 
 with M.) are objectionable on account of the inferiority of 
 their outward declaration. Chrys., and following him Oek., 
 1 The translation of the LXX. and of Theodotion is here identical. 
 
366 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 Theophyl., rightly give it: “Habeamus gratiam, hoc est, 
 gratias agamus Deo; sic quippe placenter Deo servitur, cum 
 ei per omnia gratie deferuntur.”* For it must not be 
 translated: let us hold fast the grace (as e.g. Peschito and 
 Beza)—a rendering which would at least require τὴν y., 
 although not perhaps κατέχωμεν (cf. 2 Tim. i. 13); but 
 ἔχειν χάριν signifies, as in Luke xvii. 9, 1 Tim. i. 12, 2 Tim. 
 il. 3, to entertain and show thankfulness. The words ἔχωμεν 
 χάριν, which taken by themselves are inadequate, attain 
 their proper fulness and completeness by the likewise horta- 
 tory sentence, δι’ ἧς λατρεύωμεν εὐαρέστως TO Ocd. Thank- 
 fulness is the alpha and omega of all true service of God. 
 “ Whoso offereth thanks,” we read in Ps. 1. 23, “ glorifieth 
 me, and follows a path in which I will show him the salvation 
 of Elohim.” In this sense εὐαρέστως refers back. It is incor- 
 rect to say that μετὰ αἰδοῦς καὶ εὐλαβείας are an explanation 
 of evapéctws (Liinem.). They belong, of course, to the rela- 
 tive sentence, but as more accurate definitions of the nature 
 of the service of God, which first and foremost consists in 
 thankfulness for the glory which we have in view. Accord- 
 ingly, with the thankfulness must be combined αἰδώς, shame, 
 like that felt by the seraphim when they veil their coun- 
 tenances and their feet with their wings, and also εὐλάβεια, 
 personal circumspection and attention which avoids carefully 
 anything unseemly or offensive (v. vol. i. pp. 246-7).? Instead 
 of μετὰ αἰδοῦς καὶ εὐλαβείας (D***, I, K, Pesch.), there are 
 also RA μετὰ εὐλαβείας καὶ αἰδοῦς (Δ. It.: cum metu et vere- 
 cundia, cf. ch. v. 7, exauditus a metu), μετὰ δέους καὶ εὐλα- 
 Beias (from which, perhaps, Vulg.: cum metu et reverentia, cf. 
 ch. v. 7, exauditus est pro sua reverentia), and, by far the best 
 attested, μετὰ εὐλαβείας καὶ δέους (A, C, D*, 17, 71, 73, 80, 
 
 1 The text of Chrys. in Mutian has habemus and servimus; but the 
 comment shows that Chrys., as M, read ἔχωμεν and λατρεύομεν. 
 
 2 Hengstenberg must also be reckoned among the expositors who 
 understand εὐλάβεια in Heb. v. 7 as fear of death. ‘If the punish- 
 ment lay upon Him, so that we might have peace, the whole fear of 
 death must have been concentrated in Him, and therefore, in Heb. v. 7, 
 
 fear is described as that which burdened Christ with an oppressive 
 weight” (Vorwort der E. Kz. 1857, No. 7). 
 
CHAP. XII. 29. 367 
 
 137). The rec. has in its favour the usage of the union of 
 αἰδὼς καὶ εὐλάβεια (in Philo, ii. 597.33; Dionys. Hal. vi. 72, 
 and elsewhere). That δέος is a word which does not occur 
 elsewhere either in the New Testament or the LX-X. (except 
 2 Macc.), is, as it appears to me, rather in its favour than 
 against it. But if μετὰ δέους had been miswritten for μετ᾽ 
 αἰδοῦς, it would be likely that the more forcible word would 
 be placed after εὐλαβείας for the sake of the climax. Iam 
 therefore inclined, in opposition to Lach., Tischd., with 
 Griesb., Kn., Theile, to give the preference to the reading 
 of the rec., which is besides full of meaning. If we compare 
 Hab. ii. 20, εὐλαβείσθω ἀπὸ προσώπου αὐτοῦ πᾶσα ἡ γῆ, 
 and other passages, μετὰ αἰδοῦς καὶ εὐλαβείας will not be 
 found too weak for the cause given in the following verse. 
 
 Ver. 29. For our God is a consuming fire. 
 
 As the words καὶ yap, as we decided in commentary on 
 ch. iv. 2 (vol. i. p. 187), and on ch. v. 12 (ἰδ. p. 259), combine 
 the two meanings of etentm and nam etiam, the question now 
 arises, which signification they are to bear in this passage ? 
 It is impossible that the author intends to say that our God, 
 the God of the New Testament as well as the Old, is also a 
 consuming fire (Β]., De W., Thol., Bisp.) ; but this must be 
 the meaning of καὶ yap ἡμῶν ὁ Θεός, if generally any such 
 anti-Marcionite idea could have occurred to the mind of the 
 author. And that the God who has given the promise of 
 such a blessed and glorious consummation should be also a 
 consuming fire (Liinem.), cannot be the intention of the 
 words, because they would then be arranged καὶ yap πῦρ 
 καταναλίσκον ... (cf. Luke vi. 32-34, vii. 8, x1. 4, xxii. 59 ; 
 Acts xix. 40). Therefore we take the words καὶ γάρ in the 
 signification etenim, as in Luke i. 66, xxii. 37, to be looked 
 upon as only a more closely applied “ for,’ or, more empha- 
 tically, as “for indeed.” The Thorah says (Deut. iv. 24, 
 ix. 3), just as our author, not only that God is also UN 
 n2ak, but that He is this absolutely. The Scriptures, 
 which elsewhere state that God is ἀγάπη, but not that He 
 is ὀργή, would scarcely express themselves in this way, if it 
 
368 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 were not that fire is so far a two-sided idea that it may be 
 said to be the separation between darkness and light; so that, 
 as e.g. the twofold idea of ΠΕΡ, ζῆλος (v. x. 27), shows, fire 
 includes both holy wrath and also holy love; He that is 
 both light and love becomes, by directing the potency of His 
 holy wrath against all that is unholy, a consuming fire (Isa. 
 x. 17, cf. xxxiii. 14). God is in Himself the blessed and 
 eternal triumph of light. And this triumph of light is also 
 the end of the history of the creature, inasmuch as all who 
 love darkness rather than light will be consumed by the fire 
 of His wrath, and all who aspire to the heavenly love which 
 has been made manifest in Jesus Christ will be glorified by 
 the light. 
 
 The author having thus, looking at the fearful and also 
 hopeful termination of the present course of the world now 
 coming to an end, exhorted the Hebrew Christians to a right ἢ 
 behaviour in general, now continues with more special in- 
 junctions. 
 
 Cuap. xu. 1-17. Divers admonitions to Christian virtues, 
 especially to an imitation of the faith of their departed 
 leaders ; and also, in contrast to the Levitical legal pre- 
 scriptions and the Levitical divine service, both now done 
 away with, exhortations to a faithful holding fast to 
 Jesus Christ eternally the same; who offered Himself 
 up without the gate of Jerusalem in order to direct our 
 views away from the earthly Jerusalem to the heavenly 
 and abiding city. 
 
 The first admonition is, as might be expected, to charity : 
 
 Ver. 1. Let brotherly love continue. 
 
 Φιλαδελφία in the New Testament is not the mutual love 
 of natural brothers and sisters, but of those who, as regards 
 their spiritual life, spring ἐξ ἑνός (ch. ii. 11), and acknow- 
 ledge themselves to be as children of one Father, and as 
 brethren of Christ and in Christ, the incarnate Son of God: 
 
CHAP. XIII. 2. 369 
 
 it forms, indeed. a narrower sphere within the wider sphere 
 of ἀγάπη (2 Pet. ii. 7). This love had been formerly shown 
 by the Hebrews by their sympathy with suffering brethren 
 (ch. x. 82 f.); and even at the then present time it was not 
 completely extinct (ch. vi. 10), so that the author is enabled 
 to say μενέτω. This admonition had already been prepared 
 for in many ways in the preceding portion of the epistle (ch. 
 iii. 12 f., x. 24 f., xii. 12 ff.), and now takes the lead, because 
 brotherly love is the first of all the fruits of faith, and the 
 first requisite for the continuance and confirmation of the 
 Christian social life. The general exhortation to φιλαδελφία 
 is divided (in vers. 2 and 8) into two different sides, those 
 brethren who do not belong to the same home as the persons 
 exhorted being first considered. 
 
 Ver. 2. Be not forgetful of hospitality to strangers ; for 
 thereby some have entertained angels unawares. 
 
 The connection and unity of feeling between churches 
 in all places were maintained by mutual visiting, or by 
 involuntary peregrinations induced by various causes; and 
 therefore duradeAdia must show itself in durofevia—that is, 
 love to those who come as strangers or guests. This hos- 
 pitality is not to be forgotten by them,—that is, they are to 
 be mindful of it among the virtues which they must exercise, 
 —for by it they have obtained many a wondrous mercy and 
 great blessing. The genuinely Greek construction ἔλαθον 
 Eevicavtes, which does not occur anywhere else in the New 
 ‘Testament, appears to have been prompted by the words μὴ 
 ἐπιλανθάνεσθε. There can be no question as to any inten- 
 tional play upon words, for it would be entirely without point 
 (cf. vol. i. p. 299). The intention, doubtless, is to remind 
 the readers of Abraham and Lot (Gen. xviii., xix.). Lot, 
 who addressed the two men as 278, had no presentiment that 
 they were angels; but Abraham meets the three stran gers with 
 the address ΣΝ , Springing from the deeply-penetrating glance 
 
 1 Vulg. incorrectly (as is acknowledged even by Beelen in his Lat. 
 revision of Winer’s Gramm. fiir Katholiken, Lovanii 1857, p. 184): 
 “‘latuerunt quidam angelis receptis.” 
 
 VOL, II. 2A 
 
370 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 of his faith, without, however, being able completely to de- 
 cipher the appearance of his sublime guests, whom he looked 
 upon as wanderers in want of human refreshment.' The 
 hospitality of both availed for those who were in need of it, 
 and was rewarded—in the one case by the blessing on his 
 before unfruitful marriage, and in the other by rescue from 
 destruction. The author was perhaps aware of other in- 
 stances derived from unrecorded history ; and, in fact, any 
 man whom we entertain without knowing any details as to 
 him, may be even for us a very angel of God. The exhor- 
 tation to φιλαδελφία presents also another side—the kindness 
 shown to those in captivity and suffering. 
 
 Ver. 3. Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with 
 them ; (and) them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves 
 also in the body. 
 
 In both places ὡς implies the motive; but this does not 
 require that συνδεδεμένοι should be understood as referring 
 to the σύνδεσμος of love (Col. iii. 14), or σώματι to the body 
 of the community (eg. Calvin). The motives given for 
 helpful remembrance of those in captivity and of those in 
 
 1 Philo, ii. 17.1: θεασάμενος τρεῖς ὡς ἄνδρας ὁδοιπυροῦντας, of δὲ θείιο- 
 τέρας ὄντες Φύσεως ἐλελήθησαν ; ibid. 17. 23, to the effect that the fore- 
 boding as to the higher nature of the guests first came to Sarah in the ᾿ 
 words recorded Gen. xviii. 15 f., qu. in Gen. xviii. 4: ‘‘ Hoe rursum 
 juxta alteram apparitionem dicitur, quatenus peregrinos eos putat, non 
 habita certa notitia, sed iterum illuc violenter attractus de optima 
 divinaque facie.” Jos. Ant. 1. 11. 2: vouicus sivas ξένους, ἠσπάσατο 
 τε dvaords καὶ παρ αὐτῷ κωταχθέντας παρεκάλει ξενίων μεταλαβεῖν. 
 August. Civ. xvi. 29: ‘* Sic eos susceperunt (Abr. et Loth), ut tamquam 
 mortalibus et humana refectione indigentibus ministrarent, sed erat pro- 
 fecto aliquid, quo ita excellebant, licet tanquam homines, ut in eis esse 
 Dominum, sicut esse assolet in prophetis, hi qui hospitalitatem iis exhi- 
 bebant dubitare non possent.” Augustine contends, from the passage 
 we are considering (which he correctly translates: ‘‘ Per illam etiam 
 quidam nescientes hospitio receparunt Angelos”), that one of the three 
 was the future Christ; cf. also my Genesis, 1. 353. I should now prefer 
 to express myself less precisely : for Hengstenberg is right in the idea, 
 that among the cdyzzaoug the Angel of the Lord might be included as an 
 appearance of the Lord Himself; for N50, ἄγγελος, is not the descrip- 
 tion of the nature of the being, but of the work. 
 
CHAP. XIII. 4. 371 
 
 affliction are derived from the feeling of community in suffer- 
 ing: in the former case spiritual, and in the latter case bodily. 
 We are to be mindful of those in bonds, inasmuch as by 
 means of the συμπάθεια of the members (ch. x. 384; 1 Cor. 
 xii. 26) we should look upon ourselves as bound with them ; 
 and of those in affliction, because we ourselves also are in a 
 body susceptible of suffering, and subject to similar trials: 
 σῶμα as Rom. vil. 24, and εἶναι ἐν σώματι as ἐνδημεῖν ἐν τῷ 
 σώματι (2 (ον. ν. 6). After his exhortation to the brotherly 
 fellowship of Christians, the author’ goes on to speak of 
 two important relations of earthly life—marriage and pecu- 
 niary dealings; just as elsewhere in Paul’s epistles the 
 warnings against unchastity and covetousness are placed 
 side by side (Eph. v. 5; Col. iii. 5). The sententious and, 
 as it were, sketch-like form of the admonitions is essentially 
 Pauline in its character. 
 
 Ver. 4. Marriage is honourable in all (things), and the 
 bedundefiled ; but whoremongers and adulterers God will 
 judge. 
 
 The passage Rom. xii. 4-13 is at once called to mind, 
 in which Paul, in equally brief and pregnant nominal and 
 participial sentences, throws off a model of the proper state 
 of a Christian community. The composition of the propo- 
 sitions is throughout simply declaratory ; but the apostle 
 points as if with the finger to the model, and a “So shall it 
 be “runs through the whole. In this passage, also, it is not 
 inadmissible to supply an ἔστω (cf. Luke xii. 3D) to τίμιος 
 ὁ yduoe...3 but this ellipse of an ἔστω or εἴη, in a simple 
 and independent sentence consisting of a subject, preed., 
 and resulting copula, is unusual; and the two propositions 
 
 1 Lucian (de morte peregrini, § 13): “ Their (the Christians’) most 
 distinguished lawgiver (Paul? vid. vol. i. p. 282, note) has imparted to 
 them the opinion} that they all became brethren one of another so soon 
 as they changed ; ‘that is, denied the Greek gods, and acknowledged by 
 
 adoration the crucified sophist.” All that Lucian (§ 12) says of the 
 
 sympathy of Christians, with their δέσροιοι, and also (§ 16) of their QsAo- 
 g<viz, tends to show,-in spite of the scorn manifested, what a notorious 
 new phenomenon this mutual love of Christians was. 
 
 a 
 
 Ἶ 
 
372 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 τίμιος . . . ἀμίαντος are more correctly looked upon as decla- 
 ratory sentences, intended to be expressed in the tone of an 
 hortatory exclamation.’ Marriage (γάμος, elsewhere in the 
 New Testament “wedding” or nuptials, here as in ἄγαμος *) 
 is to be highly esteemed and held in honour ἐν πᾶσιν. This 
 does not mean, among all individuals, or among all classes 
 (= παρὰ πᾶσιν) ; but is, as in ver. 18, and in some of the 
 Pauline epistles written in captivity, which can most justly 
 be compared with the Epistle to the Hebrews, as Col. i. 18, 
 Tit. ii. 9, 1 Tim. iii. 11, 2 Tim. iv. 5 (but not Eph. 1. 23; 
 ef. Col. iii. 11, where it speaks of the indwelling; and also 
 not 1 Pet. iv. 11, where δοξάζεσθαι ἐν is connected), equi- 
 valent to ἐν παντί (Eph. v. 24; Phil. iv. 6; 1 Thess. v. 18: 
 ef. Phil. iv. 12, ἐν παντὶ καὶ ἐν πᾶσιν, in every respect and 
 in all respects). Marriage has from God its Founder a 
 τιμή, and this τιμή is to be maintained. The divinely- 
 ordained relation of natural association is not to be in any 
 way, either in teaching or action, degraded in favour of any 
 unmarried position. On this point, we must call to mind 
 the false gnosis which was spreading at the date of our 
 epistle (1 Tim. iv. 3). And where Christians have entered 
 into the state of marriage, the bed must be undefiled (τὴν 
 KOLTHV, OY σρωμνὴν μαίνειν, Gen. xlix. 4); that is, should not 
 be defiled either by adulterous intercourse, or by lascivious 
 sensuality on the part of the married themselves. But (δέ) 
 those who do not hold marriage in honour, showing it by 
 indulging in the lusts of the flesh outside the proper matri- 
 
 1 The instances brought forward in favour of the addition of an ἔστω 
 by Bernhardy, Kihner, Kruger, Rost, and others (also by Philippi on 
 Rom. xii. 9)---αἰδώς, ᾿Αργεῖοι, ii. 13.955 ἵλαος, ὦ daieav, Soph. Aid. C. 
 1480 ; τοῖς θεοῖς χάρις, Xen. Anab. ili. 5. 14—are all not elliptical, but 
 exclamatory. And in such analogous sentences as ‘7 yw (εὐλογητὸς ὁ 
 Θεός), ἐστί, according to the Semitic mode of thought, is to be supplied 
 rather than ἔστω (1 Pet. iv. 11); but, in truth, nothing should be 
 added. 
 
 2 Also in the Latin, and even in legal language, the word nuptiz 
 signifies marriage ; and therefore, whilst It. and Vulg. translate connu- 
 bium, Philastrius (de her. c. 120) correctly renders it, honorandz nuptix; 
 Mutianus, honorabiles nupliz. 
 
CHAP. XIII. 5, 6. ove 
 
 monial restrictions (πόρνους), and those who defile the mar- 
 riage-bed (povyovs), will be judged by God, the holy and 
 also omniscient, the righteous and also omnipotent One. ‘O 
 Θεός is emphatically placed as the last word in the sentence. 
 And there is at least no internal evidence for exchanging 
 the reading δέ (Tischd., according to C, D***, I, K, the 
 Syrians, Greeks, and Ambr.) for yap (Lachm., according to 
 A, D*, M, It., Vulg., Copt.). Τάρ has the appearance of 
 an alteration intended to make the sentence plainer. After 
 chastity comes contentedness, which is so often in other 
 apostolic exhortations placed side by side with the former. 
 
 Vers. 5, 6. (Let your) conversation (be) without covetous- 
 ness; (and be) content with such things as ye have: for he 
 hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we 
 may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not (or, 1 
 have not to) fear what man shall (or can) do unto me. 
 
 The author goes on to tell us what the essential nature 
 of true Christians is, and how they are to behave; a mode 
 of thought and action which is free from the love of money 
 and worldly possessions generally (ἀφιλάργυρος, as 1 Tim. 
 iii. 3), and contenting themselves (ἀρκοῦμαι τινε = ἀρκεῖ 
 μοί τι. with the things which are present, that is, being 
 satisfied for the present time: thus must their conduct be, 
 and thus must they be. In a similar anacoluthon in Rom. 
 xii. 9, ἀποστυγοῦντες τὸ πονηρόν is connected with ἡ ἀγάπη 
 avuTroxpitos. The author sketches out an idea; and if it 
 avails for his readers, everything else is left as a matter of 
 course. But how becoming this contentedness is to the 
 Christian —a contentedness which, without anxiously and 
 greedily looking forward to the future, is satisfied with the 
 things which are present—is an idea which is founded on 
 words spoken by God; for αὐτός (sin), He, is God, as the 
 subject which to the consciousness of the believer is absolute 
 
 1 Thus in M. Antonin. τῶν εἰς ἑαυτόν, x. 1: When, O soul, ὠρκεσθήση 
 τῇ παρούσῃ καταστάσει καὶ ἡσθήση τοῖς παροῦσι καὶ συμπείσεις σεαυτὴν ὅτι 
 πόώντα σοι πάρεστι. ᾿Αρκεῖσθωι παρεοῦσι is also one of the first rules of 
 Phocylides. 
 
374 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 and ever present. But whence are these words of God—od 
 μή σε ἀνῶ, οὐδ᾽ οὐ μή σε ἐγκαταλίπω (A, O, Dt? ie ee 
 ἐγκαταλείπω; vid. Winer, p. 450)—derived ? Passages such 
 as Josh. i. 5, οὐκ ἐγκαταλείψω σε οὐδ᾽ ὑπερόψομαί ce; Gen. 
 xXxvill. 15, οὐ μή σε ἐγκαταλίπω ; Isa, xli. 17, οὐκ ἐγκατα- 
 λείψω αὐτούς, only give us one-half of the quotation ; but, 
 on the contrary, in Deut. xxxi. 6, cf. 8, 1 Chron. xxviii. 20, 
 οὔτε μή σε ἀνῇ, οὔτε μή σε ἐγκαταλίπῃ (A, al. οὐ μή σε ἀνῇ 
 οὐδ᾽ οὐ μή σε ἐγκαταλείπῃ), both the divisions of the sentence 
 occur, only they are not words spoken by God Himself. 
 That our author was not the first who has taken this promise 
 as God’s own words, is evident from Philo, i. 430. 26, where 
 this promise is quoted literally as it runs in our passage, as 
 “a benevolent expression of a merciful God, which pre- 
 figures pleasant hopes to those who love what is right.” 
 This is a coincidence which cannot be accidental, although 
 it is not probable that our author took the quotation in this 
 form from Philo (Bl., De W., Liinem.); we may rather 
 conclude that, in the liturgical or homiletical usage of the 
 Hellenistic synagogues, the passage Deut. xxxi. 6 assumed 
 this shape, owing to recollections of other similar passages 
 of the Old Testament being mixed up with it? On the 
 ground of promises so loving, emphatic, and so full of com- 
 fort — rendered more emphatic by the threefold negative 
 οὐδ᾽ ov μή (vid. Winer, ὃ 55. 9)—we are able to take courage, 
 and say with the Psalmist (Ps. exviii. 6), “The Lord is 
 my helper (Hebr. only ‘> Π), and I will not fear (Hebr. 
 without ‘and’); what can mando unto me?” It is an ex- 
 pression of faith from the beautiful Confitemini (Hodu),’. 
 concluding the Hallel of the feasts of passover and taber- 
 
 * In the post-biblical Hebrew, 37 and °3y occur as mystical names ° 
 of God. 
 
 * In a survey of all the passages in which this expression is repeated 
 with more or less of the same tenor, Bengel says: ‘‘ Est igitur instar 
 adagii divini.” 
 
 ° This beautiful Confitemini was the name given by Luther to this 
 his favourite psalm, the exposition of which was his comfort in his 
 Patmos (Coburg). 
 
CHAP. XIII. 7. ove 
 
 nacles, taken from that of the Hosanna festal-cry. The 
 tenor of Ps. lvi. 10, 12, 5, is similar. It is not difficult 
 to understand the train of thought which now leads the 
 author to point to the type of the former leaders of the 
 community. I was formerly of opinion, but incorrectly, 
 that the quotation of the words of Scripture led him on to 
 speak of the preachers of God’s word. In opposition to the 
 view which Theophyl. puts before us, that μνημονεύετε is 
 meant for a calling to remembrance of the thankfulness 
 which is joyful to distribute, and consequently suitably 
 follows on to the warning against covetousness, Bl. has re- 
 marked that the leaders were no longer among those living 
 in this world. It may better be imagined that the author, 
 speaking of contentedness, calls to remembrance the un- 
 selfishness and contempt for worldly things wherein the now 
 perfected leaders so exemplarily excelled his readers. But 
 in ch. x. 84 it was vouched for that these very readers had 
 accepted joyfully the spoiling of their goods. In the words 
 of the psalm he had just quoted, the author had therefore 
 in view this persecution of the synagogues, which, however, 
 had not touched the lives of the younger members of the 
 church (ch. xii. 4), and calls to remembrance the leaders 
 (as is also assumed by Hofmann, Hnésé. 347) to whom the 
 Hebrew Christians are indebted for the preaching of salva- 
 tion, and by whom what they preached was sealed by their 
 conduct, stedfast even unto death. 
 
 Ver. 7. Remember them which have the rule over you, who 
 have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, 
 considering the end of their conversation. : 
 
 The way in which this exhortation is framed is again 
 essentially in Luke’s style. For ἡγούμενοι is the appellation 
 used by Luke for the leaders of the church (Acts xv. 22 ; 
 cf. Luke xxii. 26): it does not occur elsewhere, except in 
 Heb. v. 17, 24. In a similar case Paul says προϊστάμενοι 
 (1 Thess. ν. 12). Again, λαλεῖν τὸν λόγον τοῦ Θεοῦ is 
 Luke’s usual expression for the preaching of the gospel 
 (Acts iv. 31, vill. 25, xiii. 46, etc.). The verb ἀναθεωρεῖν 
 
376 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 is used for abiding, penetrating contemplation (not found 
 in the LX X.), and occurs elsewhere only in Acts xvii. 23." 
 And for ἔκβασις (1 Cor. x. 13) as the end of life, or, as 
 it here purposely says, of conduct, Luke uses at least the 
 synonymous expressions ἔξοδος (Luke ix. 31) and ἄφιξις 
 (Acts xx. 29). From the words μνημονεύετε and ἐλάλησαν, 
 we may conclude that τὴν ἔκβασιν τῆς ἀναστροφῆς is to be 
 understood neither as a heavenly reward (something like τὸ 
 τέλος τῆς πίστεως, 1 Pet. i. 9), nor as the result of Christian 
 conduct following in another world, but as the end of life. 
 The author does not say τὴν ἐκβ. τοῦ βίου, or even τῆς 
 ζωῆς (τοῦ ζῆν), because it was repugnant to the Christian 
 consciousness to represent death as nothing more than the 
 end of life; moreover, the expression τῆς ἀναστροφῆς is 
 pregnant with meaning. They were to contemplate atten- 
 tively what an end their conduct (ἀναστροφῆ, often used by 
 James, Paul, and Peter; cf. ἀναστρέφεσθαι, ch. x. 33) had 
 attained to, and what a (spiritually considered) blessed and 
 glorious end it had brought with it for them (ἔκβασις, as 
 Wisd. ii, 17). But a Christian course of conduct, which up 
 to the last breath of even a natural death is a confirmation 
 and reflection of a life of faith, attains an end well worthy 
 of imitation, and therefore the words of the author do not 
 plainly point to a martyr’s death ; in fact, at the date of the 
 composition of our epistle, the mother-church of Palestine, 
 although Paul (1 Thess. 11. 14-16) in the year 52 or 53 
 holds it out to the Gentile Christians as a model of a confess- 
 ing church, did not as yet number many martyrs properly 
 so called. It is a matter of course that the author chiefly 
 alluded to martyrs,—namely, the proto-martyr Stephen the 
 deacon (d. cir. 37 er. Dion.) ; James the apostle, the son of 
 Zebedee, who, according to Acts xii., was slain by the sword 
 (at the end of the year 43 or the beginning of the year 44) 
 by Herod Agvippa (d. after the passover of the year 44) ; 
 
 1 Winer (De verborum cum prepp. compos. in N. T. usu), p. iii., ex- 
 plains dyvadswpciv as thoroughly to examine along anything, ἡ. 6. aliquam 
 rerum seriem ita oculis perlustrare, ut ab imo ad summum, ab extremo 
 ad principium pergas. Similarly the ὠνώ in ἀνωζυτεῖν. 
 
CHAP. XIII. 7. 377 
 
 perhaps also James the brother οὗ the Lord, the bishop of 
 the church at Jerusalem. But as to this, looking at the con- 
 tradictory accounts of the time of his martyrdom, nothing 
 can be conclusively asserted.’ It is possible that Peter is 
 also to be included, to whom was specially confided τὸ evay- 
 
 1 According to Josephus (Ant. xx. 9. 1), Ananus the younger, high 
 priest for only three months (to be distinguished from the older Ananias, 
 son of Nebedzus, high priest in the procuratorship of Cumanus, and 
 according to history, of Felix also), during the interval when Festus 
 had left Judea, and Albinus the new procurator had not yet arrived, 
 summoned a synedrium with reassumed capital jurisdiction : xxi προσα- 
 γαγὼν εἰς αὐτὸ (τὸ συνέδριον) τὸν ἀδελφὸν ᾿Ιησοῦ τοῦ λεγομένου Χριστοῦ, 
 ᾿Ιάκωβος ὄνομα αὐτῷ, καί tives ἑτέρους, ὡς πωρανομησάώντων κατηγορίαν 
 ποιησάφοενος παρέδωκε λευρθησομένους (lapidandos). “Osos δὲ ἐδόκουν ἐπι- 
 εἰκέστωτοι τῶν κωτοὶ τὴν πόλιν εἶναι καὶ τὸ περὶ τοὺς νόμους ἀκριβεῖς, βαρέως 
 ἤνεγκαν ἐπὶ τούτῳ. This passage of Josephus—which is not to be con- 
 fused with another passage which, although it is quoted both by Eusebius 
 (ZZ. E. ii. 23) and also previously by Origen (in Matth., and c. Cels. i. 47, 
 ii. 13), is no longer to be found in Josephus, and is doubtless suppositi- 
 tious: it described the destruction of the Jewish state as ἐκδίκησις ᾿Ιωκώβον 
 τοῦ O:meiov—runs as credibly as possible (cf. Griitz, Gesch. der Juden. 
 iii. 360; Jost, Gesch. des Judenth. u. seiner Sekten, 1. 452), and places 
 the date of James’ martyrdom in the year 62. On the other hand, 
 Hegesippus, in an extract of his Hypomnema, in Euseb. ii. 23, relates as 
 follows :—‘‘ James the brother of the Lord (whom he evidently looks 
 upon as not an apostle, and consequently as a different person from 
 James the son of Alpheus, which is really the practical question), was 
 universally called δίκαιος, and on account of his love for his nation, and 
 his prayers for them, was named ᾿Ωβλίας, 1.0. περιοχή of the people 
 (perhaps corrupted from ὩΣ n\n or oy 5m). He was holy from his 
 mother’s womb (that is, he was dedicated as a Nazarite by his mother 
 during her pregnancy). Wine and strong drink he drank not, neither did 
 he eat of anything that had lived (animal food) ; no razor ever touched 
 his head, and he neither anointed himself with oil nor made use of the 
 bath. He alone was permitted to enter the holy place of the temple, εἰς 
 τὸ ἅγψιω εἰσιέναι (although he was not a Cohen, or even a Levite). Also 
 he wore no woollen garments, but linen only (just as the priests). And 
 going alone into the temple, he was found there prostrate on his knees, 
 and imploring forgiveness for the people. The rulers were afraid of his 
 influence, for there was danger that the whole nation should be made 
 Christians, ᾿Ιησοῦν τὸν Χριστὸν προσδοκῶν. In order to intimidate him, 
 they placed him on one of the pinnacles of the temple, and called out 
 to him: ‘O righteous man! whom we all ought to obey, as the people 
 
378 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 γέλιον τῆς περιτομῆς ; for his martyrdom, if it occurred in 
 the year 67, may have been previous to the composition 
 of our epistle. The idea of ἡγούμενοι does not go so far as 
 that of the ἀκούσαντες, who had handed down to the existing 
 church the message of salvation which they had received 
 directly from the Lord (ch. ii. 3); but still it goes far 
 enough to embrace the apostle who had founded the earliest 
 church at Jerusalem. But other presbyters and deacons 
 unknown to us are also intended, who, as witnesses for the 
 faith, if not as martyrs, had done with this present life. 
 After the author had thus held up the past as a mirror to 
 the present, and had called to remembrance the gaps which 
 death had made in the church of the Hebrews, what could 
 be more appropriate than to raise his thoughts to the immu- 
 table Lord, exalted high above all change ?—that Lord in. 
 whom the church above and the church below find their 
 indissoluble bond of unity ; and in whom the church below, 
 
 have all gone astray after Jesus the crucified, now tell us, what is 
 the door to Jesus (that is, by what door can we attain to Him ? or if, 
 as is more probable to me, the question ran, 7D ΠῚ nd wn, how 
 does Jesus vindicate Himself)?’ Then answered James with a loud 
 voice: ‘ Why do you ask me about Jesus the Son of man? He is in 
 heaven, sitting on the right hand of Omnipotence, and will come again 
 in the clouds of heaven.’ In consequence of this joyful confession, 
 which produced an effect in many, James was cast down from the 
 pinnacle of the temple ; and as he was not killed by the fall, but turn- 
 ing round and kneeling down prayed for his murderers, a fuller (025) 
 
 took his fulling-stick and struck him on the head, so that he died out- 
 right: οὕτως ἐριωρτύρησεν . . . καὶ εὐθὺς Οὐεσπασιανὸς πολιορκεῖ αὐτούς." 
 Thus writes Hegesippus. His account of James’ martyrdom, even apart 
 from the circumstances attending it, is irreconcilably inconsistent with 
 that of Josephus in a chronological point of view. For although the 
 εὐθύς may not be entirely accurate, still its meaning cannot be extended 
 so far as to agree with Josephus; and as the whole of the pseudo- 
 Clementine literature presupposes that James was still alive at the time 
 when Peter had suffered martyrdom, the testimony of Josephus, that 
 James died shortly before the year 70, receives an important confirma- 
 tion: for, according to the unexceptionable evidence of Dionys. Cor. 
 in Euseb. ii. 25, Peter died κατὸ τὸν αὐτὸν καιρόν with Paul, therefore 
 in the year 67 (vid. Niedner, KGS. 107). We see, therefore, that, on 
 the one hand, the testimony of Hegesippus is commended to our belief 
 
CHAP, XIII. 8 379 
 
 amid all the vicissitudes of persons and things, has the un- 
 changeable ground of its being, ad a sure holdfast against 
 every fluctuation. 
 
 Ver. 8. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and 
 for ever. 
 
 This watchword of salvation forms the basis for the ex- 
 hortation just given to imitate the faith of the departed 
 leaders, and also a preparation for the warning which follows 
 in ver. 9, that the readers should not be carried about with 
 divers and strange doctrines. The three definitions of time 
 belong together; and they all apply to ὁ αὐτός, which is the 
 predicate to ᾿Ιησοῦς Χριστός. Jesus Christ is one and the 
 same, yesterday (χθές, for which Lachm., Tischd., according 
 to A, C*, D*, ἐχθές, the ordinary and also Attic form; the 
 former being epic, Ionic, and Attic: wid. Buttmann, Ausf. 
 Sprachl. § 117, A, g), to-day, and for ever. It must be re- 
 
 by the details which, although accurately described, are somewhat tradi- 
 tional in their character, and is also supported by the Clementine litera- 
 ture ; and that, on the other hand, the testimony of Josephus bears the 
 stamp of historical truth; and even if, as Credner is of opinion (Linl. 
 pp. 571-582), it should have been interpolated by some Christian hand, 
 cannot have been altogether without some traditional support. It must 
 therefore remain undecided, whether at the date of our epistle James 
 the brother of our Lord formed one of the departed ἡγούρμενο, (ch. 
 xiii. 7), or of the gyovgevos (ch. xiii. 17) who were still indefatigably 
 watching for the salvation of the souls of the Hebrew Christians. From 
 this passage Liinem. comes to the conclusion that James was no longer 
 alive at the date when the passage was written, and that the epistle 
 could not therefore have been written before the year 63. But this is 
 a very uncritical conclusion : for (1) the death of James is not a neces- 
 sary inference from our passage; and (2) it is not certain, but rather 
 very questionable, whether the year 63 was the date of James’ death. 
 Nothing, however, is proved by the assertion that it would be gene- 
 rally scarcely imaginable that, as long as James was alive, his ministry 
 would be interfered with by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 by means of a letter conveying such a tone and purport: for the whole 
 of the apostolic epistles are addressed to the various churches, without 
 giving any particular prominence to their bishops and deacons, although 
 both are included ; and also because the exhortation to obey the ἡγού- 
 #svos (ch. xiii, 17) applies especially to James, if he were still alive. 
 
380 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 marked that Jesus Christ is the subject, consequently the 
 incarnate God. θές, therefore, must be dated back not to 
 eternity, nor even to Old Testament times; it is, indeed, 
 incorrect if we take the incarnation as the extreme point to 
 which we may look back as the χθές. If such an extreme 
 point is to be fixed, it is the ascension, and not the concep- 
 tion, of Jesus Christ; for not until He sat down on the right 
 hand of God, and this world’s history had passed into eternal 
 rest, could He be ὁ αὐτός, not only in the principle, but in 
 the totality of His person. These expressions, always and 
 everywhere applicable, are, however, here more closely de- 
 fined by the context. For σήμερον is the time in which the 
 writer and readers lived; χθές is the time in which the ἡγού- 
 pevot preached God’s word to the latter, and ended their 
 faithful course of conduct here below in a way so blessed 
 and glorious, and so calculated to excite emulation. As 
 then, so to-day, and also in all the inconceivable remoteness 
 of the future, Jesus Christ is unchangeably the same. The 
 question, to what this identity is here intended to refer, can- 
 not be a doubtful one. Ver. 7 points to Jesus Christ in two 
 relations: He was the central substance of the word of God, 
 which the now departed leaders thus preached in order that 
 it might be faithfully accepted; He was also the Author and 
 Finisher of the faith which they confirmed to the end. In 
 both respects He is the same to-day,—both in the objectivity 
 in which the word presents Him to faith, and also in the self- 
 manifestation of His divine life dedicated to the care of His 
 people. He is the same as the object of faith, and as the 
 subject of the grace from which this faith springs, and ripens, 
 and finally brings the fruit of beholding. Just as Moses, in 
 Ps. xc. 2-4, says of Jehovah that He, the Lord, was God ere 
 the world was, and that His divine being extends from an 
 illimitable past to an illimitable future; that His omnipotence 
 rules over all the coming into being and passing away in this 
 world below ; and that to His eternity the changeful course 
 of a thousand years are but as a passing moment: so now 
 our author says of Jesus Christ, that amidst all the coming 
 and going of generations in the church on earth, He ever re- 
 
CHAP. XIII. 9. 381 
 
 mains the same; and neither as regards His people’s relation 
 to Him, nor His relation to His people, is subject to any 
 change. What a grave warning is thus conveyed, that the 
 one pure word we have received—God’s word as to Christ 
 —should not be confounded with “divers and strange doc- 
 trines ;” and that the grace of Clirist, which can alone estab- 
 lish the heart, should not be mixed up with legal precepts as 
 to meats, which are profitless as means of salvation ! 
 
 Ver. 9. Be not carried away with divers and strange doc- 
 trines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established 
 with grace; not with meats, in which they who walked were 
 not profited. 
 
 The first question here is, to what the sacred writer is 
 referring by the use of the term βρώμασιν. The answer to 
 this question will determine our view of various particulars 
 in the whole passage. A reference to the following para- 
 graph (vers. 10-16) would suggest that he has here especially 
 in view the sacrificial feasts of the law, and perhaps more 
 particularly that of the passover ; and we might be tempted, 
 consequently, to find the same reference in the βρώμασιν of 
 ch. ix. 10. But we adhere to the view taken in our comment 
 on that text, that such is not the case; or, at any rate, that 
 such is not the first reference in the mind of the apostolic 
 writer. And mature reflection leads to the same conclusion 
 here, for the reasons following: 1st, βρώματα is a term un- 
 known to the sacrificial Thorah, while it is the ordinary term 
 in the precepts referring to clean and unclean meats, e.g. Lev. 
 xi. 34, 1 Mace. i. 16 (in later Hebrew, mba). 2dly, βρῶμα 
 is the term used in other similar passages of the New Testa- 
 ment in reference to what was allowed or disallowed in the 
 matter of food (am WN). See 1 Cor. vi. 13, viii. 8, 18 ; 
 Rom. xiv. 15, 20. And 3dly, the first clause of the present 
 verse, διδαχαῖς ποικίλαις καὶ ξέναις μὴ παραφέρεσθε, is 
 against such an interpretation οἵ βρώμασιν. (a) The epithet 
 ποικίλαι, implying a complex of precepts and doctrines lead- 
 ing away from the plain and simple truth, refers evidently to 
 the subtle casuistry of the Jewish doctors, which, as we know, 
 
382 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 found a congenial sphere in discussions concerning lawful 
 and unlawful meats, but less so in respect to the simple pre- 
 cepts of the Thorah concerning sacrificial food ; and (6) the 
 term διδαχαὶ ποικίχαι καὶ ξέναι would hardly be applied by 
 the sacred writer to laws or commandments which he recog- 
 
 nised as of divine origin. It is therefore misleading and 
 
 self-willed speculations and interpretations of divine precepts 
 to which he is here referring. Now we know that Jewish 
 asceticism in the apostolic age dealt largely in precepts and 
 injunctions concerning the use of, or abstinence from, various 
 kinds of food, but not in those concerning sacrificial feasts. 
 The stricter Judaizing Christians in the Roman church were, 
 we know, scrupulous in distinguishing between clean and 
 unclean in the matter of food (Rom. xiv. 14), and even ab- 
 stained from the use of wine and flesh-meat (xiv. 2, 21) ; and 
 such scrupulosity the apostle regarded at the time as a pardon- 
 able weakness, which those stronger in the faith were to bear 
 with. In the Epistle to the Colossians (ch. 11. 16-23) this 
 self-willed asceticism has taken a more speculative charac- 
 ter, and has developed into schismatical separation from the 
 body of Christ; while in the pastoral epistles the ἀπέχεσθαι 
 βρωμάτων is denounced among the gravest and most deadly 
 errors, as διδασκαλίαι δαιμονίων (1 Tim. iv. 3). Now the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, whatever we may think of its author- 
 ship, stands unquestionably in close relationship to the later 
 epistles of St. Paul, those especially written in the later 
 years of his captivity. And if at that period the pernicious 
 Judaizing gnosis, fruits of which are found in the pseudo- 
 Clementines, was already in the course of development, it 
 seems very unlikely that the Hebrew communities of Pales- 
 tine should have remained unaffected by it. When St. Paul, 
 writing to the Roman church, urges that the kingdom of 
 heaven is not βρῶσις καὶ πόσις, but righteousness, peace, and 
 joy in the Holy Ghost, he is saying essentially the same thing 
 as the apostolic writer here: καλὸν yap χάριτι βεβαιοῦσθαι 
 τὴν καρδίαν, ov Bpopacw—Ii is well that the heart be estab- 
 lished by grace, not by meats: χάριτι being here opposed 
 as a divine operation on the soul to the outward and life- 
 
CHAP, XIII. 9. 3383 
 
 less ἐθελοθρησκεία and δόγματα of the Judaizing teachers 
 (Col. ii. 20-23), and βεβαιοῦσθαι, as the being rooted and 
 grounded in Christ (Col. ii. 7), to the παραφέρεσθαι, the 
 being borne or carried away by such erroneous teachings 
 from the true path and goal. [The tewtus receptus has here μὴ 
 περιφέρεσθε, be not carried about, or moved hither and thither 
 as a reed shaken by the wind ; an interpolation probably from 
 Eph. iv. 14, for which Griesbach and all subsequent editors 
 have rightly substituted μὴ παραφέρεσθε.) That βρώματα 
 is here used by synecdoche for the whole ritual law cannot 
 be asserted by the commentator, who has to do with what the 
 writer says, not with what he might say or think otherwise. 
 That this choice or rejection of particular kinds of food 
 does not strengthen the heart, is further proved by the relative 
 clause, ἐν οἷς οὐκ ὠφελήθησαν ot περιπατήσαντες (Lachmann, 
 following A, D, reads περιπατοῦντες = qui ambulabant, which 
 comes to the same thing): ἐν οἷς is to be connected with οἱ 
 'περίπατ.; περιπατεῖν ἔν τινι being a Pauline phrase (Eph. 
 ii. 2,10; Col. iii. 7: comp. δουλεύειν ἔν τινι, Rom. xiv. 18, 
 and τοῖς ἔθεσιν περιπατεῖν, Acts xxi. 21), and not with οὐκ 
 ὠφελήθησαν. Those who exercised themselves in (busied 
 themselves about) different kinds of food, regarding some as 
 lawful, others as unlawful, derived no profit from their use- 
 less speculations, the whole ceremonial law being ἀνωφελές 
 (ch. vii. 18). The whole of the Old Testament affords 
 proof that true strengthening of the heart, true inward 
 blessing, is not to be found in meats and regulations con- 
 cerning them. But how are we to understand the connec- 
 tion of that which follows ver. 10? Understanding οὐ 
 βρώμασιν in the sense given above, is there not a want of 
 connection in the argument? By no means. The laws 
 concerning clean and unclean meats stand in close connection 
 with those concerning sacrifice ; and so they follow naturally, 
 at Lev. xi., the precepts concerning the consecration of the 
 sanctuary and of the priests. Their ground is given in the 
 sentence that Israel is to be a “ holy people,” even as Jehovah 
 Himself is holy (vp). The observance of them is one 
 condition on which Israel retains her rights to the communion 
 
384 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 of the sanctuary. But for all this they are but δικαιώματα 
 σαρκός. If, even when in full force under the Old Testa- 
 ment, they had no salutary spiritual influence on heart and 
 mind, no real profit, how much less must this now be the 
 case, when doctrines and speculations based upon them are 
 leading away from Christ! They therefore stand in direct 
 contrast here with the grace of Christ. Judaizing doctrines 
 and precepts about meats and the grace of the new covenant 
 mutually exclude one another. 
 
 Ver. 10. We have an altar of sacrifice, of which they have 
 no right to eat who serve the tabernacle. 
 
 The one altar of sacrifice (θυσιαστήριον), around which 
 the church of the New Testament is gathered, and where 
 she knows all her grace and acceptance to have been pro- 
 cured, is unquestionably the place where Christ offered Him- 
 self in sacrifice (διὰ θυσίας, ch. ix. 20)---ἀνήνεγκε, ch. vii. 27 
 (comp. Jas. ii. 21; 1 Pet. ii. 24); or προσήνεγκε, ch. ix. 14; 
 or (as might also be said) where He was offered—poon- 
 νέχθη, ch. ix. 28. The place of this altar, therefore, is not 
 a heavenly one (Bretschneider), the golden altar of incense 
 alone having an heavenly antitype (Rev. vill. 3); neither 
 can it be the Lord’s table (Béhme, Biihr, Ebrard, Bisping), 
 though, as we see from 1 Cor. x. 18, this interpretation is 
 not without its truth ; but it can only be the cross on Gol- 
 gotha (τὸ ξύλον), the sacred writer himself going on imme- 
 diately to speak of the place of the passion “without the 
 camp.” This is the interpretation of Thomas Aquinas, 
 Bengel, Ernesti, Bleek, De Wette, Steugel, Liinemann, and 
 indeed of the majority of commentators. The assumption 
 (generally resorted to from fear of Roman Catholic conse- 
 quences) that the altar is the Lord Himself (Bugenhagen 
 and others, and more recently Biesenthal) is a guid pro quo ; 
 and the refusal of some interpreters to find any definite idea 
 connected with the term (Michaélis, Stier, Tholuck, Hof- 
 mann) isa whim. Why, then, should not the words ἔχομεν 
 θυσιαστήριον express the truth that we are possessed, as 
 Christians, of a place of atonement, seeing that the cross 
 
CHAP. XIII. 10. 385 
 
 of Golgotha was from all eternity the predestined place of 
 offering for the greatest of all sacrifices, and that as now for 
 the faith of the church of all times it has possessed, so for 
 all eternity it will retain, this high, unique, mysterious dig- 
 nity? The altar of the church of the redeemed is, then, 
 her Redeemer’s cross. It is a point, however, on which the 
 sacred writer is not here insisting with any emphasis. He 
 neither says θυσιαστήριον ἔχομεν, an altar is ours, nor καὶ 
 ἡμεῖς ἔχομεν Ovo., we also have an altar. The point em- 
 phasized is this, that those who minister to the tabernacle 
 (οἱ τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντες) cannot partake of this our altar. 
 Some have maintained that by this designation Christians are 
 meant as the priests of the New Testament. So Schlichting: 
 fee verba nihil aliud sibi volunt quam Christianos non aliud 
 habere sacrificium, quam ex quo vescendi facultatem nullam 
 habent. Comparing with this the connection in which St. 
 Paul speaks of the partaking by Christians of the body and 
 blood of Christ at 1 Cor. x. 14-22, we cannot but wonder at 
 so audacious an interpolation of a thought so alien to the 
 whole spirit of New Testament Scripture. Hofmann like- 
 wise (Schriftb. 11. 1. 322) regards θυσιαστήριον as a figu- 
 rative term for the atonement, and of τῇ σκ. λατρ. as a 
 designation of Christians, finding in the whole sentence this 
 meaning: that, having obtained through the one sacrifice 
 forgiveness of sins, we need no further atonement. The 
 connection of thought in the following vers. 11-13 might be 
 brought under this as a general proposition; but surely this 
 other is more simple, natural, and significant: Place not 
 your hopes of salvation in legal observances in respect to 
 food; we Christians have an altar, of which those who serve 
 the legal tabernacle have no right to eat at all: our Re- 
 deemer suffered for our redemption outside the legal camp 
 of Judaism; let us, deserting it, go and join Him there, 
 bearing His reproach. The construction of τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύ- 
 οντες is somewhat peculiar. The Septuagint occasionally 
 combines λειτουργεῖν in this way with the dative of the 
 sanctuary and altar, but only when the Hebrew status con- 
 structus ΤΠ has to be expressed, and the Greek translator 
 VOL. II. 2B 
 
386 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 felt himself at a loss how otherwise to do so. Otherwise, 
 while λατρεύειν τῷ Θεῷ or θεοῖς ἑτέροις is frequently met 
 with, λατρεύειν τῇ σκηνῇ does not occur. st aculeus, says 
 Bengel, with delicate criticism, quod dicit τῇ σκηνῇ non ἐν τῇ 
 σκηνῇ. Nor can it well be doubted that λατρεύοντες is pur- 
 posely used instead of λειτουργοῦντες. The whole expression 
 seems purposely to have an idolatrous air about it, and some- 
 what of the contemptuous or depreciating tone which we 
 found at ch. vill. 5. A comparison with that passage shows 
 that here the priests devoted to the service of the sanctuary, 
 not the Jewish people generally, are the persons meant. 
 We (believers under the N. T.) have an altar of whose 
 sacrifice the church of the Old Testament—nay, even its 
 most privileged class, its ministering priesthood—has no right 
 to eat. The positive truth indirectly implied in this negative 
 sentence is, that the sacrifice once offered on the altar of 
 the cross is one of which, as Christians, we are permitted to 
 partake, and that it far excels in virtue all other βρώματα. 
 The thought, indeed, would be an obvious one to every 
 reader. “ Seeing that,” says Riickert, “ there is a something 
 in the Lord's Sieh of which only Christians may partake, 
 and that something the body of Christ, or, in the language of 
 our epistle, the body of our atoning sacrifice, the readers could 
 hardly fail in these words to find a reference to that holy 
 sacrament.” If the apostolic writer had really meant to say, 
 what Hofmann supposes, that we, the priests of the new 
 covenant, have no right to eat of our sacrifice, he would have 
 been saying what is directly untrue; for Christ is our pass- 
 over or paschal lamb (1 Cor. v. 7), and it is a fundamental 
 thought of the Gospel of St. John, that this passover slain 
 for us, and offered on the cross of Calvary, now gives us 
 thence, in truth and reality, His flesh and blood as our 
 “meat and drink (βρῶσις καὶ πόσις) indeed.” Of the legal 
 sacrifices, the Levitical priests obtained as their portion and 
 food—(1) of the sin-offering of the prince or of a private 
 individual, the whole flesh except the fat pieces which were 
 consumed on the altar (Lev. iv. 26, 31, 35, compared with 
 vi. 19, 22); (2) of the sin-offering of a poor man (a pigeon 
 
CHAP, XIII. 11, 19, 387 
 
 or turtle-dove), the blood of which alone was given to the 
 altar, the priest received the whole flesh (Lev. v. 9); (3) of 
 the trespass-offering he likewise received the whole flesh, ex- 
 cept the fat pieces as before (Lev. vii. 7); (4) of the burnt- 
 offerings, which were wholly consumed on the altar, the priests 
 received the skin only; (5) of the peace-offerings of indivi- 
 duals, the priests received breast and thighs, while the fat 
 pieces were placed on the altar, and the rest of the flesh was 
 given back to the worshipper (Ley. vii. 34), the consecrated 
 loaves being divided between the offerer and the priest; (6) 
 of the peace-offerings of the congregation at pentecost, the 
 priests received the whole flesh, with all the loaves (Lev. 
 xxiii. 20). The share of the priest in other vegetable offer- 
 ings we leave here unnoticed. It is, however, with our 
 author a point of importance that there were sin-offerings of 
 which the Levitical priests received no part whatsoever, not 
 even, as in the case of the burnt-offering, the skin of the 
 victim. On this he founds typologically their total exclu- 
 sioa from participation of the sin-offering of the New Tes- 
 tament : 
 
 Vers. 11, 12. For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood 
 as brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are 
 burned outside the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he 
 might sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered out- 
 side the gate. 
 
 The connection of thought is clear as day. The priests 
 of the law, representing the people of the law, have no right 
 to partake of our altar; for as the bodies of those legal 
 victims, whose blood the high priest brought into the sanc- 
 tuary for atonement, were, without the priests enjoying any 
 portion of them, burned without the camp, even so was 
 Christ, their antitype, corporeally destroyed outside the gate 
 of Jerusalem, the priesthood and people of the Jews having 
 no participation in His sacrifice, inasmuch as they had wil- 
 fully rejected Him. [The words περὶ ἁμαρτίας are rejected 
 by Tischendorf after A, but are found in D, K, M, and 
 Chrysostom, and also in Οὗ, after ἅγια (Lachmann).] Of 
 
388 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 the following sin-offerings the blood was brought within the 
 tabernacle: (1) The sin-offering of the high priest for 
 himself. In this case the blood of the bullock was partly 
 sprinkled on that side of the veil which fronted the holy 
 place, partly applied to the altar of incense, and the rest of 
 it poured out at the foot of the altar of burnt-offering (Lev. 
 iv. 5-7). (2) The sin-offering of the congregation in cer- 
 tain cases of ageravated transgression. In these the blood 
 of the victims was treated precisely as in the former in- 
 stance (see Lev. iv. 16-18, and comp. Num. xv. 24). (9) 
 The two combined sin-offerings for high priest and congre- 
 gation on the great day of atonement. In this case the 
 blood was not only carried into the holy place, but beyond 
 it into the holy of holies, and sprinkled on the mercy-seat 
 (Lev. xvi.). In all these three sin-offerings the fat pieces . 
 were consumed on the altar, and the rest of the flesh burnt 
 outside the camp. The sacred writer has here doubtless the 
 sin-offerings on the day of atonement specially in view, 
 which were offered on behalf of the whole congregation, the 
 high priest and his family, and the whole priesthood; τὰ 
 ἅγια being here, as at ix. 8, the sanctuary par excellence— 
 the holy of holies. In accordance with the ordinance that 
 the bodies of such sacrifices should be burnt outside the 
 camp of Israel—an ordinance, as intimated by the διό in the 
 following sentence, of typico-prophetic meaning—the Lord 
 Jesus, as the antitypical sin-offering, suffered without the 
 gate of Jerusalem, 1.6. beyond the precincts of the holy city. 
 The question may be asked, Why and with what right the 
 sacred writer here singles out a less significant part of the 
 sacrificial action for comparison with the passion of Christ ? 
 To answer this question, we must bear in mind that the 
 Lord’s self-offering, προσφορά, is in our author’s view a two- 
 fold action, having both an earthly and a heavenly side, and 
 that the typical sacrifice separates and transposes acts which 
 in the antitypical fulfilment are closely combined, or follow 
 one another in a different order. For instance, the sprink- 
 ling of the blood before the mercy-seat is typical of our 
 Lord’s heavenly προσφορά ; while the slaying of the victim 
 
CHAP. XIII. 13. 389 
 
 in the outer court, the offering of the fat upon the altar, and 
 the burning of the flesh w ithout the camp, are all ty ical of 
 the one transaction on Mount Calvary. It is quite unneces- 
 sary, with Bahr and Liinemann, to restrict the parallelism 
 to ἔξω τῆς παρεμβολῆς = ἔξω τῆς πύλης, and thrust, on the 
 other hand, that between τούτων τὰ σώματα κατακαίεται and 
 ᾿Ιησοῦς ἔπαθεν into the background. Yet we allow that it 
 is only in one particular that the Lord’s passion corresponds 
 antitypically to this κατακαίεσθαι, ---- Πλτ ον, as Hofmann 
 truly observes, that in both cases the atoning victim is anni- 
 hilated in accordance with the will of God. The resem- 
 blance goes no further than this. The destruction by fire 
 of the type is prescribed by the Levitical law, the slaying of 
 the divine antitype is an act of human enmity. To which 
 we may add (against Hofmann), that as the priests of the 
 law were debarred from partaking of the sin-offering of the 
 day of atonement, the holiest of all the sacrifices (all sin- 
 offerings being, as such, DY P 'wP), so also they have no 
 right to partake of the ὦ sin-offering of our altar, 
 viz. the cross; that we as Christians have that privilege, but 
 that we debar ourselves from it when we go back to seek 
 salvation in the observances of the law, and put ourselves 
 once more among those who rejected the Redeemer and cast 
 Him out as evil, so unconsciously making Him the antitype 
 in that particular of the holiest of all their legal sacrifices, 
 
 Ver. 13. Therefore let us go forth unto him outside the 
 camp, bearing his reproach. 
 
 The particle τοίνυν commonly occupies the second place 
 in the sentence (Luke xx. 25; 1 Cor. ix. 26), or even one 
 yet further advanced. Here, as in. later authors, and as 
 occasionally in the Septuagint (Isa. ii. 10, v. 13, xxvii. 4, 
 XXXxill. 23), it stands first. The meaning is: Therefore let 
 us no longer continue in their society who have rejected the 
 Lord Jesus, but go forth to Him outside the camp, ἔξω τῆς 
 παρεμβολῆς, ---ἶ.6., as Theodoret well interprets it, ἔξω τῆς κατὰ 
 νόμον πολιτείας (comp. Tertullian—ewtra civitatem crucificus 
 —adv. Jud. c. 14),—-inasmuch as to belong to their society is 
 
390 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 to reject Christ, and to return to it is to deny Him, a sin 
 for which there is no forgiveness. On the other hand, to 
 forsake their company and communion for His sake is to in- 
 volve ourselves not merely in future but in present shame or 
 reproach (this is the force of the present participle φέροντες); 
 but this reproach is the reproach of Christ, a shame which 
 we share with Him, and in bearing which we are made like 
 Him. Thiersch’s view, that the purpose of our epistle was 
 to comfort the Hebrew Christians under a sentence of ex- 
 communication from the synagogue, is unsupported by any 
 historical evidence, or by the tone of the epistle itself. The 
 sacred writer does not say, Let us joyfully bear a rejection 
 hike that of our Master, but, Let us willingly join Him of our 
 own accord. And such a resolution cannot, he thinks, cost 
 them much. Why should the earthly Jerusalem have for . 
 us any attraction? Our franchise and our home is above. 
 
 Ver. 14. For here we have no continuing city, but we seek 
 that to come. 
 
 Here (6e*), that is, in this world generally, and con- 
 sequently even in Jerusalem, we have no continuing city, 
 none which is able to afford us an established residence and 
 citizenship ; but our aspirations are directed (ἐπιζητεῖν as 
 ΧΙ. 14) to the city which is to come. We are only pilgrims, 
 like the faithful believers of every age (ch. xi.), who look 
 for the city which has sure foundations (xi. 10). We are, 
 on the one hand, already come to the heavenly Jerusalem, 
 inasmuch as it is present to the eye of faith (xii. 22); but, 
 on the other hand, as we still look forward to its manifesta- 
 tion, and to our translation into it, it is the aim of our long- 
 ing hope. The home present to our faith and hope is, there- 
 fore, a different place from the camp of the Jews. Whether 
 the author, by saying ἔξω τῆς παρεμβολῆς instead of ἔξω 
 τῆς πόλεως, intends to point to the possibility of the breaking 
 
 1 Bohme remarks on ὧδε in a signification of locality: ‘‘ Vix Greca 
 est particula;” but, in spite of Aristarchus, it is Homeric, and was always 
 good Greek, at least in the vulgar tougue: v. Buttmann, Ausfihri. 
 Sprachl. ii. 362. 
 
CHAP. XIII. 14. 391 
 
 up of the latter, I must leave undecided; at all events, his 
 utterance, οὐκ ἔχομεν ὧδε μένουσαν πόλιν, attained a fearful 
 confirmation in the destruction of Jerusalem, which followed 
 soon after the composition of the epistle; and his summons, 
 τοίνυν ἐξερχώμεθα, was placed, as regarded his readers, in a 
 hitherto unforeboded connection with the prophecies and 
 warnings of the Lord, recorded in Luke xvii. 28-32, xxi. 
 21-24. The destruction of Jerusalem did not, indeed, forth- 
 with render the sacrificial service absolutely impossible," but 
 yet such an alteration took place that the Jewish nation τος 
 nounced the idea of the restoration of it, especially since the 
 possibility became more and more doubtful, and external 
 difficulties arose which could not well be obviated. After 
 the Servant of God had suffered “ without” on Golgotha, 
 and had been consumed in the fire of which Isaiah speaks 
 (ch. 1. 11), God withdrew His will and His fayour from the 
 legal sacrificial cultus: there are still, indeed, sacrifices which 
 are well-pleasing to God, but only the sacrifices of a thank- 
 ful confession and of a love active in good works, offered up 
 
 1 It was not forthwith absolutely impossible, inasmuch as, according 
 to the universal Jewish maxim, the locality of the temple retained its 
 sanctity even after the destruction of the latter: wip. Δ πὸ Ὁ ὃν ὮΝ 
 ἼΩΝ; so that, as a matter of principle, only pure priests of genuine 
 descent were needed in order to restore the sacrificial service, which, 
 according to the evidence of the Talmud, was offered for a long time 
 after the destruction of the temple, at least with a view to the feast of 
 the passover. Holdheim therefore says, in hig Ceremonialyesetz im 
 Messiasreich, p. 79: “ΤῈ it be true that the idea of atonement is, even 
 now, absolutely bound up with a sacrifice, and that only in cases where 
 the latter is impossible God is temporarily content with the reading of 
 the sacrificial chapters, it must be confessed that the Jews are guilty as 
 regards the want of atonement, as it is simply owing to their want of 
 energy that they are unable to erect an altar and sacrifice in the holy 
 places of the temple.” This learned representative of reformed Judaism 
 looks upon the sacrificial service as condemned for ever; sin is hence- 
 forth atoned for by repentance and faith in God's mercy. As if the 
 sacrifice was merely a disused symbol and not also a fulfilled prophecy! 
 During the Babylonian captivity, God prepared His people for the ful- 
 filment of this prophecy in His Servant (Isa. liii.), and their present 
 exile will continue until Israel renounces self-atonement, and prefers 
 the blood of God’s Servant to the litany of the sacrificial chapters, 
 
392 EFISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 on the foundation of the one all-sufficient atonement which 
 we owe to Him, the Father of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Ver. 15. By him, therefore, let us offer a sacrifice of 
 praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of lips, confessing 
 thankfully to his name. 
 
 Θυσία αἰνέσεως is, in the Old Testament sacrificial ritual, 
 the name given to the voluntary peace-offering ΠΡ ΟΣ (Lev. 
 vii. 12-25), which is offered in consequence of any event 
 imposing the duty of special thanks and praise, and is dis- 
 tinguished from other peace-offerings by an addition of cakes, 
 in conformity with its joyful occasion and aim, and also by 
 a shorter interval of time being allowed for the eating of it, 
 in conformity with its greater sanctity. In the Psalms this 
 
 Thoda-offering was a symbol of the thanks of the heart and . 
 
 lips (Ps. cxvi. 17,1. 14, 23); and a well-known utterance of 
 the ancient synagocue (Levit. Rabba, c. 27 ἴ. 1974, Tanchuma 
 55b) says: “In the future all sacrifices will cease, but the 
 thank-offering (MNF 12) ceases not.” The author of the 
 epistle explains what θυσία αἰνέσεως is by καρπὸν χείλεων 
 ὁμολογούντων τῷ ὀνόματι αὐτοῦ, and evidently refers to Hos. 
 xiv. 2, where the LXX. renders καὶ ἀνταποδώσομεν καρπὸν 
 χείλεων ἡμῶν (ΤΕ 7D), while in the Masoretic text the 
 humbly supplicating and adoring lips are called “ calves” or 
 “bullocks” (095). Fruit of the lips” is a biblical image : 
 according to a favourite Old Testament idea, thoughts are 
 the branches and twigs, and words the flowers and fruit 
 which, rooted in the mind and heart, and springing up thence, 
 shoot forth and ripen from mouth and lips.’ The lips, the 
 fruit of which we are to bring to God’s altar, are those which 
 laud and praise God’s name, that is Him, so far as He has 
 allowed Himself to be named, to be discerned, and to be 
 known. ὋὉμολογεῖν with God or His name in the dative 
 means more than fo confess ; it is equivalent to ἐξομολογεῖσθαι 
 To... by which the LXX. renders (7 pve) ‘nD NIN; Philo 
 interprets this (not correctly lexicographically speaking), τὴν 
 ἐκτὸς ἑαυτοῦ ὁμολογίαν, 1.6. the confession of the human 
 1 On this point, vid. my Bibl. Psychologie, p. 142. 
 
CHAP. ΧΙ. 16. 393 
 
 spirit going out of itself and offering itself up to God (i. 60. 
 13). The pronoun αὐτοῦ refers back to God, τῷ Θεῷ ; δι᾽ 
 αὐτοῦ, on the contrary, points to Jesus our sin-offering, and 
 at the same time our high priest, just as δ αὐτοῦ, vil. 25. 
 Clement of Rome comments on this δι᾿ αὐτοῦ, connecting it 
 with Ps. ]. 23 (L.XX.), and goes on to say (c. xxxvi.), “ This 
 is the way, beloved, in which we found our salvation, Jesus 
 Christ, the High Priest of our offerings, the Mediator for, and 
 helper of, our weakness: through Him, we turn our glance 
 to the highest heaven; through Him, we see as in a mirror 
 His (God’s) most pure and most sublime countenance ; 
 through Him, the eyes of our hearts have been opened, and 
 our undiscerning and darkened intelligence grows up into 
 His wonderful light; through Him, according to the Lord’s 
 will, we shall get to taste of immortal knowledge.”* In 
 addition to the sacrifice of a thankful confession which we 
 are to offer to God on the foundation of our one sin-offering 
 and through the mediation of our High Priest, there are also 
 other sacrifices pleasing to God, which we must be diligent 
 in offering. 
 
 Ver. 16. But to do good and to communicate forget not ; 
 for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. 
 
 Both psalms and prophets teach that 77m, Ps. 1. 14, and 
 ἼΡΠ (in the post-biblical language On md), Hos. vi. 8, are 
 the offerings most acceptable to God. The noun evzrovia is a 
 late formation from εὖ ποιεῖν, Mark xiv. 7, which also occurs 
 in Lucian (imag. 21), Mare. Aurel.,? and elsewhere ; κοινωνία 
 is used to denote fellowship and practical fellowship in pos- 
 sessions, as in the Pauline epistles (2 Cor. ix. 13; Rom. xv. 
 26) it means plainly the assistance rendered by charitable 
 contributions. The confirmatory words, τοιαύταις γάρ, refer 
 
 1 By its analytical, oratorical, second-rate, and developed method, as 
 compared with the simplicity, original force, and pithiness of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, this one passage proves that Clement of Rome could 
 have had no share in its composition. 
 
 2 viii. 23: T[paacw τι; ἐπ᾽ ὠνθρώπων εὐποιΐαν ὠναφέρων" συμβαίνει τί 
 foot; Geos, ἐπὶ τοὺς θεοὺς ὠναφέρων. 
 
394 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 to such sacrifices of beneficent, communicating love By 
 these God is rendered well pleased, εὐαρεστεῖται,---ἃ use of 
 the passive which the author shares with Diod., Diog. Laert., 
 and Polyb.’ 
 
 In his inculcation of the special duties of life, the author 
 in ver. 7 proceeded to speak of the rulers of the church, those, 
 indeed, who had departed this life— for the dissimilarity 
 between the present and former condition of the church had 
 gone to his heart ;—and, on the ground of the eternal same- 
 ness of Jesus Christ, he exhorted his readers not to allow 
 themselves to be led away, by a Judaizing conformity to the 
 law, from our one most holy sin-offering and the fellowship 
 with His altar. He now again turns to the leaders of the 
 church, and to the obligations due to them while still living. 
 
 Ver. 17. Obey those who preside among you, and submit 
 yourselves ; for they watch for your souls as they that must 
 give account, that they may do tt with joy and not with grief; 
 for that ts unprofitable for you. 
 
 From this exhortation, we see that the rulers of the church 
 were firmly established, and had perhaps complained to the 
 author of the epistle of the apostasy which was springing up 
 in the community; for it must have been the case, that those 
 who were sound in faith among the Hebrew Christians felt 
 themselves increasingly drawn towards St. Paul and his 
 fellow-labourers, the more clearly they perceived the perilous 
 character of the mode of life and thought produced by that 
 middle course between Judaism and Christianity pursued by 
 the majority. Although the author makes trusting obedience 
 (πείθεσθαι) and yielding compliance (ὑπείκειν, only occurring 
 here in biblical Greek = obsecundare or obtemperare) towards 
 their rulers an obligation on his readers, we are not compelled 
 to assume that their standpoint was in all points that of St. 
 Paul; sufficient that they were as sincerely, decidedly, com- 
 pletely, and fully in earnest about Christianity, as we know 
 was the case with, for instance, St. James. By his exhorta- 
 tion to the members of the church in the first place, the δας ΠΟΥ 
 
 1M inconsistently gives: τοιαῦται yap θυσίαι εὐεργετείτωι ὁ Θεός. 
 
CHAP, XIII. 18. 395 
 
 warns also the rulers of the same, although only indirectly 
 and in the most delicate manner, of the heavy responsibility 
 resting on them; for αὐτοὶ yap ἀγρυπνοῦσιν . . . isnot merely 
 a statement of fact, but is also an enunciation of the obliga- 
 tion involved in their office. They, αὐτοί, whose office brings 
 this with it as a right and a duty, watch over the salvation of 
 your souls without allowing any intermission through the 
 sleep of indolence and false security, ὡς λόγον ἀποδώσοντες, 
 that is, when the Chief Shepherd shall appear (1 Pet. v. 4)." 
 Therefore obey them and comply with their directions, so 
 that they may carry out this ἀγρυπνεῖν with joy, and not with 
 evief at the fruitlessness of their labour; for this is unpro- 
 fitable for you, that is—if the milder negative expression is 
 changed into a positive one—will bring harm to you, viz. the 
 loss of salvation. The adjective ἀλυσιτελές does not occur 
 elsewhere in the New Testament; perhaps, however, λυσιτελεῖ, 
 in Luke xvii. 2. The exhortation is Pauline in its spirit 
 (1 Thess. v. 12, 13); its wording is, however, more in St. 
 Luke’s style; but expressions peculiar to both Paul and 
 Luke are intermixed in it. 
 
 After alluding to the rulers of the Hebrew-Christian 
 church, the author goes on to speak of himself in the first 
 place, but also including his colleagues. 
 
 Ver. 18. Pray for us, for we are convinced that we have a 
 good conscience, in all things striving to live honestly. 
 
 Bl., Liinem., and others maintain, indeed, that in περὶ 
 ἡμῶν the author refers to himself exclusively ; but passages 
 such as 1 Thess. v. 25, 2 Thess. ii. 1, Col. iv. 3, are not, 
 looking at the preamble of these three epistles, favourable to 
 this view, and it seems to me that it would be hardly becom- 
 ing in the author to begin to speak of himself in the plural, 
 just after he had mentioned the ἡγούμενοι. He intends to 
 refer to himself and his fellow-labourers, who with him are 
 preaching the gospel in the Gentile world, far distant from 
 the Hebrew Christians. A distinctive ἐγὼ was not required 
 
 1°O φόβος ταύτης τῆς ὠπειλῆς, says Chrys. (de sacerd. 1. vi. init. 
 § 497, ed. Bengel), συνεχῶς κατασείει mov τὴν ψυχήν. 
 
396 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 in ver. 19, for in περὶ ἡμῶν the author included and especially 
 pointed to himself. His asking for their prayers is grounded 
 on the joyfulness of conscience which pervaded himself and 
 those of a like spirit with him. Instead of (rec.) πεποίθαμεν 
 yap, we trust, we are confident, according to A, C*, D*, M, It., 
 and other testimony, it should be read πευθόμεθα yap, we are 
 persuaded, are convinced ; the former expression is more in 
 Paul’s (Phil. ii. 24), the latter more in Luke’s style (Acts 
 xxvi. 26). A good conscience (καλή, in other places ἀγαθή, 
 Acts xxiii. 1, and elsewhere’) is one which testifies to the 
 agreement of our moral conduct with God’s law written in 
 our hearts, and with His revealed will,—a conscience which, so 
 far from accusing us, bids us take comfort, as regards God, 
 on the ground of His mercy, and as regards human judg- 
 ment, on the ground of our just conduct (1 Cor. iv. 3 f.); 
 but the idea that we are in possession of a good conscience of 
 this kind may be a delusion and untruth caused by blinding 
 and deafening ourselves, and the author therefore says that 
 this was his conviction, that is, his conviction founded on 
 God’s word, and confirmed by, and resting on, the Lord. 
 The participial sentence might belong to πειθόμεθα, as a 
 statement of the actual condition from which this conviction 
 results; but it is better to connect it with ἔχομεν as showing 
 what the consciences of him and his colleagues testified to 
 them, being for this very reason good consciences. It testifies 
 to them that, ἐν πᾶσιν, in all points (as ver. 4), they strive to 
 behave in that way which is right and seemly. Θέλοντες 
 involves more than their merely wishing this: it is the fervent 
 striving which is evident to themselves. From this self- 
 vindication we may gather that the teaching or life of the 
 author, or both together, had been a subject of mistrust and 
 suspicion among the Hebrews. It is the old and still un- 
 destroyed opposition, and the old evil repute with which the 
 Pauline kerygma and those who held it had even now to 
 contend. The enfeebling or disquiet of their intercessory 
 
 1 On this point, vid. my Biblische Psychologie, p. 103, in which the 
 biblical predicates referring to the so-called following and preceding 
 conscience are collected. 
 
CHAP. XUI. 19. 397 
 
 prayer for him and his colleagues, which might possibly arise 
 from these causes, is thus anticipated by the writer; he him- 
 self in particular needed these prayers, the hearing of which 
 would prove beneficial not only to him, but also to those who 
 
 prayed. 
 
 Ver. 19. But I beseech you the more earnestly to do this, 
 that I may be restored to you the sooner. 
 
 The intensive περισσοτέρως (vid. on 11. 1) belongs, in the 
 author’s intention, as much, perhaps, to τοῦτο ποιῆσαι (that 
 is, προσεύχεσθαι περὶ ἡμῶν) as to παρακαλῶ. He entreats 
 them all the more urgently to pray for him, so that his wish 
 to be of service to them still longer, and indeed by his per- 
 sonal presence, may be the sooner fulfilled. We are re- 
 minded of the passage, Philem. 22, ἐλπίζω yap ὅτι διὰ τῶν 
 προσευχῶν ὑμῶν χαρισθήσομαι ὑμῖν ; but the expression here 
 is in other ways worthy of remark. The verb ἀποκαθι- 
 στάναι signifies to restore (Luke vi. 10, as Mark iii. 5; Acts 
 i. 6); but also, to present again, to again give one something 
 for his own, as Polyb. iil. 98, ἐὰν ἐξαγαγὼν τοὺς ὁμήρους 
 ἀποκαταστήσῃ τοῖς γονεῦσι Kal ταῖς πόλεσιν ; or, to remove 
 back somewhere, as Polyb. iti. 5, εἰς τὴν οἰκείαν (γῆν). The 
 comparative form τάχιον is the only one usual in the New 
 Testament; the older Attic form θᾶσσον is not met with 
 even as a various reading. From the ἵνα τάχιον ἀποκατα- 
 σταθῶ ὑμῖν, we may conclude, (1) that the author had stood 
 in some personal relation to his readers which had been bene- 
 ficial to them, just as St. Paul, as we know, was moved to 
 the heart for the mother-church at Jerusalem, and sought to 
 excite everywhere an active, loving sympathy for it, and in 
 the year 58 visited it personally for the fifth time; (2) that 
 this union had now suffered some interruption, he being at 
 that time kept at a distance from them by certain circum- 
 stances. More than this we are unable to conclude. It 
 does not necessarily follow that, at the then present time, 
 the author was in captivity ; and the intention expressed in 
 ver. 23 to come to them shortly with Timothy stands in the 
 way of the idea, although indeed it does not unanswerably 
 
398 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 show (Liinem., as also Beza) that, at the place from which 
 he writes, he had the free disposal of his person; for the 
 promise might have been made on the grounds of a confident 
 expectation of a speedy release. It must honestly be con- 
 fessed that we know little or nothing about the matter. 
 For, on the other hand, the supposition, that nothing less 
 than bonds and danger of death could have detained the 
 author at that time, is supported by the mode in which the 
 concluding benedictory prayer is framed. 
 
 The author, before adding a few postscripts and his final 
 salutation, sums up all that he implores for his readers in a 
 comprehensive benedictory prayer, which may be compared 
 with those in 1 Thess. v. 23 and 1 Pet. v. 10 f. 
 
 Vers. 20, 21. Now the God of peace, that brought again ἢ 
 from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep, in virtue of the 
 blood of an everlasting covenant, our Lord Jesus, make you 
 perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that 
 which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to 
 whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. 
 
 The choice of the designations given to God and to the 
 Lord Jesus may be explained by reference to the matter 
 which precedes: (1.) The church is threatened by the 
 danger of dissension, by the propagation in it of a Judaizing 
 tendency, from which the worst results were to be feared, 
 by alienating the members from their rulers, and especially 
 from the author of this epistle; God is therefore called here 
 the “ God of peace,’—the God who loves peace,—and, hav- 
 ing given to us the King of peace, is the Author and Dis- 
 penser of peace (vii. 2). (2.) Obedience to the elders of 
 the church, and intercession for those holding the apostolical 
 office, had just before been the subject in question; and in 
 respect to both points, Jesus is called, in a connection similar 
 to that in 1 Pet. v. 2-4, “the great Shepherd of the sheep.” 
 (3.) The author, by some kind of restraint which he would 
 fain be free from, is detained far away from his readers ; 
 and this, as is appears, induced him to designate God as 
 “He who had brought again from the dead the Lord Jesus,” 
 
CHAP. XIII. 20, 22 399 
 
 and had consequently loosed the firmest fetters—those of 
 the kingdom of the dead (Acts ii. 24). This is the only 
 passage in which the author mentions the resurrection. In 
 other places his glance, passing over all the intervening 
 stages, turns forthwith from the depth of our Lord’s humi- 
 liation to the highest pinnacle of His exaltation. He is here 
 induced to make mention of the event intermediate between 
 Golgotha and God’s throne, between the altar of the cross 
 and the holiest of holies—the resurrection of Him who died 
 as a sin-offering for us. He mentions it, however, in a way 
 which is in harmony with the anagogical tendency of his 
 epistle, that is, combining with it the heavenly exaltation. 
 For although ἀναγαγών does not precisely include the ascen- 
 sion (B]., Bisp.), still it is a word which points upward (ἀνα, 
 sursum, and secondly rursuwm). The passage Isa. Ixiii. 11 
 (“ Where is He that brought them up out of the sea with 
 the shepherd of His flock?” 1.6. with him at the head) must 
 have had some share in suggesting the mode of expression. 
 In this passage the LXX. translates, ποῦ ὁ ἀναβιβάσας ἐκ 
 τῆς θαλάσσης Tov ποιμένα τῶν προβάτων. The author of 
 the epistle has in ch. ii. compared Moses and Christ: Moses 
 is a shepherd of the sheep (that is, of God’s flock), and Christ 
 is ὁ ποιμὴν τῶν πρωβάτων ὁ μέγας, just as in relation to 
 Aaron He is ἱερεὺς μέγας (x. 21); the former, the Old Tes- 
 tament mediator, is raised up by God ἐκ τῆς θαλάσσης, and 
 the latter, the New Testament Mediator, ἐκ vexpav,—both 
 for the fulfilment of their respective vocations." It is less 
 certain whether the author had in view the passage Zech. ix. 
 11, where it says: “Thou also... by the blood of thy cove- 
 nant, ἐν αἵματι διαθήκης cov (that is, in virtue of the covenant 
 previously concluded and consecrated by blood), I have sent 
 
 1 Instead of ἐκ τῆς θαλάσσης, A, X, E, F, Chryst., Rufin. read ἐκ 
 (τῆς) vis,—A, in addition, omits +od,—cvidently with a view of making 
 the reference to the resurrection of Christ more suitable. That this 
 was done with reference to Heb. xiii. 20, is confirmed by Chrysostom, 
 Didym., Cyril of Jer., who in this passage read ἐκ (τῆς) γῆς. Mutian 
 translates: ‘‘ qui eduxit de terra pastorem magnum pecorum.” Among 
 the New Testament codd., 46* has it thus. 
 
400 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water.” Of 
 course, the διαθήκη, which Christ has brought about and con- 
 secrated by His own blood, is called αἰώνιος in contrast to 
 the temporary and insufficient διαθήκη of which Moses was 
 the mediator, consecrating it with the blood of calves and 
 goats (ix. 18 ff.). Of course, also, the above Old Testament 
 passage shows what is the most appropriate meaning of ἐν. 
 If it was the ascent to God and not the resurrection which 
 is the matter in question here, the ἐν might be understood, 
 as in ix. 25, cf. 12, in the sense of being accompanied by 
 (Calv., von Gerl., Bisp., following Β].).} As, however, it is 
 the resurrection which is spoken of, the signification of agency, 
 and indeed of an acting cause (by means of, in the virtue of, 
 by the power of), is incomparably more suitable. But the 
 question arises, whether the words ἐν αἵματι διαθ. aiwy. are 
 to be, in this sense, connected with ἀναγαγών (Oek., 
 Theophyl., Anselm, Aq., Lth., Seb. Schmidt, Beng., Mich., 
 M‘Lean, Hofm., and others), or with τὸν ποιμένα τῶν Tp. τὸν 
 peyav (Hunn., Gerh., Grot., Calov., Braun., Ernesti, Dindorf, 
 Schultz, Bohme, Liinemann, and others), or merely with 
 τὸν μέγαν (Baumg., Ebr., and a few others) ; De Wette and 
 Tholuck are in doubt on the point. In point of fact, the 
 connection with ἀναγαγών, and that with the whole of the 
 idea, τὸν ποιμένα .. . μέγαν, in which μέγαν has the 
 principal emphasis, are equally permissible. For the resur- 
 rection of Jesus, which, in the first place, set Him forth as 
 the person vindicated, took place through the blood which 
 atoned for the sins of man (ix. 28), which burdened Him in 
 His death ; and this blood also extinguished God’s wrath, set 
 free God’s love, and founded an altered relation between God 
 and man—a relation of eternal fellowship of love. And, on 
 the other hand, in virtue of this blood, He is the great 
 Shepherd of the sheep; this He is, because this blood is the 
 blood of an everlasting covenant by which He has sealed 
 
 1 Thus also Kahnis, Abendm. p. 70: “Τῇ blood is understood as 
 that which the Son took with Him into the life of the resurrection, con- 
 sequently the power of His sacrifice, eternally present, eternally saving, 
 eternally uniting God and man. 
 
CHAP. XIII. 20, 21. 401 
 
 His claim to the sheep, has proved His faithfulness and 
 acquired for them God’s eternal love. We, however, must 
 decide for the connection with ἀναγαγών, because the ideas 
 which the other connections express are included therein. 
 “ Virtute ac merito sanguinis ipsius in morte effusi” (Aq.). 
 God has brought up out of the province or kingdom of the 
 dead, Him who, as the eternal One, is the great Shepherd of 
 the sheep. “ Shepherd,’” says Rieger on this passage, “ was 
 always a beautiful name for the office of the Lord Jesus ; 
 but at first a heavy charge attached to this name: now, how- 
 ever, this is surmounted; now, by faithfulness to Him who 
 gave the command and by love to the sheep, all has been 
 done and suffered; now is He called the great Shepherd of 
 the sheep who can give effect to His words, ‘I give my sheep 
 eternal life, they shall never perish, and no one shall pluck them 
 out of my hand.’ All His greatness and glory are now applied 
 by Him for the pasture and eternal exaltation of His flock.” 
 For this very reason, the author calls Him in addition τὸν 
 Κυριον ἡμῶν, and also gives Him the beloved and highly- 
 esteemed name of ᾿Ιησοῦς, which is, as it were, an emblem 
 and anagram of the whole. For this very reason, in the 
 prayer which follows this grand preamble, ᾿Ιησοῦς Χριστός, 
 the risen and consequently living One, is pointed out as He 
 through whom God works in us τὸ εὐάρεστον ἐνώπιον αὐτοῦ (cf. 
 Ps. cxiv. 9, LX X.), inasmuch as we attain to all the effects 
 of mercy, all God’s gifts of grace, only through Him, the 
 exalted Mediator. It is possible, but in my view not probable, 
 that the words dia ᾿[ησοῦ Χριστοῦ (the complete name) are 
 placed at the end, in order to connect therewith the doxology, 
 which is not intended to apply directly to God, but to Him 
 who, in consequence of His surrender of Himself, is crowned 
 with honour and glory. Schmid, the follower of C. A. 
 Crusius,' remarks more correctly, “ scil. Deus; summa enim 
 est patris gloria e prestita per Jesum redemptione.” God, in- 
 deed, is the chief subject of the sentence, He is the ἀναγαγών, 
 
 1 A celebrated theologian of the 18th century, professor at Leipsic 
 1744-75, opponent of the Wolfian philosophy and of Ernesti. See 
 Herzog’s Real-Encyclopddie, art. Crusius, vol. iii. pp. 192, 193. 
 
 VOL. Il. 2c 
 
402 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 He is ποιῶν in us, His good pleasure is the ultimate aim, and 
 to Him, according to all that precedes, is the honour due. It 
 is quite unmistakeable that, in this passage, there is much that 
 is entirely Pauline in its character. Ὃ Θεὸς τῆς εἰρήνης 
 is one of Paul’s favourite designations for God, which is 
 made use of, 2 Cor. xiii. 11, Rom. xvi. 20 (cf. Phil. iv. 9, 
 2 Thess. iii. 16), in reference to a position of the church 
 similar to the present case. And ἀναγαγεῖν ἐκ νεκρῶν occurs 
 Rom. x. 7, at least with reference to the fact of the resurrec- 
 tion. The shaping of the prayer reminds us of Phil. i. 6 
 and other passages; the doxology with its confirmatory 
 «“ Amen” calls to remembrance Gal. i. 5, Rom. xvi. 27,' and 
 other passages. The phrase εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων, which 
 is to be retained here in opposition to Tischendorf, according 
 to A, ΟἿ, K, M, and also εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας, are frequently used by 
 the apostle. On the other hand, the phrase ἐνώπιον τοῦ Θεοῦ 
 is far more a favourite expression with Luke than with Paul, 
 and there is no more suitable parallel to the preamble of the 
 prayer than Acts xx. 28, in which, as here, the church of the 
 Lord is described as a flock which He hath purchased with 
 His own blood. 
 
 Although this work is distinguished from all the New 
 Testament epistles, not excluding even the first Epistle of 
 John, by its commencement being devoid of any epistolary 
 form, still it might now be concluded, after the line taken 
 since xiil. 1, without our needing any further confirmation, 
 that we have before us an epistle in all due form. But the 
 addition now made by the author completely removes all 
 doubt on the point. 
 
 1 Even in this passage @ (instead of which αὐτῷ might have been ex- 
 pected, Eph. iii. 21) is not to be referred (as by Philippi) to διοὶ ᾿Ιησοῦ Xp., 
 but to God, as carrying out all that takes place, by means of a wise plan, 
 to a glorious termination. In this doxology the apostle intends to con- 
 centrate the whole purport of his epistle, but the great and irrepressible 
 thoughts which burst from his heart interrupt the scheme of the clause ; 
 on reaching the end of it, he appears to have forgotten the grammatical 
 form of its commencement. Where, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, do 
 we find anything which can be compared to these breaks in connection 
 so peculiar to the Pauline style ? 
 
CHAP. XIII. 22. 403 
 
 Ver. 22. And I beseech you, brethren, suffer the word of 
 exhortation; for I have written a letter unto you in few 
 words. 
 
 This is the first time in the epistle in which the author 
 speaks of himself in the singular. A supplementary παρα- 
 καλῶ of this kind occurs in Rom. xvi. 17, 1 Cor. xvi. 15, 
 and a similar remark on the part of the writer as to his work 
 in Rom. xv. 15. All the rest of the verse is, however, in 
 Luke’s style of phraseology: ἀνέχεσθαι, to give a patient, 
 willing audience (Acts xviii. 14, cf. 1 Cor. xi. 4); λόγος 
 παρακλήσεως (Acts xiii. 15); ἐπιστέλλειν (as mittere), to 
 write a letter, to send information in an epistolary form, only 
 in Acts xv. 20, xxi. 25. The reading ἀνέχεσθαι (Lachm.) 
 must, on account of its slight attestation, give way to the 
 more urgent ἀνέχεσθε (A, C, D***, K, M). The author 
 most appropriately describes his epistle as a λόγος παρακλή- 
 σεως ; for the whole purport of it tends to exhort the readers 
 to constancy in the faith, and to guard them from apostasy 
 and departure from the cross. Perhaps, also, it was not with- 
 out influence on his choice of the term, that only towards 
 the end he turns from the form of a treatise and discourse 
 into that of an epistle. The supplicatory word ἀνέχεσθε is 
 explained by the fact that the author does not stand in any 
 very close official relation to his readers, and generally does 
 not assert the authority of his office with respect to them, 
 and yet that he had not spared them some severe censures, 
 and, in ch. vi. and x., had set before them the danger of 
 apostasy In a way that was certainly calculated to excite 
 dislike. But all that he had to say to them is abridged as 
 briefly as possible, so as to lighten the burden to them, if 
 his epistle is found burdensome, and at all events to trouble 
 them for as short a time as possible. In this sense the 
 ἀνέχεσθε is grounded on the words καὶ yap διὰ βραχέων (as 
 dv ὀλίγον, 1 Pet. v. 12) ἐπέστειλα ὑμῖν Probably the 
 meaning of καὶ yap in this passage is etenim, and not num 
 
 1D gives aremarkable variation here: xa! ydp διοὶ τραχέων ὠπέστειλα 
 ὑμῖν. Unfortunately the conclusion of the Latin translation (D. Lat., - 
 quoted by us as ‘‘ Jé.”), from Ose ᾿Ιησοῦ Xp. (ver. 21), is wanting, 
 
404 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 etiam; it is, however, possible that the meaning of “also” is 
 attached to «ai, that is, an “also” referring to the whole 
 sentence, so that the brevity of the epistle is put forward as 
 a reason for their ἀνέχεσθαι, which is to be added to the 
 other reasons (chiefly the salvation of their souls). With 
 regard to the question, how far the author’was justified in 
 calling his somewhat lengthy epistle a brief one, that is, 
 as compared with other apostolic epistles, Theophylact has 
 forcibly remarked, that he styles it brief ὅσον πρὸς ἅ ἐπε- 
 θύμει λέγειν. His alleging the brevity of his admonitory 
 addresses to them as a reason why they should bear with 
 them, is, however, a delicately refined turn of expression. 
 He deals gently with them in order to win their love, or 
 rather their souls for the Lord. 
 The promise of an early visit now follows: 
 
 Ver. 23. Know ye that our brother Timothy is set at 
 liberty; with whom, if he come shortly, I shall see you. 
 
 “There are no definite grounds for deciding,” says 
 Tholuck, “whether γινώσκετε is to be understood as an 
 imperative or indicative.” Certainly γινώσκετε occurs both 
 in the sense of scitis—e.g. Phil. 11. 22 (of Timothy) ; 2 Cor. 
 viii. 9,—and also for scitote, e.g. Gal. 111. 7; 2 Tim. iii. 1. 
 But must not the feeling have been a correct one which led 
 all translators, from the Peshito down to Luther, Beza, and 
 Bengel (except only Erasm., vers., but not paraplr.), to take 
 it as an imperative? The reason which induced Bl., contrary 
 to his former opinion, to decide in favour of the indicative, is 
 a futile one, viz. that, in the announcement of something that 
 was unknown to the readers, more definite information might 
 be expected ; for the imperative presupposes that the readers 
 were aware of Timothy’s fate, but not of its issue. Liine- 
 mann, on the contrary, justly remarks, that this notice, if 
 understood as an indicative, would be superfluous; more- 
 over, in this case, as it appears to me, we should have ex- 
 pected to find οἴδατε or ἠκούσατε. We must, consequently, 
 understand it as scitote, on which Bengel, with his usual deli- 
 cacy of perception, remarks, “cum gaudio.” The construc- 
 
CHAP. XIII. 23. 405 
 
 tion is purely Greek, as e.g. in Xen. Anab. v. 5. 7: ἤκουσε 
 τὴν χώραν δηουμένην; Thuc. iv. 50: πυθόμενοι βασιλέα 
 τεθνηκότα; ibid. vil. 77: γνῶτε ἀναγκαῖον ὃν ὑμῖν ἀνδράσιν 
 ἀγαθοῖς yiyver@at,—the verb is joined with an accusative of 
 the object and also of the predicate. Instead of τὸν ἀδελφὸν 
 Τιμ., τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἡμῶν Tip. (with Lachm., according to 
 A, C, D*, all translations and other testimony) is to be read, 
 as in 1 Thess. ili. 2, Τιμ. τὸν ἀδελφὸν ἡμῶν ; but on this we 
 may remark, that everywhere else Paul places the apposition 
 after the proper name. It is still more worthy of remark 
 that the word ἀπολύειν, not occurring in Paul’s writings, is 
 a usual one in Luke’s style, in the sense both of release from 
 prison or captivity (besides Luke xxii. 68, xvii. 16 ff., e.g. 
 Acts iii. 13, iv. 21) and also of official deputation (Acts xiii. 
 8, xv. 80), for which Paul uses πέμπειν (e.g. 2 Thess. iil. 2), 
 solemn dismissal (Acts xv. 33), and of dismissal generally 
 (Acts xix. 41, xxili. 22). Consequently ἀπόλελ. (Pesh. 
 snvnt; Vulg. dimissum) may equally well express that 
 Timothy was engaged on some official mission as that he 
 was again set at liberty, although—and this we concede to 
 Bleek—in the latter sense, any further precise definition of 
 the circumstances might be better dispensed with than if it 
 were taken in the former meaning.’ It is, however, true 
 that this twenty-third verse exactly harmonizes with the idea 
 that Paul was the author of the epistle; for no one stood in 
 closer relation to Timothy than Paul, and this relation be- 
 came more and more intimate towards the end of the 
 apostle’s life (Phil. 11. 19-24). But that this verse neces- 
 sarily leads us to infer the apostle’s authorship is not true. 
 For it cannot be read in the text that Timothy appears here 
 as subordinate to the author of the epistle, or as freely 
 subordinating himself. The journey together to the Hebrew 
 church might well have been planned in concert. All the 
 
 1 Theodoret interprets it, ‘‘as sent away in order to convey the letter.” 
 Hence the διοὸ Tiwoééov in several minusc. and ancient translations—a 
 notice without either support or value. LEuthalius better interprets : 
 ἀπέλυσεν εἰς διακονίαν. In Chrys., Oek., Theophyl., we find both inter- 
 pretations ; the latter and ἐκ δεσροωτηρίου. 
 
406 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 author says is, that as soon as Timothy comes, he will set out 
 to visit them: we translate, as soon as, for ἐὰν τάχιον is pro- 
 bably used in the same sense as ἐὰν (ἢν) θᾶττον, frequently 
 occurring in Xenoph. and Plato, which signifies simul atque. 
 If, however, the force of the comparative is insisted on, the 
 sense would be, “if he come sooner than the date at which I 
 purposed to set out;” but this appears to me less probable, 
 both circumstantially and grammatically speaking. 
 The author now goes on to give his final salutation : 
 
 Ver. 24. Salute all them that have the rule over you, and 
 all the saints. They of Italy salute you. 
 
 The rulers of the church receive a special salutation. 
 Πάντας τοὺς ἁγίους includes also those Christians with whom 
 the readers might come in contact, although they might not 
 be members of the same church. Along with the author, οἱ 
 ἀπὸ τῆς ᾿Ιταλίας also send a salutation. rom this expres- 
 sion, some have come to the conclusion, that at the time of 
 the composition of the epistle the author could not have been 
 in Italy, but in some other locality where he was surrounded 
 with probably fugitive Italian Christians (Semler, Nosselt, 
 Schulz, Béhme, Bl., De Wette, Liinemann) ; but this idea is 
 incorrect. It is not even necessary, although it is possible, 
 by means of a frequent mode of slurring over of the idea of 
 locality,’ and according to Luke xi. 138, xvi. 26, to interpret 
 of ἀπὸ τῆς τ. as οἱ ἐν τῇ ᾿Ιταλίᾳ ἀπὸ τῆς ᾽τ. (formerly 
 Winer); for οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς ᾿Ἴταλ. is, as a matter of course, 
 equivalent to “Italians,” and it is, moreover, according to 
 Luke’s linguistic usage in Acts x. 23, τῶν ἀπὸ “Iommns; x. 
 38, ᾿Ιησοῦν τὸν ἀπὸ Ναζαρέτ; xii. 1, τῶν ἀπὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας: 
 xvii. 18, of ἀπὸ τῆς Θεσσαλονίκης ; xxi. 27, οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς 
 ᾿Ασίας ᾿Ιουδαῖοι; and especially in xvii. 13, where οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς 
 Θεσσ., without reference to the absence of those referred to 
 from the place named, means the Jews who had been born in 
 Thessalonica and were present there. Certainly the latter 
 point is not intimated by the expression we are considering, 
 but at the same time it is not excluded: of ἐν τῇ τ. are 
 
 1 On this point, vid. Anger, Laodicenerbrief, pp. 23-25. 
 
CHAP. XIII. 24. 407 
 
 those who are in Italy, and of ἀπὸ τῆς Ir. are those who are 
 natives of Italy." It is by no means implied by the words 
 that the latter were at the time in their native country; on 
 the contrary, if the author was then in Italy, and at the same 
 time was not a native of Italy, he could not have selected any 
 more appropriate designation for the Italian Christians pro- 
 perly so called. Likewise, we are not at liberty to conclude 
 from the words used that the epistle could not have been 
 written in Rome (Ebr., and also Tholuck). For if, as it 
 appears, there is no question of any personal relations of in- 
 dividual Christians of Rome and Italy generally, the author 
 could not do better, when writing to the Asiatic Hebrews, 
 than comprehend both Romans and Italians? in a designation 
 of this kind common to all [cf. Acts xviii. 2: ἀπὸ τῆς "ItaX., 
 and then more precisely, ἐκ τῆς Ῥώμης]. We should, how- 
 ever, be just as unwilling to conclude, with Theodoret, from 
 this ἀσπάζονται ὑμᾶς οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς “It., that the epistle must 
 have been written in Italy, and still more, with Primasius, 
 that it must have been written in Rome. The words in the 
 postscript implying that the epistle was written from Rome 
 (A, απο pwpns) or Italy (IX, απο τῆς ἐταλιας) do not depend 
 upon traditions, but upon uncertain conclusions derived from 
 the words ἀσπάζονται. . . Winer now justly says [p. 554], 
 “no critical argument as to the locality where the epistle was 
 written ought to be deduced from these words.” 
 
 The opinion which, in the course of our commentary, has 
 more and more approved itself to our mind, is simply this, 
 that the epistle is not written by the hand of Paul, and bears 
 the stamp of Luke’s more than of Paul’s style. It breathes 
 Paul’s spirit, but it does not speak Paul’s words. From ver. 
 18 to the conclusion he quite inclines towards Paul’s method. 
 And be it directly or indirectly, it is Paul’s own peculiar 
 apostolic parting blessing and salutation (e.g. Titus iii. 15), 
 with which, in ver. 25, his doctrinal parentage in Paul is 
 finally sealed. This “grace” is that which justifies, frees, 
 
 1 Vid. Wieseler, Apost. Synops. p. 516. 
 2 Not, as Tholuck says, ‘‘ provincials,” for Italia and provincia are 
 certainly contrasted ideas. A native of Italy could not be a provincial. 
 
408 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. — 
 
 establishes us, and makes us joyful; which sanctifies, saves, 
 and glorifies us; which begins, brings about, and completes 
 our salvation; in which our spiritual life is rooted, and out of 
 which it grows ;—“ grace,” that is the absolutely undeserved 
 and free result of the divine love, which, through our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, has been purchased for us sinners, and has 
 come down upon us in all the fulness of its riches. Therefore 
 to all the readers of this epistle is addressed the benediction 
 which says so much in a few words: 
 GRACE BE WITH YOU ALL! AMEN, 
 
 ee κι... 
 
FIRST DISSERTATION. 
 
 AS TO THE AUTHOR OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 Ὁ any one who thoroughly studies the preceding 
 Commentary, and is not content with a mere 
 hasty perusal, it must appear more than probable 
 that Luke had some kind of share in the com- 
 position of the Epistle to the Hebrews. In his Gospel, and 
 also in the Acts, he adheres to the style of historical writing 
 peculiar to the Old Testament, and especially to the Penta- 
 teuch,—a style which, as I believe I have elsewhere shown, 
 Matthew, the originator of the type of the Synoptical Gospels, 
 first gave to their historical matter. In the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, on the contrary, he proceeds as independently as 
 in the preamble to his Gospel, and in the second part of 
 the Acts (from ch. xvi. 10), where he appears speaking in 
 person as the companion of Paul, more at least than in the 
 first part. If due allowance be made for the fundamental 
 difference in his mode of statement, which difference is the 
 necessary result of the diversity of theme presented to him, 
 and also for his dependence on older types and models, the 
 surprising points of similarity between our epistle and Luke’s 
 writings, not only in wording and construction, but also in 
 characteristic points of doctrine, will be rendered all the 
 more conspicuous; also, the hypothesis on which we have 
 proceeded—that the Gospel and the Acts form parts, as 
 πρῶτος and δεύτερος λόγος, of one work by one author— 
 will be the more completely vindicated. The testimony of 
 Clement of Alex., the oldest and most important of all, is 
 409 
 
410 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 altogether confirmed in our view. Among the ancients, 
 also, it met with the exclusive assent of many. “ Dignum 
 enim sic erat,” says Luculentius, “ut ea, quam (que) in 
 propria lingua scribebat, plus luculento sermone componeret 
 et veteri novoque testamento fulciret. Cujus sensum et 
 ordinem tenens Evangelista Lucas post excessum Apostoli 
 Pauli Greco sermone composuit.’ In the same way 
 Primasius (sixth century): “ Post discessum vero Apostoli 
 Lucas Evangelista Graeco sermone eam comprehendit.” 
 And Haymo (d. 853), in his Breviarium Mist. Ecc. 111. ὃ, 
 writes: “ Sciendum, quod a Paulo scripta est in Hebreo 
 sermone tanquam Hebreis, a Luca vero, ejus discipulo, in- 
 terpretata in Grecum.” Likewise also Rhabanus Maurus. ° 
 
 St. Paul is in no case the writer of our epistle. We 
 miss, as Origen expresses it, τὸ ἐν λόγῳ ἰδιωτικὸν τοῦ 
 ἀποστόλους ‘The delicately fine colouring, the ingenious 
 and elaborate construction, and the musical rhythm of this 
 epistle, form a sharp contrast to the energetic, forcible con- 
 troversial strivings of St. Paul, which occasion so many 
 anacolutha, so many parentheses and lengthened periods. 
 But if St. Paul did not write the epistle, it is equally 
 certain that it is not, properly speaking, a translation. It 
 might, indeed, be imagined that an Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 ae. the Jewish Christians, those even of Palestine, should 
 have been written in Hebrew. The mother-church of 
 Jerusalem consisted, however, of Hebrews in the more pre- 
 cise sense, and Hellenists (Acts vi. 1). Now the Hellenists 
 did not understand Hebrew; whilst, on the other hand, a 
 knowledge of Greek may be assumed at least among the 
 better educated of the Hebrews. It may therefore be 
 easily explained why the author did not write his Epistle 
 to the Hebrews in Hebrew, but, in order that it might 
 be intelligible to the church as a body, preferred to em- 
 ploy the Greek language. If this point is satisfactorily 
 explained, the internal evidence against the idea of an 
 Ilebrew original seems to press all the heavier. We can- 
 not fail to see that the quotations of Scripture in the epistle 
 are taken neither from the Hebrew text nor from that of 
 
 —o 
 
 a 
 
AS TO THE AUTHOR OF THE EPISTLE. 411 
 
 the Targums: all the proofs derived from Scripture are 
 based on the way in which the words run in the Greek of 
 the Septuagint, which at that time was still acknowledged 
 by the Jews (cf. especially ch. x. 5-10). Also the train of 
 thought which is made to depend on the twofold sense of 
 the word διαθήκη (ch. ix. 15-18), may be better understood 
 as thought out and written in Greek, although ‘pny (diathiht) 
 in the Talmud signifies “ testament,” and in the Peschito 
 “covenant” (=n3). The inferences as to the tenor of 
 the Hebrew original which Biesenthal has recently drawn 
 from the Greek text, do not, moreover, approve themselves 
 to our view. In addition to this, if the epistle were a 
 regular translation of a Pauline original, the main points of 
 the Pauline type of doctrine would be brought more pro- 
 minently forward. It is true, indeed, that in many points 
 the further development of Christian doctrine is carried 
 out in the epistle in a Pauline spirit, and from Pauline 
 hypotheses." Let us take, for example, the words as to 
 Christ’s exaltation above the heavens (Kph. iv. 10), and 
 what is said as to His intercession in heaven for believers 
 (Rom. vii. 34). In these passages we have the germ which 
 might develope into the doctrine laid down in the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, as to the high-priesthood of Christ in 
 the holiest of holies in heaven. The Pauline view of the 
 ceremonial law of the Old Testament as the “ weak and 
 begearly ” στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου (Gal. iv.), includes every- 
 thing which is stated in the Epistle to the Hebrews as to 
 the insufficiency of the law to make perfect, and as to Christ 
 as the truly perfecting sacrifice and high priest. Also, the 
 way in which the Epistle to the Hebrews deals with the 
 Old Testament Scriptures is identical with Paul’s typico- 
 
 1 Ritschl is, however, of opinion (Entst. der altkath. Kirche, edit. 2, 
 1857, p. 160 ff.) that the Epistle to the Hebrews did not originate from 
 the Pauline school, but that it represents an advanced standpoint of 
 primitively apostolic Jewish Christianity, and only here and there 
 shows some traces of Pauline influence. So also K. K6stlin (Theolog. 
 Jahrb. 1854, 452 ff.), against whom, however, Ritschl justly maintains 
 the idea that the readers of the epistle belonged to Palestine 
 
412 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 allegorical interpretation of them, althouch the latter treats of 
 them from a wider view (Gal. iv. 21-31; Rom. v.14; 1 Cor. 
 x. 1-6). But it always seems strange that we do not any- 
 where meet with those particular ideas which form, so to 
 speak, the arteries of Paul’s doctrinal system. The apostle 
 of the Gentiles, who through the law was dead to the law, 
 lives in the contrast of the righteousness which is by faith 
 and that which is by works; he whom the Lord had called 
 to be an apostle during the time of His heavenly life of 
 glory, and not in the days of His flesh, lives and moves in 
 the resurrection of Jesus Christ; he who by his call was 
 directed to the Gentile world, and was destined to bring 
 about the severance between synagogue and church, lives 
 and moves in the call of the Gentiles to a fellowship in 
 Christ’s salvation. Of these three fundamental points of 
 doctrine, one only—the resurrection—is casually alluded to 
 (ch. xiii. 20). This may, of course, be accounted for to 
 some extent by the prompting cause and aim of the epistle. 
 Justification by faith alone is not the subject in question, 
 because the Hebrews at that time required to be warned 
 against utter apostasy more than against a righteousness of 
 works. Neither is the resurrection dealt with, because, 
 omitting all the intervening events, the highest stage of 
 Christ’s exaltation is placed directly in contrast with His 
 self-humiliation, so as to fix the eye on His heavenly 
 ministry. The calling of the Gentiles is not mentioned, 
 because the community for whom the epistle was destined 
 was of an exclusively Jewish-Christian character, and did 
 not possess the composite nature of the foreign churches. 
 
 It cannot, however, well be imagined, especially looking 
 at St. Paul’s other epistles written in captivity, that an 
 epistle from his hand to the Jewish Christians of Palestine 
 would have received exactly this shape and stamp. If the 
 Eastern tradition of St. Paul’s authorship is still to be ad- 
 hered to, we must assume, either that the epistle as we have 
 it is a free remodelling in Greek of the apostle’s Hebrew 
 (Aram.) original, which is perhaps what Clement of Alex. 
 intends ; or—and Origen’s opinion may be thus modified— 
 
 ~~ 
 
 a — 
 
AS TO THE AUTHOR OF THE EPISTLE. 413 
 
 that it was from the very first written in St. Paul’s name 
 by some other person, who, adopting the thoughts communi- 
 cated to him by the apostle, remodelled them independently, 
 yet in that way that St. Paul, although under his hand the 
 ideas might have assumed another shape, was nevertheless 
 able to acknowledge the work as a whole, and appropriate it 
 to himself. The unfettered course of procedure resulting 
 from the individuality of the secondary author is more intel- 
 ligible in the latter case than in the former, and the second 
 opinion is therefore to be preferred. In the case of a 
 highly-gifted disciple, a few hints from his master are sufli- 
 cient to produce a fruitful result. His work is original, 
 but original in that way that the master can recognise 
 therein his own influence. A thing which occurs even in 
 the present day, must not be set down as impossible. A 
 aie mind generally derives its suggestions from with- 
 
 ; but the suggestions thus supplied set in motion almost 
 Ἐπ λιν the peculiar gifts and intuitive power of the 
 mind in question. Thus Luke wrote at the suggestion and 
 in the name of Paul, and the mental product which was the 
 result is identical with the spirit of his master, although 
 bearing the writer’s own peculiar stamp. The words in 
 ch. ii. ὃ do not stand in the way of this view of the origin 
 of the epistle ; for although St. Paul would not have written 
 thus,’ he might dean) Ths have left the passage ὑπὸ τῶν 
 ἀκουσάντων εἰς ἡμᾶς ἐβεβαιώθη unaltered, especially in an 
 epistle which differed even in the preamble from his usual 
 method, because the wisdom and love were given him which 
 induced him to let the Hebrews feel the authority of his 
 apostleship as little as possible, and to place himself willingly 
 in the background as regarded the original apostles.” 
 
 1 A point which should never be denied. ‘‘ Paulum non scripsisse 
 hance ep., vel ex secundo cap. palam est, ubi dicit se didicisse ex pree- 
 dicatione aliorum, id quod fortiter de se negat Gal. i.” Thus does 
 Bugenhagen begin his exposition of the epistle, and this is an unpre- 
 judiced, temperate opinion. 
 
 2 Vid. Zeitschr. fiir Protest, τι. Kirche, 1856, p. 849: ‘“ The Epistle to 
 the Hebrews fulfils in all points its task of confirming the Jewish Chris- 
 
414 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 If the Epistle to the Hebrews be indirectly the work of 
 Paul, it doubtless forms one among the last of his epistles 
 written in captivity, for he glances back over a somewhat 
 long period of the history of the church which he addresses. 
 But, on the other hand, there are not a few indications 
 which will compel us, in fixing the date of the authorship, 
 not to go beyond the year 66, in which the war between the 
 Jews and Romans broke out. It is unnecessary here to go 
 into the question whether two captivities at Rome are 
 to be assumed, or only one. It is sufficient for our pur- 
 pose that the second Epistle to Timothy represents the 
 apostle in a position which would be perfectly compatible 
 with the composition of the Kpistle to the Hebrews by 
 means of St. Luke’s agency. Timothy, to whom the apostle 
 is writing, is asked (ch. iv. 9), σπούδασον ἐλθεῖν πρός pe 
 ταχέως. At this time Luke, St. Paul’s faithful companion, 
 was with him, and indeed alone with him (ch. iv. 11, Δουκᾶς 
 ἐστὶ μόνος pet’ ἐμοῦ). Luke, who had assisted the apostle to 
 carry the gospel from Asia over into Europe (Acts xvi. 10), 
 was also with the latter when he visited Jerusalem for the 
 last time. Γενομένων ἡμῶν eis “Ἱεροσόλυμα, he relates in 
 Acts xxi. 17, ἀσμένως ἐδέξαντο ἡμᾶς οἱ ἀδελφοί. All the 
 more readily might St. Paul charge him with the composi- 
 tion of a letter thither. It is one of the most beautiful 
 features in the character of the apostle of the Gentiles, that 
 his longing for Jerusalem, which the prospect of bonds could 
 not restrain, still remained unweakened in the captivity 
 which originated in that city. Jerusalem, the scene both 
 
 tians against the doubts which were presented to them by the apparent 
 contradiction shown by the then present aspect of Christianity to the 
 Old Testament promises, and the scruples which were caused by their 
 bitterly felt alienation from the people of the Old Testament law. 
 And if the apostle to the Gentiles composed it, he has fulfilled his task 
 in a way which was necessitated by his position in respect to Jewish 
 Christianity, by employing therein only the holy Scriptures, and a con- 
 ception founded on them of the history of Jesus and of Christian sal- 
 vation, and by avoiding everything which might have the appearance 
 of exhorting, warning, and chiding in virtue of the apostolic calling 
 which was peculiar to him alone. 
 
AS TO THE AUTHOR OF THE EPISTLE, 415 
 
 of the beginning and also of the completion of salvation, is 
 ever the Alpha and Omega in his thoughts. Thither also 
 is addressed the Epistle to the Hebrews, perhaps the last of 
 his letters to the churches. If Luke, as tradition tells us 
 (Kus. iii. 4, § 3), was of Antioch, he was not, as a half 
 countryman, very far removed from the Christians of Pales- 
 tine: Palestine and Syria had nearly the same dialect, the 
 ‘DD. Moreover, the inference which is wont to be drawn 
 from Col. iv. 14, cf. 11, that Luke was a Gentile Christian, 
 is by no means a certain one. On the other hand, the fact 
 that in his worldly calling he was a physician, harmonizes 
 surprisingly with the form of the epistle. For the latter 
 contains, so to speak, an anatomical (ch. iv. 12 f.), a dieteti- 
 cal (ch. v. 12-14), and a therapeutic passage (ch. xil. 12 f.). 
 There are also many phrases in the epistle which per se 
 might not lead to the presumption that the author was a 
 physician; but yet, if Luke’s share in the authorship 
 appears evident both from external and internal evidence, 
 these expressions, as very appropriate to the pen of a 
 physician, would help to favour the idea. It is also per- 
 missible at least to ask, Is it accidental, that the most 
 ancient position of the Epistle to the Hebrews makes it 
 follow the Epistle to Philemon, among the closing words 
 of which we find the name of Luke? Also is it accidental, 
 that the account of Timothy’s association with Paul just 
 precedes the passage (ch. xvi. 10) where the author of the 
 Acts of the Apostles begins to narrate personally with the 
 word “we?” Finally, is it accidental that the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews begins in a way so signally alliterative to the 
 name ITATAOX? 
 
 Grotius was the first who endeavoured to prove, from a 
 certain colouring of the language peculiar to St. Luke, that 
 the latter was the author, and indeed the independent author, 
 of the Kpistle to the Hebrews; but he only did it in a very 
 
 leg. the use of the word νωθρός (ch. v. 11, vi. 12), βρώματα καὶ 
 πόματα (as in Hippocrates, ed. Littré, i. 622, iv. 380); perhaps also 
 we may be permitted to remark that ἐπιχειρεῖν, so used as in Luke i, 1, 
 is a favourite word of Hippocrates. 
 
416 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 insufficient way.’ Stein, in his Comm. on Luke, 1830, went 
 more closely into this affinity of linguistic style, and in his 
 Comm. on the Epistle to the Hebrews stated that, in respect 
 of style, the latter epistle was more allied to the two works 
 written by Luke than to any other of the New Testament 
 books ; nevertheless he finally decides for the direct author- 
 ship of Paul. Joh. Fried. Kohler (Versuch tber ἃ. Abfas- 
 sungszeit der epist. Schriften, 1830) and Hug (Einl. edit. 3, 
 1826) have also expressed themselves in favour of the as- 
 sumption of Luke’s agency. Ebrard, in his Comm. 1850, 
 has endeavoured to prove it at great length, without, how- 
 ever, having been acquainted with my treatise of the year 
 1849. He maintains that Luke wrote ch. i. 1—xiii. 21, in the 
 name of Paul, and in ch. xiii. 22-25 added something in 
 his own name; but the latter passage has not the nature of 
 a postscript. We must leave to its own merits his endeavour 
 to fit the Epistle to the Hebrews—as a work of Paul through 
 Luke’s agency—into the historical framework of the cir- 
 cumstances of the apostle’s life, which are to be gathered 
 from the epistles written in captivity, especially that to the 
 Philippians. 
 
 That St. Paul was not the direct author of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, we hold to be incontestably certain. Taking 
 into account the observations made in the course of the 
 exposition from the beginning to the end, we consider it in 
 the highest degree probable that Luke composed the epistle 
 from statements made to him by the apostle, being commis- 
 sioned by the latter thereto. We esteem it possible that 
 Luke was the independent author of it; but that any other 
 
 1 Also Sam. Crell, in his work Initiam Evangelii S. Johannis Apostoli 
 ex antiquitate ecclesiastica restitutum indidemque nova ratione illustratum 
 (Londini), 1726, p. 98: ‘‘ Atque ita et Paulus Ap. hoe loco (Phil. 
 ii. 5), et Lucas (ut cum Elia Boherello sentio) ejus discipulus in Ep. 
 ad Hebr. Christum effulgentiam aut splendorem a gloria Dei proce- 
 dentem vocans,” ete. Sam. Crell lived at that time in London under the 
 name of Chr. Crell. I saw in Frankfort-on-the-Maine the author’s own 
 copy, with the Corrigenda.and Addenda written in; among them, e.g. 
 in Heb, xii. 23, the words κριτῇ Θεῷ πάντων are interpreted, with refer- 
 ence to Acts x. 35, ad judicem qui est Deus omnium. 
 
AS TO THE AUTHOR OF THE EPISTLE. 417 
 
 than Luke was the indirect, or even the independent author, 
 appears to us to be a possibility which cannot indeed be 
 absolutely denied. It is, however, at the same time, an idea 
 which floats in vague uncertainty, and is entirely removed 
 from the sphere of scientific cognition. The result of our 
 investigation is based upon the solid ground of the most 
 ancient church testimony, and the confirmation of it which 
 presents itself to us in the form of language and purport of 
 the epistle. Nevertheless, we only claim for our opinion a 
 high degree of probability. Here and there in our Com- 
 mentary we have purposely called the author an apostle, be- 
 cause he might share this name with Paul, at all events with 
 as much right as Barnabas (Acts xiv. 14). The apostles 
 themselves were not sparing of the title of apostle (Rom. 
 xvi. 7; cf. Gal. i. 19). Any one, however, who, like the 
 author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, is able to enter so 
 fully into the spirit of an apostle, and to continue so fruit- 
 fully the course of apostolic teaching,—this man must pos- 
 sess the apostolic spirit, although the official authority of an 
 apostle may be wanting in his case. 
 
 1 Likewise Beza, on ch. xiii. 24, after pronouncing that, in all proba- 
 bility, a disciple of Paul was the author after the apostle’s death, says: 
 ‘Non dubitavimus tamen passim eum Apostolum vocare, quod spiritu 
 vere apostolico preeditus fuerit.” On the other hand, Flacius says 
 (Clavis, ed. 1674, t. ii. col. 518), in bringing forward the evidence in 
 favour of the direct Pauline authorship of the epistle: ‘‘Tertio omnes 
 fatentur, eam esse in hac ep. rerum sublimitatem, tam etiam preclaram 
 illarum explicationem aut tractationem, ut nonnisi summum aliquem 
 Apostolum deceant. Huc accedat, quod omnia ea scripta, que mox post 
 Apostolos scripta dicuntur, sive sint Ignatii epp., sive fragmenta Ep. 
 Clementis, aut Egesippi, nihil plane eximium contineant, ut non sit 
 verisimile, aliquem ex discipulis Apostolorum tam divinum scriptum 
 componere potuisse.” This is plausible and beguiling, but only so long 
 as we omit to recollect that Luke is the author of the Gospel and of the 
 Acts of the Apostles, forming together one work, and stands conse- 
 quently in a position far above Clement, 
 
 VOL, il. 2D 
 
SECOND DISSERTATION 
 
 ON THE SURE SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL 
 DOCTRINE OF VICARIOUS SATISFACTION. 
 
 Sava have, says v. Hofmann (Schriftd. τι. 1.320), after 
 commenting on the principal passages of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, which treat of the suffer- 
 ings and death of Jesus, fully examined that por- 
 tion of the New Testament Scriptures which pre-eminently 
 represent the death of Christ as a high-priestly action, and 
 the suffering as of a sacrificial victim; but we have been un- 
 able to find therein that which is peculiar to the usual view 
 entertained since Anselm, as distinguished from our historical 
 discussion of the question. According to the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, the death of Jesus: is not the punishment for, 
 although the result of, the sin of man; satisfaction was 
 thereby made not to the wrath, but to the gracious will of 
 God, though in such a way to the latter as must needs be, 
 after sin and death were in the world; Christ suffered, not in 
 the place of man, but for their good, that which befell Him 
 being the action of the agent of salvation; and the essence 
 of our reconciliation with God is not constituted either by 
 the fact that sin is now correspondingly punished, or that it 
 is atoned for by Jesus’ ethical action in His sufferings, but by 
 
 1 In adding to my Commentary a dissertation of this kind, I have in 
 my favour the example of Gottlob Christian Storr (1789), with whom, 
 in the essence of the matter, I fully agree, and also, generally speaking, 
 with the Wiirtemburg school (Bengel, Oetinger, and Roos, down to 
 Beck and Ch. F. Schmid in his Bibl. Theol. of the N. T.), which, look- 
 ing at the direct character of its investigation of the Scriptures, cannot 
 be reproached with any dogmatical bias. 
 
 418 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 419 
 
 that fellowship between God and Jesus Christ which had 
 for its end the salvation of man, being approved under endur- 
 ance of the whole extreme consequences of sin. 
 
 We will first put together the points which are affirmed 
 by these resultant inferences: 1. Jesus’ death was the con- 
 sequence of the sin of man; 2. Satisfaction is thus made to 
 the gracious will of God, in such way as must needs be the 
 case when sin and death are in the world; 3. He suffered 
 for the good of man, that which befell Him being the action 
 of the agent of salvation; 4. He has reconciled us with God 
 by approving, under the extreme consequences of sin, His 
 fellowship with God, both as God and man, that fellowship 
 having for its aim our salvation. All these points are 
 nothing but truth, and are clearly taught in the epistle we 
 are considering. 
 
 We will, in the second place, put together the points 
 which are negatived by these resultant inferences: 1. The 
 death of Jesus was not the punishment of the sin of man; 
 2. Satisfaction is not made thereby to the wrath of God; 
 3. Christ did not sufferin the place of man; 4. Our recon- 
 ciliation with God does not consist in the fact, either that 
 our sin was correspondingly punished in Jesus’ death, or 
 that it was atoned for by Jesus’ ethical action in His suffer- 
 ings. I am convinced that all these negations would be 
 condemned by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, as 
 inferences very incorrectly drawn from his writings." 
 
 1 We extend this opinion to both the divisions of the fourth negation. 
 The second division is directed against an older treatise of Thomasius 
 (1850), in which he draws a parallel between the propitiatory sufferings 
 of the Lord as,the cause of our obtaining forgiveness of our sins, and 
 the penance of the sinner as the conditio sine qua non of the reception 
 of the forgiveness of sins. This parallel, however, views the pro- 
 pitiatory sufferings of the Lord as a self-judgment and a self-submission 
 to God’s sentence, and, if consistently carried out, prevents the objec- 
 tivity of the execution of the judgment and the penal sufferings from 
 having their full weight. But Hofmann, in the above-mentioned pro- 
 position, denies both the objective execution of judgment, and also the 
 inward experience of it, with which is bound up the ready acknowledg- 
 ment of one’s own burden of guilt, and of the divine right to punish, 
 
430 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 For, 1. If death is confessedly the penal recompense of 
 sin, and if the Son of God assumed flesh and blood in order 
 to be able to experience the death which prevailed among 
 mankind; and if, according to Heb. ii. 9, He tasted it for 
 every man, then His death, notwithstanding all that logic 
 may urge, is a penal recompense of sin, assuredly not a 
 punishment incurred by His own guilt, but taken upon 
 Himself for the salvation of all of us. Therefore in a 
 certain sense that must be true which v. Hofmann absolutely 
 denies, that His death was a punishment of the sin of man. 
 2. If death, taken in its ultimate causality, is a decree of 
 God’s wrath, and if Christ surrendered Himself up to death 
 in order to overcome the prince of death, and to deliver us 
 from death and the fear of death (Heb. ii. 14, 15), then 
 inust we be able to say, in a certain sense, what v. Hofmann 
 absolutely denies, that Christ made Himself the object of the 
 divine wrath, and that He, by His death becoming the death 
 of death, satisfied the divine wrath. But instead of the 
 words, “ that He satisfied the divine wrath,” 1 would venture 
 to modify the expression by saying, that He satisfied the 
 divine penal righteousness; for as love is the root of mercy, 
 so is wrath the root of punitive justice. And if, as is said 
 in ch. ii. 10, the work of redemption could not be perfected 
 without the sufferings of the Redeemer, if this work was to 
 be carried out in a way befitting the God who was merciful 
 in holiness, then is the suffering of the Redeemer an arrange- 
 
 which, too, at all events in this point, may be compared to penitence. 
 We, on the contrary, believe that we ought to affirm both these points 
 as factors in the action of atonement. Moreover, even after the second 
 apologetic work of my dear colleague and friend, I cannot pronounce 
 otherwise than that the Confession of the church is not only opposed to 
 the negative propositions in his doctrine of the atonement in their 
 inward sense, but that it also contradicts the tenor of their words. 
 For the articles in the Confession run: ‘‘ Christus subiit poenam peccati ; 
 Christus sua morte pro peccatis nostris satisfecit; Christus nostram 
 culpam, qua nobis luenda fuerat, persolvit ; Christi obedientia (vita et 
 morte) stern et immutabili justitie diving, que in lege revelata est, 
 satis est factum ;”—and all this is entirely different from the above- 
 mentioned four negative propositions. 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 421 
 
 ment on the part of God, who satisfies the penal justice of 
 His wrath on the One, so that He may be able to pour out 
 the gracious fulness of His love to mankind, who had be- 
 come subject to this wrath. Again, the suffering of the 
 Redeemer is a satisfaction of the penal justice of the divine 
 wrath, in that He has submitted Himself to the penal powers 
 of the latter, set in action both by man and Satan, extending 
 indeed even to the feeling of abandonment by God; and all 
 this is done in order to procure for us all the merciful ful- 
 ness of divine love, or, as is stated ch. ix. 15, to release for 
 us the inheritance destined for us by God, which, however, 
 without the death of the Mediator, could not have been 
 made over to us. 3. However certain it may be that Christ 
 died for our salvation, no less certain is it that He died in 
 our stead. For we were subject to death, and to the fear of 
 death. He, however, has submitted Himself to death, and 
 to the horrors of death, in order to deliver us from both. 
 Consequently He has suffered death in our stead, as being 
 the satanically procured punishment of sin, and as having 
 the guilt of sin for its sting (ch. 11. 9, 14 f., v. 7). Further, 
 according to ch. ix. 23, cf. 1 Pet. ii. 24, He has taken upon 
 Himself, and atoned for, the sins of many (both which points, 
 as we showed in the notes on ch. ix. 27, 28, are included 
 in the word ἀνενεγκεῖν); on which account these sins can no 
 longer rest as penal guilt on the many. We may there- 
 fore venture to say, what v. Hofmann absolutely negatives, 
 namely, that He suffered that which we should have been 
 compelled to suffer if He had not suffered it; and His 
 sufferings may therefore be pronounced to be of a vicarious 
 character,—an idea which is so probable, that the ὑπέρ (ch. 
 ii. 9) in the Oriental translations is rendered by the particle 
 of substitution. 4. According to all this, the essence of 
 the atonement consists not merely in the agent of salvation 
 approving himself on all sides under all the consequences of 
 sin, by which, as I look upon it, no real atonement results, 
 but in the vicarious abrogation of the divine wrath, the 
 vicarious expiation of our guilt, and in the vicarious quittance 
 of our bond, by means of a vicarious redemption of the 
 
422 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 penalty brought upon us by our sin. And thus it can and 
 may, indeed must, be stated; even if we allow—which, how- 
 ever, as it will be shown, must not be allowed—that the 
 death of Jesus was only permitted, and not decreed by God, 
 and that it is to be looked upon as a punishment in fact only, 
 and not in the divine intention,—only indirectly, and not 
 directly." 
 
 A materially better understanding seems to me to have 
 been now arrived at, as to one of the two contested main 
 points—the satisfaction made to the divine wrath or penal 
 justice. For, in the first edit. of the Schriftbeweis, and in the 
 Abweisung (Zeitschr. fiir Prot. ει. Kirche, 1856, p. 175 ff.), 
 directed against Philippi, the sufferings of Jesus are repre- 
 sented almost everywhere as nothing but the result of the 
 requisite condition of His nature imposed on Him by the sin 
 of man, and as events befalling Him owing to the human 
 and Satanic will, both hostile to God; but now we see that 
 Hofmann, in characterizing the sufferings of Jesus, brings 
 prominently forward the wrath of God as the ultimate cause, 
 and as going far beyond the merely secondary means—the 
 natural state of things, the assaults of Satan, and the hatred 
 
 of the unrighteous.? Even in the reply to Philippi (p. 8) 
 
 1 J mean by this, that Hofmann’s negations—namely, the above-men- 
 tioned so little limited denials— go further than the consequences of his 
 own hypotheses. Let the reader note the following remarkable passage 
 in Schmid’s work, p. 34: ‘‘ Hofmann says expressly that God, in virtue 
 of His holiness, cannot leave sin unpunished, unless it be previously 
 atoned for. This is involved in the words, ‘He has reconciled the 
 world with Himself, so as not to be compelled to punish it.’ If, now, 
 Christ has been compelled to suffer in order that we should be released 
 from the punishment of sin, and if Christ in His suffering has submitted 
 to the consequences of sin, then it was its punishment which He bore ; 
 for what are the consequences of sin except its punishment? Thus 
 Hofmann must be compelled also to say that God’s penal justice was 
 manifested by His forgiving only under the condition of a certain suf- 
 fering, in which Christ took upon Himself the consequences of sin. I 
 wish that Hofmann had brought these propositions more prominently 
 forward in his Schriftbeweis.” Yes, assuredly ; but instead of this we 
 find nothing in the Schriftbeweis but absolute denials of them. 
 
 2 We purposely express ourselves thus, for we already find passages 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 423 
 
 we read: “ The eternal Son, by virtue of the divine will of 
 love to sinful man, has exchanged His divine freedom for 
 the position of obedience to the Father, and His divine 
 blessedness for a submission to the wrath of God against 
 man, and to the power of Satan over the latter.’ In con- 
 formity with this, in the revised treatise (Schriftb. i. p. 48 
 of edit. 2) the passage in question has experienced an altera- 
 tion which may be considered as an essential step in advance, 
 as compared with the insufficient and external earlier view. 
 But, comparatively speaking, the mode of expression is still 
 more satisfactory which is assumed in his present view with 
 regard to the sufferings and death of Jesus, as exhibited 
 in the reply to Thomasius and Harnack. For there we read 
 (p. 95), that the Lord, from His conception down to His 
 death, experienced the wrath of God against man, in propor- 
 tion, indeed, to the progress of His history. “1 all the evil 
 in the world is the effect of the wrath of God against sinful 
 man, all experience of the former must be also an experi- 
 ence of the latter. And if it is God’s wrath against sinful 
 man which causes Satan to tempt and attack us, Christ 
 must have experienced this wrath in all the temptations and 
 hostility of Satan. God’s wrath against sin placed Israel 
 under the law of commandments and prohibitions; Christ, 
 being made under this law, is also subject to the wrath with- 
 out which the law would not have existed. God’s wrath 
 against Israel’s transgression of the law brought this nation 
 into misery ; thus Jesus also experienced this wrath, for He 
 
 of the following kind—that Christ, ‘‘ by His priestly self-sacrifice, made 
 satisfaction to God’s will of salvation, which, however, could not exist 
 without wrath against sin.” Indeed, in the Abweisung, he goes so far 
 as to say: ‘‘ At all times three sides of the work of atonement have 
 been set forth : that it atones for sin, and makes satisfaction to the anger 
 of God against sinful man; that it renders sinful man an object well- 
 pleasing to God; that it deprives Satan of the right which he possessed 
 over sinful man ;—all these points are combined in my view of the ques- 
 tion.” But for my part, I cannot understand how the first side can be 
 contained in the Schriftbeweis ; for in the latter it is over and over again 
 asserted, that the work of atonement does not consist in satisfaction 
 being made to the wrath or penal justice of God. 
 
424 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 shared in the misery of Israel and of the house of David. 
 Finally, it is God’s wrath against sin which gives up the 
 righteous as a prey to the wicked, in order that the latter 
 may complete the measure of his sins, and may become liable 
 to judgment; the same wrath likewise gives up Christ to 
 His enemies and as a prey to Satan, in order tliat the enmity 
 against God and that which is of God may complete its 
 judgment. For the wrath of God manifests itself against 
 sin in two points: first, that it does not forgive it without 
 Christ, and such a redeeming work as that of Christ; and 
 secondly, that through the same Christ, in whom sin is 
 atoned for to the advantage of the penitent, it is increased 
 in the impenitent up to that point where, as perfected 
 enmity against Him, it becomes subjected to the final judg- 
 ment.” Where should we be able to find a passage like this 
 in the Schriftbeweis, in which almost everywhere the only 
 thing spoken of is the operation of a will at enmity with 
 God, which was resisted by Jesus? The assertion being 
 made (p. 102), that the wrath of God the Father against 
 sinful humanity embraced the everlasting Son who had 
 entered into that humanity, it might amaze a youthful 
 reader of Hofmann’s dialectics, when, on the other side of 
 the page (p. 103), he finds it denied that the Son is in any 
 way the object of God’s wrath. And it may appear utterly 
 incomprehensible, that in the end of the life into which the 
 eternal Son entered at His conception—that in His blood, 
 He not dying generally, but dying this particular death, the 
 wrath of God against sinful men, He being subject to it as 
 their Saviour, was finally satisfied and exhausted (p. 104) ; 
 and yet, as we find expressed above as the conclusion de- 
 ‘rived from the Epistle to the Hebrews, the sufferings and 
 death of Jesus are said to make satisfaction, not to the wrath, 
 but to the gracious will of God. In fact, according to all 
 this, Hofmann must have been able to say in a certain sense 
 that Jesus became the object, indeed the target, of the divine 
 wrath, and that He suffered it to the end, absorbing and 
 satisfying it until it was exhausted and changed into love. 
 May he not, however, so speak, and why not? Because, 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 425 
 
 1. he views the wrath which Jesus experienced only as a 
 cosmical after-operation exterior to God, and not as the 
 energy of the divine holiness, which (energy) operated con- 
 tinuously on account of the nature of the case; so that 
 although the extremity of the wrath came upon Jesus, He 
 did not become the object of that wrath. 2. Because he 
 makes Jesus to have been affected by this wrath only as 
 regards the natural side of His person, and not in respect to 
 His inward personality; so that He experienced it without 
 feeling it to be such. 3. Because he looks upon the wrath 
 which affected Jesus only as the result of His incorporation 
 into sinful humanity, and not as the consequence of His 
 taking upon Himself all the sins of man; so that the only 
 aim of the pressure of the wrath upon Jesus was, that He 
 might approve Himself as the Holy One, and not that He 
 should endure it as the Guiltless One who appeared for the 
 guilty. In all three points Hofmann denies those conclu- 
 sions, into which the apostolic consciousness willingly entered, 
 and to which the apostolic utterances urge us. For, I. St. 
 Paul expressly states (Gal. iii. 13) that Christ was made a 
 curse for us. The patriarchal promise implies a blessing 
 (εὐλογία) ; but the law which intervened impends with its 
 curse (κατάρα) over those whom it binds. The dam of 
 this curse must be broken through in order that the stream 
 of the blessing may flow forth. This “ breaking through” 
 —which, except God had not intervened with His own law, 
 could not have taken place without the full execution of the 
 curse—is brought about by Christ, who has ransomed Israel, 
 the nation called to convey the blessing, from the curse of 
 the Sinaitic law.2 What the ransom consisted of is fully 
 expressed in the participial sentence: He submits to come 
 
 1 Or, as Hofmann might also say: He feels indeed the wrath of God, 
 but it is the wrath of God against man; He feels it as a wrath directed 
 against mankind, and not against Him. He feels it only as sharing in 
 the sin of the humanity into which He had entered, in order that, by 
 submitting Himself to the wrath of God against mankind, and yet, even 
 under this experience of wrath, remaining the object of God’s love, 
 
 mankind might also be made the object of the divine love. 
 2 Hofmann, on the contrary (ii. 1. 224), says: ‘‘ His enemies, and 
 
426 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 under the curse; indeed, He so takes it upon Him, that He 
 in person represents the executed curse, by hanging on the 
 cross as an ignominious criminal, whose body, that it might 
 not pollute the land, had to be buried the selfsame day. 
 “Quis auderet,” remarks Bengel here, “ sine blasphemice metu 
 ste logui, nist apostolus preiret?” The apostle, however, 
 intends it in good earnest. In the legally stigmatized mode 
 of Jesus’ death he sees only the self-manifestation to the 
 outward senses of something taking place inwardly. It was 
 necessary for the curse of the law to be abolished ere the 
 blessing of Abraham could reach the Gentiles; and it is 
 abolished by Christ taking it upon Himself, ay, taking it 
 into Himself, and thus opening out a free course for the 
 blessing. 11. If the Lord has become like us in all things 
 except in sin—a point often insisted on by the author of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews—it must be assumed beforehand 
 that He will also have experienced God’s wrath which 
 weighed upon humanity, into which He had entered. And 
 He must have felt it, because He, although sinless, had 
 made Himself the bearer of, and atoner for, the sins of man: 
 that He did feel it, is shown by mental conflicts in Gethse- 
 mane and on the cross. In Gethsemane He recoiled from 
 the cup of death only because it was to Him a cup of wrath 
 (vid..on v. 7), and on the cross He felt that He was forsaken 
 by His God; but the feeling of being forsaken by God, 
 that is, by God’s love, is the full savour of wrath, indeed of 
 hell. Or is it that, as Hofmann says (Schutzbr. 11. 74), 
 God only so far forsook Him, by leaving Him to carry on 
 alone His conflict with Satan, without affording Him comfort 
 
 not God, have realized on Him the curse which applies to those who 
 are disobedient to the law.” ἢ 
 
 1 In the Abweisung (p. 186) Hofmann thus expresses himself : 
 ‘“‘ But that Christ suffered that which we should have suffered, appears 
 quite undemonstrable. The beneficial impression made upon me by 
 this ‘ appears,’ although done away with by later works, still dwells in 
 my memory. To what purpose is the controversy carried on since the 
 first apology with so much predilection, and directed against the idea 
 that the Lord suffered the punishment of hell? It is not the ques- 
 tion whether He suffered in our stead that damnation which will ensue 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION, 427 
 
 and help? Was, then, the sting of the serpent all that the 
 crucified One had to suffer? Did He not bear the burden 
 of all our sins? Was not the matter in hand, to struggle 
 through God’s wrath so as to obtain God’s love for us, the 
 enemies of God, all of whose guilt He had taken upon His 
 guiltless soul? III. The sin of man which Christ took 
 upon Him is held in the apostolic consciousness to be so 
 much His own sin, that is, appropriated by Him, that the 
 author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says of Him, on the 
 one hand, that He was χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας (ch. iv. 15), and, 
 on the other hand, that He will one day appear χωρὶς ἁμαρ- 
 tias (ch. ix. 28); as much as to say that at His first appear- 
 ance He was, in a certain sense, not without sin. The sins 
 of many—that is, of mankind—lay upon Him, and were the 
 cause of the sufferings and death which were ordained for 
 Him. In the same sense, Paul says (2 Cor. v. 21), that 
 although He knew no sin as His own personal action, God 
 made Him sin (ἁμαρτίαν) for us. On this Hofmann remarks: 
 “ Since sin is not in this passage brought, as a matter of 
 experience, against Him who is placed in relation with it, 
 it cannot be said that the punishment of sin—that is, punish- 
 ment properly speaking—was laid upon Him.” The logic of 
 the Scriptures is something different. They do not hesitate 
 to say: Woy aagiow 1019, the punishment which was for our 
 salvation was to be upon Him (Isa. liii. 5). Certainly, in 
 Hofmann’s view, no more is said here than this, that He 
 experienced “ an actual chastisement” which convicted those 
 (who there acknowledge their former misconception of the 
 sufferer) of their sin, and of the severity of the divine holi- 
 ness, and thus availed for their salvation. But why all this 
 
 at the last day, but whether He was subject to bodily death in all the 
 depth of its penal consequences,—in one word, the death of being aban- 
 doned by God. The being abandoned by God, or being forsaken by 
 God’s love, is as assuredly wrath as the loss of life is death ; and wrath 
 is the essence of hell, just as love is the essence of heaven. This 
 essence of hell was tested by the crucified One: God hid ΝΡ ΝΞ His 
 countenance from Him, in order to have pity on His, and in Him our 
 poly ona (Isa, liv. 8). 
 
428 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 circumlocution? Merely that it may not be said that He 
 was chastised in our stead.. But 10% is the usual word 
 both for the chastisement of love (Prov. iii. 11) and also for 
 penal chastisement (Jer. xxx. 14), and the sufferings of Job 
 are thus called (Job v.17). And he on whom ‘pv lies, is 
 to a simple understanding not one on whom that lies which 
 chastises another, but one who himself has to bear and suffer 
 the chastisement. The idea of pena vicaria cannot be 
 more exactly expressed in Hebrew than is the case in the 
 above-named word. It cannot even be said that 1D%) is 
 used in order to describe the sufferings of the servant of God 
 as a chastisement proceeding from love, although of course 
 love was the alpha and omega. For, besides 1519 and nn3in, 
 the Hebrew language has no word of its own for κόλασις or 
 τιμωρία. Also, when David implores God that He will not - 
 chasten him in His wrath and fury (Ps. vi. 2), he has no 
 other expressions to use but these. But also in Rom. viii. 3 
 Paul says expressly, that Christ in His sufferings became an 
 object of the execution of the divine judgment for the sake 
 of our salvation ; for we read there: ‘‘ What the law could 
 not do, in that it was weak through the flesh” (that is, 
 through the flesh working against it, could not come to full 
 realization), God has done in another way, and by “ sending 
 His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as a sacrifice 
 for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness 
 of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the 
 flesh, but after the Spirit.” There is something almost too 
 audacious in Hofmann maintaining (Schriftb. 1. 1. 239) 
 that this passage has in no way to do with the death, but 
 only with the sending, of the Son of God; as if one point 
 excluded the other. ‘The whole course of the history of Him 
 that was sent, from the beginning down to its final climax, 
 is taken into consideration. But we are assured by the 
 words περὶ ἁμαρτίας that the apostle had, in fact, the death 
 in view. These words are applied in Hellenistic Greek 
 (Heb. x. 6) to the sin-offering. Even supposing that they 
 were translated differently from the way in which we have 
 vendered them—if περὶ ἁμαρτίας is to be so taken, that 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 429 
 
 the aim of His sending only concerned sin, and that sin is 
 the matter in question ; still it is scarcely possible that the 
 sacrificial idea should not have floated before the apostle’s 
 mind. But this we will not insist upon. At all events, 
 κατέκρινε points us to Golgotha. Then how finely drawn, 
 how much too finely drawn, is Hofmann’s interpretation: 
 “In the flesh, in human nature, from Adam downwards 
 destined to sin, where sin had hitherto exercised a right of 
 domination, there God has abrogated this right, by sending 
 for the sake of sin Him who was like to sinful humanity, 
 who also proceeded not from mankind propagated by Adam, 
 but coming from God has entered into humanity!” This train 
 of thought is as unintelligible to me as to Keil, and perhaps 
 every one else. Moreover, I do not understand how sin 
 before Christ can be adjudged to have had a “right” of 
 domination: death had a right of domination, but not sin, 
 to which no such privilege is anywhere or ever given. And 
 does xataxpivew merely mean to abrogate a right? Who- 
 ever is judged is condemned: a punishment is adjudged to 
 him, and not merely a right taken away from him. The 
 idea expressed by the apostle is as simple as it is clear: What 
 the law, in consequence of the guilt of human flesh, could 
 not accomplish—that is, the carrying out of its promise of 
 righteousness and life—this God has performed, by executing 
 in the person of His Son a judgment upon sin; in conse- 
 quence of which, the promise which the law affords to the 
 fulfillers of it is realized, or (if δικαίωμα is taken not for the 
 favourable sentence, but for the sum-total of the prerogative 
 of the law, and in conformity with this, πληροῦν also) we 
 are restored to a right position, in which the law is fulfilled. 
 For the sake of the antithesis, I prefer the former idea. On 
 sin God has passed a penal sentence, by which the κατά- 
 κρίμα of the law is removed for us, and now its δικαίωμα is 
 fulfilled. But whoever is condemned is henceforth debarred 
 from the activity by which he incurred guilt. If, therefore, 
 sin has once for all met with its penal sentence, its ruling and 
 death-producing action towards men has also come to an end. 
 Now, where has God executed this act of judgment? ’Ev 
 
430 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 τῇ σαρκί. This is not, however, to be considered equi- 
 valent, as a matter of course, to ἐν τῇ σαρκὶ αὐτοῦ. The 
 sense in the first place only is, that the penal sentence on 
 sin has been executed on that very flesh which frustrated 
 the fulfilment of the law, or of God’s will revealed on Sinai. 
 But in whose flesh, except in that of the Son of God, whose 
 personality is so absolute a one, that it might be executed in 
 His flesh once for ail—in Him the one for the sake of all? 
 And where should it be executed, except upon the cross? 
 The flesh of Jesus destroyed upon the cross is here held by 
 the apostle as the removed partition wall of sin and the 
 guilt of sin; so also in Col. ii. 14 (because vicariously for 
 our corpus delicti) as the bond (chirographum, in the legal 
 phraseology of Rome) testifying to our indebtedness, now 
 nailed to the cross, and thus pierced through and oblite- ᾿ 
 rated; and also in Heb. x. 20, in another connection of 
 thought, as the rent and consequently removed veil of the 
 holiest of holies. This idea is also fundamentally the same 
 as that expressed in Gal. iii. 13 f. The Son of God, by taking 
 upon Him our flesh, with all the consequences of sin, and in 
 this flesh suffering death, has become for us both ἁμαρτία 
 and κατάρα. 
 
 It may therefore be well said, that in what Jesus suffered, 
 or rather by suffering accomplished, in devoting Himself, 
 through His own eternal Spirit (Heb. ix. 14), freely and 
 willingly thereto, satisfaction was made to the wrath of 
 God, or, as Hofmann in his Abweisung does not hesitate to 
 write, to God in wrath against sinful man. But yet more 
 correct would it be to say—what Hofmann absolutely denies 
 —that Jesus satisfied God’s penal justice, in which His 
 wrath was manifested, and to which it was made propor- 
 tionate.' Here also the form of expression adopted by the 
 church has apostolic language in its favour. In Rom. iii. 
 21, after the apostle has shown that the Jewish and Gentile 
 
 1 The question why the Scriptures do not express themselves to the 
 effect that Christ had reconciled God, does not come into the controversy, 
 as even Hofmann has no scruple in speaking of a reconciliation of God. 
 We have endeavoured to answer the question in our commentary on 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 491] 
 
 world were in an equally lost condition, and that a righteous 
 position of any avail in God’s sight cannot be brought about 
 either by the natural or by the positive laws, he reverts to 
 the great theme of the gospel expressed in ch. i. 17, by 
 setting forth, that in Jesus Christ’s work of redemption, in 
 which God shows Himself to be the Righteous One, and 
 Him who mercifully justifies, a righteousness of God is 
 manifested, which had been previously testified to by the 
 law; and that this righteousness will become ours by means 
 of faith, to the exclusion of all self-glorification, and will 
 embrace without distinction both Jew and Gentile. God 
 has now opened another way for us to become partakers of 
 the divine righteousness, inasmuch as sinners, whose sins 
 were only made manifest by the law, are justified as a free 
 gift by His grace, by virtue of the redemption in Jesus 
 Christ, ὃν προέθετο ὁ Θεὸς ἱλαστήριον διὰ τῆς πίστεως ἐν τῷ 
 αὐτοῦ αἵματι. As above, with regard to περὶ ἁμαρτίας, I, 
 with Philippi, Keil, and now also Tholuck, think it in the 
 highest degree improbable that the apostle should have 
 understood the word ἱλαστήριον in any other than the usual 
 Hellenistic sense. On the Capporeth Jehovah was enthroned 
 in the cloud: the sprinkling of the blood of the sin-offering 
 on the Capporeth was the culminating point of all the acts 
 of expiation; from thence, too, the high priest brought 
 back the forgiveness of sins, not merely for individuals, but, 
 as the Epistle to the Hebrews often says, for the λαός, that 
 is, the whole community. In an antitypically similar way 
 has God openly set forth Jesus as an ἱλαστήριον, a mercy- 
 seat: He becomes this for us “through faith ;” He is this 
 in Himself, “in His own blood.” The apostle now goes on 
 to state the aim of this provision on the part of God: εἰς 
 ἔνδειξιν τῆς δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ διὰ τὴν πάρεσιν TOV προγε- 
 γονότων ἁμαρτημάτων ἐν τῇ ἀνοχῇ τοῦ Θεοῦ. Where there 
 is a shedding of blood, and consequently of life, there is 
 violent death; and where such a death is decreed, it is a 
 ch. ii, 17. It should be well considered, that the mode of expression, 
 
 “ that the death of Christ satisfied the divine justice,” would be allowed 
 even by Hofmann, but not that it satisfied the divine penal justice. 
 
432 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 manifestation of penal justice; and such was needed, because 
 the sins of the pre-Christian world had been passed over— 
 passed over without judicial interference through the divine 
 forbearance. How this forbearance is to be explained is 
 stated by the words πρὸς ἔνδειξιν τῆς δικαιοσύνης αὐτοῦ ἐν 
 τῷ νῦν καιρῷ, closely (with Hofmann) to be connected with 
 ἐν τῇ ἀνοχῇ τοῦ Θεοῦ. If God allowed the affronts to His 
 majesty to go so long unpunished, it was because His view 
 was directed to the one signal demonstration of His own 
 righteousness reserved for the present time. He exercised 
 forbearance as regards these affronts, because His aim was, 
 in this demonstration of righteousness, to manifest at the 
 same time both justice and mercy: εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτὸν δίκαιον 
 καὶ δικαιοῦντα τὸν ἐκ πίστεως "Incod. <A twofold aim is 
 here involved: (1) God willed to be righteous, inasmuch as 
 He required an atonement of blood, namely ἱλάσκεσθαι ἐν 
 τῷ αἵματι Ino. Xp.; (2) to be also a Justifier, inasmuch as 
 He set forth this fulfiller of the atonement of blood as 
 ἱλαστήριον for mankind. The outbreak of His punitive 
 justice was to be at the same time the introduction of His 
 redeeming mercy, and the manifestation of His mercy was 
 to be also a manifestation of His righteousness, which con- 
 demns sin and spares mankind. And thus it has come to 
 pass. Satisfaction is made to God’s righteousness by an 
 atonement of blood having been made; also His justifying 
 mercy has free course, for the sinner is not pronounced 
 righteous without its being shown how deep an abhorrence 
 He has of sin, and how severely He condemns it: he that 
 is in himself unrighteous is pronounced righteous, in that he 
 no longer derives his righteousness from individual actions 
 in conformity with the law, but from faith in Jesus Christ 
 the Atoner. Up to the time of Christ, God suspended His 
 penal justice, in order that, when He manifested Himself as 
 the Righteous One, He might also manifest Himself as the 
 Justifier, without any detriment to His righteousness. The 
 New Testament ἱλασμός is the solution of the counsel of the 
 pre-Christian history of the world, and of the divine dis- 
 position evident in it. ‘The righteousness of God,” says 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION, 433 
 
 Hofmann (Schriftb. ii. 1. 229), “is not exhausted in the nar- 
 row idea of penal justice. It is the same righteousness of 
 God which was demonstrated both in condemning the world 
 on account of its sin, and also now in helping it to obtain 
 righteousness. But it is not that He now, in the person of 
 Christ, punished sin. It was not by punishing it, but by 
 atoning for it, that He helped us to attain our righteousness. 
 And it is not of the mode in which He atoned for it that it 
 is said He thereby showed forth His righteousness; but the 
 very fact that He atones for sin, and thus helps us to 
 righteousness, is the demonstration of His righteousness. 
 That He might not be compelled to punish the world, He 
 has reconciled it with Himself.” He speaks as if atonement 
 (733) and punishment were contrasted with each other! 
 
 his can only be the case in Hofmann’s view, who makes 
 out that atonement is constituted by God allowing the 
 Mediator of salvation, and the Mediator Himself submitting 
 Himself, to suffer the utmost extremity of all that the enemy 
 could do against the work of salvation. How atonement 
 could proceed from this I would willingly understand, but it 
 does not lie in my power. It is a fundamental idea in the 
 Scriptures, that’sin is atoned for by punishment. For instance, 
 murder is atoned for (182') by the death of the murderer 
 (Num. xxxv. 33); and the guilt of Israel’s sin is only atoned 
 for by means of jndement, that is, by Israel being penally 
 sifted, and being led by God’s judgment into the self-judg- 
 ment of an honest repentance, manifesting itself in action 
 (Isa. xxvii. 7-9). If, in addition, we consider the ritual of 
 expiation (Deut. xxi. 1-9), of which we shall subsequently 
 speak further, it will be evident that neither atonement and 
 punishment, nor atonement and the vicarious suffering of 
 punishment, are so separated from each other as Hofmann 
 (Schutzschr. it. 96) asserts. It is true that by δικαιοσύνη 
 we must understand neither God’s penal justice exclusively, 
 nor yet a righteousness of God which excludes the execution 
 of the punishment threatened to sinners; for δικαιοσύνη is 
 the harmony of God’s actions with His law, and consequently 
 includes the realization both of the κατάκριμα on those who 
 
 VOL. II. 28 
 
454 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 transgress the law, and also of the δικαίωμα on those who 
 fulfil it. And in both aspects is the work of atonement a 
 
 manifestation of the divine righteousness: for on one side it | 
 
 is shown forth as judging the unrighteousness of man by 
 requiring an atonement—indeed, an atonement of blood ; and 
 on the other as helping on to righteousness, by opening out, 
 by means of this atonement of blood, to all who have faith 
 in it, the way to a righteousness by which the previous un- 
 righteousness becomes imputative, and is then effectively 
 abolished. (ὁ Evidently,’ says one of the latest expositors 
 (Matthias), in his admirable translation and commentary on 
 the Epistle to the Romans (ch. iii.), “God acts in the most 
 perfect harmony with His laws, in requiring for sin a cor- 
 responding atonement ; and the atonement required is this, 
 that Christ should give an all-sufficient λύτρον in His blood, 
 which λύτρον God looks upon as given by us, if we by 
 faith are in fellowship of life with Christ, so that Christ 
 lives in us, and we in Christ.” In our view it amounts only 
 to this, that the sufferings of Christ as a divine decree in the 
 last resort, and the whole guilt of mankind which Christ 
 took upon Himself with the aim of atonement, should be 
 placed in causative ‘connection, and that they should not be 
 degraded to a means of approving the Mediator of salvation, 
 necessitated merely by the enmity of the world and its prince. 
 The whole of the New Testament Scriptures strive and 
 contend against this view, and throughout (6.9. Heb. ix. 15) 
 make the death of Christ, on the side of God as well as 
 men, a conditio sine qua non of the redemption. God could 
 not look upon our guilt as blotted out until Christ had pre- 
 viously expiated it by His sufferings, and atoned for it by 
 His blood. This is what was required by His righteousness 
 —His righteousness, indeed, influenced by love; for it was 
 love which dealt with the claims of His righteousness on all 
 of us, by concentrating them on what was done by the One 
 for the sake of all. It was His 183? (cf. Deut. iv. 24, ix. 3), 
 from which Isaiah derives the sending of Christ—the zeal of 
 His wrath, which was pervaded, mitigated, and deadened by 
 the zeal of His love: for what is the wrath of God, but His 
 
 re 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 435 
 
 fiery zeal on account of the refusal of His love? and what is 
 the zeal of His love, but the power of love, which, by over- 
 coming all hindrances, wins back that which was refused ? 
 And Jehovah, we read in Isa. lili. 10, was pleased to bruise 
 Him, and He hath afflicted (Him) with great woe. It pleased 
 Him to do it; for that which, considered in itself, constituted 
 not only the shape, but also the essence of His wrath, was His 
 merciful will, as a motive and as an aim. He thus for a 
 time designedly afflicts the One, His own (in Himself) guilt- 
 less Servant, in order to render it possible to be able to bring 
 everlasting mercy instead of penal justice on the whole of a 
 gcuilt-burdened people. Those who despised the Servant of 
 Jehovah on account of His affliction, and held the suffer- 
 ings which He endured to be the punishment of His own 
 especially heinous sin, will one day be compelled to confess 
 that His sufferings stood in an entirely different position, 
 and that “ Jehovah laid upon Him the iniquities of us all.” 
 Stier here interprets: He caused the iniquities of us all to 
 strike or break on Him. Hofmann very justly does not 
 agree with this misinterpretation of Stier, induced by the 
 latter’s aversion to the pena vicaria. ‘As the blood of the 
 victim falls upon the head of the murderer,’ he remarks 
 (Schriftb. ii. 1. 133) with perfect justice, “since the deed of 
 blood which is committed reverts upon him as vengeance- 
 bringing guilt, so comes the sin upon the sinner—reaches 
 him and affects him. Just as it proceeded from him as an 
 act of self-determination, so it returns upon him as an act 
 of condemnation. In this case, however, God does not allow 
 those who have sinned to be affected by that to which their 
 sin condemns them, but causes it to strike His Servant, the 
 Righteous One.” Were we now to ask what it is that strikes 
 Him, Hofmann would be compelled to answer (p. 137) that 
 Jehovah’s Servant has to expiate the sins of His people, 
 although in another place (p. 321) he asserts that sin was 
 not atoned for by Jesus’ ethical action in His sufferings, 
 The sufferings of Jesus are therefore regarded by him as 
 an expiation, and yet noé so regarded. His suffering is 
 neither a penal suffering nor an expiation which may be 
 
436 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 compared to the contritio of the penitent sinner, but it is an 
 atonement, as if making good our guilt. But how does He 
 make it good, except by paying the punishment due to our 
 guilt which He took upon Himself? The name of sin in 
 the Hebrew undeniably signifies both the guilt thereby in- 
 curred and the punishment resulting therefrom (vid. e.g. Lam. 
 iv. 6; Zech. xiv. 19): the text, indeed, says expressly, “The 
 chastisement for our salvation was upon Him.” The cardinal 
 question with which we have to do, viz. whether God acts in 
 respect to the sufferings of Jesus as with the evil which He 
 allows to take place without Himself doing it, or whether 
 He acts as when punishing the wicked by intervention of the 
 wicked, thus Himself executing the punishment, cannot be 
 answered in the latter sense more clearly than by the prophet 
 Isaiah. Even if we allow that DY does not signify punish- 
 ment—which, however, it does signify—how can Jehovah 
 cause the guilt of many to fall upon the One, except by 
 visiting the guilt of the many on the One, and making the 
 One suffer, thus executing on Him the judgment incurred? 
 These are unavoidable inferences, which Hofmann, not with- 
 out now and then being caught by them,’ finally evades; 
 only, however, by looking upon the Servant of Jehovah as 
 a mere prophet, and by degrading to mere points of His 
 prophetic vocation the antitypical feature of the self-sacrifice 
 (i.e. of sacrifice and priest combined), which is here first 
 adopted into the prophetic figure (at least fundamentally) of 
 the future Mediator of salvation. Certainly a prophet cannot 
 endure the suffering due to the guilt of his people as a judg- 
 ment falling on him instead of his people. By this oblitera- 
 tion of the grand course of the announcement of salvation, 
 which is presented to us in Isa. xl.—Ixvi., both satzsfactio 
 vicaria and pena vicaria are set aside. 
 
 It would be absurd to suppose that God punished His 
 Servant because He took upon Himself the sins of men; for 
 this was the eternal counsel of mercy of the Father, indeed 
 of the Triune God, now actually realized. Neither may it 
 
 1 Vid. Keil (Luth. Zeitschrift, 1857, 3, p. 448 ff.). Compare notes on 
 ch. ix. 27, 28. 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 437 
 
 he assumed that God punished His Son as He punishes 
 sinners ; for the Son was no sinner, although the bearer of 
 sins. Being in Himself absolutely sinless, He willingly sub- 
 mitted Himself, with the guilt of man’s sin which He had 
 taken upon Him, to the judgment of God; and this free act 
 of love on the part of the sinless One was exactly that which 
 was willed by the love of the Father Himself. But the love 
 of the Father to sinful men would not have been holy, if 
 He had allowed the burden of guilt, which the sinless One 
 had taken upon Him, to be considered as obliterated, without 
 causing Him to pay the penalty incurred by mankind. He 
 must satisfy His righteousness ere He can satisfy His love, 
 unless He were to renounce the holiness of His love. He 
 must, we say, for it is a necessity grounded in His nature. 
 Over this necessity, however, impends in the work of atone- 
 ment the absolute power of His freedom, which realizes the 
 necessity, but not otherwise than according to the plan laid 
 down, and His freely stipulating will. That which takes place 
 is necessary, but it takes place according to the will of His 
 love. By submitting His Son even to a sense of divine 
 abandonment in a violent death for the sake of that guilt of 
 sin which He had willed to blot out, He obtains for Himself 
 a valid satisfaction; and the Son, by willingly meeting the 
 divine justice, and in the midst of God’s wrath retaining 
 His love, makes a sufficient satisfaction. Itis sufficient; for 
 the sufferings of Christ are actually the equivalent of the 
 punishment incurred by us. But an equivalent it assuredly 
 is not in the outward sense, by which a thousand dollars in 
 gold are equivalent to the same sum in paper money: it is 
 not so exact an equivalent as the opponents of the satisfactio 
 vicaria desire in order to be disarmed. It was not so plainly 
 exact an equivalent; and yet we cannot but believe that, in ac- 
 cordance with the words of our church Confession, we are com- 
 pelled to assert, “ Dominum nostrum J. Chr. in sese suscepisse 
 maledictionem legis ferendam et omnia peccata nostra plenissima 
 satisfactione expiasse,” that is, through a perfectly sufficient 
 expiation. Indeed, what we, if unredeemed, must have suf- 
 fered far ever, was suffered by Christ temporally; and all 
 
438 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 that we in various degrees and ways deserved to suffer, was 
 suffered by Christ in His course from the manger to the 
 cross, and although suffered in manifold ways, yet always in 
 a mode conformable to human life and history. But by 
 means of the πνεῦμω αἰώνιον, through whom the incarnate 
 One offered Himself up for man, this His suffering obtains 
 an absolute value; also through the pure, tender, and in- 
 wardly divine innocence, on which these torments of His 
 love and of His soul were inflicted, and thus brought about 
 a tension of His relation to His Father which verged on dis- 
 ruption, His suffering attains an infinite intensity ; and this 
 divine and eternal, this spotless and untroubled background, 
 renders His free surrender of Himself, even up to His last 
 breath, a preponderating equivalent, in the judgment of the 
 righteous and merciful God, for the whole of the sins of man. 
 
 Moreover, in respect to the result of that which came to 
 pass between God and the Son of God, which St. Paul 
 specifies by saying that God is both δίκαιος and δικαιῶν, why 
 should it not be called a reconciliation of the divine love with 
 the divine righteousness? “If it is said,” argues Hofmann 
 (Schuteschr. ii. 97), “that sin, as an infinite offence to God, 
 could not have remained unpunished, and that He had 
 punished it, only not in our persons, but in that of Christ ; 
 also that He had forgiven it on the ground of this reconcilia- 
 tion of His love and holiness,—I must in the first place reply 
 that God’s love is not an attribute which has to be reconciled 
 with His holiness as another attribute, but a disposition of 
 mind whose character is determined by the nature of Him 
 who loves.” This distinction is not to the point; for love 
 and righteousness are here taken into consideration as modes 
 of conduct to the creature, both equally essential to God. 
 On the one hand, God cannot forbear from still loving the 
 creature as such, even in the state of self-incurred ruin ; and, 
 on the other hand, He cannot forbear from executing on him 
 the punishment due to his sins. The sin of the creature 
 frustrates the divine love, in the rejection of which, indeed, 
 sin consists, by laying upon God the necessity of confirming 
 and asserting His holiness by penal justice. If now it comes 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 439 
 
 to pass that this demonstration of His righteousness by God 
 Himself is made the means of again turning His love to the 
 creature, we should call this a reconciliation of love with 
 righteousness. We should justly thus designate the ἀποκατί- 
 στασις of the damned, if the Scriptures taught any such idea, 
 since the age-long damnation would only be the means by 
 which the manifestation of love to them would be possible. 
 The Scriptures, however, place before us another pattern of 
 this reconciliation of the divine love as the justice which pro- 
 ceeds from its holiness. If we take a glance at the history 
 of Israel which is sketched out in Moses’ prophetic song 
 (Deut. xxxii.), what is it, taken as a whole, but a conclusive 
 reconciliation of God’s love with His righteousness? The 
 immutable ground of God’s relation to Israel is asserted in 
 the fact that God always inflicted on Israel that which His 
 righteousness required, but always with the view that this 
 manifestation of His righteousness might again confirm His 
 love. This reconciliation of the love and righteousness of 
 God, in virtue of which He judged Israel by sifting but not 
 destroying it, delivering those that were sifted out, and again 
 favouring them, is celebrated in the last words of the above- 
 named great song as the atonement o) for the land and 
 God’s people: The fundamental idea is the same as in Isa. 
 1.27, where we read, “ Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, 
 and they that return of her with righteousness.” Judgment 
 and righteousness (τῶ baw) are niet (cf. chev. 4,' v. 16, 
 ΧΧΥΠΙ. ἽΝ intended in their (in the first place) judienl fulfil- 
 ment. A judgment of God the righteous will be the means 
 whereby Zion will be redeemed ; a judgment on sinners and 
 sin, whereby the power will be broken which held in bondage 
 those of Zion who were well-affected towards God, so far as 
 any were yet existing. In consequence of this, those who 
 turned to Jehovah are made members of His true church. 
 By no other means, therefore, than by manifesting His penal 
 justice, does God acquire a righteousness which is conferred 
 as a gift of mercy on those who escape the former. The 
 result of the manifestation of judgment proceeding from 
 God’s merciful will as the ultimate motive, is that which 
 
440 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 Hosea (ch. ii. 19, 20) comprises in the profound words, 
 “And I will betroth thee unto me for ever; yea, I will 
 betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgement, and 
 in loving-kindness, and in mercies: I will even betroth thee 
 unto me in faithfulness; and thou shalt know the Lord.” 
 The wrath is now past and over: love has become reconciled 
 with the obligation to punish incumbent on His holiness ; 
 and the fruits of this reconciliation are, that Jehovah for 
 ever and without hesitation gives Himself to His people to 
 be their own, justifying and sanctifying them by His grace. 
 In this behaviour of Jehovah towards Israel, we may observe 
 a representation of His conduct to man, and to His incar- 
 nate Son. God loved man, even fallen man; but His love 
 would not have been in harmony with His holiness, if He 
 had made His righteousness, which required his punishment, 
 subordinate to His love. His aim was, assuredly, not so 
 much the satisfaction of the punishment as the making good 
 of the guilt; but as the merciful and at the same time the 
 righteous God, He could not do the one thing if He re- 
 nounced the other. The object, therefore, was to satisfy 
 His righteousness in such a way as would be also a satisfac- 
 tion to His love. And this marvellous plan constitutes the 
 eternal counsel of redemption, and its historical development ; 
 in which the Triune God took upon Himself the atonement 
 for sin, but only by the Son submitting Himself not only to 
 evil, but also to the judgment of righteousness and the curse 
 of the law against its transgressors, and by the Father de- 
 voting Him thereto: so that God’s wrath against sinful man, 
 manifesting itself in judgment, was executed within the divine 
 inbeing itself ; inasmuch as love, in order that this wrath may 
 not pass upon mankind, caused it to pass instead upon the 
 One who was both God and man, and thus withdrew it into 
 itself. 
 
 “In the second place,” Hofmann goes on to say (ut supr.), 
 “it is not correct to say of sin in general, that it is an infinite 
 wrong to the holy God. For history, attested by holy Scrip- 
 ture, teaches us to distinguish between human and Satanic 
 sin; and this distinction will require to be taken into account 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 441 
 
 when the atonement of human sin comes in question.” We 
 do not deny this distinction: it is, indeed, that which renders 
 reconciliation possible; for the case of Satan and the sin of 
 men who reject redeeming love exclude any such reconcilia- 
 tion. But where the Scriptures speak of our redemption, 
 they do not insist upon it; nor do they anywhere indicate the 
 measure of human guilt to be atoned for as being less than 
 that of Satan, but rather, on the very ground of the greatness 
 of our depravity and enmity against God, do they extol the 
 freedom of divine mercy and the plenteousness of divine 
 love. Our sin was of that kind that it allowed of a mani- 
 festation of God’s righteousness overruled by love. But 
 although men had not all become like devils, and there was 
 a distinction between even the unnatural sins in men (Rom. 
 i. 26 f.) and the similar sins in demons (Jude 3), still the 
 Gentiles are said to be children of wrath (Eph. ii. 3), and 
 Israel is under the curse of the law (Gal. iii. 13). All were 
 subject to the divine justice, ὑπόδικον (Rom. iii. 13), and 
 were liable to death in all the terrible intensity in which it 
 forms the background of spiritual death (Eph. ii. 1)—the 
 death which is both bodily and eternal; but Christ, for all 
 of us, submitted Himself to penal justice, and for all of us 
 He drained the cup of death to the last dregs, and was 
 baptized with the baptism of suffering (Mark x. 38), of 
 which He says, “ How grievous is it to me until it be ac- 
 complished !” (Luke xii. 50.) The church has at all times 
 looked upon the bitter sufferings and the death of the Son of 
 God as the true mirror of our sins. It is a mirror of the 
 superabundant merciful love of God which did not spare His 
 own Son; but it is also a mirror of the greatness, and the 
 depth, and the multitude of our sins, for the sake of which 
 He was given up to death." 
 
 If we keep rightly in view the damnable nature of human 
 guilt, and do not fritter away by over-subtle interpretations 
 the three great verities in relation to God’s plan of salvation 
 
 1“ Qua magis severa et horrenda significatio atque concio ire divine 
 
 adversus peccata est, quam illa ipsa passio et mors Jesu Christi, filii Dei?” 
 —Lormula Concordix Sol. Decl. vy. 
 
442 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 testified to in Scripture,—(1) that God made Him who knew 
 no sin to be sin for us, 1.6. imputed our sin to Jesus Christ ; 
 (2) that Christ, the sinless One, taking the burden of our 
 cuilt, became a curse for us, z.e. endured the lightning of 
 God’s wrath which should have fallen upon us; or, as the 
 Scripture also says, that God executed the judgment upon 
 sin in the person of His Son, who took upon Himself our 
 flesh and blood, and offered Himself up for us as a sin-offer- 
 ing or atonement for our sins; (3) that, in order that we 
 may be able to stand before God, His righteousness is by 
 faith so imputed to us, even as He allowed our sins to be im- 
 puted to Him in order to His making atonement for them,— 
 it is evident, so long as these three antecedent propositions 
 are maintained, that Christ must be allowed to have suffered 
 and died as our representative and in our stead, in order that 
 we might not have to suffer that to which we were liable, 
 and that instead of our dying we should have life in the life 
 to which He attained through His vicarious death. Even 
 Hofmann himself, in spite of his dissent from the first and 
 second of our propositions, must consistently speak of a 
 vicarious action on the part of our Lord,* unless he proceeds 
 upon an idea of vicarious representation’ which, as he limits 
 it, is foreign both to the language of everyday life and also 
 to legal terminology. But this idea must be maintained in 
 that strict sense which it assumes in the ecclesiastical doctrine 
 of the atonement; nor can Hofmann’s objections deter us 
 from so doing. He professes to refrain from using the 
 traditional term “ vicarious representation,” on account of a 
 twofold unfitness.? “In the first place, it suggests,” he 
 
 1 Vid. Schmid, p. 22: ‘‘ It must be looked upon as vicarious represen- 
 tation, whenever any one accomplishes an action which I am thereby 
 spared from accomplishing, or when any one bears patiently some evil 
 which I should otherwise have had to bear. I may therefore be con- 
 fident of showing that Hofmann in this sense teaches a vicarious re- 
 presentation, although he does not go so far as employ the very expres- 
 sion itself.” Because, indeed, he rejects it absolutely and without any 
 restriction, the actual points of the matter in question have been so 
 lamentably complicated. 
 
 2 The expression is customary, since it has been usual to add the ad- 
 
 xv μαοηιι σαι νι 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 443 
 
 says, “the idea that Christ did not merely appear for us in 
 order to bring about the forgiveness of our sins which we 
 could not ourselves effect, but now have without our own 
 assistance, but that all that He did was done, and all that 
 He suffered was suffered, in the sense of doing and suffering 
 instead of mankind; and that He did that which we ought 
 to have done, and suffered that which we ought to have suf- 
 fered... . For atonement, as I say with Stahl, is in its 
 nature the making good of sin, and not the penal reparation ; 
 and Christ made satisfaction for our sin, and not for our 
 punishment.” But from the very same treatise of Stahl to 
 which Hofmann refers—namely, the section on the atone- 
 ment, in his Foundations of a Christian Philosophy—we can 
 derive the materials for a refutation. For there not only is 
 the fact of the vicarious satisfaction most decidedly acknow- 
 ledged, but also the characteristic of the penal compensation 
 as being necessarily included in the much broader, deeper, 
 and nobler idea of atonement. “The vicarious satisfaction 
 of Christ,’ writes Stahl, “which the church justly main- 
 tains to be the centre-point of the Christian faith, is a satis- 
 faction made not by punishment, but by atonement taken 
 in its specific idea. The very aim of it is to avert punish- 
 ment, and in it the nature of the atonement is shown 
 forth absolutely and clearly. This is punishment submitted 
 to by Him who was pure from all sin. It is submitted to 
 not merely as the necessary result of moral fulfilment, but 
 directly, in order that through it atonement may be made. 
 It is absolute suffering undergone, not merely death in 
 general, but all suffering which can be morally assented to, 
 that is, the infinite variety of temporal sufferings,—anguish, 
 affliction, disgrace, death, and even in the highest stage, 
 
 jective vicaria to satisfactio. In my opinion, Thomasius has proved (and 
 Hofmann has not confuted him) that all that this adjective expresses 
 exists in Luther and Melanchthon, our creeds and our oldest theologians, 
 just as the Roman law recognised free representation in many legal 
 matters without having any special term to express it. The word 
 vicarius does not occur in any legal connection. 
 
444 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 abandonment by God, all fully felt without any hardening 
 against them. There is no imaginable suffering beyond this, 
 except the eternal abandoning by God. But to the latter 
 man is not permitted to assent, nor can it form the subject 
 of the atoning sufferings ; for the very idea of the latter is to 
 avert eternal suffering by that which is temporal. Finally, 
 the atonement was accomplished by Him who not only bore 
 some kind of relation to, but was absolutely one with, the 
 human race, of whom it is said that we are made in Him, 
 and through Him, and after His image.” As Stahl acknow- 
 ledges here the fact of the vicarious representation, it cannot 
 be his intention to deny, in Hofmann’s sense, that Christ’s 
 atonement has the character of penal suffering. “If by the 
 atonement,” says Stahl further on, “justice is fulfilled in the 
 same way as by punishment, it by no means follows therefrom 
 that the former is the same or of the same nature as the 
 punishment, and nothing but the punishment which—the 
 subject being altered—is executed on the guiltless instead 
 of on the guilty, that is, a ‘vicarious’ punishment. But 
 the atonement is entirely specific in its nature, and as such 
 is rather contrasted with punishment than identical with 
 it. Certainly the suffering which the Atoner underwent is 
 doubtless a suffering for guilt and for the guilty—a penal 
 suffering (Isa. liii.; 2 Cor. v. 21). But not only did the 
 atonement embrace features which were essential to and in- 
 separable from it,—which, however, are foreign, and indeed 
 opposed to, punishment,—as, for instance, the activity of the 
 sufferer and the self-submission to the suffering; but—and 
 this is the decisive point—the power of the atonement which 
 makes satisfaction to justice does not depend, as in the case of 
 punishment, on the mere sufferings, but on the action itself, 
 and on the obedience and sacrifice involved it 10. Although 
 we cannot agree with Stahl in saying that Christ in His 
 sufferings was not the object of God’s execution of punish- 
 ment,—for, as we have shown, the Scriptures do not scruple 
 to express this,—still he not only allows the fact of penal 
 suffering, but acknowledges that it is necessarily contained in 
 the idea of atonement itself. The point in dispute, indeed, 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 445 
 
 appears to me’ to be merely this, that the sufferings of Christ 
 were like the penal execution of a malefactor, from which 
 they are essentially distinguished, inasmuch as Christ, as re- 
 gards that point, was not only the suffering object, but also 
 the acting subject ; that that which makes satisfaction to the 
 divine penal justice consists not merely in the being decreed, 
 but first of all in the willing acknowledgment and accept- 
 ance of the claim of justice; and that this appearance of the 
 guiltless for the guilty has God’s good pleasure in its favour, 
 although the guiltless cannot be excused from suffering the 
 punishment for that which He had undertaken to atone for. 
 Moreover, we find in Stahl’s view of the atonement the correct 
 answer to the doubts which Hofmann over and over again 
 opposes to the proposition, that Christ did that which we 
 ought to have done, and suffered that which we ought to have 
 suffered. Christ’s action and suffering, in which our old 
 [Lutheran] divines, e.g. Flacius,? see two elements which 
 from His birth to His last breath were inseparably interwoven 
 and mutually pervading one another, are to be measured 
 dynamically, and not merely externally with what we had 
 to do and to suffer; and if a “debit and credit” account 
 is thus arranged, there is no fear that the conscience will not 
 
 1 have good reasons for assuming that I am not wrong in this. 
 Ebrard is essentially of this opinion, when he calls the decreed sufferings 
 of Christ a judgment and a curse, but not a punishment. Limborch, 
 however, says: ‘‘ Potest tamen certo sensu pro nobis dici punitas.” 
 
 2 Vid. Thomasius, Versdéhnungslehre, Ὁ. 166 :—‘‘ Scriptura justifica- 
 tionem nostri tum obedientizx, tum passioni tribuit. Possunt vero hee duo, 
 passio et obedientia Christi, per totam ejus vitam extendi inde a primo illo 
 exinanitionis momento, cum se patri submittens novam quandam, ut ita 
 dicam, inchoavit vivendi rationem, longe infra divinam majestatem. Nam 
 et illa primaria exinanitio genus passionis est et perpessionum omnium initium, 
 et tota ejus deinde vita usque ad resurrectionem perpetua passio fuit, cujus 
 tamen passionis, quia precipua et atrocissima pars in cruce peracta est, hxc 
 ideo synecdochice pro omnibus ejus passionibus ponitur. Eodem modo et 
 obedientiz nomine tota vita Christi notari potest. Nam Paulus inquit eum 
 se humiliasse factum obedientem usque ad mortem, et at Hebr. v. eum 
 didicisse obedientiam ex tis que passus est. Tota ergo vita filii Dei tum 
 obedientix tum passionis nomine comprehendi potest. Nam et obedientia 
 fuit perpetua quedam passio, et passio perpetua obedientia.” 
 
446 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 be satisfied. The Saviour approves Himself by perfect 
 obedience, which inseparably includes both the general duty 
 of man and the special vocation of the agent of salvation, to 
 be the Holy One under the conditions which God has laid 
 down, and submits Himself to the decreed sufferings framed 
 according to these conditions, even to the death upon the 
 cross; and this His suffering becomes an equivalent, a suffi- 
 cient payment of that for which we were liable, by adding His 
 holy innocence, his willingness manifested even up to His 
 last breath, and His love to men stedfast to the extremest 
 point,—a love which coincided with the love of the Father, 
 and firmly retaining it, opens a way to it, through the wrath, 
 for men. But both His suffering in action and His action 
 in suffering are vicarious. The Son of man represents man- 
 kind before the Father, and by His life, absolutely sinless 
 amid all the temptations and assaults of Satan and sin, satis- 
 fies vicariously the demand on man which remained unsatis- 
 fied, and by His suffering vicariously gives an acquittance 
 for the guilt of sin; so that within mankind and for mankind 
 a righteousness of God is constituted, in which there is 
 absolutely nothing sinful nor liable to condemnation. It 
 must, however, be acknowledged, that the significance of 
 Christ for mankind is not exhausted in the idea of vicarious 
 representation, but that it has a far wider bearing, as we 
 shall see in what follows. 
 
 (1 do not,” Hofmann goes on to say, “call Christ’s action 
 a vicarious satisfaction, because, in the second place, the 
 expression ‘ vicarious representation’ does not seem to me a 
 fitting description of Christ’s relation to man. It is not one 
 alien from man who has accomplished that which man ought 
 to have accomplished, but could not: we must not regard 
 Him in an aspect so apart from man, but as One in whom 
 man was created, who also in this world has united Him- 
 self to humanity. As the eternal Son, He is not ‘ Another’ 
 as regards mankind, any more than it would be right so to 
 speak of Him as regards the Father; neither as the man 
 Jesus is He ‘ Another’ in respect to mankind, but that Son 
 of man in whom humanity finds its second Adam. The 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 447 
 
 action by which He has reconciled us to God is not therefore 
 of a merely vicarious nature, and we are reconciled not only 
 through Him, but in Him.” 
 
 But the Lord Himself says (Matt. xx. 28) that He had 
 come to give His life as a ransom ἀντὶ πολλῶν. He thus 
 describes His giving Himself up to death as an act of a 
 vicarious character. It is true that the mere ransoming of 
 one that is liable to death does not per se come under the 
 idea of a vicarious representation. But as the λύτρον 
 (ἀντίλυτρον, 1 Tim. ii. 6) which the Redeemer offered was 
 His own life and His own person, His death was unquestion- 
 ably a vicarious action in the most precise and strict sense of 
 the words.’ And in describing this self-surrender of Him- 
 self as vicarious in its nature, He so expresses Himself, that 
 as regards the many among mankind He appears as Another; 
 just in the same way as He does not hesitate to call Himself 
 Another in respect to His disciples (John iv. 37 f.), and 
 even in respect to the Father and the Holy Spirit (John v. 
 32, xiv. 16). If holy Scripture desires to avoid represent- 
 ing the Lord as separate from humanity, they could not 
 have called Him μεσίτης and éyyvos; for He, as a repre- 
 sentative of men, had them as it were behind Him, proceed- 
 ing from and acting for them. And in the same way He 
 stands forth as a Mediator between them and God, and in 
 His exalted state guarantees the continuance and carrying 
 out of the covenant thus accomplished between God and 
 man. But the fact that He is not Another, and alien from 
 
 1 Hofmann says, on the contrary, ii. 1. 197: ‘* Jesus did not give up 
 His life in the place of many who must have surrendered their lives for 
 the sake of remission, either by dying in their stead, or by dying in 
 order that they should not die; but He gives His life as a recompense 
 for the release of many, and His death is to be the action by which they 
 are freed from their liability.” It is certainly correct that the Lord did 
 not give up His life in the stead of many who must have given up their 
 lives for the sake of remission ; for never since the fall of man has im- 
 possibility been required of him, that by his own operation he should 
 atone for his sins. But the denial is in other ways incorrect. The 
 obligation of sin is, indeed, the obligation of death. His death is 
 2} 5) DD, 1.6. He died for us in our stead. 
 
448 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 mankind, but, on the contrary, He in whom mankind was 
 created, who also took upon Himself the nature of a man, 
 is, as Stahl justly observes, exactly that which enables Him 
 to make a vicarious atonement; or, as we should say, the 
 fact from which the representative relation between Him 
 and man proceeds, and on which the validity and effect of 
 His vicarious action are based. It is, on the other hand, 
 assuredly true, that in Christ a new humanity is established 
 instead of the former one, which was disturbed by sin; but 
 this truth is put to an improper use if it is asserted in such 
 a way that the idea of the atonement is made void, and the 
 idea of vicarious representation is suppressed. The idea of 
 the atonement is made void when it is reduced to this, that 
 the new commencement of humanity constituted in Christ 
 cannot fully develope itself without being compelled to 
 struggle through all the extreme pangs which would be the 
 result of the old commencement being subject to the divine 
 wrath. For by Christ approving Himself to be the Holy 
 One amid all these ordained sufferings even unto death, we 
 obtain indeed a second Adam, but not an Atoner. But 
 Christ is in fact both. And the real state of the case is, 
 that He is not our Atoner because He is the second Adam, 
 but that He has become the second Adam by the completion 
 of the atonement, having not only offered Himself up for 
 our transgressions, but also having risen again for our justi- 
 fication (1 Cor. xv. 47; and comp. Rom. vy. 18, 19, with 
 Rom. iv. 25, John xii. 24, etc.). By the above-mentioned 
 transposition of the matter, the vicarious representation must 
 consistently fall to the ground, For the new commence- 
 ment constituted in Christ is certainly in itself not of a 
 vicarious character, but has been planted by God among 
 mankind, and has grown within it, and out of it. But the 
 vicarious satisfaction was the cause on which its possibility 
 was made conditional. The Son of man could not found a 
 new humanity without at the same time bringing the history 
 of the former humanity to a conclusion; and this He could 
 not do without atoning for the guilt of sin. He could not, 
 however, atone for the guilt of the sin of former humanity 
 
 CE υμμ νον ϑεμ. μμ... «ἡ .. μὰ 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 449 
 
 without coming forward in a vicarious character; but this 
 was impossible if He did not enter into humanity, and be- 
 come like to it, and at the same time, as sinless and divine, 
 become and remain a different One as regards man. The 
 unity with man into which Christ entered, so far from ex- 
 cluding the vicarious representation, is, on the contrary, the 
 fundamental hypothesis for it; and the new commencement 
 of humanity in Christ, so far from excluding the vicarious 
 satisfaction made to God’s righteousness, is, on the contrary, 
 its fundamental condition. The new creative life and rule 
 of Christ after the resurrection, rest upon His vicarious 
 action and suffering even unto death. The life which pro- 
 ceeds from the second Adam is the negation of the death 
 which proceeded from the first Adam, without the idea of 
 vicarious representation being applicable; but the middle 
 term between man dead in his sins and man resuscitated in 
 and with Christ, and arisen in His power, is the vicarious 
 atonement of the Son of God and man, who was to be, and 
 intended to be, the second Adam." 
 
 We have hitherto purposely abstained from speaking of 
 
 1 Baumgarten has also come forward as an opponent, in a certain 
 sense, of vicarious substitution (Nachtgesichte Sacharias, ii. 309): ‘* The 
 power of consummated sin is of course broken once for all by the 
 love and obedience of Jesus Christ, manifested even unto death; but 
 this is not to be looked upon in the convenient and carnal sense which 
 makes the result a weakening of the wicked power itself, or an altered 
 position of its force as regards the world. This is the false, carnal idea 
 of vicarious representation, according to which Christ appeared outwardly 
 in our stead; so that we had, as it were, only to remain quiescent and 
 gaze from afar, as if it was a question of something to be done which 
 was quite independent of us. Away with this pillow for moral cowardice 
 and sloth to rest on! The prince of darkness, after the death of Christ, 
 is the same in malice and power as he was previously ; and the tempting 
 power of sin, after the atonement made by the blood of Christ, is as 
 great as it was previously. But by means of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, 
 room is made on earth for us to attain, by a faithful union with Jesus’ 
 death and resurrection, to the power of overcoming the evil one, just as 
 Jesus overcame him, and of opposing sin, just as Jesus did even unto 
 blood.” This passage depreciates the work of atonement, by not giving 
 due prominence, as regards the continuous power of sin and Satan, to 
 
 VOL. 11. 2F 
 
450 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS, 
 
 Sacrifice. The atonement of the New Testament is the key 
 to the sacrifices of the Old Testament, not the reverse. We 
 must first seek to understand by themselves New Testament 
 facts, and New Testament statements as to these facts, or we 
 shall incur the danger which Hofmann has not been for- 
 tunate enough to avoid, of introducing into the New Testa- 
 ment the interpretation which the sacrificial Thorah gives us 
 of itself, in accordance with the then existing stage of sote- 
 riological development, and which would prove for us an 
 insufficient and therefore misleading guide. If it is a mis- 
 use of the progressive historical method to employ the pre- 
 pentecostal facts of the gospel history, and the statements 
 connected with them, in order to curtail the full purport of 
 the post-pentecostal apostolical developments, how much 
 greater is the misuse in the present case, looking at the in- 
 comparably greater difference in the subjects, the right rela- 
 tion of which we have now to determine! For the Old 
 Testament sacrifices were among the ‘ weak and beggarly 
 elements” mentioned in Gal. iv. 9; and, as the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews shows, the need for salvation found in them no real 
 satisfaction. And up to the great prophecy of the self- 
 
 the blotting out of guilt accomplished by the atonement, and the judg- 
 ment executed by it on the prince of this world, 1,6. the snatching away 
 from him of the claim he had on man; and it might appear therefrom 
 that Baumgarten was generally opposed to the idea of vicarious repre- 
 sentation. Nevertheless, although my ways and those of the above- 
 named divine have for so long a period been widely divided, I have not 
 been disappointed in the hope which I added to the passage of his 
 sermon given in my Commentary. In the second part of his Pro- 
 testantischen Warnung und Lehre, p. 32, he has decidedly pronounced 
 that ‘‘our Saviour Jesus took upon Himself, expiated, and atoned for 
 the sins of the world, by submitting to the punishment due to them 
 without abatement or mitigation; for His death was the death of being 
 forsaken by God, the death without God (χωρὶς Θεοῦ, Heb. 11. 9, accord- 
 ing to an ancient reading), the very death indeed which God had 
 threatened from the beginning.” He also says that, in the passion of 
 Jesus, man “sees his sin, which is evident to him from the thousand- 
 fold testimony of his conscience and of the divine law, given up to the 
 divine wrath and judgment, to the inexorable curse of, and to the 
 abandonment by God, without any restriction or abatement.” 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 461 
 
 sacrifice of Jehovah’s Servant (Isa. liii.), to which perhaps 
 may be added Ps. xl., it remained but a dumb type. The 
 eniomatical obscurity of the shadow was not fully solved 
 until the historical fulfilment took place. We should therefore 
 apply the historical fulfilment to the obscurity of the shadow, 
 and not the shadowy type to the now revealed mystery." 
 
 The giving of the Jaw did not commence with the insti- 
 tution of sacrificial worship; and therefore Jehovah says 
 through Jeremiah (ch. vii. 22), I did not give commandment 
 to your fathers, at the exodus from Egypt, nan ahy arty, 
 but enjoined on them obedience. Sacrificial worship was not, 
 therefore, the first and main point. It was in existence, as 
 prescribed by custom, before the giving of the law; and 
 when the latter purified and regulated it, while at the same 
 time limiting and rendering it more onerous, this procedure 
 was only a concession made to the need for sacrificial wor- 
 ship as felt by man. ‘The sacrificial rites were no real satis- 
 faction of this need; and the Lawgiver well knew what 
 enlightened eyes were required to understand their typical 
 import, and how likely they were to degenerate into a mere 
 heartless opus operatum. The great danger of the sacrificial 
 cultus was this, that the delusion might be established, that 
 the gift per se compensated for sin,—a delusion which was 
 opposed in prophecy by such incisive utterances as that re- 
 corded Mic. vi. 7 f. The sacrificial Thorah itself opposes 
 this notion, by making a strict separation between the atone- 
 ment and the offering. Whatever is placed upon the altar 
 is not atoning in itself, but is acceptable to God only under 
 the supposition that it is the gift of a man who is atoned 
 for. In the vegetable sacrifices this atonement is not repre- 
 sented—it is the presupposition of a well-pleased acceptance ; 
 but in animal sacrifices it is represented, and is indeed 
 
 1 “Tet it be supposed,” says Ebrard very justly in his Unters., “ that 
 it might be strictly proved that the point of vicarious penal suffering 
 was entirely foreign to the sacrificial cultus, and that the sacrifices were 
 only compensatory ; even in this case the idea would not be shut out, 
 that the sacrifice of Christ might have had the quality of a vicarious 
 suffering of punishment.” 
 
452 EPISTLE ΤῸ THE HEBREWS. 
 
 strictly separated from, and precedes, the offering up on the 
 altar. By means of the laying on of hands, he that is offer- 
 ing appropriates the victim to the special end to which he 
 intends to apply it, and at the same time transfers to it the 
 substance of all that is within him. If it is an expiatory 
 offering, 1.6. a sin or guilt-offering, he thus lays his sins upon 
 the victim, so that the latter, bears them, and takes them 
 away from the offerer. This is accomplished (a) by the 
 blood, which makes atonement for the offerer, being placed 
 upon the altar, or in some way brought before God; (6) by 
 the gift which is placed upon the altar being accepted by 
 God as well-pleasing to Him, on account of the atonement 
 which is made by the blood. Therefore the bringing in of 
 the blood which is caught, or the sprinkling of it on the 
 place of sacrifice, always precedes the sacrifice itself. For 
 the atonement is the basis of the sacrificial action, and the 
 latter is always the offering of a gift. According as the aim ~ 
 at atonement, or at an overt expression of reverence for God, 
 prevailed in the sacrifice, the preponderance is given in it 
 either to the significance of the blood, or to the significance 
 of the gift on the altar, and the fire which consumed the 
 gift. 
 
 The chief error in the sacrificial theories both of Bahr 
 and Kurtz is, that they make the atonement the main idea 
 presiding over the whole act of sacrifice, and accordingly 
 look upon all animal offerings as being of the nature of 
 sin-offerings, and vegetable offerings as a dependent addi- 
 tion to the former. This inclusion of all sacrifices in the 
 idea of atonement is foreign to the ancients, and is justly 
 rejected as erroneous and misleading by Thalhofer in his 
 
 1Jn opposition to this, Hofmann, ii. 1. 156: ‘*The sense of the 
 laying on of hands is, that man intends to make use of his absolute 
 power for disposing of the life of the beast, and consequently devotes 
 the beast to the death with which he desires to make payment to God.” 
 Whilst Hofmann derives from Lev. xvi. 16 the comprehensive conclu- 
 sion that all placing of the blood upon the altar had as its aim the 
 atonement for the altar, in another passage of the same ritual (Lev. 
 xvi. 21) he allows no result at all of the laying on of hands, 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 453 
 
 prize essay On the Unbloody Sacrifices of the Mosaical Cultus 
 (1848); also by Hengstenberg in his Vortrdge tiber das Opfer 
 (Ev. ΚΖ. 1852), by Hofmann in his Schriftbeweis, and by 
 Keil in his Add. εἶδον" die Opfer des A. B. (Luther. Zeitschr. 
 1856-57). On the other hand, however, all striving after 
 holiness which finds in sacrifice its overt expression, rests upon 
 the forgiveness of sins, which cannot take place without the 
 shedding of blood, and the blood is so far the central point 
 of the whole sacrificial ritual; and the whole comprehension 
 of the sacrifice is comprised in the question, Why and in 
 what sense did blood, and consequently the violent shedding 
 forth of the life, constitute the Old Testament means of 
 atonement ? 
 
 In answering this question, the views of modern inquirers 
 diverge respectively as follows :—1. Bahr.—According to his 
 fundamental principle, the sacrifice of a beast is the surrender 
 of the life of the beast with its blood to God, as a type of 
 the surrender of the sinful soul of man himself to God, with 
 the aim of attaining life from and in God: it typifies, there- 
 fore, the circumstance of man’s self-sacrifice, which begins 
 in repentance, and by means of justification is perfected in 
 sanctification. 2. Kurtz.—The animal and its sinless life 
 stand instead of man: instead of him it suffers the punish- 
 ment of death, and makes atonement for him with its blood 
 poured out in death, thus making void the guilt imputed to 
 it. This is the so-called juridical view, because it looks 
 upon the slaying of the beast as an act of punishment, and 
 upon that which the beast effects by suffering for man as a 
 satisfactio vicaria. ὃ. V. Hofmann.—The sacrifice of the 
 beast is a payment to or reckoning with God, which makes 
 compensation for sin, for the accomplishment of which God 
 has empowered man to employ the life of the beast. And 
 He has given him this power, inasmuch as He Himself has 
 slain beasts in order to cover the sinful nakedness of man. 
 This view has the peculiarity about it of doing away with 
 any substitutive connection between sacrificer and sacrifice, 
 and of looking upon the sacrifice as a means of atonement 
 suggested to man, by which it is intended he should recog- 
 
454 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 nise that God will not forgive sin as a matter of course, 
 without anything being done as a compensation for it. 
 4. Keil—The slaying of the beast is not satisfactory per 
 se, although the sinner may of course recognise what he 
 would have merited if God had dealt with him according 
 to His divine justice. The atonement does not consist in the 
 slaying of the beast laden with the sins of the sacrificer, but 
 in the presentation of the blood upon the altar, which pre- 
 sentation typifies the acceptance of the sacrificer into a par- 
 ticipation of God’s mercy. This surrender to Jehovah, the 
 Holy One, is a death which in this way becomes life. The 
 burning on the altar typifies the effect of the mercy, which 
 consumes that which is sinful, and transforms the sinner. 
 
 In glancing over these four opinions, of which we have 
 given but a mere sketch, it cannot be denied that the so- 
 called juridical view put forward by Kurtz is not only the 
 most simple and intelligible, but also the idea which harmo- 
 nizes best with the New Testament antitype. Bihr’s sym- 
 bolical view has fallen into the background, because it makes 
 the animal sacrificed nothing but the shadow accompanying 
 man’s personal action: man attains—this is what the sacrifice 
 typifies—to mercy and life from God by mortifying himself. 
 Moreover, the expressions, “to die to one’s self,” or ‘to 
 give one’s self up to God by death,” convey an idea which 
 is foreign to the Old Testament; and it remains unexplained 
 why the slaying of the victim, which in this interpretation 
 of the sacrificial ritual is so deeply significant, as Bihr him- 
 self allows, and brings forward against the juridical view, 
 seems to be of such subordinate importance; also why the 
 beast is slaughtered away from the altar, and not on it; and 
 why the victim was not necessarily killed by its owner (at 
 least according to the traditionally recorded’ practice), but 
 by any one else who pleased to do so." And even Keil’s 
 symbolically vicarious view is inferior to that of Kurtz, 
 
 1 Bihr’s sacrificial theory is nevertheless, in its main idea, identical 
 with the Jewish view which has prevailed since the middle ages—its 
 practical conclusion that fasting (self-mortification) was the true pro- 
 piatory altar, wind MIDI Nard Msynn. 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 4099 
 
 because it is generally a πρῶτον ψεῦδος of these sacrificial 
 theories that the life and flesh of the victim are a symbol of 
 man; the blood is a means of atonement as a third term 
 between God and man; and the sacrifice as a gift is no more 
 the symbol of man, than the gold, frankincense, and myrrh 
 which were offered to the Saviour were a symbol of the 
 Magi, or than a hymn of praise which is dedicated to God 
 is a symbol of him who dedicates it. Even the prayer is, 
 indeed, no symbol of the man himself; but, as if severed 
 from the person of the man, it appears—as ndan, according 
 to its right origin, proves—as something mediatorial and 
 intercessory between him and God. ‘The sacrifice, when 
 offered up with the right feeling, has the self-surrender of 
 man as its background, and his prayer as its accompaniment 
 (Job xiii. 8; 1 Sam. vii. 9; 1 Chron. xxi. 26; 2 Chron. xxix. 
 26-380); but neither self-surrender nor prayer is thereby 
 symbolized. The sacrificial gift is something different from 
 him that offers it; it is what it is, and does not signify what 
 it is not. 
 
 But all three opinions which oppose that of Kurtz have 
 this against them, that they mistake the nature of the atone- 
 ment expressed in the sacrifice. The verb 133, according 
 to its proper origin, signifies to cover. The atonement is a 
 covering, as is shown by the name given to the covering of 
 the ark, 153, with which in early times the idea of ἱλαστή- 
 pov was combined. ΤῸ atone is to cover, but not in the 
 sense adopted and consistently carried out by Hofmann, in 
 which we speak of the “covering,” that is, “the payment,” 
 of a debt. This metaphor is entirely foreign to the Hebrew 
 language. It is true that 153 signifies the λύτρον; but whilst 
 in our linguistic usage it is the requisite sum which is covered, 
 in the Hebrew idiom it is he who pays, or he for whom the 
 amount is paid, who is covered by the payment. Thus the 
 ideas of 153, λύτρον, and O53, ἱλασμός, are connected; and 
 on this von we must remark that the Thorah, ἘΣ the 
 first sacrifice to the last, discovers nothing whatever of any 
 intention with regard to the animal’s skin, wand also that 793 
 is nowhere p! laced in relation to the sane so that mak- 
 
456 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 ing the idea of payment the centre-point of the sacrifice, as 
 being of an de nature, is a fundamental idea which is 
 foreign to the law." The verb 783 signifies to cover, and 
 the blasast construction is that with by. of the sin ἘΠῚ im- 
 purity, or of him laden therewith. But that which covers 
 the sin or impurity, or him that is laden with them, cannot 
 be (a point which may be urged against Bahr and Keil) 
 a symbol of man: it must supply his place actually (as a 
 representative in a juristic sense), and not in a merely sym- 
 bolical way (as a substitute). And from whom is it that 
 sin and that which is sinful, impurity and that which is 
 impure, are covered? The, answer js, From God the Holy 
 One, to whom sin and i impurt are an intolerable spectacle ; 
 or, which amounts to the sane. thing, from God’s wrath, 
 which is kindled against all that, is sinful’ ‘and impure, and 
 consumes it. The “atonement, ἐξιλασμός, 1 is ‘the removal of 
 the ὀργή (Jes. Sir. xvi. 11). When the people, after the 
 punishment of the 250 rebels, murmured against Moses and 
 Aaron, and Jehovah intended to destroy those who took the 
 part Ε΄ the rebels, then spake Moses to Aaron (Num. xvi. 
 46): “ Take a censer, and put fire therein from off.the altar, 
 and put on incense, and go quickly to the congregation, and 
 make an atonement for them: for there is wrath gone 
 out from the Lord; the plague is begun.” The 1753 here 
 evidently intervenes between the wrath and the sin. And 
 although it may be said that murder could only be atoned 
 for by the death of the murderer (Num. xxxv. 33), or that 
 Phinehas by his relentless zeal atoned for, that is, covered 
 Israel (Num. xxv. 13), yet in both cases it is God’s wrath 
 excited by sin which is propitiated, that is, appeased. Thus 
 in the sacrifice sinful man is atoned for, that is, covered, . 
 by the blood which intervenes as a third elemeut between 
 man and God, and is brought to the place of God’s presence. 
 It appears for man; and since it appears for man, whose sin, 
 although perhaps according to God’s ordinance of mercy it is 
 
 1 Hofmann goes entirely against the linguistic usage in saying (ii. 1. 
 197) that Spa IBD and δίδωροι λύτρον ἐντί are Synonymous phrases. The 
 LXX. does not anywhere translate the former by the latter. 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION, 457 
 
 a peccatum veniale, is nevertheless as sin liable to death, 
 
 the fact cannot be evaded that it appears vicariously for 
 
 man.! 
 
 It is thus taught in the Thorah (Lev. xvii. 11); for we 
 there read that the blood of the beast atones for the soul of 
 the offerer (wEI-2Y), by virtue of the life contained in it 
 (W23).? Evidently, therefore, the life of the beast stands in 
 the place of the soul of the man, by the life which is shed 
 out in the blood (oN Ὁ) covering from an angry God the 
 soul of man, which was worthy of death. The vicarious re- 
 presentation is certainly an incongruous one, for man and 
 beast are infinitely different; and therefore Jehovah says, 
 vans, I have given you the blood of the beast as a means 
 of atonement. Given? Yes, given surely with a view to 
 
 1 This is also the prevailing opinion of the ancient Synagogue, as 
 Einhorn acknowledges (Princip. des Mosaismus, p. 195), although his 
 rationalistic work aims at its refutation. There is a fact which goes to 
 prove that the ancient Synagogue looked upon the offering of blood in 
 the light of a transfer of guilt, and of a vicarious satisfaction: this is, 
 that among the European Jews the sacrifice of a cock is still customary 
 (mad bygo4n). See, on this point, Briick (Labbinische Ceremonial-Ge- 
 brauche, 1837, p. 25 ff.). And that the idea of vicarious representation 
 is blended in the linguistic conception with A753, is shown by the very 
 usual phrase MADD 3A (e.g. Negaim Pen. ii.; Jebamoth 70a, ete.), ‘I 
 will be his atonement,” 1.6. Let all the evil which would have come upon 
 him, come upon me in his stead. Even now a son, when speaking of a 
 recently deceased father, is wont to say, ἸΔ 3 Ὁ MrpD 37, ‘I will be 
 the atonement of his departure,” 1.6. May that come upon me which, in 
 the other world, is awarded to him as the sufferings of purification (vid. 
 Kidduschin 31b; Tur Joreh Deah, § 240). Aruch (under 73) explains 
 exactly : 12) 23 93°97, I will supply his place, and suffer in his stead. 
 This combination of the two ideas — of atonement and of vicarious 
 representation —is also evident from the fact that, according to the 
 Mishna (JJaccoth 11b), the unintentional man-s!ayer, whose sentence 
 was pronounced, need not fly to a city of refuge if the high priest died 
 immediately afterwards, and that, according to the Gemara, the reason 
 was, that the death of the high priest, and not the exile of the fugitive, 
 constituted the atonement (77537 NIN 1Π2 nn). 
 
 * Hofmann, ii. 1. 151, is of opinion that the translation “ through 
 the life” is incorrect ; but the rendering which he substitutes, ‘‘as the 
 life in its nature,” is impossible as regards syntax: the word united with 
 the so-called Bet’ essentiz cannot have the article. 
 
458 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 that life-blood of love, not of beasts, but of man, ay, of God 
 made man, which in the fulness of time was to cover men, 
 and to make them the beloved ones of God, but to God was 
 eternally present. The Thorah is, however, dumb as to this 
 mystery of the sacrifice, although it seems to have a fore- 
 boding of it. After the people, by their calf-worship, had 
 brought upon themselves the judgment of destruction, Moses 
 says (Ex, xxxii.30): “ And now I will go up unto Jehovah ; 
 peradventure I shall make an atonement for your sin.” In 
 this case it is not a beast, and neither Aaron nor an Aaronite 
 priest, but it is Moses who undertakes the 7783. And how 
 does he attempt it? He offers to the angry Jehovah to have 
 his name blotted out of the book of life. The satisfactio 
 vicaria, or, as it may also be called, the pena vicaria, is not 
 therefore something foreign to the Thorah; but yet the slay- 
 ing of the beast had, as Kurtz assumes, the character of a 
 penal execution. The sacrifice of the beast does not repre- 
 sent in a type the event on Golgotha, because the sacrificial 
 institution is an institution of mercy, in which it is mercy 
 which pardons, and not justice which punishes. Just as the 
 altar sacrament of the New Testament presupposes the event 
 on Golgotha, but does not repeat it, so the latter is the mys- 
 terious background. from which the divine permission for 
 animal sacrifice proceeded, although the sacrifice does not 
 in the intention of the ritual portray the event on Golgotha. 
 The slaying of the victim is therefore called ὉΠ, and never 
 nn, just as (a point which may be urged against Keil) the 
 consuming in the fire on the altar is always called ?7, and 
 never ἢ, The slaying is only the means for obtaining the 
 blood of atonement, and for making the beast an offering 
 on the altar; and the consuming the gift in the fire is only 
 the means for its surrender to God, and for its acceptance by 
 God. The gift does not atone: it is the blood, and indeed 
 not merely the blood which is shed, but that which is placed 
 upon the altar (Lev. xvii. 11, nanaa-Dy), which is the tempo- 
 rary typical representative of the blood of Jesus’ self-sacri- 
 fice, and brings about the 159, 7.e. covers the offerer so far 
 as he is the object of the divine wrath, so that his gift, as 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 409 
 
 the gift of one atoned for, can be accepted by God as well- 
 pleasing to Him." 
 
 In the course of our commentary on the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews we often had occasion to show how the various 
 acts of the sacrificial ritual vary from the facts of the anti- 
 type, both as regards locality and consecutive order. Thus, 
 for instance, the presentation of the blood in the holiest of 
 holies, which in the ritual of the day of atonement, and in 
 harmony with the general ritual, took place between the 
 slaying and offering on the altar; but in the heavenly and 
 final act these points differ from the earthly. For the slay- 
 ing and the offering on the altar are coincident—because, by 
 the Lord giving Himself up to death, He also offered Him- 
 self—and the locality of the two coincident acts is one, the 
 cross-altar of Golgotha; whilst in the sacrificial ritual the 
 place of slaying and the altar were far apart. We have, 
 besides, shown, as opportunity offered, that in the death of 
 the Lord all the different acts of the sacrificial ritual found 
 their antitype: the burning of the body of the sin-offering 
 without the camp, and also the shedding of its blood in the 
 slaying, the sprinkling of its blood, and the presentation of 
 its fat upon the altar. It has been also remarked that the 
 sacrifice of Christ is the fulfilment of all sacrifices of blood ; 
 
 1 There is, however, a sacrificial ritual (Deut. xxi. 1-9) in which the 
 slaying is more noticed than the blood. The blood of a murdered man 
 cannot be expiated except 33. oya (Num. xxxv. 33). This is, how- 
 ever, impossible if the person of the murderer is unknown; and there- 
 fore that which the murderer should have suffered is done to the beast. 
 But it is not the murderer who is thus atoned for; for the latter, if 
 detected, would still be destroyed : it is the community which is atoned 
 for by slaying a beast as their representative, and calling upon Jehovah 
 to allow this to be effectual as the expiation for the undiscovered blood- 
 guiltiness which lay upon all. The young, and as yet unused heifer, 
 which is slain by cutting off the neck, represents the blood-stained 
 community, and not the murderer. The idea of vicarious representation 
 is therefore evident here. In the sacrifice the vicarious representation 
 depended on the blood, and the slaying had nothing to do with it; but 
 here it is made to depend on the slaying itself, which is here called pay, 
 and not either AO NY or AN 3}; and it must be specially noticed that no 
 mention is made of the flowing blood of the beast. 
 
460 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 and it is therefore a one-sided view if we look at it in the 
 light of a sacrifice of one kind only, to the exclusion of 
 all others. The fundamental idea of the sin-offering is 
 expiatio, or atonement; of the trespass-offering, muleta, or 
 indemnification ; of the burnt-offering, oblatio, or adoration ; 
 of the peace-offering, conciliatio, or bringing into fellowship ; 
 —all these fundamental ideas, and not merely that of the 
 making good of our sins in so far as they are a profanation 
 and defrauding of the Holy One (Isa. lili. 10, “si obtulisset 
 anima ejus mulctam”), are combined in the one all-embrac- 
 ing antitype. And the sacrifice of Christ is also an antitype 
 of the covenant offering (Ex. xxiv.), by which Israel, being 
 once for all sprinkled with the atoning blood, was dedicated 
 to be God’s covenant people, and to a performance of divine 
 worship well-pleasing to Him. It was also the antitype of 
 the installation sacrifice (Lev. viil.); for His blood which 
 washed us from our sins has also dedicated us as priests to 
 God His Father (Rev. i. 5 f.). Pre-eminently, too, is it the 
 antitype of the passover, for His blood is our protection from 
 perdition, and our redemption from bondage. We also have 
 a Paschal Lamb, which is given to us to partake of, καὶ yap 
 τὸ πάσχα ἡμῶν ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἐτύθη Χριστός (1 Cor. v. 7). 
 
 The antitypical sacrifice is therefore not to be measured 
 by the prefigurative sacrifices: it goes far beyond them, and 
 is indeed their eternal cause, and the actually fulfilled aim of 
 all of them. The death of the victim is, in the intention of 
 the ritual, not of an atoning character: the victim, in being 
 put to death, is not, in the intention of the ritual, of a pre- 
 figurative character ; for the owner of the victim, or some one 
 else, would thus kill Christ in the figure, which is inconsistent. 
 The slaying is only the means for obtaining the blood, and 
 for performing the sacrifice ; and it is therefore called slaying, 
 and not putting to death. The blood only of the victim is of 
 an atoning and prefigurative character: it is atoning in virtue 
 of its antitype, and not of the death inflicted on the victim, 
 and points forwards to the blood of Christ which was one day 
 to be shed, just as the sacramental cup points backwards to 
 
 the blood of Christ which has been shed. The slaying of 
 
 ee ie 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 461 
 
 the victim has therefore not at all the character of a penal 
 death; but it is equally wrong, either from the event on 
 Golgotha to press upon the slaying in the sacrificial cultus 
 the character of penal death, or from the slaying in the 
 sacrificial cultus to deny to the event on Golgotha the cha- 
 racter of penal suffering, and of the execution of a sentence, 
 or, as Paul does not hesitate to say, of the κατάρα. The 
 whole of the sacrificial cultus, so far as it was adopted into 
 the divine service of the people through whom salvation was 
 to be brought about, depends, indeed, upon the eternal 
 hypothesis of Christ’s sacrifice of Himself, and is not in the 
 most exact parallel a type of this New Testament fact ; but, 
 as the chief element of the divine service of Israel dedicated 
 on Mount Sinai by the blood of a sacrificed beast, it may be 
 compared to the divine service of Christianity founded on 
 Golgotha by the blood of Christ. But as the divine service 
 of the latter is imbued with after-ideas founded on the event 
 on Golgotha and its heavenly results, so the divine service of 
 Israel was pervaded by types founded on this future model ; 
 and the New Testament Scriptures: are fully justified in 
 looking upon the sacrificial law as the hieroglyphical re- 
 presentation of the New Testament, and when deciphering 
 it, in going beyond the intention of the ritual, which had its 
 ultimate cause far removed from itself. We must make a 
 proper distinction between the then existing intention of the 
 sacrificial law, and the sense which was ἃ type of the future. 
 The bond of union between the two is the blood, which both 
 in the type and antitype is vicarious in its character. In the 
 shadow the blood exclusively constituted the atonement, but 
 in the antitype it was not exclusively Christ’s blood: it was 
 also Christ’s sacrifice of Himself as προσφορὰ τοῦ σώματος 
 (Heb. x. 10; Eph. v. 2), and consequently in the totality of 
 all its points, indeed the whole life, sufferings, and death of 
 Christ; and this our atonement is at the same time our 
 sanctification, and the two together our perfecting. 
 
 In the preceding remarks, I believe that I have shown, as 
 far as I could in the space at my disposal, that the oblitera- 
 tion of the ideas of penal suffering and vicarious representa- 
 
462 EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 
 
 tion leads to a view of the work of atonement which runs 
 counter to the New Testament Scriptures; also that this 
 view is opposed by the Old Testament sacrifice, if rightly 
 understood ; for so far as the latter is atoning, it also asserts 
 itself to be vicarious. Also, that the penal suffering is in the 
 latter not represented ritually, the atonement being made 
 conditicnal on the blood alone, not on the violent death; but 
 that the atonement of blood, understood typically, as it is 
 intended to be understood, and is in fact so deciphered by 
 Isaiah in his prophecy, ch. liii., also points to a vicarious 
 satisfaction to be made to the penal justice of God. With 
 regard to this point, we have not omitted to show that the 
 idea of atonement has the narrower idea of penal compensa- 
 tion as its inalienable characteristic, but that it is by no 
 means exhausted in the latter; also that that which was 
 done and suffered actively and passively by Christ does not 
 stand, in respect to that which we had to do and must have 
 suffered, in the relation of an external well-balanced payment, 
 although it does stand in the relation of a well-to-be-un- 
 derstood essential equivalent. And that, finally, the love of 
 the Father to fallen man is the Alpha and Omega of the 
 work of atonement, by which also penal suffering, judgment, 
 and curse are overruled among them. That, however, on 
 which we insist remains this, that the severity even unto 
 death of the divine justice, which severity is evident amid 
 the work of atonement, is not to be frittered away in the 
 idea of the divine love which in this work of atonement 
 mediates with the divine justice, and only in this way obtains 
 the mastery. Although I do not fail to recognise how many 
 beneficial results may and will flow from Hofmann’s new 
 work on the Scripture doctrine of sacrifice and atonement, 
 yet I cannot say any more than all those have said who have 
 taken upon themselves to speak* on this matter, which touches 
 the innermost sanctuary of the faith, viz. that they cannot 
 recognise that any true progress has been made in the re- 
 conciliation of God’s love with God’s justice by setting aside 
 
 1 Seibert also included, in his work Schleiermacher’s Lehre von der 
 Versohnung (1855), written without reference to v. Hofmann. 
 
SCRIPTURAL BASIS OF DOCTRINE OF SATISFACTION. 463 
 
 the vicarious substitution or the penal and judicial suffer- 
 ings. The ecclesiastical, and especially the Lutheran per- 
 ception of faith, will never cease to protest against this 
 abrogation ; and my good friend and colleague, especially if 
 he takes into consideration the exceeding difficulty in under- 
 standing and ease in misunderstanding his doctrine of the 
 atonement, cannot but acknowledge still more readily than 
 before the justice of this protest, and the simple view of 
 Scripture truth and childlike faith on which it depends, 
 
FIRST APPENDIX. 
 
 —~—- 
 
 THE RITUAL OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. 
 
 [From Maimuni’s Hajad hachazaka.] 
 
 First SECTION. 
 _ Halacha (precept of the law) 1. On the day of the fast? 
 
 the morning and evening sacrifice is offered just as on any 
 other day, and also the oblation? of the day,—a bull, a ram, 
 and seven lambs, all of them burnt-offerings, and a he-goat 
 as a sin-offering, the blood of which was sprinkled in the 
 outer place (of the sanctuary), the flesh being eaten in the 
 evening. 
 
 But in addition to these (regular) sacrifices, there were 
 also offered a young bull as a sin-offering, which was con- 
 sumed, and a ram as a burnt-offering, both of which the 
 high priest had to provide out of his own means. But the 
 ram, which was provided out of the public means, and is 
 described in the Parasha Achare moth, is that which is 
 reckoned in Numbers*® among the sacrifices of the feast, and 
 is called the ram of the people. Lastly, two he-goats were 
 
 1 Briefly for D530 diy oi. 
 
 3 « Oblation” or ‘‘ feast-offering” is throughout the translation of 
 Di: the sacrifices are intended which were added to the obligatory 
 daily sacrifices, and expressed the special character of the holy day. It 
 
 is sometimes translated ‘‘ supplementary sacrifices,” which perhaps cor-' 
 
 responds better with the word, but suggests the incorrect idea that these 
 sacrifices were only an addition to the special sacrifices of the holy day. 
 3 Vid. the Comment. Lechem Mishneh on this passage. 
 
 464 
 
RITUAL OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. 465 
 
 provided by the public means; one of which was offered as 
 a sin-offering, and consumed by fire, and the other was to be 
 driven away as the scapegoat. 
 
 The whole number of the sacrificial victims for this day 
 was therefore fifteen: two daily sacrifices, one bull, two 
 rams, and seven lambs, all burnt-offerings: in addition to 
 these, two goats as sin-offerings, one of which was eaten in 
 the evening, the blood being sprinkled without; the other, 
 the blood of which was sprinkled within, was burnt: lastly, 
 the high priest’s bull as a sin-offering, which was burnt. 
 
 Halacha 2. The service as regards all the fifteen victims 
 on this day was performed by the high priest alone, either 
 by him who was anointed with the anointing oil,’ or by him 
 who was (merely) distinguished for the occasion by wearing 
 the official garments.? And if it was a Sabbath, no one but 
 the high priest offered the Sabbath oblation. Likewise, in 
 respect of the other ministries of this day—such as the daily 
 fumigation and cleaning of the lamps—all was done by the 
 high priest, who was a married man, as it is written (Lev. 
 xvi. 6), ‘ And he shall make an atonement for himself and 
 for his house,” that is, for his wife. 
 
 Halacha 3. Seven days before the day of atonement, the 
 high priest is removed from his own house to his chamber in 
 the sanctuary: this is handed down from Moses our teacher. 
 He must also for these seven days keep away from his wife ; 
 for it might happen unto her according to the custom of 
 women, and he might then become unclean and unfit for the 
 divine service for seven days. A deputy high priest is also 
 to be previously appointed; so that, in case any legal hin- 
 drance set the high priest aside from the ministry, the other 
 might act in his stead. Should any hindrance prevent the 
 high priest from ministering before the daily morning sacri- 
 fice, or even after he had offered his own sacrifice, he that 
 officiates in his place needs no special consecration ; but his 
 ministerial action supplies the consecration, and he begins 
 with that act of the service at which the other left off. 
 
 1 At the time of the first temple. 
 2 At the time of the second temple. 
 VOL. II. 2G 
 
466 FIRST APPENDIX. 
 
 When the day of atonement is over, the first returns to his 
 ministry, and the second leaves it.’ All the precepts of the 
 law regarding the high priest apply to him, but he does not 
 perform the ministry of the high priest for him, although in 
 case of necessity it is valid; and if the first high priest is 
 removed by death, the second is instituted in his place. 
 
 Halacha 4. During these seven days he is sprinkled with 
 the ashes of a heifer,—on the third day after his separation, 
 and on the seventh, that is, on the day of preparation for 
 the feast of atonement; for he might unwittingly have made 
 himself unclean. If either of these days falls upon a Sab- 
 bath, the sprinkling is omitted. 
 
 Halacha 5. During these seven days he is to exercise 
 himself in all the performances of the service: he sprinkles 
 the blood, takes care of the fumigation, cleanses the lamps, 
 and brings the pieces of the daily sacrifice to the altar-fire, 
 so that he may be accustomed to the service on the day of 
 atonement. He has associated with him elders of the high 
 court, who read to him, and instruct him in the ritual and 
 ordinances of worship of the day, and address him: “ My 
 lord! high priest! Read thou with thy mouth; perhaps thou 
 hast forgotten or never learnt this point.” And on the day 
 of preparation for the day of atonement, early in the morn- 
 ing, he is made to take his stand in the eastern gates; and 
 bulls, rams, and lambs were led by in front of him, so that 
 he might become experienced and versed in the service. 
 
 Halacha 6. During the whole of the seven days meat 
 and drink were not withheld from him; but after nightfall, 
 on the day of preparation for the day of atonement, he was 
 not permitted to eat much, because food tends to make one 
 drowsy; and he was not allowed to sleep, lest any impurity 
 might affect him. Of course he was not allowed to eat things 
 which might cause pollution, such as eggs, warm milk, ete. 
 
 Halacha 7. In the days of the second temple a free- 
 thinking spirit flourished in Israel; and the Sadducees arose 
 —may they soon disappear !—who do not believe oral teach- 
 ing. They said that, on the day of atonement, the incense 
 
 1 2". Some editions read 4a\y, which affords no suitable sense. 
 
RITUAL OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. 467 
 
 was to be lighted in the temple outside the veil, and that 
 when the smoke ascended therefrom it was to be carried 
 inside into the holiest of holies. The reason for this is, that 
 they explain the words of Scripture (Lev. xvi. 2, “ For 
 I will appear in the cloud on the mercy-seat”) as referring 
 to the clouds proceeding from the incense. But sages have 
 learnt by tradition that the frankincense was first lighted 
 in the holy of holies facing the ark, as it is written (Lev. 
 xvi. 13), “‘ And he shall put the incense upon the fire before 
 Jehovah.” Now, because in the second temple they enter- 
 tained the apprehension that the then existing high priest 
 might incline to the free-thinking party, they therefore, on 
 the preparation day for the day of atonement, conjured him, 
 saying: “ My lord! high priest! We are delegates of the 
 high court, but thou art delegate both for us and the high 
 court; we conjure thee by Him who causes His name to rest 
 upon this house, we conjure thee to make no change in any- 
 thing that we have said to thee.” Thereupon he goes away 
 and weeps because they had suspected him of free-thinking, 
 and they go away and weep because they had entertained a 
 suspicion againsta person whose conduct was unknown to them; 
 for perhaps he had nothing of the kind in his thoughts. 
 Halacha 8. The whole night before the day of atonement 
 the priest sits and gives didactic expositions, that is, if he be 
 a sage; if he be only a disciple, doctrinal expositions are 
 addressed to him. If he be practised in reading, he reads 
 out; if not, some one reads out to him, lest he should fall 
 asleep. And what is it that is read from? From the holy 
 Scriptures. If he is disposed to fall into a slumber, the 
 Levitical youths suddenly touch him with the middle finger,’ 
 and say to him, “My lord! high priest! Stand up, and 
 refresh thyself a little by walking on the floor, lest thou 
 sleepest.” And thus employment was found for him until 
 the hour for slaying the victims drew near; but they did 
 not slay them until they were certainly convinced that morn- 
 ing twilight had broken, lest they should slay them by night. 
 
 1 Vid. Gritz, Gesch. der Juden. iii. 515; and vid. above, on ch. ix. 5. 
 2 905, which is the reading in the Talmud; another reading is }p\y. 
 
468 FIRST APPENDIX, 
 
 SECOND SECTION. 
 
 Halacha 1. All sacrificial actions, as regards both the 
 daily offerings and also the oblations, are performed by the 
 high priest on the same day, clothed in the golden robes. 
 The ritual peculiar to the day is, however, performed in the 
 white robes. The service peculiar to the day consists in the 
 dealings with the bull of the high priest and the two goats, 
 one of which was to be the scapegoat, and in the fumigation 
 with frankincense in the holy of holies ; and all these matters 
 were performed in the white clothing. 
 
 Halacha 2. As often as he changes his clothes, taking 
 some off and putting others on, he must bathe himself; for 
 it is written (Lev. xvi. 23, 24), “ He shall put off the linen 
 garments...and he shall wash his flesh with water in the 
 holy place, and put on his garments.” — 
 
 The priest is to undergo five baths and ten washings of 
 consecration on the sameday. And how does this take place? 
 Firstly, he takes off his ordinary clothes which he had on, 
 and then, having bathed himself, stands up and dries him- 
 self; he then puts on the golden robes, and having con- 
 secrated his hands and feet, slays the daily sacrifice, performs 
 the daily morning fumigation, cleanses the lamps, brings the 
 pieces of the daily sacrifice to the fire on the altar, together 
 with the meat-offering and the drink-offering, and offers the 
 bull and the seven lambs for the feast-offering of the day. 
 After this he consecrates his hands and his feet, puts off the 
 golden robes, and having bathed, stands up and dries him- 
 self; he then puts on the white robes, consecrates his hands 
 and feet, and performs the service of the day—the collective 
 confession of sins, the drawing lots, the sprinkling of the 
 blood of the sacrifice in the inner places, and the fumigating 
 with frankincense in the holy of holies. He then gives up 
 the goat to him who is to lead it away to Azazel,’ and sever- 
 ing the sacrificial portions from the bull and goat which 
 were to be burnt, delivers up the rest of them to be con- 
 
 1 Tt is acknowledged that tradition takes Sry to be the name of the 
 place to which the goat was driven away. 
 
RITUAL OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. 469 
 
 sumed. After this he consecrates his hands and his feet, 
 and takes off the white robes; and after bathing, he stands 
 up and dries himself, and puts on the golden robes. He 
 next consecrates his hands and feet, and offers the atone- 
 ment-goat, which formed a part of the oblation of the day, 
 his own ram and the ram of the people, which are burnt- 
 offerings ; and placing on the altar-fire the sacrificial portions 
 of the bull and goat which were to be burnt, he offers the 
 daily evening sacrifice. After that he consecrates his hands 
 and feet, and takes off the golden robes; and after bathing, 
 he stands up and dries himself, and puts on the white robes. 
 He consecrates his hands and feet, and entering the holiest 
 of holies, takes therefrom the spoon and the censer. Next 
 he consecrates his hands and feet, and takes off the white 
 robes; and after bathing, he stands up and dries himself, 
 and puts on the golden robes: he consecrates his hands and 
 feet, and performs the daily evening fumigation; and after 
 seeing to the care of the evening lichts, consecrates his hands 
 and feet; then, taking off the gcelden robes, he puts on his 
 ordinary clothes, and goes out. 
 
 Halacha 3. These baths and consecrating washings were 
 all performed in the sanctuary; for it is written, “ And he 
 shall wash his flesh with water in the holy place.’ The first 
 bathing was an exception to this rule, and might be per- 
 formed in any ordinary place, inasmuch as its aim was only 
 to increase his attention; so that if he recollected any former 
 impurity which still clung to him, he might in his thoughts 
 give to this bathing the special purpose of cleansing himself 
 from it. If a priest omitted the bathing on the occasion of 
 the change of clothing, or the consecrating washing between 
 the various clothings and acts of service, his ministry is 
 nevertheless legally valid. 
 
 Flalacha 4. If the high priest was old or sickly, some red- 
 hot iron plates were prepared on the day of preparation, 
 which on the morrow were thrown into the water to take 
 away the cold (as in the sanctuary none of the rabbinical 
 
 1 Fundamentally different from Raschi’s view of the passage in the 
 Talmud on the point (Joma 30a). 
 
470 FIRST APPENDIX. 
 
 prohibitions from work held good), or some hot water was 
 mingled with the water of the bath of purification until the 
 cold was taken from it. 
 
 Halacha 5. On any other day the high priest performed 
 the consecrating washing of his hands and feet in the same 
 basin as the other priests; but on this day, in conformity 
 with his dignity, he washes them in a golden cup." On any 
 other day the priests ascend on the eastern edge, and descend 
 on the western edge, of the altar-stage ; but on this day they 
 go along in the middle, before the priest, both in ascending 
 and descending, for his glorification. On any other day, he 
 to whom the censer was entrusted shovelled up the glowing 
 embers with a silver pan, and then poured them into a 
 golden pan; but on this day the high priest shovelled them 
 up with a golden pan (any nAnD), and went with them into 
 the temple: this was done so as not to fatigue him with an 
 accumulation of acts of service. In the same way, the pan 
 used every day held four kab, but that employed on this day 
 held only three kab; and on every other day it was heavy, 
 but to-day it was light; on every other day the handle of it 
 was short, but to-day long, in order to make it lighter for the 
 high priest, lest he might be wearied. On every other day 
 there were three layers of fire placed on the altar, but to-day 
 there were four, in order to adorn and crown the altar. 
 
 Halacha 6. In the Thorah it says (Lev. xvi. 17), “ And 
 he makes atonement for himself, and for his household, and 
 for all the congregation of Israel.” By this—thus have 
 they learnt from tradition—oral confession of sins is to be 
 understood; thou learnest accordingly from this, that on 
 this day he makes three confessions of sins. First one for 
 his own person, a second for his own person in connection 
 with the rest of the priests; both are made over the bull of 
 the atonement which is for him. And the third confession of 
 sin for the whole of Israel is made over the goat which is to 
 be driven away. He utters the name (of God) three times 
 in each of these confessions. 
 
 What, then, is the tenor of his words? “O Jehovah! 
 
 1 ΠΡ, the Greek κύαθος (not κήθιον). 
 
RITUAL OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. 471 
 
 I have sinned, have failed in my duty, and committed wicked- 
 ness before Thee. O Jehovah! Be propitiated for the sins, 
 failings, and wickedness whereby I and my house have sinned, 
 failed in duties, and committed wickedness before Thee ; as 
 it is written (Lev. xvi. 30), ‘For on that day he shall make 
 an atonement for you to cleanse you, that ye may be clean 
 from all your sins before Jehovah.” Consequently he uttered 
 three times the name of God, and the same in the other two 
 confessions ; and when he casts the lot for the atoning goat, 
 he says, “ A sin-offering to Jehovah.” Thus on this day-he 
 utters the name of God ten times, and utters it every time 
 as it is written, that is, the full name of God. In earlier 
 times he raised his voice at the name of God; but an abuse 
 of this practice crept in, and he spake it in a subdued voice, 
 and allowed it to die away into a kind of singing, so that 
 it was not audible even to his fellow-priests. 
 
 Halacha 7. All, both priests and people, who stood in 
 the fore-court, so soon as they heard the full name of God 
 proceed from the high priest in holiness and purity, knelt 
 down, and, casting themselves prostrate on their faces, called 
 out, “ Praised be the name of the glory of His kingdom for 
 all eternity!” for it is written (Deut. xxxii. 3), “ Because I 
 utter the name of the Lord, ascribe ye honour to our God.” 
 In all three confessions he endeavoured to finish speaking 
 the name of God simultaneously with the words of praise, 
 and then he spake to them, “ Be ye purified.” The whole 
 day is valid according to the law for the confession of sins 
 for the day of atonement, and also for the confession of sins 
 over the bulls which were to be burnt.’ 
 
 THIRD SECTION. 
 
 Halacha 1. On one of the two lots was written, “ For 
 Jehovah ;” and on the other, “For Azazel.” It was per- 
 missible to use any material for them, either wood, stone, or 
 metal. It was not, however, allowed for one to be large and 
 the other small, one of silver and another of gold; but they 
 
 1 Vid. Megilla 20b. 
 
472 FIRST APPENDIX, 
 
 must be both alike: they used to be of wood, and in the 
 second temple they were made of gold. The two lots were 
 to be thrown into one and the same vessel, in which there 
 was room for both hands; yet so that the two hands were 
 pressed together, so that he could not choose one of the two 
 lots. This vessel possessed no sacred attribute; it was made 
 of wood, and was called ‘ap. 
 
 Halacha 2. Where is the lot cast? On the eastern side 
 of the fore-court, on the north of the altar, the urn was put 
 down, and the two goats were placed by it, with their faces 
 turned to the west, and their backs to the east. The high 
 priest now approaches, having the consecrating priest on his 
 right, and the chief of the ministering priestly family on his 
 left ; and the two goats stand before his face, the one on his 
 right, the other on his left. 
 
 Halacha 3. He now dips his hands hastily into the urn, 
 and draws out the lots, one in each hand, in the name of the 
 two goats, and then opens his hands. If that for Jehovah 
 has been brought out in the right hand, the consecrating 
 priest says: “My lord! high priest! Elevate thy right 
 hand!” If, however, it is brought out in the left hand, the 
 chief of the ministering priestly family says to him: “ My 
 lord! high priest! Elevate thy left hand!” He now 
 places the two lots on the goats, that in his right hand on 
 the goat on his right, and that in his left hand on the goat 
 on his left; nevertheless, if he does not lay the lots upon . 
 them, the whole matter is not prejudiced, only he has not so 
 fully completed the prescribed action. For the laying on 
 is a command which is not a necessary condition; but the 
 drawing of the lots is, on the contrary, a necessary condi- 
 tion, although it is not an act of divine service. Therefore 
 this laying on is valid, if done by one not a priest; but the 
 drawing the lots out of the urn would be invalid if thus 
 performed. 
 
 Halacha 4. And he ties a scarlet stripe, two selas in 
 weight, on the head of the goat which is to be driven away, 
 and places it opposite to the door at which it is to go out; 
 
 1 Representing the Greek word κάλσες or κάλπη (pitcher, urn, box). 
 
RITUAL OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. 473 
 
 but on the goat which is to be slain (he binds a stripe) round 
 its neck, and then slays the “bull of atonement which is for 
 him,” and (after that) the goat on which the lot has fallen 
 “ for Jehovah.” 
 
 Halacha 5. And he brings their blood into the temple, 
 and from the blood of the two he makes forty-three sprink- 
 lings ; the blood of the bull he sprinkles eight times in the 
 holiest of holies, between the poles of the ark, within a 
 hand’s-breadth of the mercy-seat. For it is written, “‘ He 
 shall sprinkle it before the mercy-seat,” etc.: he sprinkles 
 it, therefore, once above, and seven times beneath. They 
 have learned by tradition that in the Scripture term “ seven 
 times” the first sprinkling was not to be included; and 
 therefore he reckons, “once and one, once and two, once 
 and three, once and four, once and five, once and six, once 
 and seven.” 
 
 And why does he reckon thus? Lest by error the first 
 sprinkling should be reckoned among the seven. Then he 
 sprinkles the blood of the goat between the poles of the ark, 
 once above, and seven times below, and reckons in the same 
 way as with the blood of the bull. Next he sprinkles the 
 blood of the bull eight times in the temple on the veil, once 
 above, and seven times below: for it is written with regard 
 to the blood of the bull,’ “On the mercy-seat, and before 
 the mercy-seat ;” and he reckons in the same way as he did 
 inside. Then he sprinkles again the blood of the goat eight 
 times on the veil, once above, and seven times below: for it 
 is said with regard to the blood of the goat, “He shall do 
 with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull;” and 
 he reckons in the same way as he did within. In all these 
 sprinklings he endeavours not to sprinkle above or below, 
 but does it like one who is in the act of scourging. Next 
 he mixes the two bloods, the blood of the bull and the blood 
 of the goat, and sprinkles it four times on the four horns of 
 the golden altar in the temple, and seven times on the middle 
 of this altar. 
 
 1 Here there is some confusion. Vid. Lechem Mischneh on this passage, 
 and Thosaphoth Jom-tob on Joma, § 5, Mischn. 4, 
 
474 FIRST APPENDIX, 
 
 FTalacha 6. In all these forty-three sprinklings he dips 
 his finger in the blood for each sprinkling separately: one 
 dipping is not sufficient for two sprinklings. The remainder 
 of the blood he pours out on the ground to the west of the 
 outer altar. 
 
 Halacha 7. We then delivers over the living goat into 
 the hands of a man who stands by ready to lead it into the 
 wilderness. In a legal point of view, any one is fitted for 
 leading it away; but the high priests have made a rule, not 
 to allow any Israelite’ to lead it away. And tents were set 
 up from Jerusalem to the edge of the wilderness, in which 
 one or several men abode over the day, so as to be able to 
 accompany the man conducting the goat from one tent to 
 another. At each tent it was said to him, “ Here is food, 
 and here is water!” And if he was exhausted, and it was 
 necessary for him to eat, he might do so; yet this was never 
 the case. The people at the last tent remained standing at 
 the end of the Sabbath-limit, and surveyed his action from 
 afar. And what did he do? δ divided into two the 
 scarlet stripes on the horns of the goat: one-half of the 
 band was placed on the rock, and the other half between 
 the two horns of the goat, which he then pushed backwards, 
 so that tumbling over it rolled down, and all its limbs were 
 smashed to pieces ere it reached a point half-way down the 
 hill. He that led the goat now goes and sits down in the 
 last tent until it is night. Watch-towers were set up, and 
 sionals displayed, in order that it should be known when the 
 goat had reached the wilderness. 
 
 After he (the high priest) has delivered over the goat 
 into the hands of him who was to lead him away, he turns 
 to the bull and the goat whose blood he had sprinkled within ; 
 and cutting them up, and taking therefrom the sacrificial 
 portions, which he places in a vessel in order to take them to 
 the fire on the altar, he cuts up the rest of the flesh ? into great 
 pieces, all connected with one another, without severing them, 
 and delivers them up into the hands of others to take them 
 
 1 That is, no one who was not of the tribe of Levi. 
 2 Rashi quite otherwise. 
 
 i i ΨΨΘΨΨΘΜΝ 
 
RITUAL OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. 475 
 
 away to the place of burning, where they were cut in pieces 
 still in the skin1... 
 
 Halacha 8. As soon as the goat had reached the wilder- 
 ness, the priest went out into the woman’s division of the 
 fore-court in order to read from the Thorah; and whilst he 
 was reading, the bull and the goat were burnt in the place of 
 ashes. Whoever, then, saw the high priest whilst he was 
 reading, could not witness the burning of the bull and the 
 goat. The latter operation could be performed by any com- 
 mon man. 
 
 Halacha 9. This reading is not a performance of divine 
 worship; so he can read either in his own ordinary white 
 garments or in the high-priestly white robes, just as he pleases: 
 for he is allowed to make use of the priestly robes at other 
 times than those of service. 
 
 Halacha 10. And what were the circumstances attending 
 the reading? He sits in the woman’s division of the fore- 
 court, and all the people stand in front of him. The minister 
 of the synagogue takes the book of the Thorah, and gives it 
 to the ruler of the synagogue, who gives it to the consecrating 
 priest: the consecrating priest gives it to the high priest, who 
 receives it standing up; and standing up he reads Achare 
 moth (Lev. xvi.) and ach beasor (Lev. xxiii. 27) in the 
 Parashah of the feast up to the end of the division referring 
 to it. He then rolls up the Thorah, and, placing it in his 
 lap, says, “More is here written than that which I have 
 read to you,” and recites to them from memory the section 
 ubéasor in Numbers up to the end of the division. And why 
 is this done? Because the book of the Thorah is not to be 
 unrolled in a public assembly. And why does he not read 
 the latter portion out of another roll? Because the same 
 man must not read out of two rolls (one after the other), 
 lest he should cast suspicion on the first. 
 
 Halacha 11. Before and after the reading he pronounces 
 the benediction in the way in which it is done in the syna- 
 gogue, but adding the following seven benedictions: “ Be 
 
 * There are here some references made by Maimuni to other sections 
 of his work, which we omit to translate, 
 
476 FIRST APPENDIX. 
 
 well pleased, Jehovah, our God,” οἷς. ; “ We confess to 
 Thee,” etc.; “Forgive us, our Father, for we have sinned,” 
 etc. With these he pronounces the concluding formula: 
 “Thou art praised, Jehovah, Thou that pardonest with 
 mercy the sins of Thy people Israel.” 
 
 These three benedictions are the normal ones. He then 
 pronounces a benediction for the sanctuary separately, with 
 the purport that the sanctuary might continue, and that God 
 would abide therein, with the concluding formula: “ Praised 
 art Thou, Jehovah, Thou that art enthroned on Zion.” Also 
 a separate benediction for Israel, with the purport that the 
 Lord would help Israel, and that the royalty might not 
 depart from it, with the concluding formula: “ Praised art 
 Thou, Jehovah, that Thou choosest Israel.” Then for the 
 
 priests a separate benediction, with the purport that God ᾿ 
 
 would accept their actions and ministry graciously, and would 
 bless them, with the concluding formula: “ Praised art Thou, 
 Jehovah, Thou that sanctifiest the priests.” Finally, he offers 
 prayer, devotion, singing, and supplications, according as he 
 is practised therein, and concludes: “Help, Ὁ Jehovah, 
 Thy people Israel, for Thy people needs Thy help. Praised 
 
 art Thou, Jehovah, Thou that hearest prayer.” 
 
 FourtTH SECTION. : 
 
 Halacha 1. The successive order of all the actions of this 
 day was as follows :—About midnight they cast lots for the 
 carrying away of the ashes, duly prepared the altar-fire, and 
 took the ashes from the altar, following entirely the usual 
 mode of procedure in the order we have already described, 
 until they came to slaying the daily sacrifice. When they 
 were about to slay the daily sacrifice, a cloth of linen was 
 spread between the high priest and the people. And why of 
 linen? In order that he may perceive that the service of the 
 day is to be performed in linen robes. He now takes off his 
 ordinary clothes, bathes himself, and puts on the golden robes. 
 After consecrating his hands and feet, he cuts through the 
 
 greatest part of the two neck-pipes of the daily offering ; and 
 
RITUAL OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. 477 
 
 leaving to another the completion of the act of slaying, catches 
 the blood, and sprinkles it upon the altar according to pre- 
 cept. After this, he goes into the temple and looks to the early 
 fumigation with frankincense, cleanses the lamps, and places 
 on the altar-fire the pieces of the daily offering, and also the 
 meat-offering and drink-offering, in the same order as in the 
 daily sacrifice of any other day, as already described. After 
 the daily sacrifice he offers the bull and the seven lambs as 
 the feast-offerings of the day, and consecrating his hands and 
 feet, takes off the golden robes; then having bathed himself, 
 he puts on the white robes, and, consecrating his hands and his 
 feet, approaches his own bull. The latter is placed between 
 the porch and the altar, the head towards the south and the 
 face towards the west; the priest stands on the east of it 
 with his face turned towards the west, and laying both hands 
 on the head of the bull, pronounces the confession of sins. 
 And thus he speaks: “O Jehovah, I have sinned, committed 
 transgressions and wickedness before Thee, I and my house. 
 O Jehovah, let atonement be made for the sins, transgres- 
 sions, and wickedness in which I have sinned, transgressed, 
 and done wickedly before Thee, I and my house: as it is 
 thus written in the law of Moses Thy servant: ‘ He shall 
 make atonement for you to cleanse you, that ye may be 
 cleansed from all your sins before Jehovah.’ ἢ 
 
 Then he casts lots over the two goats, fastens a scarlet 
 stripe on the head of the goat which was to be sent away, 
 and places it before the door at which it was to go out. On 
 the head of the goat which was to be slain (he fastened a 
 band) in the region of the neck; and approaching his own 
 bull a second time, lays his hands upon his head, and pro- 
 nounces a second confession of sins. And thus he spake: 
 “.O Jehovah, I have sinned, transgressed, and committed 
 wickedness before Thee, I and my house, and the sons of 
 Aaron, the people of Thy sacred things. O Jehovah, let 
 atonement be made for the sins, transgressions, and wicked- 
 ness whereby I have sinned, transgressed, and done wickedly 
 before Thee, I and my house, and the sons of Aaron, the 
 people of Thy holy things; as it is written in the law of 
 
478 FIRST APPENDIX. 
 { 
 
 Moses Thy servant: ‘For on this day,’” ete. Hereupon 
 he slays the bull, and catching the blood, gives it to some 
 one, who shakes it, lest it should coagulate; then, placing it 
 on the fourth row of pavement outwards from the temple, 
 he takes the incense-pan (7757) and shovels into it the 
 fiery embers from the altar, those indeed which lie to the 
 western side; as it is written, “from the altar of Jehovah.” 
 He then descends and places them on the pavement in the 
 fore-court ; and there is brought to him out of the utensil- 
 chamber the ladle (27), and a vessel full of the very finest 
 frankincense: of this he takes two handfuls, neither levelled 
 nor heaped up, but just handfuls, whether he be large or 
 small in his bodily proportions, and places them in the 
 ladle. 
 
 We have already explained elsewhere, that, as regarded Ὁ 
 the blood of the sanctuary and the rest of the ministerial 
 actions, the use of the left hand caused a legal invalidity ; 
 therefore, in conformity with this, he would have carried 
 the incense-pan in his left hand, and the ladle with the 
 frankincense in his right hand. But nevertheless, on account 
 of the heavy burden of the incense-pan, and because, more- 
 over, it was hot, he could not carry it in his left hand as far 
 as the ark: he therefore took the incense-pan in his right 
 hand, and the ladle with the frankincense in his left, and 
 passed through the temple till he reached the holy of holies. 
 If he found the veil fastened up, he entered the holy of 
 holies, until he came to the ark. When he reached the 
 ark he placed the incense-pan between the two poles—in the 
 second temple, where there was no ark, he placed it on the 
 “¢ foundation stone ”—and, taking the ladle by its edge eitner 
 in the tips of his fingers or his teeth, he empties the frankin- 
 cense with his thumb into his hands until they are as full of 
 it as they were before ;* and this is one of the severest mini- 
 sterial duties in the sanctuary: he then with his hand pours 
 the frankincense in heaps upon the charcoal on the inner 
 
 1 Maimuni appears to have had before him here a reading which 
 
 differs from our statements in the Talmud (Joma 490). Vid. Lechem 
 Mishneh on the passage. 
 
RITUAL OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. 479 
 
 side of the pan,‘ so that the fumigation may be closest to the 
 ark, and removed away from his face, lest he might be burnt. 
 He now waits there until the temple is full of the incense, 
 and then goes out, walking backwards step by step, his face 
 turned to the sanctuary, and his back to the temple, until he 
 came outside the veil. After coming out he prays there but 
 a brief prayer, lest he might make the people anxious whether 
 he had not met with his death in the temple. And thus he 
 prayed: “Jehovah, our God, let it be Thy will, if this 
 year should be a hot year, that it may be blessed with rain ; 
 may the sceptre.not depart from the house of Judah; may 
 Thy people, the house of Israel, never be wanting in support, 
 and let not the prayer of those journeying come before 
 thee.”” 
 
 falacha 2. During the time of the incense-burning in the 
 holiest of holies, the whole of the people kept away from the 
 temple only: they had not to avoid the interval between the 
 porch and the altar. For the latter is done only in the daily 
 fumigation in the temple, and during the blood-sprinkling 
 there. Then he takes the blood of the bull from him who 
 is shaking it, and going with it into the holiest of holies, 
 sprinkles it there eight times between the poles of the ark ; 
 he then goes out and places it in the temple, on the golden 
 pedestal which stands there. In the next place, going out 
 of the temple, he slays the goat, and, catching its blood, 
 carries it into the holiest of holies; there he sprinkles it 
 eight times between the poles of the ark, and going out, 
 places it on the second golden pedestal standing in the 
 temple. Then he takes the blood of the bull down from the 
 pedestal, and sprinkles it eight times on the veil opposite the 
 ark; and putting down the blood of the bull, he takes down 
 the blood of the goat, and sprinkles it eight times on the veil 
 opposite the ark. After that he pours the blood of the bull 
 amongst that of the goat, and empties it all into the basin in 
 which the blood of the bull had been, so that they are well 
 
 1 That is, on the side farthest from him. 
 
 2 Who pray for dry weather whilst the land is in need of rain. Vid, 
 my Geschichte der Jiid. Poesie, p. 188. 
 
480 FIRST APPENDIX. 
 
 mixed ; and standing within the golden altar, between the 
 altar and the candlesticks, he begins to sprinkle the mixed 
 blood on the horns of the golden altar, going round the same 
 outside the horns, commencing with the north-eastern horn, 
 then going to the north-western, then to the south-western, 
 and then to the south-eastern. All the sprinklings are 
 made in an upward direction, the last excepted, which is 
 made freely, and in a downward direction, so that his robes 
 may not be soiled; then he shovels aside the charcoal and 
 ashes on the golden altar, until the gold of it is visible, and 
 sprinkles the mixed blood on the altar now laid bare seven 
 times on the southern side, on the spot where the horns of 
 the altar end; he now goes out and pours the rest of the 
 blood on the ground to the west of the outer altar. 
 
 Then he approaches the goat which is to be given away, 
 and, placing both hands on its head, pronounces a confession 
 of sins. And he speaks thus: “O Jehovah, Thy people 
 the house of Israel hath sinned, transgressed, and com- 
 mitted wickedness before Thee. O Jehovah, let atonement 
 be made for the sins, transgressions, and the wickedness 
 whereby Thy people the house of Israel hath sinned, trans- 
 gressed, and committed wickedness before Thee; as it is 
 written in the law of Moses Thy servant: ‘ For on this day 
 He will make atonement,’”’ etc. 
 
 After this he sends the goat away into the wilderness; 
 and taking out the sacrificial portions of the bull and the 
 goat, the blood of which he had sprinkled inside, and placing 
 them in a vessel, he sends the remainder of them to the place 
 of ashes to be burnt, and goes out into the woman’s division 
 of the fore-court, and there reads, after the goat had reached 
 the wilderness. Then he performs a consecrating washing, 
 and having taken off the golden robes, bathes himself, puts 
 on the white robes, and consecrates his hands and his feet; 
 next he sacrifices the goat, the blood of which is sprinkled 
 without, and forms a part of the regular feast-offering of the 
 day, and offers his own ram and the ram of the people, as it 
 is written: “ And he shall go out and offer his burnt-offering 
 and the burnt-offering of the people.” And having brought 
 
RITUAL OF THE DAY OF ATONEMENT. 481 
 
 to the altar-fire the sacrificial portions of the bull and goat 
 which are to be burnt, he offers the daily evening sacrifice. 
 Then he consecrates his hands and feet, takes off the golden 
 robes, bathes himself, puts on the white robes, performs the 
 consecrating washing, and, entering the holiest of holies, 
 brings out the spoon and the pan. After this he performs 
 the consecrating washing, takes off the white robes, bathes 
 himself, puts on the golden robes, performs the consecrating 
 washing, fumigates with the evening incense, and gives his 
 attention to the evening lights, just as on other days. Then 
 he consecrates his hands and his feet, takes off the golden 
 robes, and, putting on his ordinary clothes, withdraws to his 
 own house. All the people accompany him to his house, 
 and he holds a festival to celebrate his having come success- 
 fully out of the sanctuary. 
 
 This is the liturgy of the day of atonement (nay 74D 
 2m), according to Maimuni’s sketch of it. There is also 
 another classical sketch by Rabinu Asher, which concludes 
 with the words: “ Afterwards he consecrates his hands and 
 his feet, and having put on his ordinary clothes, is accom- 
 panied to his own house by the chiefs of the people and the 
 distinguished men. And he gives a day of festival to all his 
 friends to celebrate his having come safe out of the matter.” 
 I remember that I have given elsewhere this sketch, which 
 is adopted into the Lectionaries of the day of atonement. 
 The ‘Abdda of the day of atonement is the best commen- 
 tary on that which is said in the Epistle to the Hebrews as 
 to the insufficiency of this Old Testament institution, which 
 fell so very far short of the inward need of man. If we 
 consider, in addition, how deeply degraded the high-priest- 
 hood had become at the time of the composition of the epistle, 
 the language which the apostolic author uses will seem even 
 to be mild. 
 
 VOL, 11. 2H 
 
SECOND APPENDIX. 
 
 ON THE SACRIFICIAL CHARACTER OF THE 
 LORD'S SUPPER. 
 
 FOURTEEN THESES TO HEB. xu. 10. 
 
 1. The reality of the sacramental gifts in the Lord’s 
 Supper follows of necessity (apart from other grounds) from 
 the antitypical relation of that sacrament to its Old Testa- 
 ment types, especially to the passover (Ex. xii., xiii.) and 
 the covenant blood-sprinkling (Ex. xxiv.). 
 
 2. From this antitypical relation follows at once that the 
 Lord’s Supper is a sacrificial feast, the Old Testament pass- 
 over (especially the post-Egyptian) having been such [1.6. a 
 feast on sacred food which had been offered to God in sacri- 
 fice]; and, moreover, the covenant blood-sprinkling, recorded 
 in Ex. xxiv., was not a mere consecration [or dedication of 
 the people of Israel to their God], but specifically a conse- 
 eration consisting in the application of an atonement just 
 accomplished [by the blood-sprinkling on the altar] (Ex. 
 XXiv. 6). 
 
 3. The Lord’s Supper is a sacrificial feast, not merely 
 from the fact that the congregation therein offers earthly 
 gifts [of bread and wine] in order to receiving them back 
 replenished with gifts from heaven; and not merely in so 
 far as the church therein, announcing or showing forth the 
 Lord’s death, offers with her lips the sacrifice of praise. 
 Neither of these facts or statements, nor both together, can 
 be rightly said to express, and much less to exhaust, the true 
 sacrificial character of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. 
 
 482 
 
SACRIFICIAL CHARACTER OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 483 
 
 4. Neither, then, is the sacrament of the Holy Com- 
 munion a sacrificial feast in such sense as that the church 
 can properly be said to offer there anything in sacrifice [in 
 order to partake of it. Rather, she partakes of that which 
 has once been offered for her]. She offers nothing herself, 
 but only obtains a share in the sacrifice of Christ ; fone, 
 inasmuch as He, when made man, did in His high-priestly 
 character offer up Himself vicariously for all mankind, the 
 sacrifice may be said in some sense to be the church’s sacri- 
 fice as well as His. In this sense the sacrifice of Christ once 
 offered, and the oft-repeated sacramental feast upon that 
 sacrifice of which His church partakes, may be regarded as 
 one great sacrificial action, consisting on the one hand in an 
 objective atonement, and on the other in the application and 
 appropriation of its fruits. 
 
 5. And so neither is the Lord’s Supper a sacrificial feast 
 in the sense of the Roman Mass. The church [properly 
 speaking | offers nothing of herself, least of all does she offer 
 Christ. Neither does Εἰ ΠῚ in the sacrament offer Himself, 
 by means of His representative the priest (which is properly 
 the view of the Greek and Roman Churches). The self- 
 oblation of Christ, in its earthly form, was made once for 
 all on the altar of the cross; and in its heavenly form (cor- 
 responding to the entrance of the Jewish high priest into 
 the holy of holies) it has also been made once for all, and 
 now continues as an ever-present fact, admitting of no inter- 
 ruption, and therefore of no repetition either here on earth 
 or above in heaven. 
 
 6. That which was foreshadowed in the three constituent 
 acts of the typical sacrifice, the slaying of the victim, the 
 presentation of the blood in the holy place, and the oblation 
 of the flesh upon the altar, has been accomplished once for 
 all by the divine antitype in acts of eternal validity. Of 
 these acts the first and third were performed on the cross, 
 the second when the God-man entered for our sakes in His 
 risen humanity into the inner life and presence of God. 
 Two other sacrificial actions—the eating of the flesh by priests 
 and offerers (which took place more or less in almost all the 
 
484 SECOND APPENDIX. 
 
 typical sacrifices but that of the burnt-offering), and the 
 sprinkling of the sacrificial blood on the congregation of 
 Israel (which took place only once at the inauguration of 
 the covenant)—are both antitypically fulfilled in the Lord’s 
 Supper, where we partake not only of the flesh of the divine 
 victim, by whose προσφορά we have been sanctified, but 
 also of the atoning blood, by whose ἔκχυσις we were re- 
 deemed. 
 
 7. What we receive in the Lord’s Supper is the body, 
 which hung for us upon the cross, and the blood which 
 was shed for us upon the cross. That on which Scripture 
 lays stress is not that it is the Lord’s glorified body and 
 blood which we receive, but the identity of what we receive 
 with His body and blood in the act of being offered. In 
 this identity consists the essence and the efficacy of the 
 heavenly oblatio. The appearance of Christ before God 
 with His blood once shed for us, His high-priestly introduc- 
 tion of that blood into the heavenly sanctuary, is the eternal 
 conclusive act of His atonement and of our reconciliation. 
 
 8. That which is given in the Lord’s Supper is one and 
 the same, since the day of Pentecost, as that which was 
 given at the first institution. The divine words and will 
 then constituted the sacrament to be what it is, and gave it 
 its fundamental norm and character for all time. 
 
 9. The only difference is, that then the Lord’s body and 
 blood were AIAQMENON and EKXTNOMENON, and 
 that now they are AOOEN and EKXYTOEN. This differ- 
 ence is as good as none at all. 
 
 10. Another distinction, that the Lord’s body is now 
 glorified, and was not so at the first institution, is, so far as 
 the substance of the sacrament is concerned, as defined by 
 the Lord’s own words, a merely accidental distinction or 
 difference. 
 
 11. What the Lord gives us in the sacrament is that 
 unchangeable essence or form of His humanity which con- 
 stitutes the substratum under both states or conditions of 
 glorification and non-glorification. 
 
 12. This form or essence of the Lord’s humanity has the 
 
SACRIFICIAL CHARACTER OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 485 
 
 power of self-impartation and divine spiritual efficacy, not 
 only from the fact that it is the humanity of the God-man, 
 but also from the fact that it was miraculously conceived by 
 the Holy Ghost, and born of the blessed Virgin Mary, and 
 that so our blessed Lord, while partaking in full reality of 
 our Adamite nature, is yet at the same time, in virtue of the 
 supernatural and divine origination of His sinless humanity, 
 the Son of man who is come down from heaven. 
 
 13. Christ gives us His body and blood apart from one 
 another in the sacrament, because it is His death which we 
 there show forth, and which in living power is present with 
 us; a death which, in order to be the true antitype of the 
 death of the typical sacrificial victim, consisted in the violent 
 separation of His blood from His body. 
 
 14, The distinct operations of the two sacramental gifts 
 may be divined from the different purposes held in view by 
 the presentation on the altar of the flesh of the typical 
 victim, and the affusion or sprinkling of the typical blood. 
 
 [The words within brackets are added by the Translator.—T. L. K.] 
 
NOTES. 
 
 ᾿Ξ φ-- 
 Note A, p. 3.—On the adjectives ὅσιος, ἅγιος, and ἄκακος. 
 
 "Oots is used in classical writers in reference to persons, ἅγιος very 
 rarely, if ever. The Etymol. Magn. derives ὅσιος from ἄζεσθαι, the 
 Homeric synonym for σέβεσθαι. See Hahn, Vheologie des N. T. 
 § 36. Of ἄκακος Ammonius says correctly: κακὸς πονηροῦ διαφέρει; 
 ὥσπερ ὁ ἄκακος τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ. Kaxis μὲν γὰρ ὁ πανοῦργος, πονηρὸς δὲ 6 
 δραστικὸς κακοῦ,---οῦμθ one being an evil-disposed person, the other 
 an evil-doer. 
 
 Τ᾽ 5 
 Note Β, p. 5. 
 
 A ms. copy of the Liturgy of St. Chrysostom now lying before 
 me has the following noteworthy various readings of Heb. vii. 
 26-28 :—Ver. 26, καὶ χωρισμένος for κεχωρισμένος ; ver. 27, θυσίας 
 and προσενέγκως ; ver. 28, reAes6uevov,—this last evidently a blunder 
 from ignorance. ‘The Hebrew verb noyn combines the notions of 
 causing to ascend by means of fire, and of bringing up upon the 
 altar, without one being able to say which is most prominent. 
 
 Note Ὁ, p. 8. 
 
 Bahr takes no notice of this sacerdotal Minchah; but on the 
 other hand the reader may consult with advantage Thalhofer, 
 Die unblutigen’ Opfer des Mosaischen Cultus, pp. 189-156, and 
 Einhorn, Princip des Mosaismus, i. 144-146. 
 
 Nore D, p. 9. 
 
 Comp. Philo i. 534. 6. This ἐνδελεχὴς θυσία of the priests is 
 more closely described at the end of his book de Victimis, i. 250. 
 
 486 
 
NOTES. 487 
 
 Throughout he calls this Minchah θυσία, and in fact θύειν is etymo- 
 logically by no means equivalent to σφάττειν. 
 
 Norte E, p. 15. 
 
 The fathers failed to apprehend this truth: e.g. Cyril opposes 
 to the ἠσθένησε μὲν σωρκικῶς σταυρὸν ὑπομείνας the abrupt exception, 
 ἐστι γε μὴν ὡς Θεὸς τοῦ ἀσθενεῖν ἐπέκεινα. He loses sight of the ὁ 
 ὑψωθείς in the contemplation of the ὁ Θεός. 
 
 Nore F, p. 18. 
 
 ‘The word λειτουργεῖν, according to Ulpian (on Demosth. Leptin. 
 p- 162 C.), is equivalent to εἰς τὸ δημόσιον ἐργάζεσθαι. Instead of 
 δημόσιον (the commonweal), the ancients used the term λήϊτον 
 (Adirov) or λεῖσον. Philo calls the priest θεραπευτὴς καὶ λειτουργὺς 
 τῶν ἁγίων (i. 114. 4). 
 
 Norte G, p. 20. 
 
 Steinhofer alone among the older commentators developes this 
 notion in a manner truly original and profound. ‘The taber- 
 nacle,” according to him, “is the body of the Lord Jesus, His 
 sacred humanity, which was in truth infinitely more precious 
 than all the vessels of the first tabernacle, than all the gold and 
 silver, and jewelry wherewith the temple was adorned, even 
 though it bore the likeness of our sinful flesh and partook of its 
 infirmity. It was through this outer tabernacle that the Mediator 
 went into the holy of holies. But He thus entered in not for 
 His own sake, but for ours: otherwise it would have been an 
 easy thing for Him to have changed at once that most sacred 
 tabernacle into a holy of holies without any rending of the veil. 
 But it was His blessed will to make His entrance by means of the 
 taking down and destruction of the first tabernacle, that through 
 the rending of the veil we might be enabled to see into the inner 
 sanctuary. By His justification through the Spirit the dissolved 
 and ruined tabernacle became the glorious and eternal sanctuary ” 
 (Tagliche Nahrung des Glaubens, etc., ii. p. 164). These are pro- 
 found thoughts indeed, but the view thus indicated is not that of 
 the writer of our epistle. 
 
488 NOTES. 
 
 Nore H, p. 22. 
 
 Not Philo and Josephus (who regard the tabernacle as a symbol 
 of the Cosmos, the sanctuary as that of heaven) are the genuine 
 representatives of this view; but the Zohar, Midrash, and even 
 Talmud and Pijut (religious poetry of the Synagogue), are full of 
 it. See their interpretations of Ps. cxxii., cxi., Isa. xlix. 16, etc., 
 in Schéttgen’s Diss. de Hierosolyma Celesti, among the appendices 
 to his Hore, where, however, what is truly ancient and what is 
 comparatively modern are confounded in a very uncritical manner. 
 
 Nore I, p. 27. 
 
 For this use of the aorist compare Xen. @con. vii. 20, δεῖ τοῖς 
 μέλλουσιν ἀνθρώποις ἕξειν ὅ τι εἰσφέρωσιν εἰς τὸ στεγνὸν ἔχειν τοὺς 
 ἐργαζομένους τὰς ἐν τῷ ὑπαίθρῳ ἐργασίας, and, on the other hand, 
 such sentences as the following: οὐδὲν ἔχουσιν οὔτε ἀποκρίνασθαι 
 οὔτε ἐρέσθαι, in Plato,—zyw καλὰ φράσαι in Pindar, and indeed 
 everywhere; ¢g., in Ireneus, Preefat. ἔχοντες ἐπιδείξαι, habentes 
 quod ostendant. Vid. Frotscher’s Glossary to Xen. under ἔχειν, and 
 comp. Philo’s habitual use of ἀνάγκη (‘it is necessary”), some- 
 times with present infinitive, sometimes with aorist, sometimes 
 with both together (6... 11, 638). 
 
 Note K, p. 29. 
 
 Among moderns, the writer whose view on this point most 
 nearly resembles mine is undoubtedly v. Gerlach on Heb. v. 7; 
 among older writers, Steinhofer. ‘‘Christ’s blood was not merely 
 shed for us here on earth, but belongs also to the heavenly 
 sanctuary, where it is sprinkled on the throne of God, and whence 
 it is sprinkled likewise on our hearts.” Among the ancients, 
 Cyril of Alexandria interprets the σχηνή, as we do, to be ἡ ἄνω 
 καλλίπολις Tour ἐστιν ὁ οὐρανός; but the sacrifice there offered by 
 the glorified Jesus is for him the company of the redeemed. The 
 same appears to have been the view taken by Theodore and by 
 St. Chrysostom. Comp. Cramer’s Catena in loc. Another but 
 related view is that of Clemens Romanus, c. xxxvi., where he 
 speaks of Christ as σὸν ἀρχιερέα τῶν προσφορῶν ἡμῶν. St. Gregory’s 
 conception expressed in his comment on Job i. 5 (‘sine intermis- 
 sione pro nobis holocaustum Redemptor immolet, qui sine cessatione 
 
NOTES. 489 
 
 Patri suam pro nobis incarnationem demonstrat”) is not that of our 
 epistle, which regards the heavenly προσφορά of Christ as the anti- 
 type of the high priest’s action on the day of atonement. 
 
 Note L, p- Be. 
 
 In the usus loquendi it is possible that with ὑποδείγματα the 
 sense of ἁμυδρὰ δείγματα (indistinct sketches) may have been 
 combined.’ The assumption made by interpreters, that ὑπόδειγμα 
 has properly the meaning of a sketch or outline, is incorrect. 
 
 Nore M, p. 33. 
 
 The reading δειχθένταν in D (without correction) is the accusa- 
 tive form which is now common in modern Greek. This form is 
 frequently found in the Cod. Alex. (6... Ex. x. 4, Num. xv. 27, 
 Ezek. xxviii. 13), in inscriptions, and is adopted by Lachmann in 
 one or two places of the Apocalypse. Comp. Franz, Epigraphices 
 Grece Elementa, p. 248, and Mullach, Gramm. der griechischen 
 Vulgarsprache, p. 162. 
 
 Nore N, p. 36. 
 
 [It seems worth observing that this wide signification of the 
 Greek word νόμος in the New Testament, on which Professor 
 Delitzsch is here remarking, is derived from its relation to the 
 Hebrew word Thorah, of which it is the rendering in the Sep- 
 tuagint. Zhorah (ΠΛ), whether designating the Old Testament 
 in general or the Pentateuch in particular, or the revelation or 
 constitution contained in them, signifies more than a collection of 
 commands and precepts, or a code of positive laws. ‘“Thorah” is 
 properly and primarily “instruction,” and in the scriptural use 
 of the term, as denoting divine instruction, it is in the first place 
 equivalent to “revelation,” or a complex of records concerning 
 revelations made by God to His people; and only in the second 
 place, as denoting ethical instruction (i.e. a revelation of the divine 
 will concerning life and conduct), is Thorah equivalent to “law,” 
 i.e. a complex of precepts and commandments, with promises and 
 penalties attached to them. The very decalogue itself (the “ten 
 words,” δέκα λόγοι, of Deut. x. 4) is a brief summary of the whole 
 Thorah (divine teaching) of the Old Testament under both these 
 
490 NOTES. 
 
 aspects. It contains both the creed and the law of Israel. St. 
 Paul finds both “law” and “gospel” within the Thorah itself. 
 Comp. Rom. x. 5-10, Gal. iii. 8, 9, 12. Νόμος is accordingly used 
 sometimes (as Delitzsch observes) in the same comprehensive 
 sense.—Tr. | 
 
 Nore O, p. 42. 
 
 It is in reference to such passages as Isa. liv. 18, Jer. xxxi. 88 
 sq., Joel iii, 1, etce., that our Lord speaks of all believers as 
 “taught of God” (John vi. 45). The “knowing all things” of 
 1 John 11. 20, 27, is a potential knowledge, not a divine absolute, 
 but a human and relative intelligence. 
 
 Nore P, p. 84. 
 
 The view taken by many of the fathers, that in the work of 
 atonement the λύτρον was paid by the Redeemer not to God but 
 to the Evil One, is thus expressed by Origen: ἔδωκεν τὴν ψυχὴν 
 αὐτοῦ λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν, οὐ τῷ Θεῷ, τῷ πονηρῷ οὖν. Οὗτος γὰρ 
 ἐκράτει ἡμῶν ἕως δοθῇ τὸ ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν αὐτῷ λύτρον ἡ τοῦ Inood ψυχὴ 
 ἀπατηθέντι ὡς δυναμένῳ αὐτῆς κυριεῦσαι. In Matt. t. xvi. p. 726. 
 And again by Basil: ὁ διάβολος ὑποχειρίους ἡμᾶς λαβὼν od πρότερον 
 τῆς ἑαυτοῦ τυραννίδος ἀφίησι, πρὶν ἄν τινι λύτρῳ ἀξιολόγω πεισθεὶς 
 ἀνταλλάξασθαι ἡμᾶς ἕληται" δεῖ οὖν τὸ λύτρον μὴ ὁμογενὲς εἶναι τοῖς 
 κατεχομένοις ἀλλὰ πολλῷ διαφέρειν τῷ μετρῷ. Hom. in Ps. xlviil. 
 One sees at how low ἃ point stood the insight of these fathers 
 into the scheme of redemption. Origen by his ἀπατηθέντι ὡς 
 δυναμένῳ exhibits the self-contradiction of his own theory; and 
 St. Basil, making our redemption depend on the arbitrary will of 
 the Evil One, introduces a perfectly monstrous thought, as Greg. 
 Naz. himself felt, Or. 45, § 22, substituting however one false con- 
 ception for another: εἰ τὸ λύτρον οὐκ ἄλλου τινὸς ἢ τοῦ κατέχοντος 
 γίνεται, ζητῶ, τίνι τοῦτο εἰσηνέχθη; ef μὲν τῷ πονηρῷ φεῦ τῆς ὕβρεως, 
 εἰ τὸν Θεὸν αὐτὸν λύτρον ὁ λῃστὴς λαμβάνει. ἘΠ δὲ τῷ πατρὶ, δῆλον, 
 ὅτι λαμβάνει μὲν ὁ πατὴρ οὐκ αἰτήσας οὐδὲ δεηθεὶς, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸ χρῆναι 
 ἁγιασθῆναι τῷ ἀνθρωπίνῳ τοῦ Θεοῦ τὸν ἄνθρωπον. Neither does the 
 author of the Epistle to Diognetus give the true conception when 
 he says that God in the fulness of time appointed by His own 
 mercy αὐτὸς τὸν ἴδιον υἱὸν ἀπέδοτο λύτρον ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν (c. ix.) The 
 Scriptures nowhere so express it. The Father indeed wills our 
 redemption, but it is the Son who gives Himself a λύτρον for us. 
 
NOTES. 491 
 
 It seems strange that the fathers should have never laid hold of 
 the reconciling thought that a satisfaction was due from us to the 
 divine justice. But now that this has been made clear to the 
 consciousness of the later church, and she has embraced the truth 
 of which the λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν of Matt. xx. 28 has become the 
 anagram, it is the more incumbent on us to hold it fast, in adora- 
 tion of a mystery into which the angels desire to look. 
 
 The close relationship between the two notions, 15D (ransom, 
 
 λύτρον) and ODD (atonement), is strikingly shown in Ex, xxx. 
 12-16, where the census-money is called at ver. 12 ‘‘ the ransom” 
 (753) “of his soul,” and at ver. 16 “the money of atonement” 
 
 (853). The money paid at the census is called 123 because it 
 covers or protects the man from the danger supposed to be incurred 
 by the census-taking (comp. 2 Sam, xxiv.), and O53 for a similar 
 reason, because it covers or hides from the divine wrath (such 
 covering or hiding being the Hebrew mode of conceiving the idea 
 of atonement). Yet so different were the notions connected with 
 the two words in ordinary usage, that while 153 is regularly 
 rendered in the LXX. by λύτρον or λύτρωσις, DDD never is so, 
 but by ἱλασμὺς, καθαρισμὺς, ἐξίλασις, or ἐξιλασμός. Both terms 
 are applied in the New Testament to the work of redemption, and 
 in either case it is the divine punitive justice to which the λύτρον 
 is applied as “ satisfaction,” or the ἱλασμός as “expiation.” The 
 work of redemption is, in fact, a self-wrought reconciliation between 
 the divine justice and the divine mercy. Love is the Alpha and 
 Omega of the whole, between which the death of the cross stands 
 in the midst. In short, the atonement of the cross is the solution 
 of the enigma how God can be at once the δίκαιος and the δικανμῶν 
 of the sinner, how without impeachment of His holiness and justice 
 He can love and save the guilty. ‘“ Vicarious satisfaction” is the 
 grand Eureka of holy love. 
 
 Note Q, p. 93. 
 
 “‘ A Gentile once came to Rabbi Johanan Ben Saceai, and said 
 to him: Is not this a sort of magic? You take a red cow, burn 
 it, collect the ashes in a vessel of water, and sprinkle therewith a 
 man defiled by contact with a dead body, and then say to him, 
 Thou art clean! He answered him thus: Hast thou never seen a 
 man into whom the spirit of a foul disease has entered, and ob- 
 served the manner in which they went about his cure? ‘The 
 Gentile said he had done so. And canst thou, continued Rabbi 
 
492 NOTES. 
 
 Johanan, comprehend how any kind of medicine effects the cure 
 of human disease? Both the one and the other are equally 
 incomprehensible, and yet each in its own way effectual. The 
 ‘Gentile was silent, and went his way. Whereupon the Rabbi's 
 own disciples said to him: My lord, it was easy for thee to subdue 
 that Gentile with a straw and reduce him to silence, but what 
 hast thou, O master, satisfactory to say to us on this point? To 
 whom he replied: A dead body defileth not, and water cleanseth 
 not, but such is the ordinance of the Holy One, blessed be He! 
 I have settled an ordinance, I have made a decree, it is not lawful 
 for thee to overstep them !”—Be-midbar Rabba, c. xix. The Jewish 
 doctor then discerned no natural or rational connection between 
 means and end, the only reason for the proceeding being the divine 
 ordinance. 
 
 END OF VOL. II. 
 
 MURRAY AND GIBB, FDINBURGN, 
 PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE 
 
T. and T. Clark's Publications. 
 
 The Wiorks of St. Auqustine. 
 
 EDITED BY THE REV. MARCUS DODS, M.A. 
 
 .--- -. - -- 
 
 ESSRS. CLARK have much pleasure in publishing the second issue 
 of Translations of the Writings of Sr. AUGUSTINE—Viz. : 
 
 WRITINGS IN CONNECTION WITH THE DONATIST 
 CONTROVERSY. One Volume. 
 
 THE ANTI-PELAGIAN WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTINE. 
 Woolen Ic 
 
 The first issue comprised 
 
 mee elt Y Or: GOD, 
 
 In Two VOLUMES. 
 Translated by the Rey. Marcus Dods, M.A. 
 
 They believe this will prove not the least valuable of their various 
 Series, and no pains will be spared to make it so. The Editor has secured 
 a most competent staff of Translators, and every care is being taken to 
 secure not only accuracy, but elegance. 
 
 The Works of Sr. AUGUSTINE to be included in the Series are (in addi- 
 tion to the ‘ C1ry or Gop’)— 
 
 All the TREATISES in the PELAGIAN, and the four leading TREATISES 
 in the Donatist CONTROVERSY. 
 
 The TREATISES against Fausrus the Manichean; on CHRISTIAN 
 Docrrine; the Trinity; the Harmony or THE EvaANGELists; the 
 SERMON ON THE Mount. 
 
 Also, the Lecrures on the GosPEL ΟΡ St. JOHN, the CONFESSIONS, a 
 SELECTION from the Lerrers, the Rerracrations, the SOLILOQUIES, 
 and SELECTIONS from the PRACTICAL TREATISES. 
 
 All these works are of first-rate importance, and only a small proportion 
 of them have yet appeared in an English dress. The Sermons and the 
 COMMENTARIES ON THE PsaLMs having been already given by the Oxford 
 Translators, it is not intended, at least in the first instance, to publish 
 them. 
 
 The Series will include a Lire or Sr. AuGustixe, by Ropert Ray, 
 D.D., Professor of Church History, New College, Edinburgh. 
 
 The Series will probably extend to Sixteen or Eighteen Volumes. The 
 Publishers will be glad to receive the Names of Subscribers as early as 
 possible. 
 
 SupscrieTion: Four Volumes for a Guinea, payable in advance, as in the 
 case of the ANTE-NICENE SERIES (24s. when not paid in advance). 
 
 It is understood that Subscribers are bound to take at least the books of 
 the first two years. Each Volume will be sold separately at (on an 
 average) 10s. 6d. each Volume. 
 
 They trust the Subscribers to the ANTE-NICENE Liprary will continue 
 their Subscription to this Series, and they hope to be favoured with an 
 early remittance of the Subscription. 
 
LT. and T. Clark's Publications. 
 
 CHEAP RE-ISSUE 
 
 OF THE WHOLE 
 
 WORKS OF DR. JOHN OWEN. 
 
 Edited by Rev. W. H. GOOLD, D.D., Edinburgh. 
 WITH LIFE BY REV. ANDREW THOMSON, D.D. 
 
 In 24 Volumes, demy 8vo, handsomely bound in cloth, lettered. 
 With Two Portraits of Dr. Owen. 
 
 Several years have now elapsed since the first publication of this edition of 
 the Works of the greatest of Puritan Divines. Time has tested its merits; and 
 it is now admitted on all hands to be the only correct and complete edition. 
 
 At the time of publication it was considered—as it really was—a miracle of 
 cheapness, having been issued, by Subscription, for Five Guineas. 
 
 In consequence of the abolition of the Paper Duty, the Publishers now re- 
 issue the Twenty-four Volumes for 
 
 FOUR GUINEAS. 
 
 As there are above Fourteen Thousand Pages in all, each Volume therefore 
 averages 106 Hundred and Ninety Pages. 
 
 ‘You will find that in John Owen the learning of Lightfoot, the strength of Charnock, 
 the analysis of Howe, the savour of Leighton, the raciness of Heywood, the glow of 
 Baxter, the copiousness of Barrow, the splendour of Bates, are all combined. We should 
 
 quickly restore the race of great divines if our candidates were disciplined in such lore.’ 
 —The Late Dr. Hamiron of Leeds. 
 
 ConreNtTs. 
 VOLs. 
 I. Life, by Rey. Dr. Thomson ; Christologia, or a Declaration of the 
 
 glorious Mystery of the Person of Christ; Meditations on the 
 Glory of Christ; Two Short Catechisms. 
 
 II. Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. 
 III. and 1V. On the Holy Spirit. 
 
 V. On the Doctrine of Justification by Faith. 
 
 VI. Of the Mortification of Sin in Believers ; the Nature, Power, etc., of 
 the Remainders of Sin in Believers; Practical Exposition of the 
 cxxx. Psalm. ! 
 
 VII. 
 
 Nature and Causes of Apostasy from the Gospel ; 
 of being Spiritually Minded; of the Dominion 
 VIIL. and IX. Sermons. 
 X. A Display of Arminianism; the Death of Death in the Death of 
 Christ ; of the Death of Christ; Dissertation on Divine Justice. 
 
 the Grace and Duty 
 of Sin and Grace. 
 
 ΧΙ. 
 
 XII. 
 XIII. 
 XIV. 
 
 XY. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 XVIII. to XXIV. 
 
 Doctrine of the Saints’ Perseverance explained. 
 
 Mystery of the Gospel vindicated and Socinianism examined. 
 
 Duty of Pastors and People distinguished; Esheol; of Schism, ete. 
 
 On a Treatise, ‘ Fiat Lux;’ the Church of Rome no Safe Guide, ete. 
 
 Discourse concerning Liturgies and their Imposition; concerning 
 Evangelical Love, Church Peace and Unity; Inquiry into the 
 Original, Nature, Institution, Power, Order, and Communion of 
 Evangelical Churches, ete. 
 
 The True Nature of a Gospel Church, ete. ; Three Treatises concern- 
 ing the Scriptures. 
 
 Theologumena, sive de natura, ortu, progressu, et studio vere 
 Theologie. 
 
 Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
 
 *,* Separate Volumes may be had, price 8s. 6d. each. 
 
T. and T. Clark's Publications. 
 
 This day is published, price 14s., 
 
 BIBLICO-THEOLOGICAL LEXICON OF 
 NEW TESTAMENT GREEK. 
 
 BY 
 HERMANN CREMER, 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GREIFSWALD. 
 
 Translated from the German by 
 Ὁ. W. SIMON, Px.D., 
 
 AND 
 
 ἢ ΠῚ i AM UR WICK, Mi: A: 
 
 This work comprises such words as have their ordinary classical meaning changed or 
 modified in Scripture, tracing their history in their transference from the Classics into 
 the Septuagint and thence into the New Testament, and the gradual deepening and 
 elevation of their meaning till they reach the fulness of New Testament thought. 
 
 A TREATISE ON THE GRAMMAR OF NEW TESTAMENT GREEK, 
 
 REGARDED AS THE BASIS OF NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS. 
 
 By Dr. G. B. WINER. 
 
 Translated from the German, with large additions and full Indices, by Rev. W. 
 F. Moutron, M A., Classical Tutor, Wesleyan Theological College, Rich- 
 mond, and Prizeman in Hebrew and New Testament Greek in the University 
 
 of London. 
 
 The additions by the Editor are very large, and will tend to make this 
 ereat work far more useful and available for English students than it has 
 hitherto been. The Indices have been greatly enlarged, but with dis- 
 crimination, so as to be easily used. Students will admit, this is of vast 
 importance. Altogether, the Publishers do not doubt that this will be 
 the Standard Grammar of New Testament Greek. 
 
 ‘This is the standard classical work on the Grammar of the New Testament, and it 
 is of course indispensable to every one who would prosecute intelligently the critical 
 study of the most important portion of the inspired record. It is a great service to 
 render such a work accessible to the English reader.'—British and Foreign Evangelical 
 Review. 
 
 ‘We gladly welcome the appearance of Winer’s great work in an English translation, 
 
 and most strongly recommend it to all who wish to attain to a sound and accurate know- 
 
 Just published, in one vol. 8vo, price 15s., 
 
 ledge of the language of the New Testament. We need not say it is the Grammar of the 
 New Testament. It is not only superior to all others, but so superior as to be by common 
 consent the one work of reference on the subject. No other could be mentioned with it.’ 
 —Literary Churchman. 
 
 EDINBURGH: T. & T. CLARK. LONDON: HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO. 
 Le EEE EEE eee EES 
 
ZT. andT. Clark's Publications. «τ 
 
 (TEMPORARY) CHEAP RE-ISSUE 
 
 OF 
 
 STE Res OW OR DS, OF tet Hae 
 LORD: ἘΣ 
 
 To meet a very general desire that the now well-known Work 
 
 of Dr. STIER, 
 
 THE WORDS OF THE LORD JESUS, 
 
 should be brought more within the reach of all classes, both 
 Clergy and Laity, Messrs. CLARK have resolved to issue the Hight 
 
 Volumes, handsomely bound in Fowr, for 
 
 TWO GUINEAS. 
 
 This can be only offered for a limited period; and as the al- 
 lowance to the trade must necessarily be small, orders sent either 
 direct, or through booksellers, must in every case be accompanied 
 with a Post Office Order for the above amount. 
 
 ‘We know no work that contains, within anything like the same compass, 
 so many pregnant instances of what true genius under chastened submission to 
 the control of a sound philology, and gratefully accepting the seasonable and 
 suitable helps of a wholesome erudition, is capable of doing in the spiritual 
 exegesis of the sacred-volume. Every page is fretted aud studded with lines 
 and forms of the most alluring beauty. At every step the reader is constrained 
 to pause and ponder, lest he should overlook one or other of the many precious 
 blossoms that, in the most dazzling profusion, are scattered around his path. 
 We venture to predict that his Words of Jesus are destined to produce a 
 great and happy revolution in the interpretation of the New Testament in this 
 country.’—British and Foreign Evangelical Review. 
 
 ee 
 
Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Libra 
 
 > 
 + 
 m 
 Ό 
 ς 
 m 
 
 LE 
 πα ! 
 ee ~~ om | 
 
 = 
 
 Ρ 
 ὶ 
 ἱ 
 
 GAYLORD #3523PI 
 
 Printed in USA 
 
ww" ΧΑ i ode 
 @ 
 
 | REPL at MgB rp. ᾿ 
 : rt 
 
ΕΝ 
 Ἔν οἷς tp Nate 
 τσ πο δ ye ia SUT 
 
 PATIO RON Ge 
 Bicanesrate 
 
 Sere rune te 
 
 a ay heen hie 
 
 Aas τὰ ἥρως Ἦν ατὸξ Ἶ - if a 3 
 τως sas cea ee Be se τ : : Pane 
 
 sepia τᾷ 
 
 ἘΞ 
 ἀερωρνῖ 
 peal see