Heb 9:11-12, 15, 22, 28 | Clarke | e4.org | Verse 11. But Christ being come a high priest of good things ] I think this and the succeeding verses not happily translated: indeed, the division of them has led to a wrong translation; therefore they must be taken together, thus: But the Christ, the high priest of those good things (or services ) which were to come, through a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands , that is, not of the same workmanship, entered once for all into the sanctuary; having obtained eternal redemption for us, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood , . For if the blood of GOATS, and bulls, and calves, and a heifer's ashes, sprinkled on the unclean, sanctifieth to the cleansing of the flesh , ( ,) how much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God, cleanse your consciences from dead works, in order to worship (or that ye may worship ) the living God ? In the above translation I have added, in , τραγων, of goats , on the authority of ABDE, three others, the Syriac , the Arabic of Erpen, Coptic, Vulgate , two copies of the Itala , and Theodoret . And I have rendered ειςτολατρευειν, ( ,) IN ORDER to worship , or THAT YE MAY worship ; for this is the meaning of these particles ειςτο in many parts of the New Testament. I shall now make a few observations on some of the principal expressions. High priest of good things ] Or services, to come , τωνμελλοντων αγαθων. He is the High Priest of Christianity; he officiates in the behalf of all mankind; for by him are all the prayers, praises, and services of mankind offered to God; and he ever appears in the presence of God for us. A greater and more perfect tabernacle ] This appears to mean our Lord's human nature . That, in which dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, was fitly typified by the tabernacle and temple, in both of which the majesty of God dwelt. Not made with hands ] Though our Lord's body was a perfect human body, yet it did not come in the way of natural generation; his miraculous conception will sufficiently justify the expressions used here by the apostle.

‏ Hebrews 9:11-12

Verse 11. But Christ being come a high priest of good things] I think this and the succeeding verses not happily translated: indeed, the division of them has led to a wrong translation; therefore they must be taken together, thus: But the Christ, the high priest of those good things (or services) which were to come, through a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is, not of the same workmanship, entered once for all into the sanctuary; having obtained eternal redemption for us, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, Heb 9:13. For if the blood of GOATS, and bulls, and calves, and a heifer's ashes, sprinkled on the unclean, sanctifieth to the cleansing of the flesh, (Heb 9:14,) how much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God, cleanse your consciences from dead works, in order to worship (or that ye may worship) the living God?

In the above translation I have added, in Heb 9:13, τραγων, of goats, on the authority of ABDE, three others, the Syriac, the Arabic of Erpen, Coptic, Vulgate, two copies of the Itala, and Theodoret. And I have rendered ειςτολατρευειν, (Heb 9:14,) IN ORDER to worship, or THAT YE MAY worship; for this is the meaning of these particles ειςτο in many parts of the New Testament. I shall now make a few observations on some of the principal expressions.

High priest of good things] Or services, to come, τωνμελλοντων αγαθων. He is the High Priest of Christianity; he officiates in the behalf of all mankind; for by him are all the prayers, praises, and services of mankind offered to God; and he ever appears in the presence of God for us.

A greater and more perfect tabernacle] This appears to mean our Lord's human nature. That, in which dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, was fitly typified by the tabernacle and temple, in both of which the majesty of God dwelt.

Not made with hands] Though our Lord's body was a perfect human body, yet it did not come in the way of natural generation; his miraculous conception will sufficiently justify the expressions used here by the apostle.

Verse 12. But by his own blood] Here the redemption of man is attributed to the blood of Christ; and this blood is stated to be shed in a sacrificial way, precisely as the blood of bulls, goats and calves was shed under the law.

Once] Once for all, εφαπαξ, in opposition to the annual entering of the high priest into the holiest, with the blood of the annual victim.

The holy place] Or sanctuary, τααγια, signifies heaven, into which Jesus entered with his own blood, as the high priest entered into the holy of holies with the blood of the victims which he had sacrificed.

Eternal redemption] αιωνιανλυτρωσιν. A redemption price which should stand good for ever, when once offered; and an endless redemption from sin, in reference to the pardon of which, and reconciliation to God, there needs no other sacrifice: it is eternal in its merit and efficacy.

‏ Hebrews 9:15

Verse 15. And for this cause] Some translate διατουτο, on account of this (blood.) Perhaps it means no more than a mere inference, such as therefore, or wherefore.

He is the Mediator of the new testament] There was no proper reason why our translators should render διαθηκη by testament here, when in almost every other case they render it covenant, which is its proper ecclesiastical meaning, as answering to the Hebrew berith, which see largely explained, Ge 15:10, and in other places of the Pentateuch.

Very few persons are satisfied with the translation of the following verses to the 20th, particularly the 16th and 17th; at all events the word covenant must be retained. He-Jesus Christ, is Mediator; the μεσιτης, or mediator, was the person who witnessed the contract made between the two contracting parties, slew the victim, and sprinkled each with its blood.

Of the new testament] The new contract betwixt God and the whole human race, by Christ Jesus the Mediator, distinguished here from the old covenant between God and the Israelites, in which Moses was the mediator.

That by means of death] His own death upon the cross.

For the redemption of the transgressions] To make atonement for the transgressions which were committed under the old covenant, which the blood of bulls and calves could not do; so the death of Jesus had respect to all the time antecedent to it, as well as to all the time afterward till the conclusion of the world.

They which are called] The GENTILES, might receive the promise-might, by being brought into a covenant with God, have an equal right with the Jews, not merely to an inheritance such as the promised land, but to an eternal inheritance, and consequently infinitely superior to that of the Jews, inasmuch as the new covenant is superior in every point of view to the old.

How frequently the Gentiles are termed οικλητοι and οι κεκλημενοι, the called, all St. Paul's writings show. And they were thus termed because they were called and elected in the place of the Jews, the ancient called and elect, who were now divorced and reprobated because of their disobedience.

‏ Hebrews 9:22

Verse 22. And almost all things are-purged with blood] The apostle says almost, because in some cases certain vessels were purified by water, some by fire, Nu 31:23, and some with the ashes of the red heifer, Nu 19:2-10, but it was always understood that every thing was at first consecrated by the blood of the victim.

And without shedding of blood is no remission.] The apostle shows fully here what is one of his great objects in the whole of this epistle, viz. that there is no salvation but through the sacrificial death of Christ, and to prefigure this the law itself would not grant any remission of sin without the blood of a victim. This is a maxim even among the Jews themselves, ein capparah ella bedam, "There is no expiation but by blood." Yoma, fol. 5, 1; Menachoth, fol. 93, 2. Every sinner has forfeited his life by his transgressions, and the law of God requires his death; the blood of the victim, which is its life, is shed as a substitute for the life of the sinner. By these victims the sacrifice of Christ was typified. He gave his life for the life of the world; human life for human life, but a life infinitely dignified by its union with God.

‏ Hebrews 9:28

Verse 28. So Christ was once offered] He shall die no more; he has borne away the sins of many, and what he has done once shall stand good for ever. Yet he will appear a second time without sin, χωριςαμαρτιας, without a sin-offering; THAT he has already made.

Unto salvation.] To deliver the bodies of believers from the empire of death, to reunite them to their purified souls, and bring both into his eternal glory. This is salvation, and the very highest of which the human being is capable. Amen! Even so, come Lord Jesus! Hallelujah!

1. IN the preceding notes I have given my reasons for dissenting from our translation of the 15th, 16th, and 17th verses. Many learned men are of the same opinion; but I have not met with one who appears to have treated the whole in a more satisfactory manner than Dr. Macknight, and for the edification of my readers I shall here subjoin the substance of what he has written on this point.

"Verse 15. Mediator of the new covenant. See Heb 8:7. The word διαθηκη, here translated covenant, answers to the Hebrew word berith, which all the translators of the Jewish Scriptures have understood to signify a covenant. The same signification our translators have affixed to the word διαθηκη, as often as it occurs in the writings of the evangelists and apostles, except in the history of the institution of the supper, and in 2Co 3:6: and Heb 7:22, and in the passage under consideration; in which places, copying the Vulgate version, they have rendered διαθηκη by the word testament. Beza, following the Syriac Version, translates διαθηκη everywhere by the words foedas, pactum, except in the 16th, 17th, and 20th verses of this chapter, where likewise following the Syriac version, he has testamentum. Now if καινηδιαθηκη, the new testament, in the passages above mentioned, means the Gospel covenant, as all interpreters acknowledge, παλαιαδιαθηκη, the old testament, 2Co 3:14, and πρωτηδιαθηκη, the first testament, Heb 9:15, must certainly be the Sinaitic covenant or law of Moses, as is evident also from Heb 9:20. On this supposition it may be asked, 1. In what sense the Sinaitic covenant or law of Moses, which required perfect obedience to all its precepts under penalty of death, and allowed no mercy to any sinner, however penitent, can be called a testament, which is a deed conferring something valuable on a person who may accept or refuse it, as he thinks fit? Besides, the transaction at Sinai, in which God promised to continue the Israelites in Canaan, on condition they refrained from the wicked practices of the Canaanites, and observed his statutes, Lev. 18, can in no sense be called a testament. 2. If the law of Moses be a testament, and if, to render that testament valid, the death of the testator be necessary, as the English translators have taught us, Heb 9:16, I ask who it was that made the testament of the law? Was it God or Moses? And did either of them die to render it valid? 3. I observe that even the Gospel covenant is improperly called a testament, because, notwithstanding all its blessings were procured by the death of Christ, and are most freely bestowed, it lost any validity which, as a testament, it is thought to have received by the death of Christ, when he revived again on the third day. 4. The things affirmed in the common translation of Heb 9:15, concerning the new testament, namely, that it has a Mediator; that that Mediator is the Testator himself; that there were transgressions of a former testament, for the redemption of which the Mediator of the new testament died; and, Heb 9:19, that the first testament was made by sprinkling the people in whose favour it was made with blood; are all things quite foreign to a testament. For was it ever known in any nation that a testament needed a mediator? Or that the testator was the mediator of his own testament? Or that it was necessary the testator of a new testament should die to redeem the transgressions of a former testament? Or that any testament was ever made by sprinkling the legatees with blood? These things however were usual in covenants. They had mediators who assisted at the making of them, and were sureties for the performance of them. They were commonly ratified by sacrifices, the blood of which was sprinkled on the parties; withal, if any former covenant was infringed by the parties, satisfaction was given at the making of a second covenant. 5. By calling Christ the Mediator of the new testament our thoughts are turned away entirely from the view which the Scriptures give us of his death as a sacrifice for sin; whereas, if he is called the Mediator of the new covenant, which is the true translation of διαθηκηςκαινηςμεσιτης, that appellation directly suggests to us that the new covenant was procured and ratified by his death as a sacrifice for sin. Accordingly Jesus, on account of his being made a priest by the oath of God, is said to be the Priest or Mediator of a better covenant than that of which the Levitical priests were the mediators. I acknowledge that in classical Greek διαθηκη, commonly signifies a testament. Yet, since the Seventy have uniformly translated the Hebrew word berith, which properly signifies a covenant, by the word διαθηκη, in writing Greek the Jews naturally used διαθηκη for σονθηκη as our translators have acknowledged by their version of Heb 10:16. To conclude: Seeing in the verses under consideration διαθηκη may be translated a covenant; and seeing, when so translated, these verses make a better sense, and agree better with the scope of the apostle's reasoning than if it were translated a testament; we can be at no loss to know which translation of διαθηκη in these verses ought to be preferred. Nevertheless, the absurdity of a phraseology to which readers have been long accustomed, without attending distinctly to its meaning, does not soon appear.

"He is the Mediator. Here it is remarkable that Jesus is not called διαθεμενος, the Testator, but μεσιτης, the Mediator, of the new covenant; first, because he procured the new covenant for mankind, in which the pardon of sin is promised; for, as the apostle tells us, his death, as a sacrifice for sin, is the consideration on account of which the pardon of the transgressions of the first covenant is granted. Secondly, because the new covenant having been ratified as well as procured by the death of Christ, he is fitly called the Mediator of that covenant in the same sense that God's oath is called, Heb 6:17, the mediator, or confirmor, of his promise. Thirdly, Jesus, who died to procure the new covenant, being appointed by God the high priest thereof, to dispense his blessings, he is on that account also called, Heb 8:6, the mediator of that better covenant.

"Verse 16. For where a covenant [is made by sacrifice,] there is a necessity that the death of the appointed sacrifice be produced. This elliptical expression must be completed, if, as is probable, the apostle had now in his eye the covenant which God made with Noah and Abraham. His covenant is recorded, Ge 8:20, where we are told, that on coming out of the ark Noah offered a burnt-offering of every clean beast and fowl. And the Lord smelled a sweet savour. And the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground, neither will I again smite any more every living thing as I have done. This promise or declaration God called his covenant with men, and with every living creature. Ge 9:9, 10. In like manner God made a covenant with Abraham by sacrifice, Ge 15:9, 18, and with the Israelites at Sinai, Ex 24:8. See also Ps 50:5. By making his covenants with men in this manner, God taught them that his intercourses with them were all founded on an expiation afterwards to be made for their sins by the sacrifice of the seed of the woman, the bruising of whose heel, or death, was foretold at the fall. On the authority of these examples, the practice of making covenants by sacrifice prevailed among the Jews; Jer 34:18; Zec 9:11; and even among the heathens; for they had the knowledge of these examples by tradition. Stabant et caesa jungebant foedera porca; Virgil, AEneid, viii. 611. Hence the phrases, foedus ferire and percutere, to strike or kill the covenant.

"There is a necessity that the death τουδιαθεμενου, of the appointed. Here we may supply either the word θυματος, sacrifice, or ζωου, animal, which might be either a calf, a goat, a bull, or any other animal which the parties making the covenant chose. διαθεμενου is the participle of the second aorist of the middle voice of the verb διατιθημι, constituo, I appoint. Wherefore its primary and literal signification is, of the appointed. Our translators have given the word this sense, Lu 22:29; καγω διατιθεμαιυμινκαθωςδιετιθετομοιοπατηρμουβασιλειαν. And I appoint to you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed to me a kingdom.

"Be brought in; θανατοναναγκηφερεσθαιτουδιαθεμενου, Elsner, vol. ii., p. 381, has shown that the word φερεσθαι is sometimes used in a forensic sense for what is produced, or proved, or made apparent in a court of judicature. Wherefore the apostle's meaning is, that it is necessary the death of the appointed sacrifice be brought in, or produced, at the making of the covenant. In the margin of our Bibles this clause is rightly translated, be brought in. See Ac 25:7, where φεροντες is used in the forensic sense.

"Verse 17. A covenant is firm over dead sacrifices; επινεκοις. νεκροις being an adjective, it must have a substantive agreeing with it, either expressed or understood. The substantive understood in this place, I think, is θυμασι, sacrifices; for which reason I have supplied it in the translation. Perhaps the word ζωοις, animals, may be equally proper; especially as, in the following clause, διαθεμενος is in the gender of the animals appointed for the sacrifice. Our translators have supplied the word ανθρωποις, men, and have translated επινεκροις, after men are dead, contrary to the propriety of the phrase.

"It never hath force whilst the appointed liveth; οτεζηο διαθεμενος. Supply μοσχος, or τραγος, or ταυρος. whilst the calf, or goat, or bull, appointed for the sacrifice of ratification, liveth. The apostle having, in Heb 9:15, showed that Christ's death was necessary as ομεσιτης, the Mediator, that is, the procurer, and ratifier of the new covenant, he in the 16th and 17th verses observes that, since God's covenants with men were all ratified by sacrifice to show that his intercourses with men are founded on the sacrifice of his Son, it was necessary that the new covenant itself should be ratified by his Son's actually dying as a sacrifice.

"The faultiness of the common translation of the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 20th verses of this chapter having been already shown in the notes, nothing needs be added here, except to call the reader's attention to the propriety and strength of the apostle's reasoning, as it appears in the translation of these verses which I have given, compared with his reasoning as represented in the common version."

2. It is supposed that in Heb 9:28, the apostle, in speaking about Christ's bearing the sins of many, alludes to the ceremony of the scape goat. This mysterious sacrifice was to be presented to God, Le 16:7, and the sins of the people were to be confessed over the head of it, Le 16:21, and after this the goat was dismissed into a land uninhabited, laden, as the institution implied, with the sins of the people; and this the word ανενεγκειν, to bear or carry away, seems to imply. So truly as the goat did metaphorically bear away the sins of the many, so truly did Christ literally bear the punishment due to our sins; and in reference to every believer, has so borne them away that they shall never more rise in judgment against him.

3. In Christ's coming, or appearing the second time, it is very probable, as Dr. Doddridge and others have conjectured, that there is an allusion to the return of the high priest from the inner tabernacle; for, after appearing there in the presence of God, and making atonement for the people in the plain dress of an ordinary priest, Le 16:23, 24, he came out arrayed in his magnificent robes, to bless the people, who waited for him in the court of the tabernacle of the congregation. "But there will be this difference," says Dr. Macknight, "between the return of Christ to bless his people, and the return of the high priest to bless the congregation. The latter, after coming out of the most holy place, made a new atonement in his pontifical robes for himself and for the people, Le 16:24, which showed that the former atonement was not real but typical. Whereas Jesus, after having made atonement, [and presented himself in heaven, before God,] will not return to the earth for the purpose of making himself a sacrifice the second time; but having procured an eternal redemption for us, by the sacrifice of himself once offered, he will return for the purpose of declaring to them who wait for him that they are accepted, and of bestowing on them the great blessing of eternal life. This reward he, being surrounded with the glory of the Father, Mt 16:27, will give them in the presence of an assembled universe, both as their King and their Priest. This is the great salvation which Christ came to preach, and which was confirmed to the world by them who heard him: Heb 2:3." Reader, lay this sincerely to heart!

4. The form in which the high priest and the ordinary priests were to bless the people, after burning the incense in the tabernacle, is prescribed, Nu 6:23-26. Literally translated from the Hebrew it is as follows, and consists of three parts or benedictions:-

1. May Jehovah bless thee, and preserve thee!

2. May Jehovah cause his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee!

3. May Jehovah lift up his faces upon thee, and may he put prosperity unto thee! (See my notes on the place.)

We may therefore say that Christ, our High Priest, came to bless each of us, by turning us away from our iniquity. And let no one ever expect to see him at his second coming with joy, unless he have, in this life, been turned away from his iniquity, and obtained remission of all his sins, and that holiness without which none can see God. Reader, the time of his reappearing is, to thee, at hand! Prepare to meet thy God!

On the word conscience, which occurs so often in this chapter, and in other parts of this epistle, see the observations at the end of "Heb 13:25".