Bible Commentaries
Hebrews 9

Verses 1-28

IX 1-28 Superiority of Christ’s Sacrifice— Christ was a sacrificing Priest, Minister of a sanctuary and Mediator of a new Covenant, but what is of supreme importance in this Covenant is the sacrifice on which it is based, for there is no religious regime without sacrifice. Hence the logical development of the Apostle’s argument leads him to consider the sacrificial ritual of the old alliance and that of the new. He proceeds to do so in terms of the Israelite sanctuary and with supreme emphasis on the greatest sacrificial ceremony of the Jewish year, that of Yôm hakkippurîm—Expiation Day or Day of Atonement (10 Tišri).

IX 1-10 The Tabernacle and Day of Atonement— 1. ’Of course (this is often the best English equivalent of µ?µ ??+??) the former (Covenant) also had ordinances of worship and a sanctuary of this world’,i.e. a terrestrial sanctuary, and not in the sense of an ecumenical or universal one.

2. The Apostle describes not the Zorobabclian-Herodian temple but the tabernacle as set up by Moses. There is great argumentative prudence and subtle suggestiveness in thus taking a Pentateuchal basis and in going back to the days when the Ark was still in the midst of Israel. 2-5. The description of the tabernacle and its appurtenances is summary but not wanting in splendour. The first oblong tent which was set up by Moses is mentioned, in which is noted the seven-branched ’lampstand’ (DV ’candlesticks’) placed to the south or left, and the table (covered with gold) on which stand the twelve loaves of shew-bread, this being on the north or right side. This oblong, called the Holy, is seen to terminate west in a second veil or curtain, thus distinguished from the first or entrance veil.

3. Behind this second veil stands the tent or sacred cube called the Holy of Holies or Most Holy, having as its appurtenances a golden ’altar of incense’ (DV ’censer’) placed outside the veil, and then, within the veil, the Ark of the Covenant covered completely with gold. In the Ark mention is made of an urn having or containing manna, of the rod of Aaron that blossomed, of the tables of the Covenant.

5. Over the Ark stand Cherubim of glory—that is, throne-bearers of God’s glorious Majesty—covering with their wings the ’propitiatory’ or golden cover of the Ark which is called in Heb. Kapporet, to which Luther gave the happy name of Gnadenstuhl, a reminiscence of Hebrews 4:16—the ’mercy-seat’ of AV. The Gk ??ast?????? and Lat. propitiatorium designate it as an instrument of expiation or atonement.

In the above exposition care has been taken to bring out a literary quality of the text which is generally lost sight of. Apart from saying that the first tent ’was set up’, there is no past tense in the paragraph, only verbless phrases and present participles. The Apostle evidently wishes the tabernacle to stand before the Hebrews in the ’legal present’, for the Messianic age is’the world to come’. cf.’ the Jerusalem which now is’, Galatians 4:25.

Two objections must be briefly deal with. (1) The ’altar of incense’ (thymiaterion) is placed within the Holy of Holies, instead of outside it. The answer is that the verb used, namely, ’having’ not’ containing’, expresses the close relation of the altar of incense with the inner sanctuary. In 3 Kg 6:22 this altar is called ’the altar belonging to the d’?îr or inner sanctuary’ while Exodus 40:5 calls it ’the altar of incense before the Ark’. Moreover, according to the letter reproduced in 2 Mac 2:5 Jeremias hid the altar of incense together with the Ark and Tabernacle, for they went together. (2) The assertion that in the Ark were manna, and Aaron’s rod, and the tables of the Covenant seems to contradict 3 Kg 8:9 which says that the Ark contained only the tables. A possible answer would be that the author of 3 Kg and the author of Heb speak of different times, but we have no positive information on the point. A satisfactory reply is that the urn of manna and the sacerdotal rod which were beside the Ark are comprehended or lumped together with the stone tables which were within the Ark.

6-7 Day of Atonernent— The Apostle does not intend to go into details about liturgical symbolism, but he wishes to note one important thing.

6-7. Officiating priests enter the Holy at all times—twice a day for the offering of incense, and at other times to perform bloodritual, to see to the lamps, to change the shew-bread on the Sabbath; but into the second tent or Holy of Holies entrance is allowed only once a year (actually four times in the performance of one liturgy), the only privileged person being the high priest, who enters not without blood but for the purpose of sprinkling the propitiatory and sanctuary with the blood of the bull which he has offered for his own sinful ignorances and also with the blood of the goat which he has offered for the sins or ignoranccs of the people. 8. The intention of the Holy Spirit in arranging Israelite worship in such wise that the outer sanctuary should retain its position (st?s??) as the usual place of priestly access to God, and that the inner sanctuary should be an annual high-priestly reserve is to show that the way to the antitypal Holy of Holies of heaven has not yet been opened.

9. The outer sanctuary is really a parable-image of the present pre-Messianic (not Messianic) time—a parable according to which such oblationg and sacrifices of every kind are offered as are powerless to purify the conscience and interiorly perfect the worshipper.

9-10. These oblations and victims are really nothing more than part and parcel of the system which included food distinctions and drink prohibitions and various ritual washings, and, just like these, are really only fleshly regulations (DV ’Justices of the flesh’: read d??a??µata in apposition to ’gifts and sacrifices’, omitting ’and’ before ’justices’). These fleshly regulations are merely temporary, imposed until the time of Messianic reform or betterment, d?

11-28 The Day of Eternal Atonernent— Firstly, the work of Christ the High Priest is described in a magnificent synthesis, 11-14; secondly, in relation to the Covenant which his blood sealed, 15-22; thirdly, in its absolute efficacy and finality, 23-28.

11-14 Synthesis— This passage which, with the addition of two verses from the next paragraph, is the Epistle for Passion Sunday and the Feast of the Precious Blood, continues in the symbolic language of the Tabernacle and Day of Atonement. Its chief difficulty—a very considerable difficulty—is to determine what is the tabernacle through which Christ passed.

11. The Apostle says in a tone of majestic. contrast: ’Christ having come into the world in the quality of High Priest of the spiritual and eternal good things of the Messianic future, passed through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, and entered . . . the sanctuary’. The sanctuary is everlasting glory, or, in the simpler language of place, heaven; but what is the tabernacle ’through which’ he entered? As the entrance was made through the Passion, the only satisfactory answer seems to be: his own mortal Body, cf. ’the veil, which is his flesh’, 10:20. This would explain why the Apostle not only says ’not made with hands’ but adds the words: ’that is, not of this creation’, for the Body of Christ was formed as a temple of God by the Holy Ghost. It is of course, impossible to deny that the writer is thinking of the two localized poles, earth and heaven; but he evidently does not regard the blue curtain of the sky as the veil of a sanctuary. Christ passed from the condition of mortality to glory. Thus the glorified Christ, finding of course his proper habitation in heaven, constitutes the interior sanctuary. ’The flesh is a veil says Chrysostom,’ as concealing the Godhead; and likewise a tabernacle as holding the Godhead’. There is no express reference in the Epistle to the Ascension of Christ. He, as it were, enters heaven from the Cross in the sprinkling of his blood, and at the end of the Epistle it is in the Blood of the New Testament that God brings him forth from the dead, 13:20. Not that our author was unaware of the three days (some thirty-five hours) of entombment and the forty days of glory on earth, but he is thinking in the juridical terms of Atonement Day. Christ expiating sin on the Cross and sacerdotally sprinkled with his own blood de jure enters eternal glory at the moment that the veil of his mortality is broken; and at the same moment the veil of the temple—surely the inner veil—is rent, with a synchronism which seems to find its tremendous explanation in Christ’s sixth word: ’It is consummated’ (tet??esta?). With all the prophecies about the Messianic redemption now fulfilled, the Old Covenant and the Ritual of Lev 16 have come h to an end.

12. ’Not by the blood of goats nor of calves but by his own blood (Christ) entered once into the holies, having obtained eternal redemption’. The heavenly sanctuary is opened once for all and for ever, for the blood of expiation is an eternal ransom, that is, the infinite price of eternal freedom.

13. The cleansing efficacy of blood belongs to two different spheres, that of outer purification and that of interior purification. The sprinkled blood of sacrificial goats and calves and the lustral water made from the ashes of a red heifer offered in sacrifice, Num 20, cleanse those who have contracted legal defilement of one kind or another, thaf is, cleanse them externally in view of externally unimpeded communion with God’s people. These sprinklings have limited but real legal efficacy in the sphere to which they belong.

14. But how much more shall not the blood of Christ be efficacious in the interior sphere of conscience? ’By the Holy Ghost (Gk, ’eternal spirit’, probably meaning the Holy Ghost; otherwise ’his own eternal Godhead’) he offered himself unspotted unto God’. He was Priest and Victim—a Victim utterly without blemish (cf. 1 Peter 1:19). ’Cleansing’ (cf. 1:3; Ephesians 5:20; Titus 2:14) is wrought within the conscience so that the beneficiary receives new life to serve the living God. The impressive phrase ’Living God’ occurs our times in our Epistle, and five times in the other Paulines. It reminds us that the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of the Hebrew Fathers and of the Apostles was no idol and no mere philosophical abstraction.

15-22 Covenant Significance— The Redeemer is a Mediator, and what he mediates is the new covenant of friendship between God and mankind.

15. With language partly similar to that of the great redemption passage of Romans 3:21-26 the Apostle insists that the New Covenant is enacted by a death that redeemed the transgressions which were without atonement under the former Covenant, so that those who have been called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance made to the Patriarchs. Christ, the Mediator, dying to establish a Covenant, is evidently a testator and the Covenant is a Testament receiving its validity through death. There seems to be no doubt that in 16 and 17 d?aT??ð is not simply the equivalent of the Hebrew b’rî? meaning pact or alliance, ’but that it has its most usual Greek signification of ’last will or testament’.

16. ’Where there is a testament, the death of the testator must receive public attestation ’ (F??esTa?). 17. For a testament is effective only after death (?pí ?e????+??) —it has no legal force while the testator lives. 18-20. It was in view of this testamentary character of the Messianic Covenant that the inauguration of the Sinaitic Covenant and the dedication of its sanctuary and its holy things were accompanied by the death of victims of sacrifice and the sprinkling of blood. The actions of Moses are described and the words of Exodus 24:8 (alluded to in the consecration of the chalice at the Last Supper) are textually cited. Many ceremonial details mentioned are not found in Exodus, but are gathered from analogous ceremonies elsewhere described in the Pentateuch, Lev_14;4,5;16:15; Numbers 19:9.21. An anointing of the tabernacle and its utensils is all that is mentioned in the sacred page, Exodus 40:9; Leviticus 8:10, but on the analogy of the consecration of Aaron and his sons, aspersion of blood is presumed for all great consecrations.

22. Very few purifications and those minor ones were carried out without blood, and even such a permission as that of a sin-offering of meal for the poor, Leviticus 5:11, did not alter the general principle enunciated here and also current as a rabbinical Mashal: ’Without shedding of blood there is no remission’.

23-28 Finality of Christ’s Sacrifice— Four chief ideas are conveyed in these lines: (a) 23. The purifications of the Old Law were shadows and affected shadowtypes of heavenly things only, and yet animal blood was required; but the heavenly things themselves (t? ?p??????a) must be purified by better sacrifices (plural of category really meaning only one sacrifice applied in many ways). As purifications fall only on the Church militant that must be the primary meaning of ?p??????a (Chrys. Theodoret.). These things of the Church combatant are ’heavenly things’, for they are of heavenly origin, belong to the sphere of eternal life and end in heaven. 14. It really was no hand-made sanctuary that Christ entered but heaven itself, to appear now before God on our behalf. Entering he has opened the road for ever. (b)

25-26a. He does not offer himself again and again to effect a periodical expiation like the annual expiation made by the Israelite high priest. If that were so, he should have suffered many times over, since the beginning of the world. (c) 26b. But now once and once only, in the last age of the world, he has appeared for the abolition of sin through his sacrifice. (d) 27-28. As far as Christ’s work is concerned nothing remains but the consummation. Just as death comes to men once and is not repeated—only judgement next—so also Christ offered himself once to take away the sins of many’ (any number Isaiah 53:12), and at his second coming shall make his appearance in order to gather in those who expect him as Saviour, Philippians 3:20, Philippians 3:21.