Translated by Qwen.
Heb 9:9 ff.
The Greek article ἡ allows for a double reference; one can refer it first to the immediately preceding prōtēn skēnēn ("the first tabernacle"): "which former tent is a parable for..." But then one can also take it like hoti ("that") and refer it to the entire preceding sentence; the feminine gender would then have arisen through attraction to the predicate parabolē. The Vulgate follows this latter view. The sense is not essentially changed by this. Thus: "which is a parable for the present time, according to which gifts and sacrifices are offered, which are not able to perfect the offerer according to his conscience."
Under ton kairon ton enestēkota ("the present time"), the holy author obviously understands the pre-Messianic time, the time of the Old Covenant. He calls this a "present time" because he here places himself back at the standpoint of the Old Covenant. From the same standpoint, he calls the Messianic time above (2:4) an aiōn mellōn ("a future time"). Instead of kath' hēn (scil. parabolēn), for which the most important witnesses (Codices A, B, D*) speak and which the Vulgate also read, the textus receptus has di' hēn (scil. kairon): "during which time." The sense remains on the whole the same and is this: it was consistent with the character of the pre-Messianic time, the Old Testament economy, which was symbolized by the first tent, that continually gifts and sacrifices were offered, which effected no true inner justification, but only an external one, which therefore did not perfect man kata syneidēsin (i.e., in his inner being).
Heb 9:10. Here a decision must first be made regarding the reading (lectio). The textus receptus has: kai dikaiōmasin sarkos, and according to this reading our Vulgate translates: et iustitiis carnis ("and ordinances of the flesh"). In this reading, dikaiōmasi forms an apposition to the preceding datives, and epikeimena is coordinated to the preceding mē dynamenai and refers to dōra kai thysiai. Such a change of gender is nothing unusual. Accordingly, we must then translate: "which (gifts and sacrifices) are imposed only along with meats and drinks and various washings and ordinances of the flesh until the time of reformation."
However, from the outset it seems inappropriate that dikaiōmatōn, since it contains a generic concept, is coordinated with the preceding datives, which express specific concepts. Also, the most significant Codices and many old versions offer the reading [omitting kai], so that also according to the weight of external authorities this reading deserves preference. Finally, the scribes could very easily be misled by the preceding datives to change dikaiōmata into dikaiōmasin and then connect this with kai, whereas it is always less probable that the regard for epikeimena at the end of the verse could have occasioned changing kai dikaiōmata into dikaiōmasin. For all these reasons, Lachmann and Scholz have rightly adopted this reading into the text. The Vulgate seems here again to have paid too much regard to the textus receptus, since Latin Codices D, E translate: iustitia carnis usque ad tempus restitutionis imposita.
If we now read dikaiōmata, we must supply ousa, connect monon with dikaiōmata, and thus translate: "since they are only ordinances of the flesh along with meats and drinks and various washings, which are imposed until the time of reformation." The sense is then: All these Old Testament sacrifices, along with the various food and purification laws, are only fleshly ordinances, i.e., only statutes that aim at mere external expiation and purification. Under kairos diorthoseos the author understands the Messianic time, where the better and more perfect condition entered, thus the time of the New Covenant, where with the appearance of the Son of God a true inner improvement entered, and the statutes of the Old Covenant, which were only able to effect an external legal purification, ceased of themselves. Cf. Gal. 3:23-24; 4:3-4.
Heb 9:11 ff. In the preceding, the holy author has said that the Old Covenant was not able to truly perfect man, rather all its sacrifices, purification and food laws were only fleshly statutes, which were imposed on man like a heavy yoke (epikeimena) until the time of reformation. This kairos diorthoseos now entered with Christ, to whom the author now attributes, in contrast to the preceding, the greatness of the goods which have become our share in Christ: "Christ appeared as High Priest of the coming goods and entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, i.e., not of this creation, also not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood once for all into the Holy Place, and obtained eternal redemption."
The de (verse 11) refers in sense to all said in verses 1–10, especially to the worthlessness of the Old Testament sacrifices mentioned in verse 9 and verse 10. Instead of the usual reading mellontōn agathōn, Lachmann (with Codices B, D*) has adopted the reading genomenōn, which however gives no suitable sense. As such goods which Christ obtains for us as High Priest, "eternal redemption" is named in verse 12 and "sanctification" in 10:14, i.e., justification unto sanctification. The author calls these goods mellonta ("future"), although they were present for him, because he here always maintains in his representation the Old Testament standpoint, cf. 2:4.
The following: dia tēs meizonos... skēnēs has received various interpretations. Obviously this tent, through which Christ passed as High Priest, forms a contrast to the Jewish first tent, the Holy Place, through which the Levitical high priest had to pass on the Day of Atonement to come into the Holy of Holies. Furthermore, it is clear that "not made with hands" is as much as "which the Lord established and not a man," 8:2, and that ou tautēs tēs ktiseōs forms a contrast to the prōtēn (verse 1). From this it is immediately evident what the author actually understands by this tent through which Christ entered into the heavenly Holy of Holies.
He understands thereby firstly not, as St. Chrysostom, Theodoret, Oecumenius, indeed also Estius think, the body or the flesh of Christ; for the body of Christ was indeed tautēs tēs ktiseōs and cheiropoiētos, and His flesh is below (10:20) not called the tent, but the veil, katapetasma, through which we can enter into the Holy of Holies. He understands thereby furthermore not, as Justinian thinks, the earth; for this our holy author could not possibly have called a skēnē ou tautēs tēs ktiseōs; and then also not the first tent, the Holy Place, but the court was a symbol of the earth.
If we compare 4:14, where the author calls Christ an "exalted High Priest," "who has passed through the heavens (tous ouranous)"; then 7:26, where it says Christ "has become higher than the heavens (tōn ouranōn)"; finally Eph. 4:10, where the Apostle says Christ has exalted Himself above "all heavens," and we now add that the plural ouranoi, shamayim, occurring so often in Holy Scripture is based on the idea of several heavens or heaven-regions: then it is evident that our author understands by the tent not made with hands, through which Christ passed, the lower heaven-regions, which form as it were the fore-heaven. Through all these heaven-regions, which correspond to the first tent of the Jewish sanctuary, Christ has passed through to the actual presence of God, to the true throne of grace, of which the earthly sanctuary was only a copy.
Heb 9:12.
Just as the place of worship into which Christ entered as High Priest is far exalted above the Old Testament place of worship, so also is Christ's sacrifice and its effect much superior to the Old Testament sacrifices. In the Old Covenant, the high priests atoned for the people through the blood of animals, and they had to repeat this atonement every year. But Christ entered into the heavenly Holy of Holies with His own blood, and accomplished the atonement once for all, an eternal redemption, i.e., a redemption that has power and validity forever. Taken objectively, Christ's sacrifice of redemption was sufficient for all times and all men, and it is the matter of the free man, supported by the grace of God, to appropriate it subjectively.
— Regarding ephapax cf. 7:27. Heuramenos is Aorist II instead of heurēmenos. Examples of this Aorist ending are found several times in the N.T. (cf. Biner, Gram. p. 70).
Heb 9:13-14.
"For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ash of a cow, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purity of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself as a spotless sacrifice, cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living God."
To substantiate the previously said, that Christ through His one-time sacrifice has obtained eternal atonement for sinful mankind, the author contrasts the one sacrifice of Christ with the Old Testament sacrifices and means of purification and shows how from the difference of Christ's sacrifice from the Old Testament ones the greater effectiveness of the former results of itself. The comparison happens in the form of a conclusion a minori ad maius: If already the blood and the ash of animals in the Old Covenant had cleansing power, how much more the blood of Christ! The individual points of comparison are here however only more hinted at than executed.
— It says now: "If the blood of goats and bulls, which namely the high priest offered on the great Day of Atonement as a sin-offering, and the ash of a cow sprinkling the unclean sanctifies"... Whoever in the Old Testament had touched a corpse, was unclean for seven days, and was not allowed to enter the sanctuary during this time. The purification ceremony is described in detail in Numbers Chapter 19. It is commanded there to slaughter a flawless cow of red color before the camp as a sin-offering, to sprinkle with its blood seven times toward the sanctuary of Jehovah and then to burn it completely, to gather its ash and keep this at a clean place outside the camp. As often as someone had come into contact with corpses, he should let himself be sprinkled on the third and seventh day with a mixture of this ash and running water. This mixture is called in the LXX hydōr rhantismou "Water of Sprinkling" and our rhantizousa alludes to this expression.
If now these sacrifices and means of purification in the Old Covenant served "for purity of the flesh" i.e. were able to effect external legal atonement and bodily purification, how much more will then the self-sacrifice of Christ atone and sanctify internally. In the Old Testament sacrifices, as we already noted above, the pouring out of the blood was the actual center point of the whole sacrifice, not the slaughtering or burning of the sacrificial animal. Therefore here also the moment of atonement is placed not on the sacrificial death of Christ in general, but specifically on His blood.
But just as in the Old Testament it was not the material blood in and of itself which atoned, but the soul, which dwells in the blood (Lev. 17:11), i.e. the life, insofar as through the giving up of the animal life the surrender of one's own life to God was symbolically represented: so it is also not the material blood of Christ in and of itself, which effected the redemption of man, but the spiritual self-sacrifice of Christ, which came to its completion in the pouring out of His blood, has accomplished our redemption. Therefore it says here of Christ: "who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself to God."
The reading (lectio) fluctuates here between aiōnion and hagion. The Vulgate has read hagion; but according to the external authorities the former reading deserves preference. More important is the question, what the expression pneuma aiōnion or hagion should mean? Most interpreters understand thereby the Holy Spirit as third Person in the Godhead, who dwelt in His fullness in the human nature of Christ (John 3:34), and at whose impulse Christ gave Himself up to death. According to this therefore dia tou... hagiou or aiōniou would be as much as: movente et incitante Spiritu sancto (with the Holy Spirit moving and inciting). So Estius.
But much more beautiful becomes the sense, if we understand by pneuma hagiou or aiōniou the divine nature in Christ. To such an interpretation of the expression justify us the passages Rom. 1:4, 1 Tim. 3:16, where the pneuma according to the whole context can only have this meaning. Also in the so-called second Letter of St. Clement of Rome Chapter 9 pneuma occurs in this sense. (Cf. Just. M. Apol. I. Chapter 33.) The aiōnion corresponds then with aiōnian lytrōsin v. 12 and the sense is: Through His eternal Godhead, whose essence is Spirit (cf. John 4:24) Christ offered the sacrifice of Himself, and thereby effected for mankind an eternally valid atonement. The Godhead in Christ was precisely what gave His sacrifice an infinite worth.
— Heautou stands here again with emphasis: In the Old Testament priests and sacrifice were two different things; here Christ is Priest and Sacrifice simultaneously. In the amōmon lies an allusion to the Old Testament sacrificial cult. In the Old Testament the sacrificial animal had to be without fault, tamim = amōmos; for what was offered to Jehovah, the Holy and Pure, had itself to be flawless and without blemish. But Christ was the essentially flawless i.e. sinless sacrifice.
The kathariei (our Vulgate has emundavit instead of emundabit, which the best manuscripts read) tēn syneidēsin stands in contrast to hagiazai pros tēn tēs sarkos katharotēta v. 13 and apo nekrōn ergōn stands opposite to tō zōnti. Under nekra erga are to be understood the works that are dead in themselves, thus not performed in the state of sanctifying grace, and at the same time those that effect the death of the soul i.e. the sins, thus the so-called opera mortua et mortifera. The sense is therefore: Just as the Jewish sacrifices and purifications atoned externally before the Law and cleansed from the contact of the physically dead, so that the Israelite was allowed to approach the sanctuary again, the symbolic dwelling of Jehovah, so the sacrifice of Christ cleanses internally in the conscience from the contact of the spiritually dead, of sin, and gives true life, so that man can approach the living God, serve Him in spirit and in truth.
The kai alēthinō, which Lachmann has adopted after zōnti, is missing in most manuscripts and also in the Vulgate, and is probably taken over from 1 Thess. 1:9.
Heb 9:15.
"And therefore he is a mediator of a new covenant, so that after death has occurred for the redemption of the transgressions committed under the first covenant, the called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance." [Note: The original German text provided here was heavily corrupted by OCR errors; this translation reconstructs the standard commentary text based on the biblical verse and context.]
The author takes up here what was said in vv. 5–15 again and expands it further. There he discussed that Christ has become the guarantor of a better covenant, such a covenant, which rested on better promises, since God himself accepts a new covenant in the Prophet, whereby he indirectly declared the old covenant to be an old one. Here he now continues: And therefore, because namely the first covenant was powerless and obsolete, and because Christ is such a High Priest, who through His one-time entry into the Holy of Holies has obtained eternal redemption, and cleansed internally from sins, Christ has mediated a new covenant between God and mankind, so that those called to this covenant, after their sins have been erased through the redemptive death of Christ, may become partakers of the promised eternal inheritance.
The touto refers therefore not, as some think, to the following hōs... tēs klēronomias, but it refers firstly to what was said in vv. 11–14; then furthermore also back to what preceded in 8:6–13. As the purpose of Christ's death is here indicated the apolytrōsis i.e. the atonement of the sins committed under the first covenant. For the sin-guilt of mankind had first to be erased, before God could conclude with it a new covenant, the covenant of grace and love. "The promise of the eternal inheritance" is nothing other than: the promised eternal inheritance. This eternal inheritance, which is promised to us in the New Covenant, is the eternal rest in God (cf. 4:9, 10) in contrast to the temporal rest in the land of Canaan, which was promised to Abraham and his descendants.
CONTINUE
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