Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

380 Hebrews III. 13.
is evil ; the words tv tw drToarjjvai express the manner in which
this nnbelief manifests itself. In departing, namely from the way
of conversion to Christ once entered upon.
In vor. 13 a positive admonition is added by way of v.arning, the
admonition, namely, that they should daily exercise the napdKXijntc^
admonition. This word denotes both the practical application of
the law in admonitory discipline, and that of the gospel in quickening,
refreshing comfort. The author, especially at this part of his
exhortation, avails himself of the word a/jntpov in the passage from
the Psalms (the sense of which is given above on ver. 7). He
directs attention to the importance of the dail(/, ceaseless, practical
application of the Christian doctrine to the heart and mind. And
what avails all speaking and studying, where this powerful, living
purification of the heart through the law and gospel of God is
neglected ?
"Iva jifj oK/-7]pvv0l], etc. The idea expressed by aK?,Tjpvveiv, harden,
is to be explained from the figiu-e involved in the word. The figure
is derived from a circumstance in physical nature, namely, from the
gradual stifiening of bodies originally soft. Still more beautiful and
striking is the figure involved in the coiTCsponding German expression
verstoclcen; it is taken from a circumstance connected with
organic life, namely, from the growth of trees, in which the pliant
branch becomes by degrees an unbending bough or stem, a stock.
The stiffened body no longer takes on any imjircssion, the bough
now grown into wood can no longer be drawn and bent at pleasure.
Just as the living plant grows until it reaches some fixed limit of
development, so docs the soul of man, by its ceaseless development
of life, form itself into that fixed state to which it is destined. In
itself, and in general, there is nothing bad in this progressive development
of the soul ; in the season of youth and education a certain
germ will and must shoot forth in the soul, the personal character
and destined life-vocation of the individual will and must form
themselves ; in his twentieth year the man should already he something,
should be not merely a single individual, but one who has
become of such or such a nature or disposition. Nay, the last and
highest step which the Christian takes from the stage of formal
freedom to that freedom of the children of God, in which holiness
has become altogether another nature to him, can be explained from
that general fundamental law of the progressive growth of the soul.
But this growth and development can take place also in reference to
what U evil, and it is this to which the word harden—as a vox mala,
non ambigua— is specially applied in the Holy Scripture. Such a
process, by which the soul becomes firm and unbending, can take
place, first, in the sphere of the ;/v7/, as a wilful obdurateness against
particular commandments of God, as in Pharaoh (Ex. iii.
seq.), then,