Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

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404 Hebrews IV. 12. m
The second member dpuciv re Kal iiveXiov serves most fully to
establish the interpretation we have given. With as little reason
can it be said that the dpiiot have grown upon the iive?.ot, as the soul
upon the spirit. UveXog is the marrow, fiveXoi are the pieces of
marrow in the cavities of the bones. 'Ap/^^f, literally joint, can be
taken either in the signification of limb or of joint. The marrow
grows neither together with the limbs nor the joints, but forms the
inmost kernel of the limbs, and if we adopt the signification limb,
we have, here again, two things named which are concentrically
related to each other. It is not meant, therefore, that the marrow
and the limb are severed from each other, but something is spoken
of which cuts not merely into the members, but through the bones
into the innermost marrow. Or, if we prefer the signification joint
something is spoken of, w^hich not merely pierces as a common sword
into the place of the cartilaginous joint, and in this way separates,
for example, the under from the upper part of the arm at the elbow,
but which penetrates also through and through to the marrow
tubes.
But what is this something winch has this penetrating power ?
The se2mration of soul and S2)irit must, as we have seen, be taken
in the proper sense and referred to the woi'd of God, not, in a
figurative sense, to the sword. Can, then, this separation of joints
and marroio, which is grammatically included with the foregoing in
a single nepiafioc^ be referred to anything else than to the laord of
God ? And yet can it with any proiniety be said of the word of God
that it cuts into the joints, nay even into the marrow? This brings
us back to the first question which, as it will be remembered, was
left undetermined.—I do not think we are warranted in charging
the author with an inelegant recurrence from the thing to the figure;
but the words in question seem capable of the easiest explanation,
by supposing a rhetorical intermixture of two ideas which are logically
to be separated, such as we have already observed in chap,
ii. 18, iii. 3. With logical precision, the idea would be expressed
thus : "The word of God is still sharper than a sword ;
for a sword
cuts generally only into the soft flesh (soft, oftering less resistance),
but the word of God cuts not only into the (])assive) soul, but even
intfj the (free and conscious) spirit ; it therefore resembles a sword
which penetrates not merely into the members, but (through the
bones) into the marrow." This chain of ideas the author ])uts into a
more concise form thus "
: The word of God is sharper than every twoedged
sword, inasmuch as it penetrates to the dividing asunder as
well of spirit as of soul" (thus resembHng a sword which pierces even
to the separation), " as well of the marrow as of the joints."
KpiriKot; trOi'iu'ioeojv Koi twoidv Kapdia^—in these words lies the
explanation of what was meant by the cutting asunder of soul and