Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

408 Hebrews IV. 14-16.
It will appear from what has been said that the particle ovv, ver.
14, is to be taken in its usual signification, as marking an inference
to be drawn from the foregoing, and as closely connecting vers.
14-16 with vers. 10-13. Those err furthest from the right understanding
of the passage, who think (as Tholuck and Bleek) that
the author left his proper theme at chap. iii. 1, lost himself, so to
speak, in a digression which had no 2>Toper connexion ivith the subject,
and that he now takes a sudden leap back to the path he had
left, so that ovv here is to be taken in a resumptive signification, and
as referring to the end of chap. ii.
(" Seeing then that we have, as
has before been said, an high priest," etc.). With more reason it
was already perceived by Calvin, that the author has compared
Christ first with the angels, then (according to his plan) with Moses,
and that he now intends to pass to a third point ; only he failed to
perceive that the idea with which the 14th verse begins, really follows
as an inference from vers. 10-13, and thought therefore that
ovv must be taken in the signification atqui "
; now further," which
the word never has, and of which, as has been already said, there is
no need.
Now it is not, of course, to be thought that all the epithets
which are assigned to Christ in vers. 14-16, are enumerated with'
the view of exhibiting the dissimilarity betv/een Christ and the Old
Testament high priests, and the inferiority of the latter ; for a comparison
of this kind between Christ and the Old Testament high
priest first begins at the third principal part, which immediately follows,
and is there (chap. v. 1, seq.) expressly introduced by the general
enumeration of the necessary requisites for the high priesthood
{for every high priest, etc.). Here, on the other hand, we have
simply the inference drawn from vers. 10-13, that to Christ belongs
in general the high priestly calling (togetiier with that of a second
Moses). All the epithets that are here assigned to him have rather
the object, therefore, of shewing the similarity between Christ and
a high priest, or in other words, to vindicate the subsumption of
Jesus under the idea of high priest. Vers. 14-16 do not at all belong
to the third part, but quite as much to the second as chap. ii.
17, 18 to the first part ; and Hugo von St. Cher shewed a much
truer and deeiier insight into the meaning and aim of the passage
than the majority of later critics, when he commenced a new chapter
with the words rrd?- yap dpxi^psvr.
'Apxifpm fu:yav ; dpxiepsvg signifies by itself " high priest ;" /it'yaf
does not tliercfore serve to complete the idea of high priest (as is
the case when it stands along with a mere Upevr, when 6 Upevg 6
ueyag = Vnan inisn is to be rendered by " the high priest," as for
example chap. x. 21), but /it^a^- has here the independent force of an
attribute. It follows however, from what has before been said,