Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

428 Hebrews V. 13, 14.
The author repeats the same idea by means of a figure in the
words : and are become such as have need of milk and not of strong
meat.
Vers. 13, 14, contain an explanation from which it ah-eady begins
to appear what doctrines the writer understood by the milk. ITac
yap 6 iier^x^'^' yd?MK~og, whosoever still partakes of milk, still particeps
lactis est, still receives and needs milk for his nourishment.
Of every such one it is said that he is uninformed, and has no share
in the Xoyog 6iK(uoavvi]g.
Calvin, Grotius, Morns, Schulz, Olshausen,
Kuinoel, De Wette, etc., take the genitive 6iKaLoavvT]g as the (jenitive
of quality, and diKaioavvr] — teXeioti^c, so that Xoyog diKaioavvrjg would
be equivalent to "the perfect doctrine," the completed, higher
knowledge (or according to Zachariii, Dindorf, and others, " the
proper, true instruction"). But apart from the intolerable tautological
circle which would thus be introduced into the train of
thought between ver. 13 and ver. 12, apart, further, from the insipid
triviality of the 13th verse, as thus explained, the author would
assuredly have used and applied other and less ftir-fetched expressions
for the " perfect doctrine" than the strange expression Adyo?
diKaioavvqg.^ The majority of commentators have therefore rightly
understood 6iKaioavvr]g as the genitive of the object, " the word of
righteousness," in which, however, diKmoovvi] is not (with Thcophylact,
Chrysostom, (Ecumenius, a Lapide, Primasius, Bretschneider,
etc.) to be explained of the perfect morality, and consequently Adyof
6iKaioavvT]g of the moral law, but, as in the whole New Testament,
of the righteousness before God in Christ ; and Xoyog SiKaioavvrjg is
the doctrine of justification (Beza, J. Capelhis, Rambach, Bengel,
Storr, Klee, Tholuck, Bleek, etc.), which, as is well known, is also
not strange to the Epistle to the Hebrews (comp. chap. xi. 7, xiii. 9).
This explanation, however, is accom[)anied with a difficulty in
respect to the logical connexion with ver. 12. We .should rather
expect as an explanation of ver. 12 the words in an inverted form :
Uug yap u u~£ifjog Xuyov diKaioavvrjg ydXaKroq fiETExet. This would
ex[)lain in how far the persons addressed are as yet babes. The
train of tliought would be this :
" You still need milk ;
strong meat
does not agree with you. For whosoever (like you) has not yet
api)rchended even the fundamental doctrine of righteousness in
Christ (whosoever still makes his salvation to rest on the services
and sacrifices of the temple), needs as yet milk, being yet a babe,
and standing still at the first elements of Christian knowledge."
* The Ilobrcw p-U—'hST (Ovaiai i^Katocvvric) Dout. xxxiii. 19, etc., would not ©von
form an analogy. F