Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

474 Hebrews VIII. 2-4.
most recently been laid to his charge by the young Hegelians), that
a throne stands in the heaven, with a i)]ace on the right liand and
on the left ! Such a conception would indeed be in direct contradiction
to the ground-idea of the author, who makes the Divine
element of the New Testament high jn-iesthood to consist in this,
that Christ has done away with the limitations of place and time.
Carefully, however, as we are here to guard against a coarse materiahstic
exegesis, we must equally beware of a false spiritualistic
exegesis in the explanation of the ovpavoi, as if the heaven were
the mere absence of space, and the state of being above or beyond
space regarded as an attribute of God. That this is never denoted
by d-'ttw we have already seen at chap. i. 3. The heaven is that
sphere of the creation in which the will of God is perfectly done
(Matth. vi. 10), and where no sin hinders him from the full and
adequate revelation of himself.
Into thai sphere cf the tvorld of space
has Christ ascended, as the first-fruits of glorified humanity, in
order to bring us thither after him (chap. ii. 10).
Ver. 2.—The principal idea of ver. 1 is now repeated with more
distinctness, in the form of an apposition
to the subject of hdOinev,
and, therewith, the proper theme of the fourth part formally laid
down. Christ has sat down on the right hand of the Majesty, as
one who (in this) completes the service in the true sanctuary
and the true tabernacle. Twv djMv is-, of course, not to be taken
(with (Ecumenius, Schulz, Paulus, etc.), as gen. plur. masculine
(Christ a servant of the saints), but as gen. plur. neut., and tu
dyia does not signify (as Luther and others render it), " the holy
possessions," but (as at chap. ix. 8, 12, and 24, seq.; chap. x. 19 ;
chap. xiii. 11) "the holy place," or specially the '-holy of holies,"
(Theophylact, Erasmus, Calvin, Bleek, Tholuck, and the most). As
the author wished to place the adjective dXijOirog after the noun, for
the sake of the emphasis, he could only make it to agree in case and
number with a/c?/!'/}^- ; in respect to the sense, rwi- dhjOiviHi' is to be
supplied also at twv dyio)v (Bleek, etc.). A similar use of the adjective
is made also in German, with the exception that it is placed before
the noun. " Ein Diener dcs wahrhaften Heiligthums und der (scil.
wahrhaften) Hiitte."
The true sanctuary, the place where God is really and truly
united with men, is " not made with men's hands." That tent,
covered with curtains and skins, cannot, of course, be the place
where heaven and earth are united.
In vers. 3-4 the author now adduces the fird argument to i)rove
that the sanctuary into which Christ entered is the true sanctuary,
and different from the tabernacle of Moses. The steps in the reasoning
logically arranged arc the following :— A, Only the Aaronitic
priests were qualified and permitted to ofier sacrifice in the Mosaic