Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

480 Hebrews VIII. 8-12.
nant as being not of divine origin, or, altliough constituted by God,
as being insufHcient even fur its relative object, and unwisely framed;
he only means that it lies open to the charge of being faulty, when
human folly, contrary to the divine i)urpose, gives it out as being
everlastinglij sufficient, while yet God himself, inasmuch as he has
promised to give a neio, another covenant, has thereby declared the
old one to be imperfect. It is, therefore, not the author, nor generally
speaking a man who presumed to find fault with the old covenant,
but God himself has found fault with it, (Comp. the repeated
At-ya Kvpiog, ver. 8 and 9. It was not the word of Jeremiah, but the
word of the Lord to Jeremiah.)
Yer. 8-12.—The author in these verses cites the passage in
which God has promised a new and a different covenant, and thereby
has found fault with the old covenant (not as one that was not
divine, or not wise, but as insufficient and destined to cease). The
passage is in Jer. xxxi. 31-34. The author quotes literally from
the Sept. and the rendering of the Sept. is right.—In the whole of
the Old Testament no passage is to be found in which the view is
expressed more clearly and distinctly, that the law was only a
TTaidaycjyog, than in this. And, if some commentators have thought
that in this passage no fault is found with the old covenant itself,
but only with the Israelites, they merely show by this, that they
have not understood the simple sense of the passage. It is true,
that fault is found with the Israelites who "abode not in the
covenant (of Moses);" but when the Lord is induced by this consideration
to determine, that he will frame a different covenant, in
which he will write the law not upon tables of stone but on the
hearts of his people, he surely acknowledges thereby cxjjressly and
clearly, that a part of the fault belonged also to the old covenant.
(In like manner Olshausen. Comp. also our explanation of the
passage chap. iv. 2, in which we encounter a similar misunderstanding
on the i)art of the critics.)
The train of thought in the passage, Jer. xxxi. 31-34 is as
follows. A Jirst principal idea lies in the words Moi) . . . -)7/c
AlyvTTTov. The Lord announces to his people, that he will, at a
future time, make a new covenant with them, ver. 8. He calls this
covenant new, however, not in the sense of its being only a confirmatory
renewal of the old covenant, but in precise and express opposition
to the covenant which was made on their removal from Egypt ;
it is to be a new covenant not merely numerically, but qualitatively
(ver. 9, ov Kara . . . tK yrjc AiyvnTov). Then follows a second principal
idea ('"rt avrol uvk . . . toovrai noi etc ?m6i'). Wc are now
told what it was that was imperfect in the old covenant, and why
there was need of ii new covenant, and wherein this should be different
from the old. The i)rincipal imperfection of the uld covenant