Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

Hebrews IX. 15-23. 611
enant have sufficed,—as little is it " the spirit" alone, if by the
spirit be understood an abstraction, a mistj^ ideal of virtue, or freedom,
or of man-deification (in which case, it is too often the mere
adp^ that falsely boasts of possessing " the spirit of Christ")—but it
is that eternal spirit of absolute eternal holiness and eternal love
which has efficaciously manifested itself in time, inasmuch as it endured
the real bloody death for the sinful world.
Thus much our author says, in general, on the opposition
between the sacrifice of Christ and the Old Testament animal sacrifices.
From ver. 15 onwards, he developes particular sides of this
comparison.
In Ver. 15-23 he shews how, by the atoning death of Christ, a
new SiadrjKT] also has been ratified. Thus this section points back,
at the same time, to chap. viii.
For, there, it was said, in general,
that God has promised to make a new covenant, and that by this
new covenant the old must be annulled. This, too, had already
been said in chap, viii., that the priestly service (XetTovpyia) of
Christ bears the same relation to the Levitical priestly service as
the new covenant bears to the old. The author, then, in chap. ix.
entered more at large into the consideration of the old covenant,
and had shewn how the structure (vers. 1-10) as well as the service
(vers. 11-14) of the tabernacle pointed to something future and
more perfect ; in vers. 11-14 he has shewn how, in the death of
Christ, the more perfect XeiTovpyia consists ; now in vers. 15-23 he
shews, that by this very death of Christ, also the {promised)
more perfect covenant has been ratified.
Am Tovro, in ver. 15, does not point backwards to ver. 14, but
forwards to the clause beginning with ottw^ (although this final
clause itself certainly involves substantially a repetition of the former
idea. This final clause is, however, differently construed.) First,
it must be asked, whether the words dg dnoXv-pcjoiv belong to davdrov
yevojievov or to Xdpcootv. The former is the more natural according
to the position of the words, and has also been acknowledged as the
right construction by almost all critics. But, secondly, there is the
question, whether the genitive rr^g alcdviov Klripovojxiaq is dependent
on t-nayyeXiav or on kekXtjuevol. In the latter construction (Tholuck
and others) not only must a strong hyperbaton be presupposed, but
also the idea which it yields ("that those who are called may receive
the promise of the eternal inheritance") is not quite suitable,
seeing that this promise as a promise had already, according to
chap. viii. 8, seq., been given to the members of the old covenant.
It is better, with the majority of commentators, to take that genitive
as dependent on kekXt]ij,evoi. Those who are called to the eternal
inheritance are, accordingly, those members of the old co\'enant who,
according to chap. iv. 1 and 9, had hitherto only attained to a tern-