Timothy to Hebrews - The Preterist Archive

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Hebrews IX. 23. 517
might lead the commentators astray is, that the author there lays
down the principle not in the limited (form " where any one will
enter into a covenant with God"), but generally (" where a covenant
is"), seeing that an atoning death is necessary, not to every covenant,
hut only when a sinner will enter into a covenant with God.
But this limitation, according to which it is only religio-theocratical
covenants that are here spoken of, is evident enough from the context
ver. 15/--'
Ver. 23 now forms the conclusion.
That the old covenant could
not be ratified without shedding of blood, without substitutionary
sacrifices, was shewn in vers. 18-22, That the same law is applicable
also to the new covenant^ is shewn in ver. 23. " It was necessary,
therefore, that the symbols of the heavenly things should be
purged by this (by the goats and calves mentioned in ver. 19), but
the heavenly things themselves by better sacrifices than these."
Those sacrifices by which the old covenant was ratified, belonged to
the category described in ver. 13, of those acts by which the conscience
was not expiated and purified. The fulfilment, the new
covenant, as the heavenly archetype whose symbol was the Mosaic
tabernacle (for, here also, as at chap. viii. 5, there is no heavenly
(7/C7/V7/
placed in opposition to the Mosaic oktjvij)^ required for its form-
* Ebrard's objections to the transition in meaning from "covenant" to "testament"
are not without weight, but can scarcely countervail the opposing considerations :
1. His objection to the rendering " testament," that it is not absolutely true that a
testament is never valid during the life of the testator, has almost the air of an evasion.
It is essential to the idea of a testament that it goes into effect upon the death of the
testator ; while he lives it is a mere nulUty.
2. As the same Greek word {di.ad/}K7], disposition, arrangement), denotes both " covenant"
and "testament," it was not at all unnatural that the one meaning should slide
over into the other. The transition was probably occasioned by the incidental use of the
term "inheritance" (liTirjpovojua), ver. Id.
3. This transition was all tlie easier, as the blessings of the Old Testament dispensation
fluctuate between the idea of covenant blessings and an inheritance. Looked upon
formally, the Old Testament economy was a covenant, a contract between two parties.
God condescending to enter into this relation to men. But as it was a contract only in
name, while the blessings were in reality all on one side, estpwed by God, the infinite
possessor, upon men, by the Father upon the children of his adoption, these blessings are
under a profounder view, an inheritance, and the terms "heirs, inheritance," prevail
throughout the Old Testament, and are transferred to the New.
4. The argument Ls not invalidated by this change, as death may be predicated as a
like necessity in the case both of the covenant and the testament.
In the old covenant
there was needed the death of animals that mediated the covenant, that stood as substitutes
for man, and types of the great atoning sacrifice of the new covenant.
In the case
of a testament the argument comes nearly to the same result, God, tlie original diaOi/uE'
%>oc, disposer, testator, has put all things into the hands of Christ (Luke xxu. 29), who
yet cannot bestow them without previously undergoing death. Of course the pecuhar
ground of the necessity of Christ's death, as distinguished from that of the death of ordinary
testators, need not here be dwelt upon. The argument is stated in general terms,
but derives its proper force and colouring from the peculiar character and relations of
the parties to whom it refers.— [K.