Jonathan Edwards Collection: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology: Chapt 12 Sample of Edwards Exposition

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | Download

Jonathan Edwards Collection: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology: Chapt 12 Sample of Edwards Exposition



TOPIC: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: Chapt 12 Sample of Edwards Exposition

Other Subjects in this Topic:

Chapter XII

A “Commentary” on Hebrews

A Sample of Edwards’ Biblical Exposition



Jonathan Edwards never wrote one commentary on one book of the Bible *1* though a scholar can with effort compose an almost complete commentary on the whole Bible using Edwards’ Bible Notes, the Blank Bible, Images and Shadows, the Miscellanies (most of which deal with biblical texts or passages), Edwards’ sermon notebooks, citations from his various works many of which, like The History of Redemption, were interpretations of particular texts and especially from his sermons every one of which is expository, beginning with a study of the context, one or more of which sermons deal with every book in the Bible. There are more sermons on Isaiah than on any other O.T. book; no less than 88 on a book of 66 chapters. Matthew, which has 28 chapters, provides texts for 136 sermons. The sixteen chapters of Romans afford 42 sermon texts. It is to be remembered that much of the material cited in this chapter was never edited by Edwards and has been left almost totally in that rough form.

So it goes with this man who as a teenager:



28. Resolved, To study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive, myself to grow in the knowledge of the same. *2*



To give the reader some awareness of Edwards’ depth and width of biblical comment I have chosen, somewhat at random, the New Testament book of *Heb_3:1-19* While the following sample makes no claim to exhaustiveness, it comes reasonably close and gives some feel for the scholarly seriousness with which Edwards treated the whole Bible in accord with his conviction of its divine inspiration.

Edwards seems to have had no doubt that this letter was written by the Apostle Paul. He sees it as following the general Pauline pattern of writing and everywhere assumes it was Pauline.

It was written to Jewish Christians in Palestine:



The epistle to the Hebrews was written to all the Jewish Christians in the land of Canaan, in distinction from the Jews that live in other countries. . . . *4*



It had a crucial significance in the “History of Redemption”:



And after this God was pleased to give ’em one more very remarkable warning by the Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews, which was an epistle written to that nation of the Jews, as is supposed, about four years before their destruction: wherein the plainest and clearest arguments are set before them from their own law, and from their prophets that they professed such a regard for, to prove that Christ Jesus must be the Son of God, and that all their law pointed to him and typified him, and that their Jewish dispensation must needs have now ceased. For though the epistle was more immediately directed to the Christian Hebrews, yet the matter of the epistle plainly shows that the Apostle intended by it the use and conviction of the unbelieving Jews. And in this epistle he particularly writes of the approaching destruction, as chapter ten, verse twenty-five, “So much the more, as ye see the day approaching,” and in the twenty-seventh verse he speaks of an approaching “judgment and fiery indignation, which should devour the adversaries.” *5*



See Commentary on Hebrews