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Heb_13:10. Justification of οὐ βρώμασιν , Heb_13:9, by the emphasizing of the incompatibility of the Christian altar with that of Judaism. We possess an altar, of which they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle, i.e. he who seeks in the Jewish sacrificial meals, and consequently in the Jewish sacrificial worship, a stay and support for his heart, thereby shuts himself out from Christianity, for he makes himself a servant of the tabernacle; but he who serves the tabernacle has no claim or title to the altar of Christians. That the subject in ἔχομεν is the Christian, is acknowledged on all sides. But equally little ought it ever to have been disputed that by οἱ τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντες persons must be denoted who are contrasted with the Christians. For, in accordance with the expression chosen, the author can only mean to say that the Christians possess the right to eat of the altar; those τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντες , on the other hand, forego this right. Quite in a wrong sense, therefore, have Schlichting, Schulz, Heinrichs, Wieseler (Schriften der Univ. Kiel aus d. J. 1861, p. 42), Kurtz, and others, referred οἱ τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντες likewise to the Christians,[125] in that they found expressed the thought: for Christians there exists no other sacrifice than one of which it is not permitted them to eat. They then suppose to be intended by οἱ τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντες either, as Schlichting, “omnes in universum Christiani,” or, as Schulz, particular officers of the society, who conducted the Christian worship. But in the first case—apart from the fact that then, what would alone be natural, ἐξ οὗ φαγεῖν οὐκ ἔχομεν ἐξουσίαν would have been written instead of ἐξ οὗ φαγεῖν οὐκ ἔχουσιν ἐξουσίαν οἱ τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντες —the Christians would, as Bleek has already justly observed, have been designated by a characteristic which could not possibly be predicated of them; in the second, an anachronistic separation into clerics and laity would be imputed to the author, and the sense arising would be unsuitable, since the proposition, that the warrant for eating of the Christian sacrifice is wanting, could not possibly hold good of the clergy alone, but must have its application to Christians in general. By ἡ σκηνή can thus be understood nothing other than the earthly, Jewish sanctuary, as opposed to the ἀληθινή and τελειοτέρα σκηνή of Christians, Heb_8:2, Heb_9:11. The τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντες , however, are not specially, as Bleek, de Wette, Delitzsch, Riehm (Lehrbegr. des Hebräerbr. p. 161), Alford, and others suppose, the Jewish priests (Heb_8:5), but the members of the Jewish covenant people universally (Heb_9:9, Heb_10:2).
The θυσιαστήριον further is the altar, upon which the sacrifice of the New Covenant, namely, the body of Christ (comp. Heb_13:12), has been presented. Not “ipse Christus” (Piscator, Owen, Wolf; comp. Calvin), or the θυσία itself which has been presented (Limborch, Whitby, M‘Lean, Heinrichs, and others), nor yet the cultus (Grotius), can be denoted thereby. But likewise the explaining of the table of the Supper, the τράπεζα κυρίου , 1Co_10:21, with Corn. a Lapide, Chr. Fr. Schmid, Böhme, Bähr (Stud. u. Krit. 1849, H. 4, p. 938), Ebrard, Bisping, Maier, and others (comp. also Rückert, das Abendmahl. Sein Wesen und seine Geschichte in der alten Kirche, Leipz. 1856, pp. 242–246), is inadmissible. For then there would underlie our passage the conception that the body of the Lord is offered in the Supper, Christ’s sacrifice is thus one constantly repeated; but such conception is unbiblical, and in particular is remote from the thought of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which the presentation of the sacrifice of Christ once for all, and the all-sufficiency of this sacrifice by its one presentation, is frequently urged with emphasis; comp. Heb_7:27, Heb_9:12; Heb_9:25 ff., Heb_10:10. Exclusively correct is it, accordingly, to understand by the altar, with Thomas Aquinas, Estius, Jac. Cappellus, Bengel, Bleek, de Wette, Stengel, Delitzsch, Riehm, l.c., Alford, Kluge, Moll, Kurtz, Woerner, and others, the spot on which the Saviour offered Himself, i.e. the cross of Christ. But to eat of this altar, i.e. to partake of the sacrifice presented thereon, signifies: to attain to the enjoyment of the spiritual blessings resulting from Christ’s sacrificial death for believers; the same thing as is represented, Joh_6:51 ff., as the eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of Christ.
[125] So also Hofmann (Schriftbew. II. 1, 2 Aufl. p. 457 ff.), who will have only the twofold fact to be accentuated at ver. 10 : “that we are priests,” and “that we possess a means of expiation,” and brings out as the sense of the verse: “that we, whose only propitiatory sacrifice, and one for all alike, is Christ, have no other profit from our means of expiation, than that we are reconciled.” (!)
On Heb_13:11-13, comp. Bähr in the Stud. u. Krit. 1849, H. 4, p. 936 ff.