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to Heb_10:18
Heb_4:14 to Heb_10:18. The author has, in that which precedes, compared Christ with the angels and then with Moses, and proved the superiority of Christ over both. He applies himself now to a third point of the comparison, in that he institutes a comparison between Christ and the Levitical high priests, and developes on every side the exalted character of His high-priesthood above the Levitical high-priesthood, with regard to His person, with regard to the sanctuary in which He fulfils His office, and with regard to the sacrifice presented. The copiousness of this new dogmatic investigation—which is subservient to the same paraenetic aim as the preceding expositions, and therefore opens with an exhortation of the same nature with the former ones, and is presently interrupted by a somewhat lengthy warning-paraenetic interlude—is to be explained by the greater importance it had for the readers, who, in narrow-minded over-estimate of the temple cultus inherited from the fathers, regarded the continued participation in this cultus as necessary for the complete expiation of sin and the acquiring of everlasting salvation, and, because they thought nothing similar was to be found in Christianity, were exposed to an imminent peril of turning away from the latter and relapsing entirely into Judaism. Compare the explanation already given by Chrysostom, Hom. 8. init.: Ἐπειδὴ γὰρ οὐδὲν ἦν (sc. in the New Covenant) σωματικὸν ἦ φανταστικόν , οἶον οὐ ναός , οὐχ ἅγια ἁγίων , οὐχ ἱερεὺς τοσαύτην ἔχων κατασκευήν , οὐ παρατηρήσεις νομικαί , ἀλλʼ ὑψηλότερα καὶ τελειότερα πάντα , καὶ οὐδὲν τῶν σωματικῶν , τὸ δὲ πᾶν ἐν τοῖς πνευματικοῖς ἦν , οὐχ οὕτω δὲ τὰ πνευματικὰ τοὺς ἀσθενεστέρους ἐπήγεταο ὡς τὰ σωματικά , τούτου χάριν τοῦτον ὅλον κινεῖ τὸν λόγον .
The transition to this new section is formed by Heb_4:14-16.
Heb_4:14. The introductory phrase: ἔχοντες οὖν ἀρχιερέα , presupposes that the author has already had occasion to speak of Jesus as ἀρχιερεύς . We are therefore led back for οὖν to Heb_2:17, Heb_3:1. But, since there is further added to ἀρχιερέα the qualification μέγαν and διεληλυθότα τοὺς οὐρανούς , and thus also these characteristics must be presupposed as known from that which precedes, we have consequently not to limit οὖν , in its backward reference, to Heb_2:17, Heb_3:1, but to extend it to the whole disquisition, Heb_1:1 to Heb_3:6, in such wise that (logically, indeed, in a not very exact manner) μέγαν , διεληλυθότα τοὺς οὐρανούς glances back in general to the dignity and exaltedness of the person of Jesus, as described in these sections.
Erroneously does Delitzsch suppose that by means of οὖν the exhortation κρατῶμεν τῆς ὁμολογίας is derived as a deduction from Heb_4:12-13. Such opinion would be warranted only if, with the omission of the participial clause, merely κρατῶμεν οὖν τῆς ὁμολογίας had been written. For since κρατῶμεν τῆς ὁμολογίας has received its own justification in the prefixed ἔχοντες κ . τ . λ ., apart from that which immediately precedes, it is clear that, in connection with Heb_4:14, there is no further respect had to the contents of Heb_4:12-13. It is not therefore to be approved that Delitzsch, in order to make room for the unfortunate reference to Heb_4:12-13, will have οὖν logically attached to the verb κρατῶμεν , instead of the participle, with which it is grammatically connected, and to which, as the most simple and natural, the like passage, Heb_10:19 ff., also points. What laboured confusion of the relations would Delitzsch require the reader to assume, when he is called to regard ἔχοντες κ . τ . λ ., as being at the same time a recapitulation of that which has been said before, and continuation of the argument; and yet, spite of all this, to look upon κρατῶμεν τῆς ὁμολογίας as a deduction from Heb_4:12-13! In any case, the connection asserted by Delitzsch to exist between Heb_4:14 and Heb_4:12-13 : “the word of God demands obedience and appropriation, i.e. faith, not, however, as merely a faith locked up within the breast, but also a loud Yea and Amen, unreserved and fearless confession, ὁμολογία from mouth and heart, as the echo thereof,” is in itself a baseless imagination; because the before-demanded πίστις and the here demanded ὁμολογία are by no means distinguished from each other as a minus and a majus, but, on the contrary, in the mind of the author of the epistle are synonyms. It results that οὖν stands in a somewhat free relation to the foregoing argument, consequently must not at all be taken as, strictly speaking, an illative particle, with which that which precedes is first brought to a close, but as a particle of resuming, which, in the form of a return to that which has already been said before, begins a new section.
μέγαν ] does not in such wise appertain to ἀρχιερέα that only in combination with the same it should form the idea of the high priest (Jac. Cappellus, Braun, Rambach, Wolf, Carpzov, Michaelis, Stuart), but is indicative of the quality of the high priest, and means exalted, just as μέγας , Heb_10:21, in combination with ἱερεύς . Comp. also Heb_13:20.
As the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews represents Christ the Son of God, so also does Philo (De Somn. p. 598 A, with Mangey, I. p. 654) represent the divine Logos as ὁ μέγας ἀρχιερεύς . Comp. ibid. p. 597 (I. p. 653): Δύο γάρ , ὡς ἔσικεν , ἱερὰ θεοῦ , ἓν μὲν ὅδε ὁ κόσμος , ἐν ᾧ καὶ ἀρχιερεὺς ὁ πρωτόγονος αὐτοῦ θεῖος λόγος , ἕτερον δὲ λογικὴ ψυχή , ἧς ἱερὺς ὁ πρὸς ἀλήθειαν ἄνθρωπος .
διεληλυθότα τοὺς οὐρανούς ] elucidatory demonstration of μέγαν . Wrongly is it translated by Luther (as also by the Peshito): who has ascended up to heaven; by Calvin, Peirce, Ernesti, al.: qui coelos ingressus est. It can only signify [Piscator, Owen, Bengel, Tholuck, Stuart, al.]: who has passed through the heavens, sc. in order, exalted above the heavens (cf. Heb_7:26; Eph_4:10), to take His seat upon the throne of the Divine Majesty (i. 3, 13). Allusion to the high priest of the Old Covenant, who, in order to make atonement for the people, passed through the courts of the Temple, and through the Temple itself, into the Most Holy Place. Comp. Heb_9:11.
Ἰησοῦν τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ ] emphatic apposition to ἀρχιερέα μέγαν κ . τ . λ ., in which the characterization of Jesus as the υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ (Heb_1:1; Heb_1:5, Heb_6:6, Heb_7:3, Heb_10:29) serves anew to call attention to the dignity of the New Testament High Priest. Quite mistaken are Wolf and Böhme in their conjecture that the object in the addition of τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ is the distinction of Jesus from the Joshua mentioned Heb_4:8. For the mention of Joshua, Heb_4:8, was, as regards the connection, only an incidental one, on which account there also not even a more precise definition was given to the name.
κρατῶμεν τῆς ὁμολογίας ] let us hold fast (Heb_6:18; Col_2:19; 2Th_2:15; wrongly Tittmann: lay hold of, embrace) the confession. ὁμολογία is not, with Storr, to be referred specially to the confession of Christ as the High Priest, but to be taken in general of the Christian confession. The expression is here too used objectively, as Heb_3:1, of the sum or subject-matter of the Christian’s belief.