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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Hebrews 7:24 - 7:24
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Heb_7:24. The other, on the other hand, because (not “by the fact that,” de Wette, Bisping) He abides unto eternity, has His priesthood as an unchangeable one.
μένειν εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα ] must not be explained, with Estius, Seb. Schmidt, and others, of abiding for ever as priest. For in this way the declaration of Heb_7:24 becomes tautological. The expression denotes the everlasting duration of life (comp. Joh_12:34; Joh_21:22-23; 1Co_15:6; Php_1:25), is thus equivalent to the πάντοτε ζῆν , Heb_7:25.
ἀπαράβατος ] a word belonging to later Greek (comp. Lobeck, ad Phryn. p. 313), save here, foreign to the N. T., as also to the LXX. Erasmus, Schlichting, Bengel, Schulz, Böhme, Stengel, Stuart, Ebrard, Hofmann, Conybeare, and the majority, take it in the active signification: not passing over to another, thus remaining with the same person, or unchanging. So, as it would seem, already Theodoret ( οὗτος δὲ ἀθάνατος ὢν εἰς ἕτερον οὐ παραπέμπει τῆς ἱερωσύνης τὸ γέρας ), Oecumenius ( ἀδιάδοχον , ἀτελεύτητον ), Theophylact ( ἀδιάκοπον , ἀδιάδοχον ). More correctly, however, because more consistently with the demonstrable usage of the language (see instances in Wetstein and Bleek), does Bleek, after the precedent of Elsner, insist upon the passive signification: “that which may not be overstepped, transgressed; therefore: inviolable, unalterable, immutable,” which then, it is true, includes likewise the notion of “unchanging.”