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For when for the time ye ought to be teachers: the conviction of this fault in their understanding and will, is by the Spirit demonstrated; for their dulness proceeded from their neglect of God’s means of knowledge, and so was inexcusable; they had time and means enough of improving in the knowledge of this gospel doctrine of Christ’s priesthood, and to have gained in them the abilities of teachers of their families, fellow Christians, and neighbours, both from the law of Moses, and the other Scriptures, and by the teaching of Christ and his apostles.
Ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles; yet such was their negligence and idleness, that their knowledge was diminished and lost, and they fallen off to the old Mosaical economy of priesthood, ceremonies and services, so as they had need again to be taught and instructed by others which are the stoiceia of God’s oracles in the Scriptures, such things as are the first in order, and first to be taught and learnt, the very fundamental principles of Christianity, without the knowledge of which none can be saved, and on which all others do depend. They are so styled by a metaphor, signifying such a state of this in the Scripture, as the elements have in natural bodies which they compound; or, like elements of speech, which must be first attained before there can be either an understanding, speaking, or writing of a language; they are the foundation upon which a system of the Christian religion is raised; see Heb_6:1: which principles lie dispersed in the New Testatment, and are summed up in those ancient creeds which are agreeable to our Saviour’s words.
Of the oracles of God: logiwn tou yeou, such oracles or revelations of God’s mind about the way of our salvation, which he hath made to us by his Son our High Priest, and which he brought from heaven with him, and taught himself, as Heb_1:1,2; and hath by the inspiration of his Spirit of persons chosen on purpose by him, penned them eminently in the Scriptures of the New Testament, not excluding those of the Old Testament, which are unveiled, opened, and made glorious in them, Rom_3:2.
And are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat: these Hebrews had so greatly forgotten these first principles, that they were become mere babes and infants in knowledge, they needed the first and weakest spiritual food, metaphorically styled milk; the most plain and easy truths of the gospel, such as they may understand, and give light to others; not the beggarly elements of Judaism, as they are styled, Gal_4:3,9, and Col_2:8,20, which would keep them ignorant babes in the word of righteousness, and unfit them for the understanding and digesting the stronger food of the higher and more excellent doctrines of the gospel concerning Christ’s priesthood. Such a babe was Nicodemus, though a master in Israel, Joh_3:10,12.