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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Hebrews 10:7 - 10:7
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
7. Ἰδοὺ ἥκω. “I am come.” This 40th Psalm is one of the special Psalms for Good Friday.
ἐκ κεφαλίδι βιβλίου. The word κεφαλίς, here rendered volume, does not occur elsewhere in the N. T. It means the knob (umbilicus) of the roller on which the vellum was rolled. The word in the Hebrew is מְנִלָּה, “a roll.” See LXX. Eze 2:9; Eze 3:1. It cannot be rendered “in the chief part” or “in the beginning.” The words “it is written of me” may mean in the Hebrew “it has been prescribed to me,” and others take the clause to mean “I am come with the roll of the book which is written for me.” If we ask what was “the book” to which the author of the Psalm referred the answer is not easy; it may have been the Law, or the Book of God’s unwritten counsels, as in Psa 139:16. The writer of the Epistle, transferring and applying David’s words to Christ, thought doubtless of the whole O. T. (comp. Luk 24:26-27, “He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself”).
τοῦ ποιῆσαι ὁ θεὸς τὸ θέλημά σου. The writer has omitted the words “I delight” (LXX. ἠβουλήθην) and has made the gen. of purpose depend on ἥκω. Slavish accuracy in quotation is never aimed at by the sacred writers, because they had no letter-worshipping theory of verbal inspiration. They held that the inspiration lay in the sense and in the thoughts of Scripture, not in its ipsissima verba. Hence they often consider it sufficient to give the general tendency of a passage, and frequently vary from the exact words.