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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Hebrews 3:3 - 3:3
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
3. οὗτος, “He,” i.e. Christ. The γὰρ depends on the κατανοήσατε.
ἠξίωται, “hath been deemed worthy,” namely, by God.
πλείονος … δόξης “of a fuller glory” (amplioris gloriae, Vulg.).
παρὰ Μωϋσῆν. Eagerly as the writer is pressing forwards to develop his original and central conception of Christ as our Eternal High Priest, he yet has to pause to prove His superiority over Moses, because the Jews had begun to elevate Moses into a position of almost supernatural grandeur which would have its effect on the imaginations of wavering and almost apostatising converts. Thus the Rabbis said that “the soul of Moses was equivalent to the souls of all Israel” (because by the cabbalistic process called Gematria the numerical value of the letters of “Moses our Rabbi” in Hebrew = 613, which is also the value of the letters of “Lord God of Israel”). They said that “the face of Moses was like the sun”; that he alone “saw through a clear glass,” not as other prophets “through a dim glass” (comp. St Paul’s “through a mirror in a riddle,” 1Co 13:12), and that whereas there are but fifty gates of understanding in the world, “all but one were opened to Moses.” See the Rabbinic references in my Early Days of Christianity, I. 362. St Paul in 2Co 3:7-8 contrasts the evanescing splendour on the face of Moses with the unchanging glory of Christ.
πλείονα τιμὴν ἔχει τοῦ οἴκου, “greater honour than the house.” The οἴκου depends on πλείονα not on τιμήν. The point of this expression is not very obvious. If taken strictly it would imply that Moses was himself “the house” which Christ built. But οἶκος, “house” or “household” (“die Familie und das Dienerschaft”), means more than the mere building (οἰκία). It means the whole theocratic family, the House of Israel in its covenant relation; and though Moses was not this House, he was more than a servant in it, being also its direct representative and human head. (There is a somewhat similar phrase in Philo, De plant. Noe, 16.)
ὁ κατασκευάσας. The word implies rather “equipped” or “established” than “builded” (see Heb 9:2; Heb 9:6, Heb 11:7 and note on Heb 1:2; Wis 13:4).