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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Hebrews 5:10 - 5:10
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
10. προσαγορευθείς, “saluted” or “addressed by God as.” This is the only place in the N. T. where the verb occurs.
κατὰ τὴν τάξιν Μελχισεδέκ. We should here have expected the writer to enter at once on the explanation of this term. But he once more pauses for a solemn exhortation and warning. These pauses, and landing-places (as it were), in his argument cannot be regarded as mere digressions. There is nothing that they less resemble than St Paul’s habit of “going off at a word,” nor is the writer in the least degree “hurried aside by the violence of his thoughts.” Commentators who indulge in such criticisms shew an entire lack of the critical sense. There is in this writer a complete absence of all the hurry and impetuosity which characterise the style of St Paul. His movements are not in the least like those of an eager athlete, but (as I have said) resemble the stately walk of some Oriental Sheykh with all his robes folded around him. He is about to enter on an entirely original and far from obvious argument, which he felt would have great weight in checking the tendency to look back to the rites, the splendours and the memories of Judaism. He therefore stops with the calmest deliberation, and the most wonderful skill, to pave the way for his argument by a powerful mixture of reproach and warning—which assisted the object he had in view, and tended to stimulate the spiritual dulness of his readers.