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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Hebrews 8:4 - 8:4
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
4. εἰ μὲν οὖν ἦν. “Now if He were still on earth.”
ἐπὶ γῆς. His sanctuary must be a heavenly one, for in the earthly one He had no standpoint.
οὐδʼ ἂν ἦν ἱερεύς. He would not even be so much as a Priest at all; still less a High Priest; for He was of the Tribe of Judah (Heb 7:14), and the Law had distinctly ordained that “no stranger, which is not of the seed of Aaron, come near to offer incense before the Lord” (Num 16:40).
ὄντων τῶν προσφερόντων κ.τ.λ. “Since there are (already) those who offer their gifts according to the Law.” The writer could not possibly have used these present tenses if the Epistle had been written after the Fall of Jerusalem. Jewish institutions are, indeed, spoken of in the present tense, after the fall of Jerusalem, by Barnabas and Clement of Rome; but they are merely using an every-day figure of speech. In the case of the Epistle to the Hebrews the argument would have gained such indefinite force and weight in passages like this by appealing to a fact so startling as the annulment of the Mosaic system by God Himself, working by the unmistakable demonstrations of history, that no writer similarly circumstanced could possibly have passed over such a point in silence.