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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Hebrews 9:16 - 9:16
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16. ὅπου γὰρ διαθήκη. In these two verses (16, 17), and these only, διαθήκη is used in its Greek and Roman sense of “a will,” and not in its Hebrew sense of “a covenant.” The sudden and momentary change in the significance of the word explains itself, for he has just spoken of an inheritance, and of the necessity for a death. It was therefore quite natural that he should be reminded of the fact that just as the Old Covenant (διαθήκη) required the constant infliction of death upon the sacrificed victims, and therefore (by analogy) necessitated the death of Christ under the New, so the word διαθήκη in its other sense of “Will” or “Testament” (which was by this epoch familiar also to the Jews) involved the necessity of death, because a will assigns the inheritance of a man who is dead. This may be called “a mere play on words”; but such a play on words is perfectly admissible in itself; just as we might speak of the “New Testament” (meaning the Book) as “a testament” (meaning “a will”) sealed by a Redeemer’s blood. An illustration of this kind was peculiarly consonant with the deep mystic significance attached by the Alexandrian thinkers to the sounds and the significance of words. Philo also avails himself of both meanings of διαθήκη (De Nom. Mutat. § 6; De Sacr. Abel, Opp. I. 586, 172). The passing illustration which thus occurs to the writer does not indeed explain or attempt to explain the eternal necessity why Christ must die; he leaves that in all its awful mystery, and merely gives prominence to the fact that the death was necessary, by saying that since under the Old Covenant death was required, so the New Covenant was inaugurated by a better death; and since a “Will” supposes that some one has died, so this “Will,” by which we inherit, involves the necessity that Christ must die. The Old Covenant could not be called “a Will” in any ordinary sense; but the New Covenant was, by no remote analogy, the Will and Bequest of Christ.
φέρεσθαι. Wherever there is a will the supposition that the maker of the will has died is implied, or legally involved (φέρεσθαι, constare).