Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Hebrews 9:2 - 9:2

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Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Hebrews 9:2 - 9:2


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2. κατεσκευάσθη. “Was prepared” or “established.” He treats of the Sanctuary in 2–5, and of the Services in 6–10.

ἡ πρώτη. By this is not meant the Tabernacle in contrast with the Temple, but “the outer chamber (or Holy Place).” It is however true that the writer is thinking exclusively of the Tabernacle of the Wilderness, which was the proper representative of the worship of the Old Covenant. He seems to have regarded the later Temples as deflections from the Divine pattern, and he wanted to take all that was Judaic at its best. His description applies to the Tabernacle only. It is doubtful whether the seven-branched candlestick was preserved in the Temple of Solomon; there was certainly no ark or mercy-seat, much less a Shechinah, in the Herodian Temple of this period. When Pompey profanely forced his way into the Holy of Holies he found to his great astonishment nothing whatever (vacua omnia).

ἐν ᾗ. Understand “is.” The whole tabernacle is ideally present to the writer’s imagination.

ἥ τε λυχνία. Exo 25:31-39; Exo 37:17-24. The word would more accurately be rendered “lampstand.” In Solomon’s temple there seem to have been ten (1Ki 7:49). There was indeed one only in the Herodian temple (1Ma 1:21; 1Ma 4:49; Jos. Antt. XII. 7, § 6, and allusions in the Talmud). It could not however have exactly resembled the famous figure carved on the Arch of Titus (as Josephus hints in a mysterious phrase, Jos. B. J. VII. 5, § 5), for that has marine monsters carved upon its pediment, which would have been a direct violation of the second commandment.

καὶ ἡ τράπεζα. Exo 25:23-30; Exo 37:10-16. There were ten such tables of acacia-wood overlaid with gold in Solomon’s temple (2Ch 4:8; 2Ch 4:19).

ἡ πρόθεσις τῶν ἄρτων. Rendered by the LXX. ἄρτοι τῆς προθέσεως. Lit., “the setting forth of the loaves.” The Hebrew name for it is “the bread of the face” (i.e. placed before the presence of God), Exo 25:23-30; Lev 24:5-9.

ἅγια. Neut. plur. ἅγια ἁγίων represents the Hebr. superlative קֹרֶשׁ הַקֳּרָשִׁים. In the O. T. Kodesh is “the Holy Place.” ἅγια ἁγίων. Lit., “the Holy of Holies,” a name which, like the Latin Sancta Sanctorum, is the exact translation of the Hebrew Kodesh Hakkodashim. In Solomon’s Temple it was called “the Oracle.”