(15) And for this cause.--Or, And because of this. This verse looks back to the great truth of Hebrews 9:11-12, which the last two verses have served to confirm and place in bolder relief. "Christ through His own blood entered once for all into the Holy Place, having won eternal redemption; and by reason of this He is the Mediator of a covenant, a new covenant, in order that they who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance." For "the new testament" we must certainly read a new covenant: whatever may be thought of the following group of verses, the rendering testament has no place here. The leading thought of Hebrews 8 is the establishment of a new covenant, and the former covenant has been referred to three times in this very chapter (Hebrews 9:1; Hebrews 9:4).
That by means of death.--Rather, that, death having taken place for redemption from the transgressions, &c. The first covenant had been broken by "transgressions:" unless there be redemption from these--that is, from the bondage of penalty which has resulted from these--there can be no promise and no new covenant. In respect of this bondage, this penalty, the death of Christ was a ransom--an offering to God looked at in the light of a payment in the place of debt, service, or penalty due. When debt and payment are changed into the corresponding ideas of sin and punishment, the ransom gives place to the sin-offering, of which the principle was the acknowledgment of death deserved, and the vicarious suffering of death. So far our thought has rested on the removal of the results of the past. The covenant and the promise relate to the establishment of the better future. Death was necessary alike for both. The offering of Christ's life (Matthew 20:28) was a ransom or an offering for sin; it was also a sacrifice inaugurating a new covenant, which contained the promise of the eternal inheritance. See Hebrews 9:16-18; also Galatians 3:13-14, where the thought is very similar.
They which are called.--More clearly, they that have been called. (See Acts 2:39; Romans 1:6-7; 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14.) In Hebrews 3:1 we have a similar expression, "partakers of a heavenly calling:" there also the idea of sonship (Hebrews 2:10), with its right of "inheritance," is certainly present.
Verses 15-17. - And for this cause he is the Mediator of a new testament, that by means of death (literally, death having taken place), for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. Here the view of the gospel as a new διαθήκη (introduced first in Hebrews 7:22, and enlarged on in Hebrews 8:6-13) is again brought in. For the word is still διαθήκη, though here, for reasons that will appear, rendered "testament" in the A.V. The connecting thought here is - It is because of Christ's sacrifice having been such as has been described, that he is the Mediator of that new and better covenant; it qualified him for being so. A sacrifice, a death, was required for giving it validity (vers. 16-23), and the character of his sacrifice implies a better covenant than the old, even such a one as Jeremiah foretold. Further, the purpose of his death is said to be "for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant." For in the passage of Jeremiah the defect of the first covenant was based on the transgression of its conditions by man, while under the new one, such transgressions were to be no more remembered. But this could not be without atonement for them; the whole ceremonial of the Law signified this; and also that such atonement could not be except by death. The death of Christ satisfied this requirement; and so the new covenant could come in. So far the course of thought is clear. Nor is there difficulty in understanding the purport of ver. 18, etc., taken by itself, where the "blood-shedding" that inaugurated the first covenant is regarded as typical of that of Christ in the inauguration of the new one. But there is a difficulty about the intervening verses (16, 17), arising from the apparent use of the word διαθήκη in a new sense, not otherwise suggested - that of testament rather than covenant. The verses are, as given in the A.V., For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be (φέρεσθαι. a word of which the exact meaning is not clear; some interpret "be brought in, or proved," some "be understood, implied ") the death of the testator (τοῦ διαθεμένου, equivalent to "him that made it"). For a testament is of force after men are dead (ἐπὶ νεκροῖς): otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth (or, for doth it ever avail while he theft made it liveth?ἐπεὶ μήποτε: cf. Hebrews 10:2; Romans 3:6; 1 Corinthians 14:16; John 7:26; Luke 3:15). Now, the word διαθήκη itself undoubtedly may bear the sense of "testament." Its general meaning is " disposition," or "settlement;" and it may denote either compact between living persons, or a will to take effect after the testator's death. In the verses before us it appears to be used specifically in the latter sense. For they express general propositions, which are not true of all covenants, but are true (according to their most obvious sense) of all testaments. Further, this sense is distinctly applicable to the newδιαθήκη, regarded as the dying Christ's bequest to his Church. Hence, but for the context, we should naturally so understand it in these verses. The difficulties attending this sense are:
(1) The word is not used in this specific sense before or afterwards in this Epistle or in Jeremiah 31, which is the basis of the whole argument, or elsewhere, apparently, either in the Old Testament or the New.
(2) The sense does not suit the case of the oldδιαθήκη, which was a covenant between the living God and his people; and there is no intimation of two senses being intended in the two cases: indeed, in the passage before us, the same sense seems to be distinctly implied, since the blood-shedding which inaugurated the old is at once (in ver. 17) spoken of as answering to the death which inaugurated the new, as though death inaugurated both in the same sense.
(3) The word, in the sense of covenant (equivalent to the Hebrew berith), is common in the LXX., expressing an idea familiar to Jews and Jewish Christians, while testamentary dispositions were, as far as we know, unfamiliar to the Hebrews; and, though the Roman testamentary law may have come into use when the Epistle was written, it is thought unlikely that the writer, addressing Hebrews, would have referred to it in illustration of a Divine dispensation, or, if he had, have used a word so well known to them in its traditional sense.
(4) Christ is called (here as well as in Hebrews 12:24 and Hebrews 13:20) the Mediator (μεσίτης) of the new διαθήκη: but a testament does not require a Mediator, nor, if it has one, can the same person be both mediator and testator. If, however, the sense of testament should seem inevitable here, we may explain as follows. Though the word has been used so far in a general sense, yet the writer, on the suggestion of θανάτου γενομένου in ver. 15, passes in thought at ver. 16 to the specific sense of testament, as suiting the case of Christ, the language he uses being sufficient for carrying his readers with him in the transition. Further, though the old διαθήκη was not in itself a testament, yet it was typical of that which was; its whole ceremonial foreshadowed the future Testator's death, and so, in a typical sense, it might also itself be called one. Consequently, in ver. 18, the inaugurating sacrifices of the old dispensation are regarded as representing the death of the testator; for they prefigured Christ, through whose death the "eternal inheritance" is bequeathed to man. (In accordance with this view, the Vulgate renders διαθήκηtestamentum throughout the Epistle, even when the old dispensation is referred to.) As to ὁ διαθέμενος (translated "the testator"), it is, according to this view, ultimately God the Father in the new διαθήκη, as well as in the old, though, of course, the Godhead could not die. But the Father having placed the whole inheritance destined for mankind in the hands of Christ as Mediator, in his human death the testator died. And thus one of the difficulties above mentioned may be met, viz. that of Christ being regarded both as Testator and Mediator. Christ was, in fact, both - Testator, in that, being one with God, he bequeathed through his death the kingdom appointed unto hint by the Father; Mediator, in that it was through his incarnation only that the "eternal inheritance" willed to us by the Father could be transmitted in the way of testament. So in effect Chrysostom explains. Apposite to this view of the subject are his own words (Luke 22:29), "And I appoint (διατίθεμαι) unto you a kingdom, as my Father appointed (διέθετο) unto me." Here we have the same verb (διατίθεμαι) as is used in the Epistle. And though, in the passage from St. Luke, the idea of a testamentary appointment is not necessarily implied, yet it is naturally suggested where Christ is speaking on the eve of, and with reference to, his death. There is, however, another view taken (decidedly by Whitby, Ebrard, and in the recent 'Speaker's Commentary'), according to which the idea of a testament does not come in at all, the word διαθήκη retaining here, as elsewhere, its usual sense of covenant. The position is that, though the propositions of vers. 16, 17 are not true of all covenants, yet there is a sense in which they are true of any covenant between God and man; which is the only kind of covenant that the writer has in view, or that his readers would be led to think of by the previous reference to Jeremiah 31, or by the associations of the word διαθήκη as used in the Old Testament. The sense in which the propositions are true of such a covenant is thus expressed by Ebrard: "Whenever sinful man will enter into a covenant with the holy God, the man must first die - must first atone for his guilt by death (or must put in a substitute for himself)." This principle is expressed (it is alleged), not only by the sacrifices that inaugurated this covenant of the Law, but also wherever a covenant between God and man is spoken of in the Old Testament; e.g. in the covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15:8, etc., and Genesis 22.). In the case of covenants between man and man (as between Abraham and Abimelech, and between Jacob and Laban) there was no need of slain victims, whoso life had to be given for that of one of the contracting parties; but there is always expressed such need in the case of a covenant between God and man. Further, the expression, διαθήκη ἐπὶ νεκροῖς βεβαία, is, according to this view, illustrated by Psalm 50:5, where the LXX. has τοὺς διατιθεμένουςτὴν διαθήκην αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ θυσίαις (in the Vulgate, qui ordinant testamentum ejus super sacrificiis). The same preposition ἐπὶ is used in both passages, and ἐπὶ θοσίαις is supposed to express the same idea as ἐπὶ νεκροῖς. This passage from the psalm is certainly much to the point in support of the view before us, serving moreover to meet in some degree one principal objection to it, viz. that it requires ὁ διαθέμενος to be understood of the human party to the covenant, and not of its Divine Author. Such is not the most obvious application of the word, nor the one sanctioned by the quotation from Jeremiah, or by other references to the Divine covenant (see supra, Hebrews 8:10, and also Genesis 15:18; Deuteronomy 5:2, 3; Luke 12:29; Acts 3:25; as well as Exodus 24:8, quoted below (ver. 20), where διέθετο, not ἐνετείλατο, is the word in the LXX. But such is the application in Psalm 50:5, and may be considered, therefore, not untenable. The writer may, indeed, have had the expression in the psalm in his mind when he wrote the verses before us. It appears from what has been said that difficulties attend both the views that have been above explained. It is not here attempted to decide between them.
9:15-22 The solemn transactions between God and man, are sometimes called a covenant, here a testament, which is a willing deed of a person, bestowing legacies on such persons as are described, and it only takes effect upon his death. Thus Christ died, not only to obtain the blessings of salvation for us, but to give power to the disposal of them. All, by sin, were become guilty before God, had forfeited every thing that is good; but God, willing to show the greatness of his mercy, proclaimed a covenant of grace. Nothing could be clean to a sinner, not even his religious duties; except as his guilt was done away by the death of a sacrifice, of value sufficient for that end, and unless he continually depended upon it. May we ascribe all real good works to the same all-procuring cause, and offer our spiritual sacrifices as sprinkled with Christ's blood, and so purified from their defilement.
And for this cause he is the Mediator of the New Testament,.... See Gill on Hebrews 7:22, See Gill on Hebrews 8:6, See Gill on Hebrews 8:8. This may refer both to what goes before, and what follows after; for Christ, that he might offer himself to God, and by his blood purge the consciences of his people from dead works, that so they might serve the living God, became the Mediator of the New Testament, or covenant; and also he took upon him this character and office,
that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance; Christ became the Mediator of the New Testament, and assumed human nature that he might die, and by dying might obtain redemption for his people; not only for those that were then in the world, or should be in it, but also for all those that had been in it. "The first testament" is the first dispensation of the covenant of grace, reaching from the first promulgation of it to Adam after the fall, to the death of Christ; "the transgressions" that were under it are the sins of the saints who lived under that dispensation, froth Adam to Moses, and from Moses to Christ, and takes in all their iniquities of every kind: and the "redemption" of these, or from these, by Christ, at and through his death, does not suppose that there was no remission of sins, or justification from them, under that dispensation; or that the Old Testament saints did not go to heaven, but were detained in a prison, till redeemed by the death of Christ; or that their sins were only redeemed, not their persons; for transgressions may stand for transgressors; and so the Syriac version renders it, "that by his death he might be a redemption for them who transgressed the first testament"; so the Jews say, that the Messiah must die "to redeem the fathers" (b): but the sense is, that though legal sacrifices could not atone for sin, nor ceremonial ablutions cleanse from them; yet the sins of Old Testament saints were expiated, their iniquities pardoned, and they justified and saved, through the blood of Christ, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; whose death is a redemption from transgressions past, present, and to come; whose blood is the ransom price for them, and was shed for the remission of them, even of sins that are past through the forbearance of God; who took the surety's word for the performance of all this, which in the fulness of time he strictly fulfilled, to the satisfaction of law and justice; see Romans 3:25 and the ultimate end of Christ's being a Mediator, and dying for such purposes, was, that called ones might receive the promised inheritance: by the "eternal inheritance", is meant heaven, which is by gift and bequest, belongs to children only, and comes through the death of Christ; and is a very substantial, plentiful, and glorious one; it is incorruptible and undefiled, and that fades not away, and as here, "eternal"; it was prepared from the foundation of the world, and will continue for ever; and it may be so called, to distinguish it from the inheritance of the land of Canaan, or any temporal one: "the promise" of this was made before the world began, and was put into the hands of Christ, the surety of the better testament, by whose death the heirs of it come to enjoy both the promise, and the thing promised; and they are such who are "called", not merely externally, but internally and effectually; by whom were meant, not Abraham and his natural seed, nor the Old Testament saints only, but all that are called with an holy calling, whether Jews or Gentiles, and who will enjoy both the promise of the inheritance, and that itself, in a way of "receiving": every word shows this affair to be all of grace; it is an "inheritance", and therefore the Father's gift; it is by "promise", and so of grace; and it is "received", and so freely given, and not merited; and only such who are "called" by grace possess it; and yet it is through the death of Christ, that so it might be received in a way consistent with the justice of God.
That by means of death.--Rather, that, death having taken place for redemption from the transgressions, &c. The first covenant had been broken by "transgressions:" unless there be redemption from these--that is, from the bondage of penalty which has resulted from these--there can be no promise and no new covenant. In respect of this bondage, this penalty, the death of Christ was a ransom--an offering to God looked at in the light of a payment in the place of debt, service, or penalty due. When debt and payment are changed into the corresponding ideas of sin and punishment, the ransom gives place to the sin-offering, of which the principle was the acknowledgment of death deserved, and the vicarious suffering of death. So far our thought has rested on the removal of the results of the past. The covenant and the promise relate to the establishment of the better future. Death was necessary alike for both. The offering of Christ's life (Matthew 20:28) was a ransom or an offering for sin; it was also a sacrifice inaugurating a new covenant, which contained the promise of the eternal inheritance. See Hebrews 9:16-18; also Galatians 3:13-14, where the thought is very similar.
They which are called.--More clearly, they that have been called. (See Acts 2:39; Romans 1:6-7; 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14.) In Hebrews 3:1 we have a similar expression, "partakers of a heavenly calling:" there also the idea of sonship (Hebrews 2:10), with its right of "inheritance," is certainly present.
(1) The word is not used in this specific sense before or afterwards in this Epistle or in Jeremiah 31, which is the basis of the whole argument, or elsewhere, apparently, either in the Old Testament or the New.
(2) The sense does not suit the case of the old διαθήκη, which was a covenant between the living God and his people; and there is no intimation of two senses being intended in the two cases: indeed, in the passage before us, the same sense seems to be distinctly implied, since the blood-shedding which inaugurated the old is at once (in ver. 17) spoken of as answering to the death which inaugurated the new, as though death inaugurated both in the same sense.
(3) The word, in the sense of covenant (equivalent to the Hebrew berith), is common in the LXX., expressing an idea familiar to Jews and Jewish Christians, while testamentary dispositions were, as far as we know, unfamiliar to the Hebrews; and, though the Roman testamentary law may have come into use when the Epistle was written, it is thought unlikely that the writer, addressing Hebrews, would have referred to it in illustration of a Divine dispensation, or, if he had, have used a word so well known to them in its traditional sense.
(4) Christ is called (here as well as in Hebrews 12:24 and Hebrews 13:20) the Mediator (μεσίτης) of the new διαθήκη: but a testament does not require a Mediator, nor, if it has one, can the same person be both mediator and testator. If, however, the sense of testament should seem inevitable here, we may explain as follows. Though the word has been used so far in a general sense, yet the writer, on the suggestion of θανάτου γενομένου in ver. 15, passes in thought at ver. 16 to the specific sense of testament, as suiting the case of Christ, the language he uses being sufficient for carrying his readers with him in the transition. Further, though the old διαθήκη was not in itself a testament, yet it was typical of that which was; its whole ceremonial foreshadowed the future Testator's death, and so, in a typical sense, it might also itself be called one. Consequently, in ver. 18, the inaugurating sacrifices of the old dispensation are regarded as representing the death of the testator; for they prefigured Christ, through whose death the "eternal inheritance" is bequeathed to man. (In accordance with this view, the Vulgate renders διαθήκη testamentum throughout the Epistle, even when the old dispensation is referred to.) As to ὁ διαθέμενος (translated "the testator"), it is, according to this view, ultimately God the Father in the new διαθήκη, as well as in the old, though, of course, the Godhead could not die. But the Father having placed the whole inheritance destined for mankind in the hands of Christ as Mediator, in his human death the testator died. And thus one of the difficulties above mentioned may be met, viz. that of Christ being regarded both as Testator and Mediator. Christ was, in fact, both - Testator, in that, being one with God, he bequeathed through his death the kingdom appointed unto hint by the Father; Mediator, in that it was through his incarnation only that the "eternal inheritance" willed to us by the Father could be transmitted in the way of testament. So in effect Chrysostom explains. Apposite to this view of the subject are his own words (Luke 22:29), "And I appoint (διατίθεμαι) unto you a kingdom, as my Father appointed (διέθετο) unto me." Here we have the same verb (διατίθεμαι) as is used in the Epistle. And though, in the passage from St. Luke, the idea of a testamentary appointment is not necessarily implied, yet it is naturally suggested where Christ is speaking on the eve of, and with reference to, his death. There is, however, another view taken (decidedly by Whitby, Ebrard, and in the recent 'Speaker's Commentary'), according to which the idea of a testament does not come in at all, the word διαθήκη retaining here, as elsewhere, its usual sense of covenant. The position is that, though the propositions of vers. 16, 17 are not true of all covenants, yet there is a sense in which they are true of any covenant between God and man; which is the only kind of covenant that the writer has in view, or that his readers would be led to think of by the previous reference to Jeremiah 31, or by the associations of the word διαθήκη as used in the Old Testament. The sense in which the propositions are true of such a covenant is thus expressed by Ebrard: "Whenever sinful man will enter into a covenant with the holy God, the man must first die - must first atone for his guilt by death (or must put in a substitute for himself)." This principle is expressed (it is alleged), not only by the sacrifices that inaugurated this covenant of the Law, but also wherever a covenant between God and man is spoken of in the Old Testament; e.g. in the covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15:8, etc., and Genesis 22.). In the case of covenants between man and man (as between Abraham and Abimelech, and between Jacob and Laban) there was no need of slain victims, whoso life had to be given for that of one of the contracting parties; but there is always expressed such need in the case of a covenant between God and man. Further, the expression, διαθήκη ἐπὶ νεκροῖς βεβαία, is, according to this view, illustrated by Psalm 50:5, where the LXX. has τοὺς διατιθεμένους τὴν διαθήκην αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ θυσίαις (in the Vulgate, qui ordinant testamentum ejus super sacrificiis). The same preposition ἐπὶ is used in both passages, and ἐπὶ θοσίαις is supposed to express the same idea as ἐπὶ νεκροῖς. This passage from the psalm is certainly much to the point in support of the view before us, serving moreover to meet in some degree one principal objection to it, viz. that it requires ὁ διαθέμενος to be understood of the human party to the covenant, and not of its Divine Author. Such is not the most obvious application of the word, nor the one sanctioned by the quotation from Jeremiah, or by other references to the Divine covenant (see supra, Hebrews 8:10, and also Genesis 15:18; Deuteronomy 5:2, 3; Luke 12:29; Acts 3:25; as well as Exodus 24:8, quoted below (ver. 20), where διέθετο, not ἐνετείλατο, is the word in the LXX. But such is the application in Psalm 50:5, and may be considered, therefore, not untenable. The writer may, indeed, have had the expression in the psalm in his mind when he wrote the verses before us. It appears from what has been said that difficulties attend both the views that have been above explained. It is not here attempted to decide between them.
that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance; Christ became the Mediator of the New Testament, and assumed human nature that he might die, and by dying might obtain redemption for his people; not only for those that were then in the world, or should be in it, but also for all those that had been in it. "The first testament" is the first dispensation of the covenant of grace, reaching from the first promulgation of it to Adam after the fall, to the death of Christ; "the transgressions" that were under it are the sins of the saints who lived under that dispensation, froth Adam to Moses, and from Moses to Christ, and takes in all their iniquities of every kind: and the "redemption" of these, or from these, by Christ, at and through his death, does not suppose that there was no remission of sins, or justification from them, under that dispensation; or that the Old Testament saints did not go to heaven, but were detained in a prison, till redeemed by the death of Christ; or that their sins were only redeemed, not their persons; for transgressions may stand for transgressors; and so the Syriac version renders it, "that by his death he might be a redemption for them who transgressed the first testament"; so the Jews say, that the Messiah must die "to redeem the fathers" (b): but the sense is, that though legal sacrifices could not atone for sin, nor ceremonial ablutions cleanse from them; yet the sins of Old Testament saints were expiated, their iniquities pardoned, and they justified and saved, through the blood of Christ, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; whose death is a redemption from transgressions past, present, and to come; whose blood is the ransom price for them, and was shed for the remission of them, even of sins that are past through the forbearance of God; who took the surety's word for the performance of all this, which in the fulness of time he strictly fulfilled, to the satisfaction of law and justice; see Romans 3:25 and the ultimate end of Christ's being a Mediator, and dying for such purposes, was, that called ones might receive the promised inheritance: by the "eternal inheritance", is meant heaven, which is by gift and bequest, belongs to children only, and comes through the death of Christ; and is a very substantial, plentiful, and glorious one; it is incorruptible and undefiled, and that fades not away, and as here, "eternal"; it was prepared from the foundation of the world, and will continue for ever; and it may be so called, to distinguish it from the inheritance of the land of Canaan, or any temporal one: "the promise" of this was made before the world began, and was put into the hands of Christ, the surety of the better testament, by whose death the heirs of it come to enjoy both the promise, and the thing promised; and they are such who are "called", not merely externally, but internally and effectually; by whom were meant, not Abraham and his natural seed, nor the Old Testament saints only, but all that are called with an holy calling, whether Jews or Gentiles, and who will enjoy both the promise of the inheritance, and that itself, in a way of "receiving": every word shows this affair to be all of grace; it is an "inheritance", and therefore the Father's gift; it is by "promise", and so of grace; and it is "received", and so freely given, and not merited; and only such who are "called" by grace possess it; and yet it is through the death of Christ, that so it might be received in a way consistent with the justice of God.
(b) R. Moses Haddarsan apud Galatin. l. 8. c. 20.