TEXT [Commentary]

  V.   Sanctuary and Sacrifice (8:1–10:18)

A.   The Heavenly Tabernacle (8:1-6)

1 Here is the main point: We have a High Priest who sat down in the place of honor beside the throne of the majestic God in heaven. 2 There he ministers in the heavenly Tabernacle,[*] the true place of worship that was built by the Lord and not by human hands.

3 And since every high priest is required to offer gifts and sacrifices, our High Priest must make an offering, too. 4 If he were here on earth, he would not even be a priest, since there already are priests who offer the gifts required by the law. 5 They serve in a system of worship that is only a copy, a shadow of the real one in heaven. For when Moses was getting ready to build the Tabernacle, God gave him this warning: “Be sure that you make everything according to the pattern I have shown you here on the mountain.”[*]

6 But now Jesus, our High Priest, has been given a ministry that is far superior to the old priesthood, for he is the one who mediates for us a far better covenant with God, based on better promises.

NOTES

8:1 We have. The author punctuates his work, as we have seen, by reminding his readers of what “we have” (echomen or echontes [TG2192, ZG2400]; see 4:14-15; 10:19). Other things that “we have” include hope as “a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls” (6:19), “a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith” (12:1; see note), “an altar” (13:10), and no “permanent home” in the world (13:14).

8:2 the heavenly Tabernacle, the true place of worship. Lit., “the holy things, even the true Tabernacle.” Although the phrase “the holy things” (ta hagia [TG40B, ZG41]) is plural, it refers to “the holy place” or “the sanctuary” (see BDAG 11), which could be either in the Jerusalem Temple, in Moses’s Tabernacle during Israel’s sojourn in the desert (for the latter, see 9:2, 3, 24, 25; 13:11), or (as here) in heaven itself. The NLT calls it a “heavenly” Tabernacle because of the adjective “true” (alēthinēs [TG228, ZG240]), used in Plato’s sense of that which belongs to the “real” world above rather than the visible world of sense experience (see also 9:12; 10:19).

built by the Lord. More precisely, “set up” or “pitched” (epēxen [TG4078, ZG4381]) by the Lord. The verb is appropriate to a tabernacle or tent, not to a temple (see Num 24:6, LXX, “as tents which God pitched”). “The Lord” here is God, not Jesus, who serves rather as priestly “minister” (leitourgos [TG3011, ZG3313]) in this “heavenly Tabernacle.”

8:5 only a copy, a shadow of the real one. “Copy” is hupodeigma [TG5262, ZG5682] (also in 9:23), a term used earlier of the bad “example” set by the “people of Israel” long ago when they disobeyed God in the desert (4:11). Another word for “copy” is antitupos [TG499A, ZG531] (9:24), or “antitype,” corresponding to a God-given “pattern” or “type” (tupos [TG5179, ZG5596], as in Exod 25:40, LXX). “Shadow” is skia [TG4639, ZG5014], a word Paul used in making a similar point about “what you eat or drink” and about “celebrating certain holy days or new moon ceremonies or Sabbaths” (Col 2:16). Rules about such matters, Paul claimed, “are only shadows of the reality yet to come. . . . Christ himself” (Col 2:17). Here, “the real one” is literally, “the heavenly things” (pl. to agree with ta hagia [TG40B, ZG41], “the holy things,” in the sense of the holy place or “heavenly Tabernacle”; see note on 8:2).

8:6 a ministry that is far superior to the old priesthood. Lit., “a superior ministry.” The reference to “the old priesthood” has been supplied by the translators.

the one who mediates. A single word in Greek (mesitēs [TG3316, ZG3542], “mediator”; see 9:15; 12:24; 1 Tim 2:5), another title for Jesus (like “guarantor” or “surety” in 7:22; see note).

COMMENTARY [Text]

Ever the effective preacher, the author pauses to summarize his argument so far. “Here is the main point,” he begins, gathering up the whole of chapters 1–7 into a single verse. “We have a High Priest” is more literally, “We have such (toiouton [TG5108, ZG5525]) a High Priest,” echoing the expression used just three verses earlier, “He is the kind of (toioutos) high priest we need” (7:26). At the same time, the accompanying relative clause, “who sat down in the place of honor beside the throne of the majestic God in heaven,” takes us all the way back, word for word, to the author’s opening presentation of God’s Son, who “when he had cleansed us from our sins, he sat down in the place of honor at the right hand of the majestic God in heaven” (1:3). In this way, Psalm 110:1 (“sit in the place of honor at my right hand”) is linked inseparably to 110:4 (“you are a priest forever”), laying a firm foundation for the next step in the author’s argument. Jesus’ exaltation to heaven means that his eternal ministry as High Priest does not take place on earth, or at least not only on earth in his death on the cross, but beyond the cross, in “the heavenly Tabernacle, the true place of worship” (8:2). The author’s language here begins to shed light on his mysterious reference earlier to what the NLT calls “God’s inner sanctuary,” a place inside the curtain where, he says, “Jesus has already gone” on our behalf (6:19-20). He now confirms that this “inner sanctuary” or “true place of worship” is where Jesus is, “beside the throne of the majestic God in heaven.” It is a “holy place” (ta hagia [TG40B, ZG41]; see note on 8:2), or “heavenly Tabernacle. . . . built by the Lord and not by human hands.”

Readers will naturally suspect that this holy place in heaven is somehow modeled after holy places on earth, whether the ancient Tabernacle in the desert or the Temple in Jerusalem. Earthly priests offer “gifts and sacrifices,” and this priest “must make an offering, too” (8:3). The language is vague, but the reader already knows that Jesus’ offering is himself (heauton [TG1438, ZG1571]; 7:27) in his death on the cross. It is an offering made on earth, yet Jesus is no longer on earth and was never an earthly priest. “If he were here on earth” (8:4) is a contrary-to-fact condition, implying that he is not. Not only does he lack the qualifications for earthly (that is, Jewish) priesthood (see 7:13-14), but such a priesthood would have been redundant, for on earth “there already are priests who offer the gifts required by the law” (8:4). Who are these earthly priests? Ever since the first mention of the (presumably Jewish) high priests “chosen to represent other people in their dealings with God” (5:1), the modern reader has understandably wondered whether or not the Jewish priesthood was still functioning in the Temple in Jerusalem at the time Hebrews was written (that is, whether Hebrews was written before or after AD 70, when the Temple was destroyed; see “Date of Writing” in the Introduction).

Here the author makes it sound as if such priestly activity was in fact going on, but if it was, it would have been in the Temple, and he consistently avoids mentioning the Temple. Instead, he speaks vaguely of “a system of worship that is only a copy, a shadow of the real one in heaven” (8:5). There is indeed a relationship between holy places and priestly systems on earth and in heaven, but the author insists that the holy place “built by the Lord and not by human hands” (8:2) is not a projection of a holy place somewhere on earth. It is just the opposite. The earthly Tabernacle is modeled after the heavenly, as a mere “copy” or “shadow” (see note on 8:5), and he has Scripture to prove it: God told Moses when he was preparing the Tabernacle in the desert, “Be sure that you make everything according to the pattern I have shown you here on the mountain” (Exod 25:40; see also 26:30). By “pattern” (tupos [TG5179, ZG5596]), the author of Hebrews understood a kind of heavenly archetype, something like Plato’s “forms” or “ideas” behind the visible world. But Hebrews is different from Plato in that it does not see the whole visible world as a mere shadow or copy of the heavenly world. Rather, Moses’s Tabernacle in the desert and all the trappings that went with it are unique in being copies or shadows of that world above. God gave special directions for their construction because there was a model in heaven to go by. Philo of Alexandria, writing perhaps a few decades earlier than the author of Hebrews, makes a similar point more than once, and at much greater length: “Therefore Moses now determined to build a tabernacle, a most holy edifice, the furniture of which he was instructed how to supply by precise commands from God, given to him while he was on the mount, contemplating with his soul the incorporeal patterns of bodies which were about to be made perfect, in due similitude to which he was bound to make the furniture, that it might be an imitation perceptible by the outward senses of an archetypal sketch and pattern, appreciable only by the intellect” (Moses 2.74; Yonge 1993:497; see also Allegorical Interpretation 3.102; Yonge 1993:61-62; Questions and Answers on Exodus 2.52; LCL Philo Supplement 2.99-100). We can be grateful for the relative simplicity of Hebrews.

Quite possibly this one verse of Scripture (Exod 25:40) is the main reason the author of Hebrews fastens his attention on the Tabernacle in the desert rather than on the Temple in Jerusalem. No one ever claimed that God told Solomon, “Be sure that you make everything according to the pattern I have shown you,” when he built the first Temple in Jerusalem. Stephen in the book of Acts even hinted that it may not have been such a good idea because “the Most High doesn’t live in temples made by human hands” (Acts 7:48)—this just four verses after acknowledging that the Tabernacle in the desert “had been made as God directed Moses, according to the pattern (tupos [TG5179, ZG5596]) he had seen” (7:44, NIV). And what was true of Solomon’s Temple would have been true many times over of the Temple built by Herod the Great and destroyed in AD 70. The author of Hebrews was not comparing the heavenly sanctuary to an existing Jewish Temple “made by human hands” but to the Tabernacle that God explicitly directed Moses to make “according to the pattern I have shown you” (8:5). Consequently, when he concluded that “Jesus, our High Priest, has been given a ministry that is far superior” (8:6), he was not comparing Jesus’ priesthood to an existing priesthood in Jerusalem that he believed to be corrupt but to the Jewish priesthood as God intended it from the beginning. He seems to presuppose that this priesthood still existed in some form, whether or not it still functioned as God intended. His point is not that it is corrupt, as the sectarian community at Qumran believed, but simply that it has been superseded, replaced with something “better.” For the sake of any Jewish Christians who might be tempted to return to Judaism and to the law, it is important to this author to show that the new covenant in Christ is better in every way.

Consequently, words of comparison, such as “better,” “greater,” or “superior,” are conspicuous throughout Hebrews. God’s Son was shown to be “better” or “far greater” than the angels (1:4); Christian believers are “meant for better things” (6:9); Melchizedek was “better” or “greater” than Abraham (7:7); those whose property was confiscated possess “something better and more lasting” (10:34, NRSV); God’s people of old “were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland” (11:16), or “a better life after the resurrection” (11:35), which they have not yet received because “God had something better in mind” (11:40). Here the author claims that Jesus “mediates for us a far better covenant with God, based on better promises” (8:6). Later, in connection with this covenant, we will hear of “better sacrifices” than those prescribed by the law (9:23) and of Jesus’ “sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (12:24, NRSV).

The first time we heard that phrase “better covenant” (7:22), it was the realization of a “better hope, through which we draw near to God” (7:19). This time it is “based on better promises.” Although Hebrews exalts the better hope and promises of the new covenant, it does not denigrate the earlier hope and promises as “worse.” The starting point for comparison is not false hope or false promises but is presumably the “promises of God” mentioned twice before (6:12; 7:6; see also 11:13, 17, 33). The point of comparison for all three—the “better covenant,” the “better hope,” and the “better promises”—is what has repeatedly been called “the law,” including the whole priestly system regulated by the law (see 7:5, 12, 16, 19, 28; 8:4). That system was itself by implication a “covenant” (diathēkē [TG1242, ZG1347]), and now the author will begin to speak explicitly of that “first,” or “old,” covenant.