TEXT [Commentary]

  C.   The First Tabernacle: A Guided Tour (9:1-10)

1 That first covenant between God and Israel had regulations for worship and a place of worship here on earth. 2 There were two rooms in that Tabernacle.[*] In the first room were a lampstand, a table, and sacred loaves of bread on the table. This room was called the Holy Place. 3 Then there was a curtain, and behind the curtain was the second room[*] called the Most Holy Place. 4 In that room were a gold incense altar and a wooden chest called the Ark of the Covenant, which was covered with gold on all sides. Inside the Ark were a gold jar containing manna, Aaron’s staff that sprouted leaves, and the stone tablets of the covenant. 5 Above the Ark were the cherubim of divine glory, whose wings stretched out over the Ark’s cover, the place of atonement. But we cannot explain these things in detail now.

6 When these things were all in place, the priests regularly entered the first room[*] as they performed their religious duties. 7 But only the high priest ever entered the Most Holy Place, and only once a year. And he always offered blood for his own sins and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance. 8 By these regulations the Holy Spirit revealed that the entrance to the Most Holy Place was not freely open as long as the Tabernacle[*] and the system it represented were still in use.

9 This is an illustration pointing to the present time. For the gifts and sacrifices that the priests offer are not able to cleanse the consciences of the people who bring them. 10 For that old system deals only with food and drink and various cleansing ceremonies—physical regulations that were in effect only until a better system could be established.

NOTES

9:1 That first covenant. The NLT has supplied the word “covenant.” The original text has only “the first,” echoing “the first one” in 8:13, but “covenant” is clearly what is meant. Some mss (mostly later ones) have mistakenly inserted “Tabernacle” (skēnē [TG4633, ZG5008]) instead, but a “first” tabernacle is not explicitly mentioned until the next verse (see note).

9:2 There were two rooms. These words are not in the original text but are supplied by the NLT in light of the following references to the “first room” (lit., “first tabernacle”; 9:2) and the “second” curtain (9:3; see note).

the Holy Place. Lit., “holy things,” a term referring (as in 8:2; see note) to a sanctuary or place of worship. Here, however, the author distinguished an outer sanctuary or “Holy Place” (hagia [TG40B, ZG41]) from the “Most Holy Place” (or hagia hagiōn, “holy of holies”) inside a dividing curtain (9:3). A difficulty is that some important ancient mss (including 46 A D*) have “the Most Holy Place” (or hagia hagiōn) already here, a reading that seems to make no sense at all in view of the distinction the author is trying to make. Despite Attridge’s ingenious argument for its originality (1989:233-238), this reading appears to be simply a mistake by a scribe in a hurry to move “behind the curtain” into the Tabernacle’s inner sanctuary (see Koester 2001:394).

9:3 Then there was a curtain. Lit., “after the second curtain” (see Exod 26:31-35). Although it is not mentioned in Hebrews, a “first” curtain stood at the outer entrance to the Tabernacle (see Exod 26:36-37), and Hebrews presupposes this. The translation speaks instead of a “second room,” in keeping with the text’s reference to a “first” room or tabernacle (9:2).

9:4 a gold incense altar. At least one important ancient manuscript (B) omits these words here after having added “and the gold incense altar” in 9:2. These readings seem to have come about because a scribe thought the gold incense altar belonged in the outer rather than the inner sanctuary, in keeping with both Philo (Moses 2.101; Yonge 1993:500) and Josephus (Antiquities 3.147-148; LCL 4.385). The writer of Hebrews did not follow this tradition but instead placed the gold incense altar in the “Most Holy Place” (the biblical evidence could be read either way; see Attridge 1989:234-235). The reading supported by almost every other witness and adopted by the NLT (with the “gold incense altar” here) is the correct one.

a gold jar. In the Hebrew Bible (Exod 16:33), this is simply a “jar,” but a “gold jar” according to the LXX.

9:5 the Ark’s cover, the place of atonement. This is two words in Greek (to hilastērion [TG2435, ZG2663], “atonement cover”; see Exod 25:18). Its only other NT occurrence is in Rom 3:25, referring to Christ as an atoning sacrifice “to satisfy God’s anger against us” (see BDAG 474, “an instrument for regaining the goodwill of a deity”). Here it echoes the adjective hileōs [TG2436, ZG2664] (“gracious” or “merciful”) within the preceding Jeremiah quotation (8:12, rendered as “I will forgive their wickedness”).

9:7 the Most Holy Place. Lit., “the second,” that is, the second room of the Tabernacle, which was in fact the inner sanctuary or “Most Holy Place” (9:3).

committed in ignorance. For the distinction between sinning “unintentionally” and sinning “brazenly” or “highhandedly,” see Num 15:22-31. For early Jewish tradition, see Tob 3:3 and 1QS 9.1; and for rabbinic Judaism, see m. Yoma 8.9, which says, “If a man said, ‘I will sin and repent, and sin again and repent,’ he will be given no chance to repent. [If he said,] ‘I will sin and the Day of Atonement will effect atonement,’ then the Day of Atonement effects no atonement” (Danby 1933:172). Philo, by contrast, claimed that the Day of Atonement atoned for brazen or deliberate sins as well (Special Laws 2.196, “for remission of their sins, voluntary and involuntary”; LCL 7.429). While the NT does not make this distinction, it does recognize ignorance as an extenuating factor (see Luke 23:34; Acts 3:17-19).

9:8 the entrance to the Most Holy Place. Here the phrase “the Most Holy Place” (meaning the inner sanctuary) translates the simple ta hagia [TG40B, ZG41], rather than hagia hagiōn (as in 9:2). Having once made the distinction between the outer and inner sanctuaries, the author did not keep repeating the cumbersome hagia hagiōn but from here on used the simpler ta hagia [TG40B, ZG41] to refer to the inner sanctuary or “Most Holy Place” and to that alone (see 9:12, 24, 25; 10:19; 13:11). So far as his argument is concerned, the “Most Holy Place” (whether on earth or in heaven) is the only “Holy Place” that matters.

the Tabernacle and the system it represented. Lit., “the first tabernacle” (as in 9:2, but now with a temporal rather than spatial meaning; see commentary below).

9:9 cleanse the consciences of the people who bring them. More precisely, “perfect the conscience of the worshiper” (NRSV). As in 7:11 and 19 (also 10:1), it is a matter of the inability of the law to bring about “perfection” (teleiōsis [TG5050, ZG5459] and its related verb “perfect” teleioō [TG5048, ZG5457]). Here we learn that the “perfection” of which Hebrews speaks has to do with the human “conscience” (see also 9:14), not with physical or ceremonial cleanliness or what goes into the body.

9:10 various cleansing ceremonies. “Cleansing ceremonies” are literally “baptisms,” just as in 6:2 (see note). Here the close association with “food and drink” suggests that ritual washings before and after meals (whether by Jews or Jewish Christians) are particularly in view (see Mark 7:1-23).

until a better system could be established. Lit., “until a time of correction,” probably equivalent to “the present time” (9:9).

COMMENTARY [Text]

While the first or old covenant is “now out of date” and soon to disappear (8:13), it is not for that reason irrelevant to the author’s argument. On the contrary, he invites the reader to examine it in some detail, beginning with its “place of worship here on earth” (9:1), the Tabernacle as Moses planned it from the beginning. This is not surprising if, as God told Moses, the Tabernacle was to follow “the pattern I have shown you here on the mountain.” If it was only “a copy, a shadow of the real one in heaven” (see 8:5), it was still therefore worthy of close attention. Consequently, the author provides a kind of “virtual tour” of that Tabernacle and a glimpse of what went on there.

The tour begins and ends with references to the first covenant and its first tabernacle, where its provisions were carried out (see 9:1, 8). “First” (prōtē [TG4413, ZG4755]) has a temporal meaning in keeping with the preceding contrast between a new covenant and “the first one” (8:13). But in between, on the tour itself, “first” is used differently, referring to the audience’s imaginary act of entering a first tent or room (9:2) and then through a second curtain into a second room (see note on 9:3). “First” means “the first one you come to.” The text speaks of a “first tabernacle” or tent, and then a second, but the NLT presupposes rightly that there was only one “Tabernacle” with two rooms or compartments.

The Jewish historian Josephus took his readers on an imaginary tour of the Temple in Jerusalem in much the same way. “Proceeding across this [open court] towards the second court of the temple,” Josephus wrote, “one found it surrounded by a stone balustrade” in which “at regular intervals stood slabs giving warning . . . of the law of purification, to wit that no foreigner was permitted to enter the holy place, for so the second enclosure of the temple was called” (War 5.193-194; LCL 3.257-259; my italics). What Josephus’s translator called “the second court of the temple” or “second enclosure of the temple” was literally “the second temple” (to deuteron hieron). The author of Hebrews spoke in similar fashion of the “first” and (by implication) the “second” tabernacle of Moses. The only difference is that Josephus was taking his audience from the outermost “Court of the Gentiles” in the Jerusalem Temple (which had no equivalent in Moses’ Tabernacle) into the “Holy Place,” while in Hebrews the “Holy Place” is itself the “first” area one comes to (9:2) and “second” refers to the inner sanctuary behind or beyond it, known as the “Most Holy Place” (9:3, 7, 8). Between the two “tabernacles” or rooms was a “curtain” (katapetasma [TG2665, ZG2925]; 9:3), recalling the mysterious “curtain” in heaven, where, we were told, “Jesus has already gone” on our behalf (see 6:19-20). Our experiences as readers parallel Moses’s. Having first learned of the “pattern” shown to Moses on the mountain (8:5), we are now shown its “copy” or “shadow” on earth.

In the first room, or “Holy Place,” the author calls attention to three things (9:2): “a lampstand, a table, and sacred loaves of bread on the table,” all in keeping with the biblical description of Moses’s Tabernacle (see Exod 25:23-40; also 2 Chr 13:11). In the second room, or “Most Holy Place,” where neither he nor the audience even has a right to go (see 9:7), the author goes into far more detail, pointing out “a gold incense altar” (see Exod 30:1-6) and “the Ark of the Covenant . . . covered with gold on all sides” (9:4). The very phrase “Ark of the Covenant” recalls for the reader the preceding quotation from Jeremiah, with its promise of a new covenant replacing the old (8:8-10). The Ark (see Exod 25:10-16) captures his attention, and he then gives the audience a look inside, again at three specific things: “a gold jar containing manna” (see Exod 16:33), “Aaron’s staff that sprouted leaves” (see Num 17:1-10), and “the stone tablets of the covenant” (replicas of the tablets Moses received; see Deut 10:1-5).

Only the last of these, the stone tablets, was explicitly said to have been placed inside the Ark, according to the biblical text, with the significant added words, “And the tablets are still there ” (Deut 10:5). The jar with the manna was placed “before the Lord” or “in front of the Testimony”—the “Testimony” being the Ark and the tablets within it, viewed as bearing witness to God’s covenant with the people (see Exod 16:33-34, NIV). “Aaron’s staff that sprouted leaves”—as a sign of Aaron’s priestly authority after Korah’s rebellion against Moses—was similarly placed “in front of the Testimony, to be kept as a sign to the rebellious” (Num 17:10, NIV). The author of Hebrews imagines them inside the Ark because the biblical text locates them in relation to the Ark and because they too, like the Ark, are part of the “Testimony” to that ancient covenant. The jar of manna and the staff of Aaron testify to miraculous signs—the manna pointing to God’s provision for the people during the years of their desert wandering, and the “staff that sprouted leaves” to his choice of Aaron and his sons as the sole candidates for priesthood (see 5:4). At the same time, both hint at the dangers of apostasy, whether by those who “tested and tried my patience, even though they saw my miracles for forty years” (3:9), or more specifically by Korah and his cohorts, when they denied Moses’s authority and perished (Num 16:33-35; see also Jude 1:11). Ironically, Aaron himself had questioned Moses’s authority in an incident cited earlier in Hebrews (3:5; see Num 12:7), when he and Miriam “criticized Moses because he had married a Cushite woman,” asking “has the LORD spoken only through Moses? Hasn’t he spoken through us, too?” (Num 12:1-2). But the writer of Hebrews, like Jewish tradition generally, gave Aaron the benefit of the doubt.

The author next directs attention “above the Ark,” where “the cherubim of the divine glory [were], whose wings stretched out over the Ark’s cover, the place of atonement” (see Exod 25:18). “There,” God told Moses, “above the cover between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the Testimony, I will meet with you and give you all my commands for the Israelites” (Exod 25:22, NIV; my italics). This “place of atonement” (hilastērion [TG2435, ZG2663]) hints at the purpose of the whole system, the two rooms, and all their trappings, for it is a place of meeting and reconciliation between God and his people. While the author has not yet commented on the concluding promise in Jeremiah, “And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins” (8:12; see 10:17-18), we see here the possible means of its fulfillment (see note on 9:5). But just when the audience’s curiosity is aroused—at least any audience familiar with Paul and with Christ’s sacrifice according to Romans 3:25—the author backs away with the comment that “we cannot explain these things in detail now” (9:5b). He had gone into considerable detail already, but with this remark he leaves the impression that he knows far more than he is telling (for a similar strategy, see 11:32). We are left wanting to hear the rest, and it will not be long in coming.

Like any good tour guide, the author not only shows us the place and its furnishings but invites us to imagine what went on there on a regular basis, starting at the “first” room (9:6) and moving on to the “second” (see note on 9:7). The former was the place for routine priestly activities; the latter, as the NLT makes explicit, was a very special place—“the Most Holy Place,” where only the high priest could go, but “only once a year.” There, the author says (for the third time), is where the high priest offered blood sacrifices “for his own sins and for the sins the people had committed” (9:7; see also 5:3; 7:27), adding only that the sins taken away had to be sins “committed in ignorance” (see note on 9:7). The audience knows by this time that Jesus, by contrast, did not have to offer sacrifices for his own sins because he had none (7:26-27), and they can infer that his blood sacrifice (also by contrast) took away all sins, not only those “committed in ignorance,” but even those committed “brazenly” or “deliberately” (see Num 15:30-31).

The author does not stop to point this out but instead comments that in these ancient Scriptures describing the Tabernacle that Moses built (above all Exod 25–26), “the Holy Spirit” was showing or revealing something to the author and his readers (9:8), just as the Spirit was “speaking” in the words of David’s psalm (3:7) and “testifying” in Jeremiah’s words about the “new covenant” (see 10:15). What was the Spirit’s revelation? The author calls it an “illustration,” or parable (parabolē [TG3850, ZG4130]), “pointing to the present time” (9:9). In effect, he is claiming the Spirit’s authority in giving a figurative or symbolic meaning to the “first” and “second” rooms in Moses’s Tabernacle. By referring explicitly to “the present time,” he acknowledges that the Tabernacle he has been describing does not belong to the present time (i.e., the time of the author) but to the remote past. The Ark of the Covenant and the furnishings of that ancient Tabernacle had long since disappeared, and the author’s interest at this point is not in them but solely in the two rooms, or two “tabernacles,” comprising the “Holy Place” and the “Most Holy Place,” respectively.

The symbolic interpretation depends on reverting to the temporal meaning of the word “first” (as in 9:1). The author comments that “the entrance to the Most Holy Place” (that is, the second room) was not accessible as long as the “first tabernacle” was still in place. The “first tabernacle” is what the NLT calls “the Tabernacle and the system it represented” (9:8; see note). It is part and parcel of the “first covenant,” and as such it is “obsolete” and “out of date” (see 8:7, 13). It belongs to the past, while the “second” tabernacle, or room, belongs to the “new covenant” and consequently to the present and the future. We will hear more of it shortly, but for the time being the author focuses on “that old system” and its limitations. Specifically, the old system dealt “only with food and drink and various cleansing ceremonies” (9:10). All its “gifts and sacrifices,” he claims, were powerless to perfect “the consciences of the people who bring them” (9:9; see note).

The author had previously dropped hints that his real quarrel was not so much with the Levitical priesthood as such (which may have been a thing of the past, depending on when Hebrews is dated) but with the law that established it (see 7:5, 12, 16, 19, 28; 8:4). He hints further that perhaps the legal issues that concern him most immediately have to do with “food and drink and various cleansing ceremonies” in particular. These could have been aspects of the old system that were especially attractive to some Jewish Christians and even gentile converts. There is no way to verify this, but the author returns to the subject twice in later discussion (see 12:16; 13:9-10) and would quite likely have agreed with Paul’s dictum that “the Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink” (Rom 14:17; see also 1 Cor 8:8; Col 2:16). Such things as food, drink, and ritual cleansing he calls mere “physical regulations” in force until a “time of correction” (see note on 9:10), a time that has now begun with Jesus’ enthronement as High Priest and his establishment of a new and better covenant (see 8:1-6).

In conclusion, a temporal understanding of “first” and “second” means that the first room in Moses’s Tabernacle corresponds to this world, and the law and priesthood belonging to it, which the author saw as growing old and passing away. The second room represents “the future world” (see 2:5) with its new priesthood and new covenant, a world already upon us and to which we are called in Jesus Christ. Alternatively, “first” can refer to laws and priestly activities on earth and “second” to “God’s inner sanctuary” in heaven, where “Jesus has already gone” (6:19-20). Hebrews shares with most early Jewish and Christian apocalyptic writings a stark contrast which can be expressed either temporally, as a contrast between this world and the world to come, or spatially, between this world and the world above. Either way, the contrast is between the sorrow and imperfection of the world as we know it and the glory and joy of an unseen world that God has prepared for his people.

The guided tour is now complete. The audience has been allowed to go past the “first” room (9:2) through the “second” curtain into the “second” room (9:3), where only the high priest could ever go, and then only once a year (9:7). What is left, except to enter heaven itself, where hope “leads us through the curtain into God’s inner sanctuary,” where “Jesus has already gone” (6:19-20)? The author will shortly take us there as well, urging his audience to enter by personal faith as pilgrims on a journey, where “a huge crowd of witnesses” (12:1) has gone before.