RY AND

b.

of the new Covenant. It advances now towards the Sanctuary and the Sacrifice wherein we see

ot holiest, the depository of lamp and table, but then beyond it, parted from it by the inner curtain, the adylum itself, the Holiest Place, where lay ready for use "a golden censer," the vessel needful for the making of the incense-cloud which should veil the glory, and, above all, the Ark of that first covenant of which so much has now been said.

m the text in this verse, and understa

had long vanished out of sight. The temple of Herod, with its vacant Holiest, was the sanctuary of his generation. But the Mosaic picture of the Tent and of the Ark was for him the abid

t," W. M?ller: Bedenken gegen die Graf-Wellhausensche Hypothese, von einem früheren Anh?nger (Gütersloh, 1899). The writer, a young and vigorous student and thinker, explains with remarkable force the immense difficulties from the purely critical po

ine, the place of the Presence, and the sacrificial process by which alone the rare privilege of entrance into it could be obtained. The outer chamber was the daily scene of priestly ministration. But the inner was, officially at least, entered once only in the year, and by the High Priest alone, in the

with a view to the purity of the flesh" (ver. 13), satisfying the conditions of a national and temporal acceptance. Its holiest place was indeed approachable, once annually, by one representative person; enough to illustrate and to seal a hope; but otherwise, and far more deeply, the conditions symbolized separation and a Divine reserve. But "the good things to come"[I] were in the Divine view all along. The "time of reformation" (ver. 10), of the rectification of the failures suffered under the first covenant, drew near. Behold Messiah steps upon the scene, the true High Priest (ver. 11). Victim and Sacrificer at once, He sheds His own sacrificial blood (ver. 12) on the altar of Golgotha, to be His means (δι? c. gen.) of acceptable approach. And then He passes, through the avenue of a sanctuary "not made with hands" (ver. 11), even the heavenly world itself (cp. διεληλυθ?τα το?? ο?ρανο??, iv. 14), into the Holiest Place of the eternal Presence on the throne. He goes in thither, there to be, and there to do, all that we know of fr

9). The Epistle alludes, so I should conjecture, to the period of its writing as a time when the sacrifices were still going

?ν, "the good things that are come" (R.V. marg

el there in peace (ver. 23). Even so, only after a higher and holier order, must it be with the better covenant and that invisible sanctuary where a reconciled God may for ever meet in peace His spiritual Israel. There must be priestly immolation and an offered sacrifice; there must be peace conditioned by life-blood shed. And such is the work of our Messiah-Priest. He has "borne the sins of many" (ver. 28). Presenting Himself (ver. 6) as the Atonement Victim, in the heavenly Holiest, He has thereby "borne," uplifted (?νενεγκε?ν), in that Presence, for pardon and peace, the sins of the new Israel. And so "the heavenly things" are, relatively to that Israel, "cleansed"; their God can meet them in that sanctuary with an intimacy and access free and perfect, because their High Priest and Mediator has done His work for them. For ever and ever now they need no new sacrifice; His blood, once shed, is eternally sufficient. Aye, and they need now for ever no repeated offering (ver. 25) of sacrifice,

? διαθεμ?νου. I am convinced that this rendering, though it has the serious difficulty of lacki

tal, if possible, is the affirmation here of the need and of the virtue of His vicarious death. The chapter puts His blood-shedding before us in a way as remote as possible from a mere example, or from a suffering meant to do its work mainly by a mysterious impartation to us of the power to suffer. He dies "for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant"

not need to listen again, reverent and believing, to the ninth chapter of the He