7Remember your leaders who taught you the word of God. Think of all the good that has come from their lives, and follow the example of their faith. 8Jesus Christ [is] the same yesterday, today, and forever. 9So do not be attracted by strange, new ideas. Your strength comes from God’s grace, not from rules about food, which don’t help those who follow them. 10We have an altar from which the priests in the Tabernacle have no right to eat. 11Under the old system, the high priest brought the blood of animals into the Holy Place as a sacrifice for sin, and the bodies of the animals were burned outside the camp. 12So also Jesus suffered and died outside the city gates to make his people holy by means of his own blood. 13So let us go out to him, outside the camp, and bear the disgrace he bore. 14For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come. 15Therefore, let us offer through Jesus a continual sacrifice of praise to God, proclaiming our allegiance to his name. 16And don’t forget to do good and to share with those in need. These are the sacrifices that please God. 17Obey your spiritual leaders, and do what they say. Their work is to watch over your souls, and they are accountable to God. Give them reason to do this with joy and not with sorrow. That would certainly not be for your benefit.
Hebrews 13:7-17
In the whole passage (13:7-17) I have picked out the difficult portions in red and the repetition of “outside the camp/gates” in orange. What isn’t included at this point is the ending which Ross feels reads like a final close of the letter from Paul. We will include that when we move on to the following closing segments. My intention at this point is to deal with each one of these difficulties one by one and then attempt to look at the flow of it all to determine if it is possible to put it altogether again. We deconstruct all sorts of things these days, including food, but we must also reconstruct to regain the full flavour; with apologies for the pun on the food analogy.
Here are the problematic verses:-
8Jesus Christ [is] the same yesterday, today, and forever.
9So do not be attracted by strange, new ideas. Your strength comes from God’s grace, not from rules about food, which don’t help those who follow them.
10We have an altar from which the priests in the Tabernacle have no right to eat.
11Under the old system, the high priest brought the blood of animals into the Holy Place as a sacrifice for sin, and the bodies of the animals were burned outside the camp. 12So also Jesus suffered and died outside the city gates to make his people holy by means of his own blood. 13So let us go out to him, outside the camp, and bear the disgrace he bore.
What is remarkable is that these four difficult verses follow one another in order. So whatever we come up with must make sense individually and as a whole. In Deeper Bible we are currently looking at the principles of rightly interpreting God’s Word. I have discussed Using Commentaries with the participants and the pitfalls associated with that. Often the commentaries have nothing to say about the really difficult verses and just gloss over them. The other problem is commentaries are the opinions of people or on occasions the best educated guess. You should really know the theological background and historical precedence of each commentary and you should take a survey across the commentaries to gain a sense of what has been said from extreme left to extreme right. But no normal person can do that because commentaries cost so much money. Only Bible College or Seminary students who have time to do research in the library can do that.
I do have an advantage in that I have in my library the Wycliffe / SIL series of Exegetical Helps, produced to help Bible translators to have before them a survey of the range of opinions on each verse collected from the various commentaries. But as I have said above, many times when we look into the really difficult verses we find no comment. Ah, the problem must be REALLY difficult and the commentators are avoiding the issues, putting them in the ‘too hard basket’. I also have William L Lane’s Word Biblical Commentary on the text of Hebrews which is comprehensive. Added to that I have Neva Miller’s An Analytical and Exegetical Handbook on the Epistle to the Hebrews as well as Arnold G Fruchtenbaum’s Commentary on Hebrews, An Exposition from a Messianic Jewish Perspective. However, I constantly tell participants in Deeper Bible to do their own analysis of the text first before they turn to the commentaries.
I will now do a foolish thing and attempt to address this series of difficult verses and pull it all together in the end to make sense. You, my readers, can be the judge of how successful I have been in the end.
Let’s begin with the first of our problematic verses. It is the easiest one of the four, but it still holds difficulty. The verse in itself doesn’t appear to be difficult.
8Jesus Christ [is] the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Notice it is greyed out and in italics. I chose both conventions to ensure you got the message. The problem with this verse is firstly that it is clearly in a liturgical form: a poem, a saying or a song. But the literal Greek does not include a verb.
᾿Ιησοῦς Χριστὸς
χθὲς
καὶ
σήμερον
ὁ αὐτός
καὶ
εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας.
There should be a verb somewhere in that utterance, poem, song or liturgy but it has been omitted. It is most likely to be the present form of the verb to be – [is] – but where does it fit? It could be between the first two words as a number of commentators think, yielding Jesus is Christ; Jesus is the Messiah. Or it could mean Jesus Christ is the same yesterday today and forever. The third word [χθὲς] is the word for ‘yesterday’. The fifth word [σήμερον] is the word for ‘today’. [ὁ αὐτός] carries the meaning ‘the same’ or even ‘the one’. Finally the words [εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας] ‘forever’ or more literally “to the ages”. Given the way the verse is structured it is difficult to tell where to put the verb but we know it ought to be there. All of this has led to a great diversity of exegesis. Not so much on the meaning of the verse, but more the purpose of the verse in the context of the surrounding sentences. Here again the experts are divided. Some think it is connected with verse 7, others think it is connected with verse 9 and of course, you guessed it, others think the verse is connected to both verses 7 and 9. That is, it’s a bridge between verse 7 and verse 9. And you thought knowing Greek would make things clear.
What is yesterday [χθὲς] linked to? It could be to the more distant past in the form of all the men and women of faith in Chapter 11, or it could relate to the more immediate past in the sense of the leaders who have been teaching them the Word of God. The today [σήμερον] is more likely a reference to the present at the time of the recipients of the letter. Thus the link to verse 9 and the advice to the current Hebrews Christians to guard against false teaching. Our difficulty is working out the purpose of the author by including this saying , poem, liturgy at this point and the meaning of it in the context in which it is placed. The name Jesus Christ is only used three times in Hebrews in 10:10, 13:8 and 13:21. This time (Hebrews 13:8) Jesus Christ has been placed in the beginning of the sentence for emphasis, in the other two verses Jesus Christ appears in the final position in the sentence.
I have summarised for you the alternative interpretations the experts have given. I will pull it all together when I give you my conclusion of how all of these difficult verses fit together. As I remind those doing Deeper Bible, commentaries are essence the opinions of men and women or their best educated guess. It goes without saying that the Gems I write are in the same category. You may disagree with my conclusions. There are many learned readers of the Gems. I invite their comments as well into this investigation of some very difficult verses. I invite you all to consider what you think about these difficult verses as we work through them. You too can weigh up the evidence and hazard a guess.
Being certain of Scripture’s authority is humility. Being certain that my interpretation is always right is arrogance.
Rick Warren
I believe in the absolute inerrancy of Scripture, I do not believe in the inerrancy of my interpretation.
Basil Brown
Most of the Bible doesn’t require interpretation, just common sense and obedience!
Ian
There are four levels of Interpretation according to the Rabbis:- Peshat, the plain meaning; Remez, the hinted or implied meaning; Derash, the deeper or alllusory meaning; Sod, the hidden meaning.
Ian
I myself have always liked that verse as a stand alone statement. It’s solid and stands strong. It also has to be true doesn’t it? We can’t have God changing his mind every 5 minutes.
Kevin
Yes Kev, It’s a great verse, but you will see it doesn’t stand alone. Oh most often we make it stand alone but in actual fact it comes from a context first and foremost. Keep tracking the continuing story as it unfolds.