Hebrews: An Introduction and Study Guide

Amy L. B. Peeler, Patrick Gray

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780567674777
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

This volume offers a compact introduction to one of the most daunting texts in the New Testament. The Letter to the Hebrews has inspired many readers with its encomium to faith, troubled others with its hard sayings on the impossibility of a second repentance, and perplexed still others with its exegetical assumptions and operations drawn from a cultural matrix that is largely alien to modern sensibilities. Long thought to be Paul, the anonymous author of Hebrews exhibits points of continuity with the apostle and other New Testament writers in the letter's (or sermon's) vision of life in the light of the crucified Messiah, but one also finds distinctive perspectives in such areas as Christology, eschatology, and atonement. Gray and Peeler survey the salient historical, social, and rhetorical factors to be considered in the interpretation of this document, as well as its theological, liturgical, and cultural legacy. They invite readers to enter the world of one of the boldest Christian thinkers of the first century.

1

The Argument of Hebrews: God Speaks

Chapter outline

The proclamation of the supremacy of Christ and his salvation (1:1–2:18)

The example of Israel in the wilderness (3:1–4:13)

Jesus the great high priest (4:14–5:10)

Christian maturity: Warnings and encouragement (5:11–6:20)

The proclamation of the supremacy of Christ and his salvation (1:1–2:18)

From the outset, the exposition of Hebrews focuses on two vehicles of divine revelation: the Son and the Scriptures. Each conveys knowledge about the other. Having introduced the Son in just the second phrase, the author extols his supremacy throughout the first chapter in a series of citations from the sacred texts of the people of Israel. It is hardly remarkable for a first-century Christian writer to focus on Jesus and the Scriptures, but the author’s exegetical twists and turns were, one may surmise, sufficiently provocative to hold the audience’s attention.

The first sentence (vv. 1-4) in many modern translations comprises an entire paragraph. It includes no explicitly biblical material, but the author unmistakably echoes Scripture and thereby draws comparisons between the Son and various aspects of God, namely, God’s word and God’s wisdom. Several qualities are predicated of the Son in this opening sentence, many of which find parallels in the Old Testament. Hebrews may not refer to him as the logos (“word”), as does the prologue to the Gospel of John, but the Son is a medium of divine speech. Nor does Hebrews declare, like Paul, that Christ is “the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:30), yet he exemplifies many of its signal qualities. God’s powerful wisdom (Ps. 103:24; Prov. 3:19; Wis. 7:22, 27; 8:1) was active in the creation of the world, as was his word, to which the angels are said to be subservient (Ps. 32:6; Wis. 9:1; cf. Ps. 102:20). Wisdom also reflects God’s glory and is associated with the name and greatness of God (Dan. 2:20; Wis. 7:25-26). Philo of Alexandria uses some of the same terminology as Heb. 1:3 in making many of the same attributions—for example, that wisdom existed before the beginning of time as the mother and nurse of the whole universe and that the word is the radiance (apaugasma) of the blessed nature and the seal (charactēr) of the divine nature (Ebr. 31; Op. Mund. 146 Plant. 18).

Two attributes of the Son are without precedent in Jewish descriptions of God’s wisdom and word. First, Jewish writers never describe God’s word or wisdom as an inheritor. People may inherit wisdom (Philo, Heir 98), but wisdom, as a personified quality, does not itself inherit anything. By contrast, in Hebrews, the Son is described as an heir at the beginning and end of the opening paragraph. Second, neither Sophia nor Logos are described as purifying agents.

By describing Jesus in this way, the author indicates that he finds widespread notions about the wisdom and word of God useful in understanding the Son without being constrained by them. In other words, the Son may be like God’s word and God’s wisdom, but he is not to be identified with either of them without remainder. He does things they do not do—namely, inherit and purify—which highlight his most important roles in Hebrews, Son and Priest. This opening paragraph shows the balance the author maintains between the old and the new. The old (the Scriptures) grants understanding of the new (the Son), but the new redefines the framework of the old. Hence, while the Scriptures convey knowledge about the Son, so too does the Son convey knowledge about the Scriptures.

This hermeneutical symbiosis becomes even more pronounced in the catena of seven Scripture citations in Heb. 1:5-13 (in order, Ps. 2:7; 2 Sam. 7:14; Deut. 32:43; Ps. 104:4; 45:6-7; 102:25-27; 110:1; cf. Schenck 2001). In some cases, the author has selected texts that in their original context refer to the heir of David. The first two citations fall into this category. Psalm 2:7 is a royal psalm that was read by some Jews as referring to the Messiah, as was 2 Sam. 7:14 (//1 Chron. 17:13), where Nathan speaks to David concerning his son. The fifth citation in vv. 8-9 (Ps. 45) is likewise written in praise of the king. The final citation (v. 13) from Ps. 110:1 is one of the most frequently cited messianic texts in the New Testament, so like other Jews who professed Jesus as the Messiah, this author saw such royal texts as applying to Jesus the Son.

The third and sixth texts in the catena refer to God rather than to David. In Deut. 32 (Heb. 1:6), Moses invites the angels to join him in praising God, and in Ps. 101:26-28 (Heb. 1:10-12) the psalmist acclaims God for his qualities of permanence and immutability. In the author’s reading, texts about David and his son as well as texts about God apply to this Son. For this reason, Athanasius would later view the Son as fully divine and coequal with the Father. Arius cites the same texts to argue that he was a created being and therefore subordinate to the Father, with the “begetting” of the Son in Heb. 1:5 identified variously with Jesus’s birth, baptism, death, resurrection, or exaltation. While the author of Hebrews might have felt out of place at Nicaea in 325 or Chalcedon in 451, in retrospect it is not difficult to see how the early church found in his writings a warrant for the dual assertion that Jesus was both a human heir of David and also worthy of worship as the eternal creator God.

Remarkably, the author does not make these claims on his own authority or in his own voice. This is a subtle but significant point. He does not simply claim that Scripture supports his claim about Jesus’s messianic or divine status or even preface his quotations with the formula “it is written,” as if he were engaged in a theological debate requiring the citation of sources. Instead, he retreats after his eloquent first sentence and allows God to speak. Each of the seven citations is introduced either explicitly or implicitly with “God said.” Upon what greater authority could the author base his claims about this Son? Moreover, most of the citations (in vv. 5, 8-9, 10-12, and 13) take the form of direct address. God is speaking to the Son, and by presenting the texts in this way the author allows the audience to eavesdrop. No other New Testament author presents God’s voice in quite the same manner (Docherty 2009).

If Hebrews had held the view that the age of prophecy had ceased—occasionally voiced in the postexilic period (1 Macc. 9:27; Josephus, C. Ap. 1.37-41; t. Soṭah 13.2)—its author now believes that any such hiatus is over. Moses, Nathan, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, and Haggai are among the prophets of old through whom people may hear God speaking in Hebrews 1 and elsewhere in the letter. Against the view that God’s voice has with time become more distant, muted, and difficult to distinguish, Hebrews asserts th at it has never been transmitted with such clarity than “in these last days” (1:2).

But why do the angels appear in this thoroughly scriptural argument about the relationship between God and the Son in vv. 5-14? They serve as a foil to the Son in the first and last citation: God speaks in this way to the Son but never to angels. They give worship to the Son in the third citation and are described as ministering spirits and flames of fire in the fourth. In the final verse (v. 14) their role as servants to “those who are to inherit salvation” anticipates the discussion in Hebrews 2 of the relationship between the Son and his co-heirs, the other sons and daughters to whom Hebrews is addressed. Whether the angels are meant to represent a sort of ontological “buffer” between the divine and human that underscores the proximity of the Son to the former, as some interpreters have suggested, or to contrast with and thus accentuate the humanity of the Son is not clear (Bauckham 2008: 240–41). Whatever the precise significance, their presence facilitates the realization that, however mundanely orthodox Hebrews 1 may sound in its affirmation of the humanity and divinity of the Son, it was written by an author and for a community whose particular religious convictions and conceptual universe remain something of a mystery. Angels mattered then in a way that angels do not matter today for most readers, which serves as a reminder that even for many monotheistic communities the supernatural world is densely populated (cf. Heb. 12:22-24 to see how crowded “the heavenly Jerusalem” will be). Hebrews therefore invites readers to consider the known along with the unknown.

Here the angels appear in the first in a series of comparisons between Jesus and previous messengers and mediators. The author does not denigrate them or other precursors such as Moses (3:1-6) even as he stresses the auxiliary nature of their role in salvation history. The Son has appeared late in the game, so to speak, but it would be a mistake to consider his part as secondary or superfluous. With each comparison, the author concludes that Jesus is “better” or “superior.” (The adjective kreittōn in Heb. 1:4—the Son has “become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs”—is used a dozen times in Hebrews.) The logic that governs the a fortiori argument that runs through Hebrews from beginning to end is premised on the validity of these prior announcements of God’s will, a point to which the author turns in Hebrews 2.

The chapter division at this point makes perfect literary sense because for the first time (but not the last) the author moves from exegesis—his reading of Scripture—to exhortation—his charge concerning what actions the audience should take in light of the Scriptures explicated (2:1-4). Unsurprisingly for an orator of such skill, his first exhortation is that they pay close attention to what he has just told them, yet he includes himself in the group that should be listening, employing the first-person plural “we.” To be sure, his own speech is worthy of a hearing, but more importantly, God’s speech in the Scriptures and in the Son is to be heeded. Also for the first time, the author sounds a warning about the consequences that could result due to a lack of attention. Just as the mind wanders during a speech without concerted effort, so too might this audience drift away if they do not focus on God’s words.

To emphasize the point, he returns to the angels. Jewish tradition sometimes held that angels were present at Mount Sinai and acted as intermediaries when God gave the law to Moses (Jub. 1.27-29; Josephus, Ant. 15.136; Acts 7:38). Transgression of God’s word previously given through angels “received a just penalty,” the author reminds them, and any disregard for God’s word more recently delivered through the Son will likewise be punished (2:2-3). There is some ambiguity in the way he describes the harm in “neglect[ing] so great a salvation.” The expected answer to his rhetorical question (“how can we escape?”) is obviously, “we cannot.” This may imply that there can be no escape from God’s punishment or, alternatively, that there can be no escape from the situation in which humanity finds itself—that is, enslaved to the fear of death (cf. 2:15). In other words, it might be not that God actively punishes those who do not heed his salvific word in the Son, but in so doing, they leave themselves in thrall to “the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (2:14). Whereas sins of commission were punished in the past, “in these last days” a sin of omission may lead to even more dire consequences. Both the promise and the peril are now higher than in the past, and so the audience must attend to the good news even more diligently if they are not to be “among those who shrink back and so are lost” (10:39).

The author goes into further detail concerning the manner in which God has now communicated this great salvation. A three-step process begins with the salvation being spoken by the Lord. First, kyrios can refer either to God or to Jesus in other New Testament writings, but because the author of Hebrews has previously used it exclusively in reference to the Son (Heb. 1:10) and because this message is then passed on by people who heard him, it makes sense to understand “Lord” in Heb. 2:3 as a reference to the speech of the human Jesus. The second step involves the messengers. They communicate this salvation from the Lord to the author and his audience. Finally, God supplements their witness, not through the medium of words but of deeds, including “wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit” (2:4). The author articulates no fully developed Trinitarian theology, but all three “persons” of God, as they will later be known, are involved here in the dissemination of this salvific revelation.

After this first exhortation, the author resumes his exegesis in Heb. 2:5-9, again drawing a comparison with angels. But in contrast to Hebrews 1, here Jesus’s sovereignty over the angels derives not from his status as Son of God, but as “son of man.” The author interprets portions of a psalm praising God for caring for humanity (Ps. 8:4-6) in reference to Jesus. By rendering huios anthrōpou as “mortals” or “human beings” (NRSV; CEB) rather than “son of man,” some translations completely obscure the unmistakable allusion to Jesus that the author finds in the literal words of the Septuagint text he is quoting. The translation of singular pronouns (“him,” “his”) as plural (“them,” “their”) has the same distorting effect. Jesus is the one who was made lower than the angels and is now crowned with glory and honor. The author understands brachy (vv. 7, 9) temporally rather than spatially (so, in English, “for a little while”), in line with his emphasis on the work accomplished by Jesus’s suffering during his time on earth. In this respect, the narrative of Jesus’s career resembles that of the “Christ hymn” quoted by Paul in Phil. 2:6-11. As Jews looked forward to the day when humans would reign over God’s creation, Jesus is now the first human to exercise that sovereignty (cf. 1QS 4:22b-23a; Jub. 1:29; 4 Ezra 7:10-14; Moffitt 2011: 81–118). By virtue of his relationship both with God and with humanity, Jesus is supreme over the angels.

Hebrews now has more to say about the Son’s relationship with humanity and the significance of the suffering he experiences in that state (2:10-13). The author claims that suffering worked to bring him to “perfection.” Moreover, this suffering has salvific merit for the many children who are on their way to glory because the perfected Jesus serves as “the pioneer of their salvation” (2:10; cf. 12:2). The notion of vicarious suffering raises eyebrows among some feminist theologians, but the potential difficulty is further heightened when the author says that God’s involvement is “fitting.” Does Hebrews advocate a kind of cosmic child abuse by which the Father inflicts suffering upon the Son (Brown and Bohn 1989)? Two factors suggest that the answer is no: (1) according to Hebrews, the Father allows this suffering but does not inflict it. Rather, its true sources are sin and the devil; and (2) the Son willingly takes on the suffering of death out of his own desire to rescue humanity.

The author’s primary focus is on the way in which this process sets humanity into a specific relationship. “The one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified” come from one source (literally, “are all of one”). Both Adam and God have been identified as this unnamed source, but by this point in the letter, it is clear that neither one can be denied. Jesus and his followers share both the human condition and also God as their father. By virtue then of his dual sonships—he is son of humanity as well as Son of God—he is unashamed to address humanity as his siblings. He has been lowered to the human condition and so shares their humanity, and he has in turn elevated them into a relationship in which God is their father.

Of the many prooftexts he might have chosen, why does the author make his case by invoking Ps. 21:23 LXX in Heb. 2:12-13? The initial motivation, it seems, is to put a text on the Son’s lips in which he uses the word adelphos, “brother.” This citation is taken from a later portion of the same psalm which, in Matthew and Mark, supplies Jesus’s last words from the cross (Ps. 22:1 in Mt. 27:46; Mk 15:34: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”). The verse quoted in Hebrews comes from a later section where the psalmist turns from lament to praise. Jesus also addresses God as he declares that humans are his siblings. If Jesus is the “firstborn” Son of God (Rom. 8:29; Col. 1:15; Rev. 1:5) and believers are, here as elsewhere in early Christian discourse, children of God (Jn 1:12; Rom. 8:14-17; Gal. 4:6-7), then it follows that he is their older brother, setting a far better example in this role than Cain and Esau, the other older brothers mentioned in Hebrews (11:4; 12:16-17).

One might read these citations as the second half of a conversation ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Argument of Hebrews: God Speaks
• 2 The Argument of Hebrews: Priesthood and Covenant
• 3 The Holy Spirit in Hebrews
• 4 The Reception History of Hebrews
• For Further Study
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright