Discuss the way the author of Hebrews uses the Old Testament
by
Chi-Keung Ng
Introduction
One special feature of the epistle of Hebrews is its extensive use of the OT. Most of the discussions in the epistle are either concerning an OT character, phrase or passage or are applications of the OT to the situation of the audience. The purpose of this article is to study how the author used the OT materials in his epistle and to tackle some common criticisms on this.
Generally speaking, there are three main problems concerning the uses of the OT in Hebrews:
1. The appropriateness of the applications of some quotations.
2. The differences in some quotations with the LXX.
3. The correctness of the author's interpretations.
Being a book in the Scripture, the honesty of the author and the soundness of his argument is crucial. It is also important to distinguish the way the OT was used in Hebrews and an arbitrary "creative understanding" of the Scriptures.
In the following, we divide the uses of the OT in Hebrews into 4 different categories and will briefly look at some individual usage of the OT and discuss these three problems on our way.
Four categories of usage of the OT in Hebrews
The first kind of OT usage consists of those taken for granted quotations. These OT verses were used without a long discussion or exposition. The author seems to assume the audience to agree with his interpretation of the verse (sometimes, the interpretations weren't even stated explicitly). These quotations were used as examples, illustrations or supports for the main argument.
The first series of such usage can be found in 1:5-14 when the author gave 7 quotations for the comparison of the Son and the angels. In 1:2-3, the author started talking about the Son who is also the heir of all things, through whom all things were created and sustained, who is the glory and the image of God, the saviour as well as the one sitting at the right hand of God. In the following, we will simply use the designation "the SON". The quotations in 1:5-14 were then used to compare the SON with the angels.
One may ask the reason for this comparison of the SON and the angels. There is a suggestion that the author was refuting the belief that the SON is just an angel. Meier recorded in his article some other possible explanations: to flight against a type of angel worship or veneration of angelic priests; polemicizing against the idea of multiple intermediaries; to paint a picture of royal enthronement with angels as the court audience; to warn against neglecting the revelation from the SON who is superior to the angels (the Mosaic revelation was thought to be communicated through an angel).
However, I do not think that the author was using these quotations to argue against any incorrect belief because his quotations were so brief and he didn't even make clear the points he was making. Some of these quotations may not even be accepted by those who held those beliefs. On the other hand, I suggest another explanation for these quotations: the author used the angels as a reference point to compare the position of the SON before and after His incarnation. That is why there are so many quotations in 1:5-14 followed by another discussion in 2:5-10 concerning the position of the SON after his incarnation.
These seven quotations fall into 4 groups: introducing the Son of God; the SON and the angels; the SON as God; the SON as the triumphant Lord. One important thing about these quotations is that they addressed the SON as the King (ruler of angels and having an eternal kingdom) which was missing from the main discussion of the epistle.
Let us now give some explanations of these quotations. Unlike Meier, we see the first quotation as proclaiming the nature of the SON: begotten not created. This quotation was taken from Psalm 2:7 and was used in Acts13:32-33 to refer to Jesus. Moreover, Psalm 2:2 was also used in the prayer in Acts4:25-26 concerning Jesus. Therefore, Psalm 2 may be a Messianic proof text in the early church. The second quotation is different from the first one because it states that the SON is not just the Son of God by nature but also by the will of God. The quotation was taken from 2Sa7:14. In 2Sa7:13, it was said that God "will establish the throne of his kingdom forever". Probably it was because of this "forever" that made the author think that this was referring to the Messiah.
The next two quotations stated the relation between the SON and the angels. The third quotation clearly said that the angels worship Him. The fourth one said that the SON made the angels (we accepted the interpretation of Meier here).
The fifth and the sixth quotations seem to identify the SON directly with God. The original texts were clearly talking about God. In fact, it is strange that in the fifth quotation, God seems to be identified with the one whom God anointed. Will it be possible that the author was using this text to show that the Messiah (the SON) is actually God? If so, the sixth quotation becomes legitimate. In any case, if we assume that the author was not trying to prove anything here but only to give a mental picture of how far the position between the SON and the angels is (and the author assumed his audience to agree with him that the SON is actually God), then there is no problem here. Anyway, these two verses also show the distinction of the angels from the SON who was anointed above the angels and who is eternally unchangeable.
According to Meier, the final quotation gave another comparison that the SON is sitting while the angels are ministering (v.14). On the other hand, it also paints a picture of a triumphant Lord.
The above were concerning the first 7 quotations in the first category. Other quotations in this category are: 2:12-13 (giving evidences that the SON called human being His brothers); 4:4 (another description on God's rest); 5:5 (repeating the quotation in 1:5); 6:13-15 (showing God's faithfulness to Abraham); 8:8-13 (showing that God has made the former covenant old and bring forth a new one); 9:20 (an example showing the relation between blood and covenant); 10:15-17 (an support for the claim that there is a complete forgiveness in the new covenant); 10:30 (God is a judge); 12:26 (the comparison between the shakable and the unshakable); 13:5 (God will never forsake us); 13:6 (do not be afraid).
The second category contains those OT quotations that were discussed in great details (quotations with expositions). In some cases, individual terms in these quotations were discussed in great length. Occasionally, new or spiritual interpretations of these terms were given. These quotations can be regarded as the controlling texts for most of the discussions in the epistle and there are altogether seven of them. Amongst these seven, five were proposed by Longenecker and France added three more but we move one of France's additions to the third category.
1). 2:6-8 (exposition 2:8-9). The author applied this Psalm to the incarnated SON. As stated above, angels served as a reference point here. The SON was far above angels but became a little lower than them in the man Jesus. There were some arguments about the validity of applying this Psalm to Jesus because this Psalm was clearly talking about all human being instead of Jesus. Some people suggested that it is because the author saw Jesus as the representative of mankind. We have no objection to this suggestion. However, the concept of a representative is very close to what Plato called the form or ideal. In fact, it is more natural to think that the author actually saw Jesus as the "ideal of mankind". Later on, we will also see that some other strange interpretations of the author can be explained if we assume that he was influence by some Greek philosophies.
2). 3:7-11 (exposition 3:12-4:11). The main message of the exposition is the following warning: "the people that Moses led out of Egypt couldn't enter the rest because of disbelieve; therefore, you must not harden your heart because you have a more important "rest" that is in danger of losing if you do so". However, the author seems to be over-interpreting the text a bit. I couldn't help to think of the following scenario:
I wouldn't say this boy is wrong in thinking this way but it is strange. The same applies to the interpretation in 3:12-4:11. However, this interpretation may become natural if we assume that the author held a view that for everything in the OT, there is a direct spiritual correspondence. It is not hard to image that a person holding this dualistic view will insist that there is a "heavenly rest" behind Psalm 95:11. This sort of dualism may seem alien in our days but is probably quite common in the days of the author, especially, amongst the Greek thinkers. So, we see again how Greek philosophies affected the author's interpretation of the OT.
3). 5:6 (exposition 7:1-28). The author used this verse to justify the claim that Jesus is a priest. The text speaks of a priest ordained by God in the order of Melchizedek. Psalm 110 may be a well-known Messianic proof text in the early church (Peter also used it in his sermon in Acts 2). It seems to be legitimate for the author to apply Psalm 110:4 on Jesus.
4). 8:5 (exposition 9:1-28). This quotation was used to show that the Aaronian priesthood, together with its sacrificial system, is just a shadow of the true thing in Heaven. Again, the question of interpretation arises here. There is no mention of the true Tent in the quotation. A natural understanding of the text will be that God was showing Moses a blueprint or a model. What made the author jump directly to the conclusion that God shows Moses the "true thing" in Heaven? Once again, it will become clear if we assume a Platonic background of the author. In fact, it is not hard to image what a person soaked deeply in Platonism would be thinking when he read that God show Moses what He wanted him to make in the high mountain: "What else will that be except the ideals of the tabernacle in Heaven?"
5). 10:5-7 (exposition 10:8-14). This is used to show that God set up the true sacrifice (Jesus himself) alongside with the true priesthood. There are two questions concerning this quotation. The first one is whether it is legitimate to apply this quotation on Jesus. The second one is whether the author is guilty of changing the original text to suit his argument. Although there are numerous differences between other quotations in Hebrews and the LXX that we have (see e.g. McCullough), the differences in this quotation is crucial because the meaning changed dramatically. For example, as Jobes said, the change from ear to body is not just "the whole being used for part" (as suggested by Kaiser). The original verse probably means listening but the one in 10:5-6 seems pointing to the body being prepared for sacrifice. It may be possible that the text the author used was corrupted or the author misunderstood the original text or he used a different version of LXX that was not preserved. We propose another explanation for this: the author was not quoting from the OT but from a collection of sayings of Jesus. In fact, the author didn't say that he was quoting from the Scripture. He only addressed the quotation as a saying of Jesus Christ. Our support is that we also find in 5:7-8 a description concerning Jesus Christ which is certainly not from the OT. Of course, this raises the question of whether we can assume that the author quoted from the OT when he didn't say so.
6). 10:37-38 (exposition 11:1-40). We agree with the suggestion of France that the discussions and examples in 11:1-40 are in fact an exposition of 10:37-38 concerning the word "faith". The author recalled a lot of people in the OT and explained how their acts can be regarded as a result of their faith in God.
7). 12:5-6 (exposition 12:7-11). Again, it was suggested by France that the discussion in 12:7-11 is an exposition of 12:5-6. The author used this quotation to remind the audience that their suffering could be a discipline from God.
The third type of OT usage is the expositions without unquoted text. They are like the second type except that the passages were not quoted in details. Some of these expositions are themselves parts of the expositions of the passages in the second category. Again, we will look at them individually in the following.
1). 7:1-10. It is generally believed that the author was using OT materials here (probably from Gen.14:18-20). It is an exposition on "Melchizedek". The author argued that Melchizedek is greater than Abraham and hence Levi (who is the ancestor of Aaron). This constitutes the first proof that the priesthood of Jesus is better than that of Aaron. However, there is one difficulty here. The author claimed that Melchizedek is "without father ... having neither beginning of days, nor end of life". There is nothing in Genesis or Psalm 110 that support this claim. Although some people said that it is a hermeneutic principle that the author used which resulted in such conclusion but such principle will probably imply a lot of characters in the OT to be without parent and immortal. There is also a possibility that he was actually using an extra Biblical source which was lost.
2). 9:1-10. It is part of the exposition of the things that God showed Moses on mountain Sinai. The author was probably recalling from the OT on the description of the tabernacle without quoting the text explicitly.
3). 12:18-24. The environment and event in Sinai was recalled (although no text was quoted). The author then used it to compare with the situation of the audience. He also gave a warning to his audience. Again, the "duality" between the old and the new is clearly seen.
4). 13:11-13. The author recalled here the details of the sacrificial ritual and compared it with what happened in Jesus. He then used it as an encouragement for the suffering audience.
The fourth kind is like the first one but again without explicit quotations. They are kind of invisible OT usage. Again, these are used as information provided for the discussion or as illustration or examples for exposition in the second category. They can be found in the following passage (which we will not go into the details here): 9:19-22; 11:3-12; 11:17-31; 12:16-17; 13:2.
Apart from these four types, one can also find a lot of OT languages / concepts / imagery / characters being used and discussed. Since it is difficult to say whether the author was solely influenced by the OT on these, we will not discuss them here.
Conclusion
In the above, we consider four different kinds of OT usage in the epistle of Hebrews and we look at some of the individual quotations in the first three cases. In particular, we look at the 7 quotations in chapter 1 in details and proposed that these quotations were used to form a mental picture of the how great the SON was (compare to the angels) before His came into the world. This was used in conjunction with the exposition in Chapter 2 to exhibit the incarnation of the SON. The comparison with the angels was used as a tool. In fact, we see that most of the author's discussions of the SON were through comparisons with some OT figures.
We also look at the seven controlling quotations that set the framework for the major discussions. Some of the messages in the epistle were obtained through the discussions on certain words in these quotations. Most of the expositions of these seven quotations used other OT quotations or well-known OT stories or materials (from the other 3 categories).
Now, we will give brief answers to the three problems that we list in the introduction. First of all, it is difficult to answer the first problem in either the positive or negative way as we do not know much about the consensus of the early church about the interpretations of different OT texts, especially, which ones were regarded as Messianic proof texts.
For the second problem, as already indicated by McCullough, there were probably more diversified versions of LXX in the first century AD than most people thought and it is possible that the author was quoting from a version that was lost. After all, LXX is just a translation and it makes no harm if the author did the translations of the Hebrew texts himself based on the LXX, so long as the meanings he translated are reasonable ones from the Hebrew texts that he had. We have also seen in the above there is a possibility that some of his quotations weren't actually direct quotations from the OT.
For the third question, we have shown in the above how those seemingly strange interpretations of the author can be explained if we assume his Greek education background.
The answers we gave in the above were concerning Hebrews as an epistle written to a particular audience in a particular time of history (namely, a group of Christians in the first century AD). One may ask how this will affect the universal messages that God was communicating through this epistle. Our answer to this question is that God is communicating his universal messages through a particular group of people in a particular point in the history. His communication will use the language / culture / thought acceptable to that group of people (instead of us). Although the arguments may not seem to be acceptable in our days, the conclusions of the discussions should be regarded as a message from God.
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