Hebrews 13:10

The One Sacrifice of the Christian, and the sacrifices which he must offer

10. We have an altar These seven verses form a little episode of argument in the midst of moral exhortations. They revert once more to the main subject of the Epistle the contrast between the two dispensations. The connecting link in the thought of the writer is to be found in the Jewish boasts to which he has just referred in the word "meats." Besides trying to alarm the Christians by denunciations founded on their indifference to the Levitical Law and the oral traditions based upon it, the Jews would doubtless taunt them with their inability henceforth to share in eating the sacrifices (1 Corinthians 9:13) since they were all under the Cheremthe ban of Jewish excommunication. The writer meets the taunt by pointing out (in an allusive manner) that of the most solemn sacrifices in the whole Jewish year and of those offered on the Day of Atonement not even the Priests, not even the High Priest himself, could partake (Leviticus 6:12; Leviticus 6:23; Leviticus 6:30; Leviticus 16:27). But of our Sacrifice, which is Christ, and from (ἐξ) our Altar, which is the Cross on which, as on an Altar, our Lord was offered wemay eat. The "Altar" is here understood of the Cross, not only by Bleek and De Wette, but even by St Thomas Aquinas and Estius; but the mere figure implied by the "altar" is so subordinate to that of our participation in spiritual privileges that if it be regarded as an objection that the Cross was looked on by Jews as "the accursed tree," we may adopt the alternative view suggested by Thomas Aquinas that the Altar means Christ Himself. To eat from it will then be "to partake of the fruit of Christ's Passion." So too Cyril says, "He is Himself the Altar." We therefore have loftier privileges than they who "serve the tabernacle." The other incidental expressions will be illustrated as we proceed; but, meanwhile, we may observe that the word "Altar" is altogether subordinate and (so to speak) "out of the Figure." There is no reference whatever to the material "table of the Lord," and only a very indirect reference (if any) to the Lord's Supper. Nothing can prove more strikingly and conclusively the writer's total freedom from any conceptions resembling those of the "sacrifice of the mass" than the fact that here he speaks of oursacrifices as being "the bullocks of our lips." The Christian Priest is only a Presbyter, not a Sacrificing Priest. He is only a Sacrificing Priest in exactly the same sense as every Christian is metaphorically so called, because alikePresbyter and people offer "spiritualsacrifices," which are alone acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:5). The main point is "we too have one great sacrifice," and we (unlike the Jews, as regards their chief sacrifice, Leviticus 4:12; Leviticus 6:30; Leviticus 16:27) may perpetually partake of it, and live by it (John 6:51-56). We live not on anything material, which profiteth nothing, but on the wordsof Christ, which are spirit and truth; and we feed on Him a symbol of the close communion whereby we are one with Him only in a heavenly and spiritual manner.

whereof Lit. "from which."

they have no right to eat Because they utterly reject Him whose flesh is meat indeed and whose blood is drink indeed (John 6:54-55). Forbidden to eat of the type (see Hebrews 13:11) they could not of course, in any sense, partake of the antitype which they rejected.

which serve the tabernacle See Hebrews 8:5. It is remarkable that not even here, though the participle is in the present tense, does he use the word "Temple" or "Shrine" anymore than he does throughout the whole Epistle. There may, as Bengel says, be a slight irony in the phrase "who serve the Tabernacle," rather than "in the Tabernacle."