Hebrews 5:4

this honour i.e. this honourable office. We have here the second Qualification for Priesthood. A man's own caprice must not be the Bishop which ordains him. He must be conscious of a divine call.

but he that is called of God Rather, "but on being called by God," or "when he is called by God." Great stress is laid on this point in Scripture (Exodus 28:1). Any "stranger that cometh nigh" i.e. that intruded unbidden into the Priesthood was to be put to death (Numbers 3:10). The fate of Korah and his company (Numbers 16:40), and of Uzziah, king though he was (2 Chronicles 26:18-21), served as a terrible warning, and it was recorded as a special aggravation of Jeroboam's impiety that "he made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of Levi" (1 Kings 12:31). In one of the Jewish Midra-shim, Moses says to Korah "if Aaron, my brother, had taken upon himselfthe priesthood, ye would be excusable for murmuring against him; "but God gave it to him." Some have supposed that the writer here reflects obliquely upon the High Priests of that day alien Saddu-cees, not descended from Aaron (Jos. Antt.xx. 10) who had been introduced into the Priesthood from Babylonian families by Herod the Great, and who kept the highest office, with frequent changes, as a sort of apanage of their own families the Boethusim, the Kantheras, the Kamhits, the Beni-Hanan. For the characteristics of these Priests, who completely degraded the dignity in the eyes of the people, see my Life of Christyii. 330, 342. In the energetic maledictions pronounced upon them in more than one passage of the Talmud, they are taunted with not being true sons of Aaron. But it is unlikely that the writer should make this oblique allusion. He was an Alexandrian; he was not writing to the Hebrews of Jerusalem; and these High Priests had been in possession of the office for more than half a century.

as was Aaron The original is more emphatic "exactly as even Aaron was" (Numbers 16-18). The true Priest must be a divinely-appointed Aaron, not a self-constituted Korah.