Hebrews 3:5

καὶ Μωϋσῆς.… Another reason for expecting to find fidelity in Jesus and for ascribing to Him greater glory. Moses was faithful as a servant in the house (ἐν), Christ as a Son over (ἐπὶ) his house. θεράπων denotes a free servant in an honourable position and is the word applied to Moses in Numbers 12:7. [“Apud Homerum nomen est non servile sed ministros significat voluntarios, nec raro de viris dicitur nobili genere natis” (Stephanus). It is especially used of those who serve the gods. See Pindar Olymp. iii. 29.] Both the fidelity and the inferior position of Moses are indicated in the words which occur like a refrain in Exodus: “According to all that the Lord commanded, so did he”. Nothing was left to his own initiative; he had to be instructed and commanded; but all that was entrusted to him, he executed with absolute exactness. The crowning proof of his fidelity was given in the extraordinary scene (Exodus 37), where Moses refused to be “made a great nation” in room of Israel. He is said to have been faithful εἰς μαρτύριον τῶν λαληθησομένων. The meaning is, the testimony to his faithfulness which God had pronounced was the guarantee of the trustworthiness of the report he gave of what the Lord afterwards spoke to him. This meaning seems to be determined by the context in Numbers 12. “My servant Moses … is faithful in all my house. I will speak to him mouth to mouth, apparently and not in dark speeches.” Grotius says “ut pronuntiaret populo ea quae Deus ei dicenda quoquo tempore mandabat”. Bleek and Davidson refer the μαρτύριον to Moses not to God. “He was a servant for a testimony, i.e., to bear testimony of those things which were to be spoken, i.e., from time to time revealed. Reference might be made to Barnabas viii. 3, εἰς μαρτ. τῶν φυλῶν. The meaning advocated by Calvin, Delitzsch, Westcott and others is attractive. They understand the words as referring to the things which were to be spoken by Christ, and that the whole of Moses' work was for a testimony of those things. Thus Westcott translates “for a testimony of the things which should be spoken by God through the prophets and finally through Christ”. This gives a fine range to the words, but the context in Numbers is decisively against it. The idea seems to be that Moses being but a θεράπων needed a testimonial to his fidelity that the people might trust him; and also that he had no initiative but could only report to the people the words that God might speak to him. In contrast to this position of Moses, Χριστὸς ὡς υἱὸς ἐπὶ τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ, Christ's fidelity was that of “a Son over his house”. It was not the fidelity which exactly performs what another commands and faithfully enters into and fulfils His will. It is the fidelity of one who himself is possessed by the same love and conceives the same purposes as the Father. The interests of the house and the family are the Son's interests. “We are His house” and in Christ we see that the interests of God and man, of the Father and the family are one. [Grotius quotes the jurisconsults: “etiam vivente patre filium quodam modo dominum esse rerum paternarum”.] But this house so faithfully administered by the Son Himself is the body of Christian people, οὗ οἶκός ἐσμεν ἡμεῖς, we are those on whom this fidelity is spent. The relative finds its antecedent in αὐτοῦ. The “house of God” is, in the Gospels, the Temple; but in 1 Peter 4:17 and 1 Timothy 3:15 it has the same meaning as here, the people or Church of God. “Whose house are we,” but with a condition ἐὰν τὴν παρρησίαν … κατάσχωμεν, “if we shall have held fast our confidence and the glorying of our hope firm to the end”. For, as throughout the Epistle, so here, all turns on perseverance, παρρησία originally “frank speech,” hence the boldness which prompts it. Cf. Hebrews 4:16; Hebrews 10:19; Hebrews 10:35; so in Paul and John. καύχημα, not as the form of the word might indicate, “the object of boasting,” but the disposition as in 1 Corinthians 5:6 : οὐ καλὸν τὸ καύχημα ὑμῶν and 2 Corinthians 5:12 : ἀφορμὴν διδόντες ὑμῖν καυχήματος. [Cf. the interchange of βρῶσις and βρῶμα in John 4:32; John 4:34, and Jannaris, Hist. Gk. Gram., 1021 and 1155.] Whether ἐλπίδος belongs to both substantives is doubtful. The Christian's hope of a heavenly inheritance (Hebrews 3:1), of perfected fellowship with God, should be so sure that it confidently proclaims itself, and instead of being shamefaced glories in the future it anticipates. And this attitude must be maintained μέχρι τέλους βεβαίαν, until difficulty and trial are past and hope has become possession. βεβαίαν In agreement with the remoter substantive, which might give some colour to the idea that the expression was lifted from Hebrews 3:14 and inserted here; but Bleek shows by several instances that the construction is legitimate.