Hebrews 5:11

Hebrews 5:11. Of whom; that is, of Melchisedec, in his superiority to Aaron, and as the type of Christ. The other interpretations, ‘ of Christ,' and ‘ of which thing,' are hardly defensible grammatically; the explanation just given is grammatically preferable, and is the same in sense.

We, not the writer and Timothy, but (as elsewhere in the Epistle, Hebrews 2:5; Hebrews 6:9; Hebrews 6:11, and as is common in Paul's Epistles) the writer himself.

Have many things (literally, have much) to say, and hard to be uttered; rather, hard to explain to you.

Seeing (since) ye are become (having lost the quick sense of your new life, and relapsed, in part at least, into your old state) dull in your hearing (not easily made to understand).

For while ye ought, on account of the time, to be teachers, etc. Thirty years had passed since Pentecost, and some of you may have heard Christ the Lord; His apostles you have certainly heard. Churches were first formed among you, and most of you became believers years ago. Nor only a long time, but a trying time also; ‘distress of nations,' men's hearts failing them for fear, ‘the' shaking' foretold by the prophet. The nature of the time (not the length only) ought to have produced serious thought, earnest inquiry, and better understanding of what was coming upon the earth. They had not only made no progress, they had retrograded.

Ye have need that one teach you what is the nature of (or, that some one teach you) the very first principles of the oracles of God. The first rendering is adopted by most commentators, ancient and modern, though the second is adopted by Bleek, Alford, and others, in neither case does it mean ‘ what are the first principles,' but rather, what quality and meaning they have. The oracles of God in the plural means generally what God revealed, the Divine utterance (Acts 7:38; Romans 3:2), while in the singular it meant that part where the revelation was given. The meaning here is not quite the same as in Hebrews 6:1: ‘the doctrine of Christ,' though this meaning is implied. The Jews had sacrifices and ritual, a material temple, prophecies clearly foretelling the life and death of our Lord, and rudimentary Christianity; but though they had embraced the Gospel, they were failing to see what their own economy really meant, and they were in danger of going back from the Spirit to the flesh, from the reality to the type, overlooking the significance of the simplest parts of their system, ‘the elements,' as the Apostle Paul calls them also (Galatians 4:3; Galatians 4:9). The description here given may mean the plain doctrines of the Gospel, such as are specified in the first verse of the next chapter; but the peculiar language of this verse (‘elements,' ‘oracles') points rather to the significance of the elementary rites and truths of Judaism itself, the very things he goes on in later Chapter s to explain. Christianity is the Law unveiled, and you would understand the general principles of the new economy if you rightly understood the old; a like rebuke may be seen in Luke 24:25-27.

And are become (as in Hebrews 5:11) such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat (solid food). You have gone back into a second childhood, and need to understand the pictures and shadows of the ancient Law, things intended for the infant state of the Church, or, possibly, need to study again those easier parts of the Gospel which men accept at the beginning of the Divine life. The Fathers generally understood by ‘ milk ' and by ‘ first principles ' the Incarnation; but that is itself a profound mystery, and the writer has already affirmed and discussed it. The comparison of doctrines to milk and food is common in Philo, and is found in both Testaments. St. Paul uses both in 1 Corinthians 3:1-2.