Hebrews 5: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The writer explains what a high priest is: a man chosen from among people to bring gifts and sacrifices to God for sins, gentle with those who go wrong because he is weak himself, and appointed by God rather than self-appointed. Christ likewise did not take the role for himself; God called him a priest forever in the order of Melchisedec, and though he was a Son, he learned obedience through suffering and became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. The writer then breaks off, saying the readers have become slow to listen: by now they should be teachers, but they still need milk instead of solid food.

Claim by Claim

1. 5:1
   • Every high priest is taken from among men.
   • Every high priest is appointed to act on behalf of men in things pertaining to God.
   • The purpose of his appointment is that he may offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.
2. 5:2
   • The high priest is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant.
   • The high priest is able to deal gently with those who are going astray.
   • The high priest is himself surrounded by weakness.
3. 5:3
   • Because of his own weakness, the high priest is obligated to offer for sins.
   • He must offer for his own sins as well as for the sins of the people.
4. 5:4
   • No man takes this honor upon himself.
   • A man receives this honor by being called by God.
   • Aaron was called by God to this honor.
5. 5:5
   • Christ did not glorify himself to become a high priest.
   • The one who glorified Christ was the one who said to him, 'You are my Son.'
   • God said to him, 'Today I have begotten you.'
6. 5:6
   • God also says in another place, 'You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.'
7. 5:7
   • In the days of his flesh Christ offered up prayers and supplications.
   • He offered them with strong crying and tears.
   • He offered them to the one who was able to save him from death.
   • He was heard, either because of his reverent fear or in the matter of what he feared.
8. 5:8
   • Christ was a Son.
   • Although he was a Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered.
9. 5:9
   • Christ was made perfect.
   • Having been made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation.
   • He is the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him.
10. 5:10
    • Christ was named by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
11. 5:11
    • The writer has many things to say about this subject.
    • These things are hard to explain.
    • The hearers have become dull of hearing.
12. 5:12
    • By this time the hearers ought to be teachers.
    • The hearers need someone to teach them again the first principles of the oracles of God.
    • The hearers have become people who need milk.
    • The hearers cannot take solid food.
13. 5:13
    • Everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness.
    • Everyone who lives on milk is a babe.
14. 5:14
    • Solid food belongs to those who are mature.
    • The mature have their senses trained by practice.
    • Their senses are trained to distinguish both good and evil.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

5:1

The high priest was the single chief priest of Israel, descended from Aaron, who supervised worship at the temple and alone entered the innermost room of the sanctuary, once a year, on the Day of Atonement. "Gifts and sacrifices" is a pair covering the whole range of what was brought to the altar: grain, drink and thanksgiving offerings as well as slaughtered animals.

5:2

The King James "them that are out of the way" does not mean people who are out of the road or out of sight. It means people who have strayed off the path, gone wrong. "Compassed with infirmity" means fenced in or surrounded by weakness: the priest is hemmed in by the same frailty as the people he serves.

5:3

Under the law the high priest had to present an offering for his own sin before he could present one for the people. On the Day of Atonement he killed a bull for himself and his household first, and only then the goat for the nation.

5:4

Aaron was Moses' older brother and the first high priest of Israel. The point of naming him is that he did not apply for the office or seize it; it was assigned to him by God, and the priesthood after him passed down through his family line.

5:5

The quoted line is from Psalm 2, a psalm sung at the crowning of a king. The King James "to day have I begotten thee" and the rendering's "today I have become your Father" translate the same phrase: in its original setting it was the formal declaration that made the king God's adopted son on the day he took the throne.

5:6

Melchisedec (also spelled Melchizedek) appears in only one short episode in Genesis, where he is called king of Salem and priest of God Most High, and he blesses Abraham and receives a tenth of the spoils. The line quoted here is from Psalm 110. "After the order of" means belonging to that kind or class of priesthood, as opposed to the hereditary line that ran through Aaron.

5:7

"In the days of his flesh" is an idiom for the stretch of time when he was living an ordinary mortal life. The last clause is genuinely ambiguous in the Greek. The word behind the King James "feared" means reverent awe rather than fright, so the sentence can mean "he was heard because of his reverence," which is how the rendering takes it; but some read it as "he was heard and released from what he dreaded."

5:8

There is a pun here that no English version can carry: the Greek words for "learned" and "suffered" differ by a single letter, emathen and epathen. Ancient writers used the pairing as a proverb, roughly "learning comes by suffering."

5:9

"Made perfect" translates a Greek verb meaning brought to completion, finished, or brought all the way to its intended goal. It does not suggest that something faulty was corrected. The same verb was the standard phrase in the Greek Old Testament for installing a priest in office.

5:11

"Hard to be uttered" means hard to put into words, difficult to explain, not forbidden to say. "Dull of hearing" translates a word meaning sluggish or lazy; the complaint is about the listeners' effort, not their hearing.

5:12

"The oracles of God" means the things God has said, God's own utterances, which for these readers meant the Hebrew scriptures. "First principles" translates a word used for the letters of the alphabet and so for the ABCs of any subject. And in 1611 English "meat" meant food of any kind, so "strong meat" is solid food rather than flesh specifically.

5:13

"Unskilful" here means inexperienced or untrained, not clumsy. Teachers in the ancient world commonly sorted their students this way, with milk for beginners and solid food for those further along; the writer is using a familiar classroom image, not inventing one.

5:14

"Of full age" means grown up, mature. "Senses" means the faculties of perception, the way taste or touch or an ear for music can be trained, and "exercised" translates a word taken from athletic training in the gymnasium: these are perceptions drilled into shape by repeated practice.