Hebrews 8: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The writer sums up his argument: the high priest Christians have is seated at God's right hand and serves in the true tent that God set up, not a human one. Since every high priest must have something to offer, and earthly priests already serve at a copy and shadow of what is in heaven, this priest's work belongs elsewhere and is better. The writer then quotes a promise of a new covenant with Israel and Judah, in which God writes his laws on people's minds and hearts and forgives their sins, and he concludes that calling one covenant new makes the first one old and near disappearing.

Claim by Claim

1. 8:1
   • The point of what has been said is this.
   • We have such a high priest.
   • This high priest sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty.
   • That throne is in the heavens.
2. 8:2
   • He is a minister of the holy places.
   • He is a minister of the true tabernacle.
   • The Lord pitched that tabernacle.
   • No man pitched that tabernacle.
3. 8:3
   • Every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices.
   • Therefore it is necessary that this high priest also have something to offer.
4. 8:4
   • If he were on earth, he would not be a priest.
   • There are already priests who offer the gifts according to the law.
5. 8:5
   • Those priests serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things.
   • Moses was divinely warned when he was about to complete the tabernacle.
   • The warning said to see that he made everything according to the pattern.
   • That pattern was shown to Moses on the mountain.
6. 8:6
   • He has now obtained a more excellent ministry.
   • He is the mediator of a better covenant.
   • His ministry is more excellent in the same degree that his covenant is better.
   • That covenant has been enacted upon better promises.
7. 8:7
   • If that first covenant had been faultless, no place would have been sought for a second.
8. 8:8
   • He finds fault with them.
   • He says that days are coming.
   • The Lord says this.
   • He will make a new covenant with the house of Israel.
   • He will make a new covenant with the house of Judah.
9. 8:9
   • The new covenant will not be like the covenant he made with their fathers.
   • He made that covenant on the day he took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.
   • They did not continue in his covenant.
   • He disregarded them.
   • The Lord says this.
10. 8:10
    • This is the covenant he will make with the house of Israel after those days.
    • The Lord says this.
    • He will put his laws into their mind.
    • He will write his laws on their hearts.
    • He will be a God to them.
    • They will be a people to him.
11. 8:11
    • They will not teach, each man his neighbor.
    • They will not teach, each man his brother.
    • They will not say, Know the Lord.
    • All of them will know him.
    • This will hold from the least of them to the greatest.
12. 8:12
    • He will be merciful to their unrighteousness.
    • He will remember their sins no more.
    • He will remember their iniquities no more.
13. 8:13
    • By saying a new covenant, he has made the first one old.
    • What is becoming old and aging is near to vanishing away.

Words Worth Explaining

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

8:1

"The sum" in 1611 meant the chief point or gist of an argument, not a total added up. A high priest was the single chief priest of Israel, the one man allowed to enter the innermost room of the sanctuary, and then only once a year. "The Majesty" is a reverent way of referring to God without saying his name, common in Jewish speech of the period. The right hand of a ruler's throne was the seat of highest honor, the place of the person authorized to act with the king's own power.

8:2

The tabernacle was the portable tent shrine Israel carried through the wilderness, built to the specifications given in Exodus; it was the center of sacrifice before the temple was built in Jerusalem. "Pitched" is the ordinary word for setting up a tent. "Sanctuary" translates a word meaning the holy places, the sacred rooms inside that tent.

8:3

"Ordained" here means simply appointed to an office, not ordained in the later church sense. "Gifts and sacrifices" covers the whole range of what worshipers brought: grain, oil, wine and incense as well as slaughtered animals.

8:4

Under the law of Moses only descendants of Aaron, from the tribe of Levi, could serve as priests. Jesus was born into the tribe of Judah, so by that law he would have had no standing at the altar at all. The letter argues this out at length in the chapter before.

8:5

"Example" in 1611 meant a copy or model taken from an original, not something to be imitated. "Admonished of God" means warned by God. The quotation is from Exodus 25:40, and "the mount" is Mount Sinai, where Moses was given the instructions for building the tent.

8:6

A covenant was a formal, binding agreement between two parties, closer to a treaty or a contract than to a simple promise: it set out terms, obligations and consequences on both sides. A "mediator" was the go-between who arranged such an agreement and then stood as its guarantor. "Ministry" here means the work of serving as a priest, not preaching.

8:7

"No place have been sought" uses "place" in the older sense of occasion or opening, the room left for something to happen.

8:8

Verses 8 to 12 are a quotation of Jeremiah 31:31-34, words written some six centuries before this letter. After Solomon's death the nation split in two, the northern kingdom called Israel and the southern kingdom called Judah; naming both together is a way of saying the whole people, the split undone.

8:9

"I regarded them not" follows the Greek version of the Old Testament, which this writer is quoting. The Hebrew text of Jeremiah reads instead "though I was a husband to them," or possibly "though I was their master." The two readings come from Hebrew verbs that look nearly identical in writing, and it is not settled which the prophet wrote.

8:10

In Hebrew usage the heart was the seat of thought, memory and decision, the inner self that weighs things and chooses, not the emotions as in modern English. "I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people" is the standard covenant formula, the fixed wording used to declare such a relationship binding.

8:11

"From the least to the greatest" is a set phrase for everyone regardless of rank, from the most obscure person to the most powerful; naming the two ends is a way of including everything between them.

8:12

The King James piles up three words here, "unrighteousness," "sins" and "iniquities." They are near synonyms used together for weight. "Iniquity" translates a word whose root sense is bent or crooked, deliberate wrongdoing rather than a slip.

8:13

"Waxeth" means grows or becomes; to wax is the old opposite of to wane. "Decayeth" here means wearing out with age rather than rotting. The picture is of something like a garment or a document going threadbare and about to be discarded.