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VII.
A New and Better Covenant (8:1–10:39)
B.
The Old Covenant Superseded ()
2.
() Continued: But first the kindness and the love of God are brought out by the reference to taking the people "by the hand" to bring them out of Egypt. () The metaphor is that of a father or mother taking a little child by the hand to lead him safely to the place where he is going. Egypt had been a place of slavery. Yet God had brought Israel out of it to set up the old covenant. But the Israelites lacked perseverance. They refused to remain faithful and found that accordingly God was ranged against them. They openly disobeyed the Lord and earned His wrath.
3.
() From the failures of the past, Jeremiah in the quotation from turns his vision to the future. Again, he sees a united people as he thinks of the covenant being made with "the house of Israel." It will be made "after those days," which clearly refers to the future, though he does not locate it with any precision. The repeated "says the LORD" keeps before the reader the truth that a divine and not a human act is in mind. The first point is that the new covenant is inward and dynamic: it is written on the hearts and minds of the people. A defect in the old had been its outwardness. () Although it had divinely given laws, it was written on tablets of stone. The people had not been able to live up to what they knew was the word from God. Jeremiah looked for a time when people would not simply obey an external code but would be so transformed that God's own laws would be written in their inmost beings. We should not distinguish too sharply between "minds" and "hearts" (note the poetic parallelism). Old Testament Israel and Judah are destroyed in God’s judgment in AD 70 to be replaced by the Messiah and Christendom (Jews and Gentiles) for the new covenant with God.
a.
The second point in the new covenant is that there will be a close relationship between the God who will be "their God" and the people who, he says, will be "My people." There is nothing really new in the terms of this promise, for in connection with the old way it was said, "I will take you as My people, and I will be your God" (). But "I will be your God" acquires fuller meaning in the light of Jesus Christ. His life, death, resurrection, and ascension mean that God has acted decisively to save a people. The God who saves people in Christ is the God of His redeemed in a new and definitive way. And when people have been saved at the awful cost of Calvary, they are the people of God in a way never before known..
4.
() The third significant feature of the new covenant is that all who enter it will have knowledge of God; there will be no need for anyone to instruct his or her "fellow citizen." Jeremiah then moves from the wider relationship in the community to the narrower relationship in the family ("brother") and says that in neither case will there be the need for exhorting anyone to know God. For "from the least to the greatest of them," all will "know Me [the LORD]." There will always, of course, be the need for those who have advanced in the Christian way to pass on to others the benefit of their knowledge. But this knowledge of God will not be confined to a privileged few. Everyone in the new covenant will have his or her own intimate and personal knowledge of God.
5.
() The fourth significant thing about the new covenant is that in it sins are forgiven. "For" shows how important this point is: God's forgiveness is the basis of what has just been mentioned. It is because sins are really dealt with that the blessings enumerated earlier become possible. God's wrath no longer rests on sinners and God does not bear their sins in mind. They are completely forgotten, because of the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Sin has been completely and finally dealt with.
6.
() The divine author picks out the word "new" (cf. vs. 8) and sees it as making his essential point. It implies that something else is "old" and that the old was replaced. When God speaks of a "new" covenant, then, it means that the old one is "obsolete" and ineffective, unable to meet people's needs. And that in turn means that it is close to disappearing. It is not something people should go back to with nostalgia.
a.
The idea of the "new covenant" is not confined to this letter. It is implied in the narratives of the institution of the Lord's Supper in ; , and it is explicit in ; . Paul also saw Christian ministers as "servants of a new covenant" (). The new covenant is thus one of the strands in the New Testament teaching about what Christ has done for us. While it emphasizes radical novelty, we should not overlook the fact that it also points to continuity. The new arrangement retains the term "covenant," and it is established on the basis of sacrifice. In other words, it fulfills the old covenant rather than stands in outright opposition to it.
C.
The Old Sanctuary and Its Ritual ()
1.
() The divine writer has no noun with his adjective "first," but the NASV is certainly correct in inserting "covenant." The author is contrasting two whole ways of approach to God — the old covenant that has been superseded and the new one that Jesus has now established. The old one had been set up with a full set of regulations for worship, prescribed directly by God. Thus, the new covenant, also established by God, is its fulfillment, not its contradiction.
a.
The old way not only had regulations but also a sanctuary described as "earthly". This sanctuary belonged to this world in contrast to the heavenly sanctuary where Jesus ministers (vs. 11). The first covenant, then, was established with its due regulations for worship and its holy place of this earth where worship could be carried on. The author will go on to stress the "earthly" nature of it all.
2.
() The tabernacle was a tent with two compartments. The term rendered "prepared" is not the usual word for the pitching of a tent but has rather the meaning of "prepare." It may be used not only of the erection of a building but also of its furnishings and equipment. This is in mind here as is shown by the list of furnishings that follows. (.; ) In the first tent there was "the lampstand," i.e., the seven-branched lampstand. It also had "the table and the sacred bread" (a hendiadys [a single idea expressed by two words connected with and] for the table of the "sacred bread"). () There were twelve loaves, each baked from two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour, arranged in two rows of six, pure frankincense being put with each row. Every Sabbath day, Aaron had to set them up, and it was prescribed that they were to be eaten only by the priests. () The loaves were called "the continual bread", a name that brings out the fact that there were always to be such loaves in the Holy Place, put on a table specially constructed for the purpose (; ). The tent in which these objects were placed was called "the Holy Place."
3.
() Then there was a "second veil" (cf. ; ; ); it is called the "second" to distinguish it from the curtain between the outer court and the Holy Place (; ). Behind this curtain was a tent called the "Most Holy Place," the very special place where God dwelt between the cherubim on the ark. As the divine author will presently emphasize, it was never to be entered by anyone other than the high priest, and by him only on the Day of Atonement (the tenth day of the seventh month []).
4.
() The author now says some things about the furnishings of the Most Holy Place, beginning with the golden "altar of incense". There is a problem in that the author seems to locate this altar inside the Most Holy Place, though its place was really "in front of the veil" (). Indeed, it had to be outside the Most Holy Place, for it was used daily (). Most likely he has in mind the intimate connection of the incense altar with the Most Holy Place; it "was by the inner sanctuary" (), as is shown by its situation "in front of the mercy seat that is over the ark of the testimony" (). The writer does not say that this altar was "in" the Most Holy Place but only that that the Most Holy Place had it. It is true that the same verb covers the ark that was undoubtedly inside the veil, but the indefinite term may be significant.
a.
On the Day of Atonement, the high priest offered incense, using coals of fire from this altar, "otherwise he will die" (). The incense was indeed important.
b.
(; ; ) There is no question that the gold-covered "ark of the covenant" was in the Most Holy Place of the tabernacle. The ark contained "an omerful of manna" () and Aaron's rod that budded (). Neither of these is said in the Old Testament to be "in" the ark; rather, they were in front of it (cf. ; [optional reading] ). We are told in that in Solomon's temple there was nothing in the ark but the tablets of stone. But the author is not concerned with the temple. He is writing about the tabernacle, and it is possible that a different arrangement held there. Also, in the ark were "tablets of stone written by the finger of God" (). (Cf. ; ; ). They represented the permanent record of the terms of the old covenant and were kept in the most sacred place.
5.
(; ; ) Above the ark were "the cherubim of the Glory." The exact form of these is not known, but most interpreters hold that they had bodies of animals; they were certainly winged. (; ) Moreover, they were especially associated with the presence of God, which is why they are here called the cherubim "of the Glory." They overshadowed the lid of the ark, which is here called "the mercy seat." The justification for this translation is that on the Day of Atonement this object was sprinkled with the blood of the sin offering, whereby sins were atoned for due to the mercy of the LORD. Doubtless the writer would have been glad to dwell on the significance of all these objects. He points out, however, that it is not the time for him to do this. His argument proceeds on other lines.
6.
() From the sanctuary, the author moves to the ritual — notably what was done on the Day of Atonement. He uses the limitations attached to the high priest's entry into the Most Holy Place to bring home the inferiority of the whole Levitical system. But he begins with the ministry of the lower priests. When the tabernacle system was established, the priests did their work in "the first tent" (NASV "outer tabernacle"). This included such things as burning incense [optional readings] (), setting out the holy loaves (), and trimming the lamps (; ). There was a sharp distinction between the duties of the priests and those of the Levites ([optional reading] ).
7.
() "But" marks the contrast. We move from the priests to the high priest and from ministry in the Holy Place to that in the Most Holy Place. Into "the inner room" (i.e., "second veil," vs. 3) only the high priest might go and he only "once a year." The reference is to the ceremonies of the Day of Atonement (). We should understand "once" to mean "on one day," because the high priest made two and perhaps even three entrances into the room beyond the curtain (see [optional reading] ).
a.
To go into the Most Holy Place was dangerous; so, the high priest had to safeguard himself by offering blood in the prescribed manner. His offering was "for himself and for the sins … the people committed in ignorance." Being a sinner himself, he had to atone for himself before he could minister on behalf of others. The sins "committed in ignorance" point to the truth that ignorance can be culpable. Sins of this kind do matter, and we should be on our guard against minimizing their seriousness.
8.
() The Holy Spirit used the pattern of the Old Testament tabernacle to teach important truths. The limited access into the Most Holy Place was meant to bring home the fact that ordinary people had no direct access to the presence of God. Now, however, people do have such access through the finished work of Christ.