October 2nd, 2021

This Sunday is our first week in what is sometimes called ‘The Epistle to the Hebrews’ [2:1-13(14-18)]. We are moving on from the Epistle of James. The two are in the opposite order in the New Testament—because Hebrews is longer. But whichever writing is studied first, they are similar to each other, and there is a benefit in studying them together, or one right after the other.

Two of the big differences between the two works are that the Epistle to the Hebrews is MUCH longer, and the writer of this work is unknown; the title of this work is NOT ‘The Epistle OF the Hebrews’. It is simply, ‘to (or ‘toward’) the Hebrews’. We know the people who are receiving this work, but we do not know the one who is sending it. This may be one of those situations where it is not important who the writer is. That fact may be distracting from the interesting content of this epistle.

The writer usually gives his name at the beginning of the work, and with a knowledge of the writer comes the knowledge of his style of writing, and this helps in understanding the writing itself. In other words, the beginning of a work is important. And that is true for this epistle as well. Unfortunately, the beginning of this epistle is the reading for Christmas Day. If you can think of today as Christmas Day, we can look at the first few words of this epistle.

I hope I am not scaring you away by saying that the first four verses of this epistle are complicated. The nice (and not-so-nice) thing about those complications is that they usually disappear when they are translated into English. This one, long, run-on sentence (in the original language) is called a ‘period’.

I also hope you do not find the following quote unimportant. What follows is a somewhat-long but helpful quote regarding Hebrews 1:1-4 from F. Blass and A. Debrunner’s, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature: A Translation and Revision of the ninth-tenth German Edition Incorporating Supplementary Notes of A. Debrunner by Robert W. Funk (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1961; page 242):

The period, i.e., the organization of a considerable number of clauses and phrases into a well-rounded unity, is rare in the NT. Since the period belongs to a more elegant style, it is most frequently met in Hebrews, which certainly is to be regarded as artistic prose by reason of the composition of its words and sentences. Paul … does not generally make the effort required by so careful a style; artistic periods, therefore, in spite of all his eloquence, are not to be found in his writings, while harsh parentheses and anacolutha abound. The prologue to the Gospel of Luke is a beautiful period; Lk elsewhere forsakes this device, it is true, and the introduction to Acts is not a period but a series of clauses strung together; only the introduction of the apostolic decree in A 15:24-6 forms a genuine period.

Hopefully, after such a long quote, you see the importance (and rarity) of the structure of these first four verses of this letter. And here is a somewhat-literal translation of it (and although this translation may be helpful, what also may be even more helpful is to look at what other translators have given us):

In many portions and in many ways God, having spoken to the fathers in the prophets, in the last days of these he spoke to us in a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages; who being radiance of the glory and character of the hypostasis of him, and bearing all things by the word of the power of him, having made a cleansing of the sins, he sat in the right of the greatness in high places, by so much better becoming [than] the angels as a more excellent than them he has inherited a name.

What is to be made of this? What may be helpful is to see this within the context of the entire New Testament. From the four gospel accounts (better yet, the fourfold gospel) we know that Jesus (the Son) is important, and we know that his death on the cross is important. And the meaning of that death on the cross is more obvious within many of the epistles of the New Testament, but in that death of God’s son, there is the forgiveness of sins or a cleansing.

There may be something even more interesting here. That phrase (cleansing of the sins) happens to be three words in the original language of the New Testament (Greek). And both the word ‘Son’ and the words ‘of the’ (which is only one word in the Greek)—from the middle of the phrase ‘cleansing of the sins’—are twenty-one words from the beginning and ending of this section. In other words, the word ‘Son’ has been put in an important position, and the action of his ‘cleansing of sins’ is also in an important position (and the number twenty-one is made up of three, multiplied by seven, and both of those numbers are also important in the scriptures).

This ‘cleansing’ is a very visual term, and this word is connected to God in different ways; but it is God who ultimately is able to make something truly clean. Whether God wished to do that in the Old Testament by the sacrifices in the tabernacle or temple, or in the New Testament, by the blood of Jesus, he is ultimately still the One doing it. The LORD is the ONLY One who can TRULY cleanse and clean.

The two things that are needed, when it comes to the tabernacle or temple, are a person and the action that is done at that special place, and these two things are given in the two important places highlighted above. It will become more obvious as we progress through this epistle, but there are some connections with this epistle to the great Day of Atonement, an important day in the calendar of Israel. And the structure of this epistle will, in some ways, imitate the layout of the tabernacle or temple. This is a very ‘visual’ way to structure a literary work, and this method has been used for centuries.

In this work we will continue to see comparisons to the Old Testament sacrificial system and the layout of either the tabernacle or the temple. But the most important thing to remember regarding this is that Jesus is literally at the center of it all.