Bible Commentaries
Abbott's Illustrated New Testament
Hebrews 8
The true tabernacle. The spiritual kingdom of Christ is so designated in contradistinction from the tabernacle in which the religious services of the Israelites were performed, which was only ceremonial and temporary, and pitched by man.
The meaning is, that his priesthood, as spoken of in the passage upon which all this discussion rests, (Psalms 110:4,) cannot be an ordinary priesthood under the law of Moses, since he did not belong to the tribe to which the priestly office was confined.--There are priests; that is, of the tribe of Levi.
Unto the example and shadow; that is, their ceremonies and services are intended to shadow forth and typify the higher spiritualities of the Christian dispensation.--See (saith he;) Exodus 25:40. In the directions given to Moses in Exodus, allusion is often made to a pattern which God showed him in the mount. The apostle seems to consider this conformity of the Mosaic tabernacle to the pattern by which it was made, as an emblem of the correspondence between the Jewish rites and the heavenly spiritualities which they were designed to prefigure.
Finding fault with them, he saith. The idea is, that the language quoted (see Jeremiah 31:31-34) implies that God did not regard the first dispensation as permanent and complete; but, recognizing its insufficiency and imperfection, he promised a better one to come.
He hath made the first old; that is, his language implies that it is old.
Add Comment
Comments