(avg. read time: 6–12 mins.)
8:1 Now this is the main point of what is being said: we have such a high priest, who has sat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens,
8:2 a minister of holy things and of the true tabernacle/tent, which the Lord, not any human, pitched [hapax].
8:3 For every high priest is appointed in order to offer gifts as well as sacrifices; hence it is necessary for this one to have something to offer as well.
8:4 Now if he were on earth, he would not have been a priest, because there are those who offer gifts according to the law;
8:5 they minister in a pattern/example and shadow of heavenly things, just as Moses had received a revelation when he was about to complete the tent, “For see,” he said, “that you make everything according to the model [type] that was shown to you on the mountain,”
8:6 but now he has attained a different service, and who is also mediator of a superior covenant, which has been enacted [hapax] by/with better promises.
8:7 For if that first one was faultless, there would have been no need/place to look for a second one,
8:8 for fault is found with them when he/it says,
“Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will complete/consummate with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah a new covenant,
8:9 not according to the covenant that I made with their ancestors on the day when they took hold of my hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not abide in my covenant, and so I neglected/I had no concern for them, says the Lord.
8:10 Now this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord, putting my laws in their mind and writing them upon their hearts, and I will be their God and they will be my people.
8:11 And no one will teach each of his fellow citizens or each of his brothers, saying ‘Know the Lord,” because all of them will already know me from the least to the greatest of them.
8:12 Because I will be merciful on their unrighteousness, and I will certainly remember their sins no more.”
8:13 By speaking of “a new one,” he has made the first obsolete, but what was made obsolete and growing old is near disappearance/destruction [hapax].
In line with what we have seen from ch. 7, the author stresses in ch. 8 in no uncertain terms that the main point of what he is arguing here is that Jesus is such a high priest and that he operates in heaven, sitting at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty (once again a reference to his exaltation, which I indicated earlier is an important motif in Hebrews). Where he ministers is the true tabernacle, which God himself has pitched. As I have indicated before, the claim that the heavenly tabernacle is the true one is not to evoke a Platonic metaphysic. Rather, the spatial contrast of heaven and earth is of one piece with the temporal contrast of old and new (covenant and creation). This is indicated by the eschatological orientation of Hebrews as a whole—which we have observed at several junctures up to this point—as well as the key terms with which the author makes his argument. The author refers to the institutions of the old covenant, especially the tabernacle, as ὑπόδειγμα (“pattern”) and σκιά (“shadow”) of the heavenly things to come (8:5; 9:23; 10:1). Likewise, the author uses the speech of God to Moses regarding the tabernacle in Exod 25:40 (cf. 25:9) and fastens on to the notion that the tabernacle was based on the τύπος, the model—rather, the source of the model—of the heavenly tabernacle. In other words, they are the lesser realities that point to the fuller ones in their form and function, and this was by the design of God himself according to the Exodus text and the argument of the author of Hebrews. Their insufficiency and imperfection are the “built-in” features of models and foreshadows, since they were never meant to be the final realities of the new covenant (8:6–13; 9:11–15; 10:1–18; cf. 6:13–20; 7:21–22, 25–28).
The author further reinforces this contrast by drawing on Jer 31:31–34 to distinguish between “old” and “new” (8:8, 13; 9:15; cf. 10:20; 12:24). The typological language and the contrast between old and new illustrate the fundamental axis of contrast is historical/eschatological and the spatial/cosmological contrast is at the service of this contrast. The author also demonstrates this logic with the language of superior fulfillment and obsolescence with the term κρείττων, which occurs more often in Hebrews (fourteen times) than all other NT texts combined, often in reference to the superiority of the new covenant and its eschatological realities in comparison to the old covenant or earlier times of salvation history (1:4; 7:19, 22; 8:6 [twice]; 9:23; 11:16, 35, 40; 12:24; cf. 6:9; 7:7; 10:34). Likewise, Hebrews uses the language of obsolescence or “making old” as God has acted in a new way to fulfill better promises that makes the former way obsolete (8:13; cf. 7:18; 9:26). As noted above, this obsolescence is by divine design—revealed in typological interpretation—rather than having to do with inability or refusal of the covenant signatories to obey. Just as the tabernacle of mediated divine presence would give way to God’s full presence among his people and access to the throne of God itself because of Jesus (cf. 4:14–16; 10:19–25), the old covenant as a whole would give way to the new covenant and all the better promises thereby entailed.
While the above generally captures the main ideas of this section, a couple of areas around the OT citations require closer examination. First, the citation of Exod 25:40—which is recognized as direct divine speech within the narrative—in 8:5 does not quite match the LXX. The author inserts a note to indicate that God is speaking as well as a πάντα, which indicates that what is said applies to the whole of the tabernacle. The participle is also different in terms of the tense (aorist vs. perfect). Still, the key piece of continuity is that both texts refer to the τύπος shown to Moses on which the design of the tabernacle was based, and it is on that term that the author of Hebrews chiefly builds his argument in this section.
Second, vv. 7–8 raise questions about the fault found with the old covenant and what the fault(s) is in reference to. There is a text-critical variant in v. 8 when it talks about who or what fault is found with. Both variants are plural and they both have strong manuscript representation in terms of number, date, and distribution, but one is an accusative plural (αὐτούς) and the other is a dative plural (αὐτοῖς). One could translate each of these in essentially the same way, but the accusative reading may have more of a sense of “finds them at fault” whereas the dative reading may have more of a sense of “finds fault with/in them.” Some scholars suggest that the accusative makes the pronoun the object of the participle (“finds fault with them”) while the dative makes the pronoun a complement to the verb (“saying to them”) and “finding fault” is not in reference to the pronoun. In any case, the question is raised as to why the plural is used at all. Nothing in the preceding verse prepares for it. If one takes the cue from the subsequent quotation, it would seem that the “them” refers to the signatories of the first covenant, the people of Israel and Judah. Indeed, as early as the second century some Christian teachers were taking this approach of saying that the new covenant means a new people of God (I have illustrated this at length with Melito’s Peri Pascha, for example). However, the logic of the argument immediately surrounding this statement and the subsequent Scripture citation concerns the replacement of the covenant rather than the covenant people per se. The preceding argument in chapters 3–4 and the upcoming one in chapter 11 are built on the premise that there are two covenants, but one people of God to which the signatories of the new covenant now belong. But if the fault is with the covenant, why is the pronoun for it plural? It could be that the plural matches the recognition in the subsequent Scripture citation that there was fault with both the people and with the covenant, but the primary stress falls on the fault with the covenant, because God replaces the covenant, but not the covenant people. The new covenant will not only be faultless, but it will also make its people faultless.
Now we come to the citation of Jer 31:31–34 (LXX: 38:31–34), the longest such quotation in the NT. And it is fitting that it should be so, since this text is important to the author’s argument that the new covenant promise has been fulfilled and that Jesus is the mediator of a superior covenant that is enacted with better promises. Indeed, this text shows that the old covenant was temporary by design. Still, the quotation has some differences from the LXX. In the citation of v. 31, the equivalent of “says” is different, the case of both uses of “the house” is different (accusative rather than dative), and a completely different verb is used for the action of covenant-making (συντελέω vs. διατίθημι, which is used later in 8:10 in the quotation of v. 33). While it is possible that these changes are the result of having access to a different version of the LXX—which would not be surprising in the case of Jeremiah—one cannot discount the author providing a different translation that accentuates the eschatological sense of this text. The first verbal change is probably just stylistic, but the difference in the second verb causes the change in case. That verb has more of the sense of “completing” or “consummating” the covenant than of simply “making” it. The verb and its associated noun are rare in the NT, but both of them otherwise can appear in some eschatologically significant contexts when they are not borrowed from the LXX (9:26; Matt 13:39–40, 49; 24:3; 28:20; Mark 13:4). There are multiple words that overlap in meaning with this verb and the associated noun, but I have described this particular term as having a sense comparable to “denouement,” the resolution of the grand story at which everything is brought together (hence the συν element), hence its association with eschatology in another text in Hebrews, one in Mark, and several in Matthew. Interestingly, in the quotation of v. 32 in 8:9, the same LXX verb is once again replaced, this time with a general “making” verb, the “saying” verb is different again, and the combination of καί and ἐγώ is contracted into the form of κἀγώ. If these are not attributable to the different version of the LXX, these seem to be merely stylistic differences. The quotation of v. 33 in 8:10 differs in that it does not include the possessive pronoun after “covenant”—which the author moves after “laws”—once again changes the “saying” verb, removes the emphatic use of both a participle and future verb form of δίδωμι, and adds a prefix to the verb for “write.” Again, nothing fundamentally changes here, but the differences are stylistic, whether that is due to an alternate LXX version or differences due to the author’s own work. The translation of v. 34 in 8:11–12 is a match for the LXX.
I have noted elsewhere the eschatological elements of this text and the eschatological significance attached to it in the larger scheme of the return from exile. This eschatological character is further accentuated when this covenant is compared to the covenant with the Israelite ancestors that God led out of Egypt (v. 32). This places this new covenant in the framework of a new exodus, which is fitting for the return from exile by which God will provide a greater deliverance, a greater covenant, and a greater destination. Furthermore, the promise that God will be their God and they will be his people is a promise echoed numerous times throughout the OT, especially in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, to signify full reconciliation and the fulfillment of God’s purpose for his people first outlined in the exodus (v. 33; Exod 6:7; 29:45–46; Lev 26:12; Deut 26:18–19; Jer 11:4; 24:7; 30:22; 31:1; 32:38; Ezek 11:20; 14:11; 34:30; 36:28; 37:23, 27; Hos 1:9; 2:23, 25; Zech 8:8; 13:9; cf. Rev 21:4, 7). These promises about the new covenant are some of the “better promises” referenced by the author of Hebrews earlier. They also include the interiority of the covenant in contrast to the old covenant—which anticipates the role of the Holy Spirit, although the Spirit is not referenced here as in Isaiah and Ezekiel—as well as the renewal thereby implied that will enable the people of the new covenant to be more faithful than they were under the old covenant by “knowing the Lord” (Exod 6:7; 14:4, 18; 16:6, 12; 29:46; Deut 7:9–11; 29:6; Ps 25:4–14; Isa 11:2–10; 43:8–13; 49:22–26; 58:2; 60:8–16; Jer 24:7; Ezek 16:59–63; 20:5, 9, 12, 20, 26, 38, 40–44; 34:25–31; 36:9–12, 26, 32–38; 37:6, 13–14, 28; 38:23; 39:22, 28; Hos 2:20–23; Joel 2:27–28; 3:17). Finally, the promise for the final and complete forgiveness of sins by the mercy of God is the outcome of this new covenant, another of the better promises, whereby the temporary atonement achieved by the institutions of the old covenant is replaced by something perpetual, though the passage itself does not indicate how exactly this forgiveness will be achieved and enacted. This is one of those lacunae—only partially filled by the indications of other texts from the prophets—that leaves open the mystery of God’s instrumentality in achieving these purposes. Only in hindsight is it clear that God has achieved these purposes through Jesus and the sending of the Holy Spirit.