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Chapter 3. Summary

So, holy brothers, sharers in the heavenly calling, think of the
divine envoy and high priest whom we confess, Jesus, who is
faithful to Him who made Him, just as Moses was faithful in all
God's house. Jesus was worthy of greater glory than Moses, just as
the maker of a house has more glory than the house. For some
creature makes a house, but it is God who created all things.

Moses indeed was faithful in all God's house as a servant,
testifying to the things he was to say. But Christ is like the Son,
in His own house -- we are that household, if only we keep our
courage and hope of glory, which we hold onto as a firm foundation.

Wherefore, as the Holy Spirit says: "Today if you hear His voice,
do not harden your hearts, as they, the ancient Jews, did in the
rebellion, in tempting God, as on the day of tempting in the
desert." Your forefathers tried Me, and saw ny works. Hence I was
angry with this generation and said: They are always going astray
in their heart. They did not know my ways, and so I swore to them
in my anger: "They will not enter into my rest."

Watch out brothers, so that there may not be in any of you a heart
of faithlessness, so as to depart from the living God, but
encourage one another each day, as long as it is still called
"Today", so no one of you may be hardened in the deception of sin.
For we are sharers of Christ, if only we hold to the firmness with
which we began, even to the end.

For it is said: "Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your
hearts, as they did in that tempting". Who were those who had heard
and in spite of that were rebellious? Most of those who

left Egypt with Moses leading. With which ones was He angry for
forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies were
laid low in the desert? Which ones did He swear would never enter
into His rest, if not those who were disobedient? We see it was
because of lack of faith that they could not enter.

So, let us be afraid that, now while the offer of entering into
that rest is still available, some might be judged to have failed.
For that good promise came to them as it did to us. But that good
news was of no benefit to them since it did not meet with faith in
those who heard.

For we who have faith (i.e., if we have faith) enter that rest, as
He said: "As I swore in my anger: They shall never enter into my
rest."

And yet, His works were finished since the beginning of the world
as He said in a certain passage about the seventh day: "And God
rested on the seventh day from all His works. On the same subject,
the Psalm says: "They shall not enter into my rest."

Since then there is still an opening for some to enter into this
rest, while those who failed in former times failed because of
disobedience, He sets a particular day again, saying,"Today" when
he says in a Psalm of David, after so long a lapse of time, "If
only you would listen to His voice Today. So do not harden your
hearts. If Joshua, the successor of Moses had really given them
rest, God would not have spoken of still another day after that. So
then a sabbath rest is still open for the people of God. One who
has entered God's rest has rested in his turn from his own works,
as God did from His.

Comments on 3. 1-19

The writer calls them members of a holy brotherhood. For Jesus is
the Son of God, but we are made His brothers - we recall 2. 13
where Jesus calls us His brothers. We have a heavenly calling -
that is a calling to be full members of the People of God. St. Paul
commonly uses that word call in this sense.

We are members of the household of God. This is another Pauline
thought, as we see it in Ephesians 2. 19: "You are no longer
strangers and aliens, but citizens of the holy ones, members of the
household of God." Although this Epistle is addressed to the
Hebrews, it applies not only to the descendants of Abraham - for
mere carnal descent from Abraham is not enough, as we saw in Romans
4 - but to all those who have been made into one body in Christ
(cf. Eph 3. 6), who broke down the wall of separation and made the
two one (Eph 2. 14-16).

The author calls Jesus both apostle (one who is sent) and high
priest. He was sent by the Father; He is appointed high priest -
which will be developed more fully in 4. 14 - 6. 20.

In the Old Testament, only Moses seems to have had both roles, as
envoy and as priest. But Moses was unique. In Numbers 12. 7-8, when
Aaron and Miriam claimed they were sent by God as well as Moses,
God called them before the Tent of Meeting, and proclaimed that
with an ordinary prophet, He revealed Himself in visions and
dreams: "But not so to my servant Moses, who is faithful in all of
my house. I speak to him face to face, clearly , not in riddles. He
sees the form of God."There is of course a bit of Semitic
exaggeration here even it be words of God, for although Exodus 33.
11 says also that God used to speak to Moses "face to face", yet
that is clarified in 33. 18-22. For when Moses asks to really see
God's face, God places Moses in the hollow of the rock, and covers
Moses with His hand, so Moses might see only God's back, not His
face.

In Dt 18. 18 God said that He would later raise up a prophet like
Moses. The NT readily understood this to refer to Jesus. priests
and levites asked John the Baptist (Jn. 1. 19-26 if he, John, was
the prophet who was to come. In Acts 3, 22 Peter quotes this line
of Dt, and says it refers to Jesus.

As we just noted, Exodus tells us that Moses did want to see the
face of God, and was refused. But Jesus, far greater than Moses,
always saw the face of God. For the Church has taught repeatedly-
in spite of determined denials by unfaithful persons- that from the
first instant of conception, Jesus' human mind saw the vision of
God (cf. Wm. Most, The Consciousness of Christ, especially Chapter
7).

Even without the help of the Church we can sees that His human soul
not only happened to have that vision, but could not have lacked
it. For just any soul will have that vision if its power to know is
raised by grace, and if the divinity joins itself directly to the
mind/soul without even an image in between. This had to be the case
in Jesus, for not just His human mind, but His entire humanity was
joined to the divinity even in the unity of one Person!

It is tragic that so many deny this truth today, for in doing so
they miss a major part of His suffering for us. By that vision He
knew from the first instant everything He was to suffer. That would
wear on Him all through His life. He could not, as we could, say:
Perhaps it will not come, perhaps it will not be so bad. No, that
vision was infallible, and mercilessly clear on all the hideous
details of pain. He let us look inside Himself, as it were, in Luke
12. 50 and in John 12. 27.

We might add that Matthew's Gospel in various ways seems to intend
to think of Jesus as that new Moses, especially in His exodus from
Egypt, and in His giving the law: "You have heard it was said to
them of old, but I say... ."

It is not only that Christ was faithful in all His house, but He
Himself, as divine was the maker of that house, and thus far
superior to Moses. For Christ is the maker of the house, He is the
Son.

The Epistle continues saying that we are his house, provided that
we hold on to our confidence and hope. If we suppose, as is most
likely, that this Epistle was rather early, we may see in these
words an exhortation to hold on-- they may have had the notion that
the return of Christ was to be very soon. The Thessalonians, as we
gather from St. Paul's Epistles to them, certainly had such a
notion. Did Paul himself also think so?The reason advanced for
saying that are not convincing. Chiefly commentators point to the
words,"we the living" which come twice in 1 Thes 4. But there is no
need to suppose Paul had a mistake here. Such language is only the
sort of thing many teacher uses, speaking of first singular or
plural, to make things concrete and vivid. Further, the Second
Epistle to Thessalonica makes entirely clear that the author did
not think the end was close. Of course, then those commentators who
want to say Paul was in error will say Paul could not have written
Second Thessalonians - what a weak reed on which to pin their
belief, the mere possibility that "we the living" might imply such
a thought. In contrast, the external witnesses saying Paul wrote 2
Thes are as strong as they are for First Thessalonians.

Some of our greatest manuscripts add the words "firm until the
end:" after speaking of our hope. In spite of such evidence, in
spite of the fact that the words fit the situation, some say the
words were added from the end of 3. 14. Not impossible, but neither
is there any solid reason for thinking the words do not also belong
here in 3. 6.

The passage 3. 7-19 points out that since it was so serious to
reject the first Moses, how much more serious it is to reject
Christ, the new and far greater Moses. Language and imagery are
taken from the Exodus here.

The words of the Holy Spirit here are from Psalm 95. 8-1. |The
Psalm, and Hebrews urge them not to harden their hearts as they did
more than once in the desert wanderings. Special mention however is
made of Meribah ("rebellion") and Massah ("testing" of God). The
incident was the murmuring of the Hebrews in Exodus 17. 1-7. There
the people had said: "Is the Lord in our midst ot not?" They had
already seen the power of the Lord i miracles more than once, yet
they still did not have faith. It reminds us of the call by the
Pharisees to Christ for a sign - when they had already seen so very
many. In this incident Moses is told to strike the rock with the
rod which he had used in miracles before. The water did come out at
once. There is a very similar incident- for the Israelites murmured
so many times-- reported in Numbers 20. 1-13. Then Moses was told
merely to speak to the rock, but instead he struck it, struck
twice. It seems his faith weakened. At any rate, in Numbers 20, 12
the Lord told Moses and Aaron that since they did not honor him by
faith at that point, they would not be allowed to lead the
community into the promised land. Therefore Aaron died soon after.
Numbers 20. 27-28 tells how Moses, at command of God, took off the
priestly garments from Aaron, and put them on his son Eleazar.
Aaron himself then died. Moses later died, as narrated in
Deuteronomy 34, on Mt. Nebo, form which he could see the promised
land, but was not allowed to enter it.

The second incident seems to have taken place in the last year of
their wanderings, the first, sometime earlier. The location of this
first incident is said to be at Rephidim, and it seems to be close
to Mt. Horeb-- which seems to be the same as Sinai.

There is a problem about the location of Rephidim. Numbers 13-14
the Israelites stopped at Kadesh-barnea while spies scouted the
land. Because of their faithless reaction there, after the false
report of the spies, God condemned them to wander for years, so
none of the generation there would enter the promised land, except
Joshua and Caleb. There is a problem of lack of remains near the
probable site of Kadesh-Barnea: Cf. R. Cohen,"Did I excavate
Kadesh-Barnea" in BAR, May- June, 1981. pp 21-33. However, Frank
Moore Cross, retired from Harvard, in an interview in Bible Review,
August 1992, pp. 23-32, 61-62 thinks the Israelites really wandered
in the area of Midian, where many remains have been found. Also,
Moses had the vision of the Burning Bush in Midian, and seemingly
Sinai was there. Moses married a woman from Midian.

God swore they would not enter into His rest. What would have been
understood at the time of the desert wanderings by that word? Most
likely the promised land. Later, around the end of the OT period,
there was a tendency to reinterpret material images to make them
stand for spiritual realities, as St. Paul does in Galatians 3. 15
ff. But although the Jews did know of survival after death during
the desert period, they may not have known much about retribution
the future life then.

Many scholars today argue that the early Hebrews seem to have had a
unitary concept of man - a body with the breath of life, so that
after the breath goes into the air, and the body decays, nothing is
left. Hence the modern conclusion of no survival. Yet we are
certain that they did know of survival very early. Three times in
the OT -- Lev 19. 31; 20. 6; Dt 8. 11 - necromancy is prohibited,
which makes clear they did know of survival. Jesus Himself in
replying to the Sadducees, appealed to the burning bush text:"I am
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." He
reasoned:He is not the God of the dead but of the living. While of
course accepting His words, we still may ask: Did the early Hebrews
pick up that implication in Exodus 3. 15.

How did they reconcile the two things? We do not know. It seems
that they did not know, but most likely did not concern themselves
about it. Semites could be quite comfortable with a pair of
seemingly contradictory statements, without asking how to reconcile
them. A fine example is found in Matthew 6. 6 tells them top ray in
secret. But Matthew 5. 16 tells them to let their good works be
seen so they may glorify the Father.

There are even some passages in the Psalms - admitted by all -which
seem to speak of the vision of God after death: In Psalm 17. 15 the
psalmist says that when he awakes: "I shall behold your face."
Psalm 73. 24:"You guide me with your counsel, and afterwards will
receive [laqah the same word used for the cases of Enoch in Gen 5.
24 and Elijah in 2 Kings 9-10] me to glory [kabod]." Psalm 49.
15:"God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for He will
receive me" - Again, laqah is used.

Further, Mitchell Dahood, in the introductions to each of his three
Anchor Bible volumes on the Psalms, argues for revising about 30
Psalm lines with the help of the Ugaritic. If he is right,
knowledge of retribution must have been found at least early in the
period of the kings.

So, picking up on the word today, the author of Hebrews wants them
to encourage one another, so long as it is still Today. In making
the exhortation of the OT present to his own time, the author is
following a very old tradition. In Dt. 5. 2 Moses told the
people:"The Lord God made a covenant with us at Horeb. Not with our
fathers did the Lord make the covenant, but with us all, who are
living today." The reason is clear: God intends each one of His
children to make the covenant with Him. A similar thought appears
in 2 Cor . 2:6 "Behold, now is the a acceptable time, now is the
day of salvation."

The author urges them not to be taken by the deceit [apate] of sin.
Sin deceives since it promises what is cannot give, since as St.
Augustine (City of God 14. 4) explains well, to sin is to fail to
be "true to form", the form or pattern God intends for each of us.
To do that is to move in the direction of non-being, since one
thereby recedes from Being and the source of being. That deceit is
epitomized in the story of Eve in the garden. She looked at the
fruit - or whatever command of God it may have been - and said in
effect to herself; God may know what is good in some things, but
right now, I can just SEE that this is good. I know better than
God. -- What consummate deception!

The author says we have become sharers metochoi with Christ if only
we hold on until the end. We are partners with Him, since as
Hebrews said above, He is our brother, since by divine adoption He
and we are sons of the Father. But this is valid only in the
condition expressed in Romans 8:17: "We are heirs of God, fellow-
heirs with Christ, provided that we suffer with Him, so we may also
be glorified with Him."

God was vexed with the Hebrews in the desert "for forty years",
that is, for the entire period of their wandering. It is an
evidence of the veracity of the author of that account that he does
not hesitate to portray the people of Israel as murmuring and
rebelling against God so very frequently, that Moses and God both
called them several times "stiff-necked."

So it was because of lack of faith that they could not enter into
the rest of God. The word used for their faithlessness is apistia
which is explained by saying "they disobeyed" Again, Hebrews is in
line with the certain Epistles of St. Paul, for whom faith includes
not only belief in what God says and confidence in His promises,
but also and especially obedience to His commands, as in Romans 1.
5,"The obedience of faith', that is, the obedience that faith is.

The fact that our author thinks of faith as including obedience,
like St. Paul in Romans 1. 5, is clear especially from the examples
of faith he gives in chapter 11, especially of the faith of
Abraham, who not only believed in His mind, had confidence in God's
promises, but acted in obedience, in leaving his home land, and in
being willing to sacrifice Isaac. What of the fact that St. Paul
insistently says faith alone justifies, without works? We reply:
Faith in the Pauline sense includes obedience, even as Hebrews does
here and in chapter 11. St. Paul seems unwilling to mention these
two examples -- leaving his home land, and sacrificing Isaac-- for
they might be called works . But a distinction was in order: these
works were things produced by the "obedience of faith", Romans 1.
5, that is, the obedience that faith is. But they did not earn
justification or salvation. That is a free gift of God, as we see
in Romans 6. 23: "The wages of sin [what we earn] is death; the
free gift of God [what we do not earn] is eternal life."

In line with all of this, the NT tends to picture the work of
Christ as a new Exodus, by the new Moses. In Lk 9. 31 at the
Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah are speaking with Jesus about the
exodos He is to fulfill in Jerusalem. That word fulfill may well
point to the final words of Jesus on the Cross: "It is completed,
fulfilled". St. John's Gospel (19. 30), so fond of working with
evocative uses of words, has Jesus say:"tetelestai: it is teleios",
reminding us of the words of Hebrews that He was made teleios (Heb.
2. 10) by suffering. (We recall too our comments above on Heb. 2.
10 that that word, teleioo in Greek was used to reproduce the
Hebrew expression meaning to ordain).