HEBREWS 8 — THE BETTER COVENANT AND THE HEAVENLY SANCTUARY

Chapter 8 begins with a summary of the central point of the book's argument and then turns to the second major theme of the middle section: the new covenant. Having shown that Christ's priesthood is superior to the Levitical priesthood, the author now shows that the covenant He mediates is superior to the covenant of Sinai. The heart of the chapter is the longest quotation from the Old Testament in the New Testament, a full citation of Jeremiah 31:31–34, the great prophecy of the new covenant. The author reads this prophecy as fulfilled in Christ, and he draws the conclusion that the old covenant has become obsolete. The chapter also introduces the contrast between the earthly tabernacle, which was a copy and shadow, and the heavenly reality, which is the true sanctuary, and the language of "shadow" and "pattern" will be developed further in chapters 9–10. The language of the chapter reflects the situation of the readers, who were tempted to return to the temple system. The author is saying that the temple and its priesthood were only a preparation, and that to go back to them would be to give up the reality for the shadow. The warning that the old covenant is "ready to vanish away" suggests that the temple was still standing but not for long, and the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 would soon prove the point.

The prophecy of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31 is one of the most remarkable passages in the Old Testament, and the way that it is quoted here is an important part of the case for the Christian reading of the Scriptures. Jeremiah wrote about 600 years before Christ, at a time when Judah was about to fall to Babylon. He foresaw a new covenant that would not be like the one made at Sinai, and that would involve inner transformation and the forgiveness of sins. No such arrangement existed in the Judaism of his time, nor did it emerge in later Judaism in the form that Jeremiah described. The claim of the early Christians was that this promise was fulfilled in Christ, and the evidence they pointed to was the transformation of lives, the gift of the Spirit, and the forgiveness of sins. Jesus Himself, at the Last Supper, said that the cup was the new covenant in His blood (Luke 22:20), which shows that the connection between His death and the new covenant goes back to the earliest tradition. The writer's comment that the old covenant is about to vanish is also noteworthy as a historical marker. If Hebrews was written before AD 70, as most scholars hold, the author is making a prediction that was soon vindicated by the destruction of the temple. A text that speaks of the temple in the present tense, and that describes the sacrificial system as still in operation, is most naturally explained as written while the temple stood. The Dead Sea Scrolls show that some Jewish groups of the time, such as the Qumran community, also looked for a new covenant and regarded the temple as corrupt, which shows that the expectation of a renewed covenant was in the air.