analogy, the Lord himself came through human parentage and is acclaimed (or not) as Lord in the world though he is its Lord. On such scores as apply, Hebrews has passed the test and must therefore be read for what it is, inspired, canonical divine speech.
Looking Through the Text: The Preacher’s Strategy
As already indicated the preacher’s strategy is to translate the readers’ lives into the heavenly drama of the Son’s salvation. This is the real context by which to make sense of their social-psychological-physical lives, to be sure without any reduction to the reality and importance of the latter.
The sermon is a soundly-reasoned argument with themes that give it a distinct profile. Its coherence, however, finally consists not in syllogistic argumentation nor in abstract (e.g., the superiority of Christ) or specific themes (priesthood, covenant, divine speech, perseverance, etc.) but in the history of God’s covenantal speech which attained its goal and revealed its center in the Son. The Son is the one in and as whom God speaks his world-creating, -governing, and -cleansing word, within which world we are created participants. As the Father of the Son who is Jesus his newly spoken word is one with all his words. Or rather, all his words are now found to have been oriented on the Son, to whom they witnessed; they were expressive of the Son. The flip side of that claim is that the Son is known in those earlier words, and thus as priest and offering according to the shadows and copies of Moses. This is not merely a convenient set of categories for a Jewish readership but the divinely created light in which the Son’s person and work are known.
That history not only enables us to see the Son but with him ourselves and his salvation in our own time. This is the time in which the Son’s salvation is given in the word of promise—gospel—while the already-enthroned Son waits for his enemies to be made a footstool for his feet. That image of the enthroned-but-waiting Son accounts for the ongoing resistance to his rule (persecution, temptation), the provision for the present, and the certainty of hope. The proclaimed word of forgiveness, as a word of promise, must be received in faith, which means a faith that falls into step with this history and that perseveres in this to the end. That way of faith is none other than the way of the Son’s learning of obedience through his suffering, again illuminated from the history of Israel’s pilgrimage as God’s covenantal children. In all of this, Hebrews is a retelling of the entire history of creation and its salvation, prepared and anticipated in the old covenant history, accomplished in the now-inaugurated new covenant, verging on its great dénouement.
The thread that unites this story is the one already supplied by the Scriptures, namely, the promise of God to Abraham that he would inherit the world (Rom 4:13) and that all nations would be blessed through him. Hebrews affirms nothing of the cosmos or its history that is not known from and by this history; it pretends to no metaphysical commitments that do not emerge from this history. It is interested in the literal fulfillment of that historical promise. The promise, it is understood, concerns the entrance into the inheritance, which is the world fully consumed by the holiness of God, God’s own resting place. This is the original intention for the world; the association of that resting place with the creation sabbath has this intention. That promise was elaborated in the covenant established with Abraham’s seed through Moses, a covenant that dramatically enacted the (at that point still-blocked) entrance into the holy space of God’s presence. The challenge posed to the promise was the unfittingness of the seed to make that entrance, defiled as it was by sin and under the sentence of death. The covenant, as the bond of willing parties, was accordingly a failure because of Israel but, because God is faithful, it will not fail. The history of failure was enacted in the shadows and copies of Israel’s history. The act of salvation was not an act of mere power imposed on creation, but the free choice of the Son to receive the body prepared for him—created existence is not foisted on humankind, but freely chosen by our first member—sharing fully in the blood and flesh seed of Abraham and as a man doing God’s will to the uttermost. Abraham’s seed kept covenant. By his self-offering his brothers and sisters are cleansed of their defilement. Because of his suffering he is crowned with glory and honor. As the God-man fitted for this exaltation he has entered the Most Holy Place of God’s presence and is seated on the divine throne where he waits for all things to be placed under his feet and where he always lives to intercede for those who draw near to God through him. Thus the promise of Psalm 8 concerning the created status of humanity is fulfilled. What remains is the doing away with all that is not of the holiness of God, the great “shaking” of which Haggai spoke (12:25–29).
We can focus this history further: The story of Israel is not merely one that leads up to the Son; it is the Son’s own history in shadows and patterns. Even more basically we must say that real history is the history of the Son, and from it we understand Israel’s history. If that seems too abstract and therefore unlikely we should remind ourselves of the comparison of the tabernacles—the true tabernacle preceded Moses’s (8:5), casting its shadow down from heaven and back from the Son, and its history overarched the whole of time (9:12, 14, 26)—and then repeat that the rest of the cosmos is understood from this. The universe itself was made “through” the Son and he is the heir of all things; he bears all things by his own powerful word.11 This applies not only to the history that preceded Jesus but the history that follows, which is why the post-resurrection church correctly finds itself inside the gospel narratives of Jesus’ life—not just in the sense that we benefit from those events but that, for instance, we are in the boat with the other disciples undergoing what they did in a storm on the Sea of Galilee or that the raising of Lazarus is a manifestation of the general resurrection. Hebrews accordingly directs its readers to find their story in either Jesus’ own (2:5–16; 12:1–3; not to mention 9:15) or in Israel’s (e.g., 3:7—4:11). These are really one and the same, but their center is always Jesus.
Israel’s story is invoked by the preacher both in particular allusions (OT quotations) and sweeping gestures, both in its telling moments and in its whole arc. In the history of Israel we are in the lives of the Patriarchs, in the exodus, at Sinai, in the wilderness, on the borders of the land, occupying the land, and at the Most Holy Place. Two demonstrations of this can be mentioned as illustrative: The exhortation of 3:7—4:11 based on Ps 95:7–11 is unmistakably set against the story of Israel’s apostasy when they stood at the border of the land and refused to enter (Num 13–14). More fittingly we should say that the churchly readers are to find themselves with Israel in Deuteronomy now looking back on that earlier apostasy (Deut 1:9–46). The generation that rebelled at Kadesh had died, their children now stood again at the border, and they were being commanded to live in obedience. Moses reminds them that they have not yet “come to the rest and to the inheritance that the LORD your God is giving you.” (Deut 12:9). When they do arrive the Lord promises that he will give them rest from their enemies and choose a place for his Name where they will bring their offerings (12:10–11). This history carries forward to David in 2 Sam 7:1–29 and on into the son of David, Solomon (1 Kgs 5:3; 8:56; see further on Heb 3:7—4:11 and 12:18–29). It is into this history that Ps 95:7–11 fits, but now, in the context of Hebrews, it is recognized that the true history being enacted was that of the Son who is the pioneer for his fellow seed (Heb 2:10) and that the resting place was to be the whole world made God’s Most Holy Place. The promise remains (Heb 4:1, 6) and enduring faith that does not replicate Israel’s rebellion is the need of the hour. But how can they, unholy, enter God’s holy presence? That is what the long exposition of 4:14—10:25 will unfold.
Again, the exhortation of Heb 12:4–11 based on Prov 3:11–12 is finally to be set against the sweep of Israel’s experience of God’s disciplinary measures by which she would be purged of her sin and made fit to inherit what had been promised, especially as this is seen in the great prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah. The frame of reference is not that of a Jewish or Greco-Roman household as such, as if merely to put an encouraging spin on the experience of hardship. The point is to assure these Christian men and women of faith that they are the genuine children of God’s household, Abraham’s seed, the people of Israel and of Judah with whom God has established his new covenant (Heb 8:7–13), and that just for this reason they find themselves on the difficult
