Hebrews 8:7–13

8:7–8 Christ is mediator of a better covenant, “enacted on better promises” than the law and its Levitical priesthood (8:6). For the third time in Hebrews our preacher enlists an OT text to testify to the inadequacy of the OT order (cf. 4:7–8; 7:11). By promising (in Jer. 31:31–34) to establish a “new covenant” with Israel and Judah in the future, God implied that the “first covenant,” made at Sinai in the aftermath of the exodus, was not “faultless.” If it had been, a second covenant would not have been called for.

Elsewhere in the LXX and NT, “faultless” (amemptos) refers to individuals’ moral blamelessness, as in Job 1:1, 8; 2:3; 4:17; 9:20; 11:4 and in such NT texts as Luke 1:6 and 1 Thessalonians 2:10; 3:13; 5:23. Our author also has persons—not the covenant per se—in view. Although he characterizes the covenant enacted at Sinai as “not faultless,” he clarifies that the “fault” lay not in the law’s requirements but in the Israelites: “find[ing] fault [memphomenos] with them”—not with the covenant, but with people who “did not continue in my covenant” (Heb. 8:9).

The promise of a “new covenant” in Jeremiah 31:31–34 is crucial to our understanding of redemptive history. When he instituted the Lord’s Supper, Jesus interpreted the cup as a sign and seal of “the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25) and mentioned the new covenant promise of forgiveness of sins (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24). Paul draws on the Jeremiah 31 prophecy to contrast the “glory” of Moses’ ministry, which brought death and condemnation, with Paul’s privilege, as a minister of the new covenant, to proclaim righteousness in the life-imparting power of the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:5–18). Paul applies “old covenant” to the Scriptures given through Moses (2 Cor. 3:14–15), establishing the basis for the familiar titles of the two parts of our Bibles: Old Testament and New Testament. The Lord would establish this new covenant in “days [that] are coming,” “after those days” (Heb. 8:8, 10), a new era of redemptive history. Through Jeremiah and other prophets the Lord foretold that in the “last days” (Heb. 1:2; cf. 9:26) he would come to his people in justice and salvation (Num. 24:14; Deut. 4:30; Isa. 2:2; Jer. 30:3–24; Dan. 2:28; Hos. 3:5).

The permanence of the new covenant may have inclined our author to amend the LXX slightly, replacing “I will decree/confer [diathēsomai]” with, literally, “I will complete [syntelesō]” a new covenant, using a term belonging to the “perfection” word group that is so significant for this sermon. Just a few chapters later in Jeremiah, the LXX uses “complete” (synteleō) to describe the covenant inauguration rite in which Israelites passed between animal carcasses, enacting a self-maledictory oath (Jer. 34:15 = 41:15 LXX).

8:9 The new covenant is “not like the covenant that I made with their fathers” because the Israelites “did not continue” in that first covenant. With a strong arm the Lord “took them by the hand” to lead them out of slavery. This tactile imagery of God’s personal and powerful engagement to free his captive people, anticipated in Hebrews 2:16 (cf. comment on 2:15–16), compounds the guilt of their infidelity. They professed allegiance when the covenant was read and ratified at Sinai (Ex. 24:3–8), but when Moses went back up the mountain for further directions, they turned to worshiping a golden calf (Exodus 32). Then, as Psalm 95 testified, that generation disbelieved God’s voice and failed to enter his rest (Heb. 3:7–11). Finally, by the time of Jeremiah, faithless Israel and Judah had been banished from the Promised Land (Deut. 28:15–68; Jer. 2:1–32).

8:10 Our preacher has piqued our curiosity about the “better promises” on which the new covenant would be established (8:6). Jeremiah’s prophecy mentions four ways in which the new covenant would surpass its predecessor. The Hebrews author does not immediately elaborate on these promises, instead moving to conclude that the announcement of a new covenant implies the obsolescence of the old. But Hebrews 9:1–10:17 will show implicitly how the new covenant’s promises are fulfilled.

First, whereas at Sinai God inscribed his commandments on stone tablets (Ex. 24:12; 31:18; 34:1), in the new covenant “I will put my laws into their minds, and . . . on their hearts” (Heb. 8:10). The apostle Paul interprets this promise in light of the Holy Spirit’s work of sanctifying our affections and desires (2 Cor. 3:3). In Hebrews, the contrast between external and internal is expressed in the contrast between OT rites that could only “sanctify for the purification of the flesh” and the blood of Christ, which can “purify our conscience . . . to serve the living God” (Heb. 9:13–14; cf. 9:9–10).

The second promise, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people,” appears often in Scripture to summarize the mutual commitment between the Lord and his human subjects (Ex. 6:7; Lev. 26:12; Jer. 24:7; 32:38; Ezek. 11:20; 34:30; 37:27; Zech. 8:8; 2 Cor. 6:16; Rev. 21:3; etc.). The new covenant is secured by God’s oath-bound promise to Abraham and his oath-bound appointment of Christ as Abraham’s and our priestly intercessor (Heb. 6:13–20; 7:1–28). In this better covenant, therefore, the bond between the Lord and his people is unbreakable.

8:11 The third promise, that all God’s people, “from the least of them to the greatest,” will know him, can be understood against the backdrop of the mediatorial role of the OT Levitical priests. Priests were to teach God’s law to Israel (Deut. 33:8–10; Mal. 2:4–7). Parents were to teach the Torah to their children (Deut. 6:6–9), but their knowledge of God’s word was dependent on priests who preserved it, read it aloud, and explained it (Deut. 31:9–13; Ezra 7:1–10; Neh. 8:1–8). Moreover, access to the Lord’s presence was limited: only priests could minister in the tabernacle’s Holy Place, and only the high priest could enter the Most Holy Place.

These restrictions showed that “the way into the holy places” for all God’s people was “not yet opened” (Heb. 9:6–9). Hebrews does not infer from the promise that “they shall not teach, each one his neighbor . . . , saying, ‘Know the Lord’” that the new covenant community needs no recognized leaders or teachers (Heb. 13:7, 17). The preacher himself is teaching them in this “word of exhortation” (13:22). Nevertheless, Christ’s coming has effected a wider access to God’s word and to his Holy Spirit’s instruction from that word (1 John 2:26–27), as well as a more intimate access to God’s presence for all believers.

8:12 The previous three promises flow from the fourth, which these two lines express in complementary ways:

I will be merciful [will forgive, turning away my wrath] toward their iniquities.

I will remember their sins no more.

“Merciful” reflects a Greek word (hileōs) that differs from the “mercy” (eleos) of 4:16 (cf. 2:17). The term here belongs to the cognate group that expresses the turning aside of God’s wrath from the guilty through the forgiveness of their sins (Ex. 32:12–14; Num. 14:19–20). This family of related words includes hilaskomai (“make propitiation”; Heb. 2:17; Luke 18:13; Ps. 78:9 LXX); hilastērion (“mercy seat”; Heb. 9:5; Ex. 25:17–21; or “propitiation”; Rom. 3:25); and hilasmos (“propitiation”; 1 John 2:2; 4:10). The animal sacrifices of the OT provided a “reminder of sins every year,” an incessant witness to the inability of bulls’ and goats’ blood to remove sin’s guilt and defilement (Heb. 10:3–4). Our preacher will explore the sufficiency of Jesus’ sacrifice to achieve complete forgiveness of sins and deep cleansing of conscience (9:11–15, 23–28; 10:5–14), concluding: “Where there is forgiveness of these [sins]”—where God refuses to remember our offenses—“there is no longer any offering for sin” (10:17–18).

8:13 Our author concludes from Jeremiah 31:31–34 that, when God promised a “new” covenant, he relegated the first covenant to the category of what was aging and obsolete, near the point of disappearing altogether. Thus the OT announced that the Sinai covenant, as the framework for God’s relationship to his people, was destined to be discarded.