Lenski's Hebrews Commentary:
The Sharp Warning:
Harden not Your Hearts, chapter 3
Harden not Your Hearts, chapter 3
Consider Jesus in the Light of Moses, 3:1–6.
1) This is the preamble which resembles that found in 2:5–8. Moses is introduced because v. 7–19 cite the terrible unbelief that occurred on the journey through the desert under Moses. Let this story find no repetition under Jesus! We should not think that Jesus is put in contrast with Moses so that the readers are warned to forsake Moses for Jesus. They are paralleled—both Moses and Jesus are faithful. As Israel should have been faithful to Moses, so the readers should now be faithful to Jesus. In fact, the readers have a greater call to faithfulness than the unfaithful Israelites had as far as Moses was concerned because here is one greater than Moses. The two are alike, yet when they are paralleled, the greatness of Jesus must be kept in mind.
Verses 1–6 are thus important and necessary for a proper understanding of what follows. The placing of the two characters in juxtaposition, as is done here, is masterly indeed. The readers were tempted to forsake Jesus for Moses, but by doing this they would, despite their reverting to Moses, only repeat what the Israelites had done under Moses, repeat it in a way that is still worse because Jesus is greater than Moses. The writer makes the very inclination to turn back to Moses and to the old Judaism the basis of his warning not to forsake Jesus. This desire to turn from Jesus to Moses would be no more a turning back to Moses than was the action of the ancient Israelites, who had Moses and yet did not prove faithful to him.
If the writer had placed Moses in opposition to Jesus he would have aroused the antagonism of his readers. He proceeds as Jesus does in John 5:45–47. Yet, by being true to the facts when he places Jesus and Moses side by side and asks his readers to be faithful to both, the writer is able to bring out the fact that Jesus is far greater than Moses. And so both the similarity between the two and the fact that Jesus is the greater by far lend their powerful force to the warning appeal.
We now see why the appeal is ushered in by the preamble, v. 1–6, and why this opens with the call to consider thoroughly (κατανοέω) the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus.
Lenski, R. C. H.: The Interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews and of the Epistle of James. Columbus, O. : Lutheran book concern, 1938, S. 99.
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Lenski:
Jesus is presented as our example, but only on the basis of his High-priestly expiation (2:17). Only those who are cleansed by his expiation can be faithful to God and to him. Faithfulness in us means above all faith in him as our Apostle and High Priest, unwavering and true confession of him as such. Jesus cannot be merely a moral example. The wording is again wonderful, for beside Jesus as our Apostle and High Priest are placed our heavenly calling (from God to us) and our confession (our response to God)—he in his saving office, we in our calling as saved—“faithful” being the great point now to be considered.
“As faithful to him who made him” means: God made Jesus the Apostle and High Priest, made him what we confess him to be. We may appeal to 1 Sam. 12:6 for this use of made (ποιεῖν) but not overlook Acts 2:36: “God made him both Lord and Christ (ἐποίησε), this Jesus whom you on your part did crucify.” It is unfair to criticize the Greek fathers who understand these words in this way and to claim that they did it only in order to deprive the Arians of one of their proof passages against the deity of Jesus. Those Greek fathers were right, witness Acts 2:36. God “made” also the human nature of Jesus, wherefore Jesus also called him “my God”; but what are Arians able to make of this since they must show that Jesus did not possess the deity of the divine nature? The interpretation that God made “the historical personality of Jesus, i. e., not only created it but equipped and commissioned it as the task required for the accomplishment of which it was destined” (Riggenbach) is unclear and does not accept the simple meaning of the words.
Moses is placed alongside of Jesus, the Moses of whom these Jewish Christians think so highly, from whom also the writer detracts nothing: “even also as Moses (was faithful) in his whole house,” meaning Israel. This is plainly a reference to Num. 12:7; it is almost a quotation. See the repetition of it below in v. 5. Some construe the ἐν phrase with πιστός, which would then mean that Jesus was faithful in his house (or in God’s house). But such a construction does not follow the Greek order of the words. The use of the word “whole” is challenged, in part on textual grounds, but especially because no reason for its introduction is said to exist. But Num. 12:7 has “whole.” The word is decidedly in place here, in v. 5, as well as in Numbers. In all three passages it states that Moses was faithful, not merely in a part of Israel, but in his management of the whole of it. Besides all this, some overlook the fact that Moses is an individual “in” the house while in marked difference to him Jesus is “over” the house (v. 6).
Here, then, are two individuals who are “faithful” in their high and most difficult offices; the one is even “the Apostle and High Priest” whom we confess. Dare we be faithless and recreant in our calling and our confession?
3) This application is as yet only implied, for the readers are left to ask why Jesus’ faithfulness is made thus prominent. Before the answer is offered the point regarding Moses is more fully explained. While he and Jesus are examples in faithfulness, not he but Jesus is the greater. It may well be possible that the explanation is needed because the Jews commonly placed Moses higher than even the angels.
Lenski, R. C. H.: The Interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews and of the Epistle of James. Columbus, O. : Lutheran book concern, 1938, S. 102.
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Lenski:
Harden not Your Hearts! v. 7–14.
7) The unbelief and the hardening of the whole people of Israel during the forty years of their journey in the wilderness, not only as these are recorded by Moses but also as they are depicted anew by David in Ps. 95:7–11, are a mighty effective warning for us even today. They must have been an even more effective warning for the first readers of this epistle. They were of Jewish blood; are they going to repeat what happened to their ancestors in the desert? Faithful Moses has been placed before them beside faithful Jesus. Will they be faithful in their “heavenly calling” (v. 1) as Jesus and Moses were, or will they now prove faithless? This is what happened to their ancestors under Moses. Are they going to repeat this under Jesus who is so much greater than Moses?
They think of turning from Jesus to Moses. But Moses and Jesus belong together; both were equally faithful, Moses in the house as a servant, Jesus as the Son over the house (v. 5, 6). It is impossible to become faithless to the faithful Jesus who is the Son over the house without becoming equally faithless to Moses who is the servant in the house even as the house is one. Moses would be the first to accuse them (John 5:45–47). All this lies in the use of this quotation, and it is brought to bear upon the readers with corresponding effect.
It is best to construe διό … βλέπετε (v. 12) and to regard the καθώς clause with its quotation as subordinate, a construction which the A. V. indicates by the use of a parenthesis. The writer does not adopt the language of the psalm as stating his own thought, for in v. 10 God speaks, and the writer cannot adopt the words of God as being spoken by himself. Therefore, even as speaks the Holy Spirit:
Today if you shall hear his voice,
Do not harden your hearts as in the embitterment,
On the day of the temptation in the wilderness,
Where your fathers tempted me in a testing
And saw my works for forty years.
Wherefore I was disgusted with this generation
And said: Always they err with the heart.
Moreover, they did not know my ways
So that I swore in my wrath:
They shall not enter into my rest!—see to it, brethren, etc.
“Even as speaks the Holy Spirit” is not a formula of quotation which introduces Scripture. It is not a formula at all as witness 9:8 and 10:15 where we have a different wording; in Acts 21:15 Agabus says, “These things says the Holy Spirit,” although he is not quoting Scripture. What David wrote about the old Israelites is attributed to the Holy Spirit as if the Spirit himself “says” it, still says it to us. David’s words (see 4:7) are the Holy Spirit’s words. This defines inspiration just as do Matt. 1:22; Heb. 10:15; 9:8; and many other statements. We do not talk about an “inspiration theory” but look at all these passages which present a clear fact: “the Holy Spirit says or declares” this and that which was written in the Old Testament.
