I. Significant Places in Hebrews 9-10
Hebrews 9-10 is a visual text replete with places, details and movement. It combines two analogically related diachronic topographies. It begins with a tour of the earthly tabernacle (9:1-11) and moves to the realms of the heavenly tabernacle (9:12-28). It travels the reader to the covenant inauguration at the base of Sinai (9:15-20), and the consecration of the earthly sanctuary (9:21-22) before rocketing back to the heavenly sanctuary of Christ’s present priesthood and soon second appearing.
The first section, Hebrews 9:1-10 introduces the Exodus tabernacle on the way to the theme of Yom Kippur. The outer and inner sections of the tabernacle are contrasted in terms of entrance, function, and personnel. The “first tent” is used continually by the priests (9:6). The second is entered only once a year, only by the high priest, and for the bringing of blood (9:7). These features of holy of holies, high priest, one time, with blood are then matched to Christ’s heavenly entry in Hebrews 9:11-12. The writer then leaves the Yom Kippur theme briefly in verses 9:15-21. He ties together themes of covenant rupture (9:15), covenant inauguration (9:16-20), and priestly ordination (9:9-10, 13-14), then returns to the Yom Kippur service in 9:22-10:4.
II. The Problem of Places in Interpreting Hebrews 9-10
The writer expects his reader to be aware of the date, origin, functions, and purpose of the Yom Kippur service.[1] Knowledge of the trajectory of the service is important, as the writer envisions Christ and believers at a particular moment within the Yom Kippur service. This place informs the nature of Christ’s present work and the actions that remain to be accomplished. These, in turn, illuminate believers’ location within God’s arc of salvation.
The writer signals the importance of Christ’s location in the Yom Kippur sequence by introducing the theme early in the letter. The language of τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ποιησάμενος “purification for sins” in 1:3 is a unique construction in the New Testament. Sins are more often forgiven. Sinners are more often cleansed. This text finds its nearest scriptural parallel in the LXX of Leviticus 16, the instructions for Yom Kippur. This purification was done in the Holy of Holies, an act associated with the ark of the covenant. An association reinforced by Hebrews 2:17, which uses εἰς τὸ ἱλάσκεσθαι τὰς ἁμαρτίας τοῦ λαοῦ to express Christ’s high priestly goal, language sometimes associated with the mercy seat of the ark. Scripture speaks of the ark as the footstool of God (Psalm 99), above which he is enthroned (Isaiah 37:16), and from which he speaks (Exodus 25:22). In Hebrews, this is the location from which Christ presently speaks (Hebrews 12:25).[2] The text says that Christ made purification and sat down. Hebrews 1:3 pictures Christ enthroned above the place where this crucial cleansing took place.
A confusion has been created by the tendency to see the sprinkling of the blood on the mercy seat as the apex or end trajectory of the Yom Kippur service. In normal practice, there was more to come. Hebrews presents a change in the Yom Kippur service. Christ’s enthronement after making purification is a remarkable and previously impossible turn of events. No priest could sit down as king. No human could ascend to, much less take, the divine throne. None could survive in God’s presence once the smoke of the incense cleared (Leviticus 16:13). No other enthronement could produce such an extended parenthesis.[3]
The main point is this, the writer of Hebrews has located the present enthronement of Christ as an extended pause near the climax of a celestial Yom Kippur service. If we are going to understand the implications of this placement we will need to answer these questions:
- What are the conditions presupposed in the Yom Kippur prescription that inform the nature of the current pause?
- What parts of the traditional service await completion and are these anticipated in the letter to the Hebrews?
Once we have investigated these themes, we can answer the question that is the purpose for our explorations
- How can this help us to make sense of Hebrews 9:26-10:25?
III. The Purpose for the Pause in Hebrew’s Yom Kippur Liturgy
Hebrews speaks of Christ as having gone “through the greater and more perfect tent” (9:11), and “through the veil” (6:19), where he is a “forerunner for us.” At this entrance, Christ is in the “holies” (9:13) that was “not made by hands, but heaven itself” (Hebrews 9:24) where he is presently appearing in the presence of God for us. Here, Christ is “making intercession for us” (7:25), providing present help (Hebrews 2:18, 4:14) and enthroned over all things (1:3, 1:8, 1:12, 2:7-8,10:12).
Most contemporary interpretations of this configuration contain these elements:
- Based on Christ’s enthronement, this is the final state of things.
- Based on Christ’s completed cleansing, believers now have access to the heavenly holy of holies.
Problems with this interpretation emerge from the text of Hebrews. Not least of these is the Hebrew’s description of present circumstances. These texts that point to Christ as a forerunner (Hebrews 6:20), toward whom we race (Hebrews 12:1-3). Christ appears in now heaven on our behalf (Hebrews 9:24). We eagerly await him (Hebrews 9:28). If believers had access within the second veil, such language would be unwarranted or misleading.
Next, Hebrews contains indications of things yet to happen. Hebrews 9:28 speaks of Christ’s appearance a “second time without reference to sin for those who eagerly await him.” This phrase has long been associated with the Yom Kippur high priest’s emergence from the heavenly tabernacle. Christ “sat down at the right hand of God waiting from that time onward until His enemies be made a footstool for his feet.” (Hebrews 10:12b-13). If the re-emergence of Christ and the subjection of creation to him are future, as they must be, then Hebrews’ salvific arc allows for future events. The “one time” entrance of Christ (Hebrews 9:12, 26,10:12) does not preclude present and future accomplishments in the work of Christ. It does indicate how firmly established are those things which Christ has done.
Additionally, Hebrews connects every need for resolution with the future setting right of things through Christ’s present enthronement (Hebrews 10:12). While the promise remains for us to enter God’s rest, we must be diligent to enter (4:1-13) even as we depend on the one who has already passed through the heavens (4:15-16). Though our hope has passed within the veil, we are invited to draw near with confidence to the throne of grace (4:16). This places believers at the golden altar before the second veil where the priests stood daily to intercede. Their place at the throne of grace was once only accessible to the anointed priests in the earthly sanctuary. In Hebrews, non-Aaronic believers have been ordained to enter the holy place in the greater and more perfect sanctuary, and their access will soon be greater still. Believers will see him and enter with him (10:19-25) provided they are not among those who shrink back (10:39).
It is in connection with these present/future tensions that Hebrews places an extended pause at the point in which the high priest has gone into the holy of holies with the blood of bulls and goats.
He shall make atonement for the Holy Place, because of the impurities of the sons of Israel and because of their unlawful acts regarding all their sins; and he shall do so for the tent of meeting which remains with them in the midst of their impurities. Leviticus 16:16
This also speaks to why Hebrews places believers outside the tent, even though they are already ordained for priestly service:
When he goes in to make atonement in the Holy Place, no one shall be in the tent of meeting until he comes out, so that he may make atonement for himself and for his household, and for all the assembly of Israel. Leviticus 16:17
The writer points to Christ, just within the veil, within the heavenly sanctuary, beyond our sight, thereby locating Christ and believers at a particular point in the Yom Kippur trajectory. Christ’s entry, intercession, and enthronement are a parable for the present time (Hebrews 9:8). Believers, meanwhile, live in the time between Christ’s payment for the sins of his people and the final acts of Christ’s high priestly service that will complete the liturgy and realize the age to come.
IV. Hebrews 9 and the Continuation of the Celestial Yom Kippur
Moral defilement entails those sins that defiled the land, and the sanctuary listed in Leviticus 17-22, sexual sin, misuse of blood and idolatry.[4] These specifically stained the golden altar of incense.[5] The most widely known remedy for moral defilement is the Yom Kippur instructions of Leviticus 16-17. An earlier picture in Exodus 30:7-10 presents the Yom Kippur not in terms of the blood on the cover of the ark of the covenant, but exclusively as the cleansing of the golden altar.[6] Cleansing instructions for the golden altar are later included in the prescription for the entire service:
Then he shall go out to the altar that is before the Lord and make atonement for it; he shall take some of the blood from the bull and some of the blood from the goat and put it on the horns of the altar on all sides. With his finger he shall sprinkle some of the blood on it seven times and cleanse it and consecrate it from the impurities of the sons of Israel. Leviticus 16:18-19[7]
Hebrews has traced Christ, as the great high priest into the throne room of heaven and has paused the universal Yom Kippur service after Christ’s death to pay for sins, when he is seated enthroned above the ark/footstool, which he has sprinkled with blood to amend the breaking of the former covenant (9:15) and to ratify the establishment of the new. He now intercedes for new covenant people to complete their race and join those who have arrived at the finish line before them.
The world through which believers run has the potential for tempting them (Hebrews 12:1) and defiling them (Hebrews 12:15-17). For this reason, Christ is presently sanctifying those he has already perfected (Hebrews 10:13).[8] This language indicates that Christ has already qualified believers to enter the presence of God and keeps them cleansed as they pass through a fallen world. It is upon their entrance to Zion and the heavenly city that they are met with a final application of the “sprinkled blood” (Hebrews 12:22-23).
Such sanctification will be ever necessary for earthly pilgrims until that moment prefigured by the Yom Kippur cleansing of the golden altar, when Christ removes the stains of every sin and the traces of the fall from the world and every reminder and record of humanity’s wrongs from the heavenly sanctuary. The analogy runs: as the high priestly cleansing of the tabernacle was for Israel, so shall Christ’s high priestly cleansing be for the creation “order to come”. (Hebrews 2:5)
In the Yom Kippur liturgy, once this cleansing of the golden altar had taken place, the priest came into view and poured out the rest of the blood at the base of the brazen altar.[9] After these events is the scapegoat ritual.
When he finishes atoning for the Holy Place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall offer the live goat. 21 Then Aaron shall lay both of his hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wrongdoings of the sons of Israel and all their unlawful acts regarding all their sins; and he shall place them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who stands ready. 22 Then the goat shall carry on itself all their wrongdoings to an isolated territory; he shall release the goat in the wilderness. Leviticus 16:20-22
Too often, this has been seen as a ritual of forgiveness, rather than a ritual of removal and renewal. The Yom Kippur functioned within a larger system. Sins had been confessed and impurities cleansed in ongoing purification offerings. Redemption had been made continually in the reparation offerings. On Yom Kippur the infractions against covenant were addressed, in the sprinkling of the mercy seat. Then the record, memory, and the defilement of these sins and impurities were cleansed from the golden altar. In the Azazel ceremony, their effects and consequences were sent outside of the community of God’s people.[10]
As these are still future in Hebrews, the writer sketches them lightly. 9:22 speaks of the blood outpouring or blood on the base of the brazen altar. It also alludes to the “release” of the scapegoat[11] that can only be done once the sacrificial blood has been poured out. The heavenly things to be cleansed are the mercy seat, which has been done, and the golden altar, which will be done just before Christ “appears a second time without reference to sin” as he sends every remnant and trace of sin and death outside of the created order.
V. The Yom Kippur Pattern in the Letter to the Hebrews
A. The Eschatological Place of Yom Kippur
The writer of Hebrews has lifted the salvific events of Christ’s fulfillments of the spring festivals, Passover, Firstfruits, and Pentecost and recast them as the fall feasts. Rosh Hashanah, the days in which the world was created and their movement to the seventh month of the year in Exodus 12 has recast the sounding of the trumpets as the ushering in of the New Creation. This feast culminates in Yom Kippur which speaks of Judgment Day and apocalyptic/eschatological cleansing. Such cleansing was the messianic and salvific frame in the eschatology of 1st century Judaism,[12] as they read and understood Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Malachi.[13] Tabernacles, with its seventy bulls, completes the annual cycle with the cleansing of the nations of the world, a Sh’meta year covenant inclusion ceremony, and a feasting in the presence of the LORD. This too will need much support and explanation and is the subject of my present and much larger work.
For now, as long as we keep a post-temple perspective on Yom Kippur in which it functioned like a large public sin offering and time of repentance, rather than an ultimate purging of the sacrificial system we will minimize and mischaracterize its role in Hebrews. This gap in understanding has been kept in place by the siloing of the disciplines in Old Testament and New Testament scholarship.
B. A Re-reading of Hebrews 10
If this reading properly identifies and locates the writer of Hebrews’ pause in the Yom Kippur service, it lends clarity to the questions about the effectiveness of sacrifice in Hebrews 10. Hebrews is clear on two things the law could not accomplish. First, though the plan of God envisioned a kingdom of priests, the Law could not qualify and ordain priests outside of the sons of Aaron. In fact, the Law’s ordination ordeal left even fully qualified priests fearful for their well-being. A solution to this problem has been provided in Hebrews 7-9:14 in which a high priest of the order of Melchizedek can cleanse those whom he is not ashamed to call brothers to “serve the living God.”
A related problem is raised in 10:1 where the year-by-year sacrifices could not cleanse those who “draw near”, probably lay persons, Levites, though perhaps priests other than the high priest. The language of “enter” is reserved for those who can pass through the second curtain, spectifically, high priests. Two things were be needed to allow God’s people to enter the heavenly holy of holies, 1. The people would need cleansing that could remove all traces of sin and death and consecrate them to God. 2. The sanctuary would need to be cleaned in such a way as to remove every record of sin and defilement from the golden altar.
If the first problem is an ordination problem, the second one is a Yom Kippur problem. Every sin that defiled the land also defiled the golden altar. Each day-to-day sin that required blood be brought into the holy place resulted in the sprinkling of blood on the golden altar (Hebrews 10:11). These applications were not removing the sins but rather they were leaving a record of them. Were one to enter the holy place, this accrual of blood would serve as a reminder, a witness of why one had already come to far and could not go any further. These sins stood, quite literally, between the worshipper and the LORD.
Yom Kippur spoke of a day in which those stains, themselves records of humanity’s sins, defilements and iniquities, would be washed away. But instead of cleansing the gold of that altar, each Yom Kippur left only another layer of blood. In short, Yom Kippur always promised something it could never accomplish. And yet such an accomplishment would have been premature. If God had provided the perfect Yom Kippur that removed every sin at the wrong time, how long would it be before the stains of humanity’s sins, iniquities and defilements began to accrue once again?
Establishment of final purgation raises the need to change the world to keep humanity holy. This, in turn, raises another problem resolved by Christ in Hebrews, the need to change humanity. If there was to be a break in the cycle in which humans defiled the world and the world defiled humanity, a solution would need to come from outside of the cycle, a priest from elsewhere who could say and fulfill, “I have come to do your will.” The combination of Christ’s perfect obedience, perfect sacrifice, and better covenant Christ not only provided the only blood that could cleanse the golden altar, he also provided the only obedience that could conquer all human disobedience.
VI. Conclusion
This presentation of the Yom Kippur sequence in Hebrews may be seen as far flung or far fetched. But it is not far from presentations of the Hebrews-Yom Kippur relationship in Church History from Origen to the Puritans to work of C. K. Barrett.[14] If nothing else is thought to be beneficial from this explanation, I hope we would hang on to two things. First, is the sentiment of B. F. Wescott, that to say that Hebrews presents Christ as the fulfillment of God’s purposes for the Law, or God’s purposes for humanity, are both too low. Hebrews presents Christ as the fulfillment of God’s purposes for the whole created order.
The second thought is like the first, Hebrews is remarkably comprehensive in the ways it sees God address what is wrong with the world. It does see atonement as a resolution to those matters that are individual, human, and moral. It also sees Christ’s death, resurrection, ascension, reign, and return as the God’s means for defeating sin, defilement, death, the devil, and disorder in the world.
[1] Justin Harrison Duff, ‘The Blood of Goats and Calves … and Bulls? An Allusion to Isaiah 1:11 LXX in Hebrews 10:4’, Journal of Biblical Literature, 137/3 (2018), 770 footnote 22, https://doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1373.2018.344454.
[2] Felix Cortez, ‘The Anchor of the Soul That Enters Within the Veil: The Ascension of the “Son” in the Letter to the Hebrews’, Doctor of Philosophy, Andrews University, 2008, 30.
[3] The promise of the ongoing Kingship in the Davidic Covenant in 2Samuel 7 could only be accomplished by two means, to have an unbroken succession or to have a king who lives forever.
[4] Jonathan Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (Oxford, 2000), 48–9.
[5] Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, 2009), 59.
[6] In a previous article we made this distinction. While ceremonial purity was accomplished through the cleansing of the persons affected, moral purity was, counter intuitively, accomplished through the cleansing of things. These things included the tent, the mercy seat, and most importantly the golden altar.
[7] Roland Kenneth Harrison, Leviticus: An Introduction and Commentary, The Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries, 3 (Downers Grove, 1980), 173. Harrison points out that many Christian sources think this refers to the brazen altar, while Jewish sources take this as a reference to the golden altar.
[8] Denney, James, The Death of Christ (2nd edn, London, 1911), 160. “There has been much discussion as to what sanctification in such passages means, and especially as to whether the word is to be taken in a religious or an ethical sense. Probably the distinction would not have been clear to the writer; but one thing is certain, it is not to be taken in the sense of Protestant theology. The people were sanctified, not when they were raised to moral perfection -a conception utterly strange to the New Testament as to the Old-but when, through the annulling of their sin by sacrifice, they had been constituted into a people of God, and in the person of their representative had access to His presence.”
[9] William L. Lane, Hebrews, vol. 47B, Word Biblical Commentary (Grand Rapids, 2014). See Lane’s understanding of αἱματεκχυσία in his notes on Hebrews 9:22.
[10] Harrison, Leviticus, 171.
[11] Leviticus 16:10 speaks of the ἀφήσει sending out of the scapegoat. 16:26 say the one who released the scapegoat must was his clothes, also using the word ἄφεσις. While ἄφεσις may be used for forgiveness of sins, it is rendered as release in Hebrews 9:22, καὶ χωρὶς αἱματεκχυσίας οὐ γίνεται ἄφεσις.
[12] Jacob Neusner, ‘Messianic Themes in Formative Judaism’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 52/2 (1984), 358, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/52.2.357.
[13] Jacob Neusner, ‘The Idea of Purity in Ancient Judaism’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 43/1 (1975), 17–8.
[14] Charles Kingsley Barrett, ‘The Christology of Hebrews’, in Who Do You Say That I Am? (Louisville, 1999).