- Background
For the last 150 years, scholars, with few exceptions, have read Hebrews 9:11-20 as focused on “moral cleansing”, in contrast to the “ceremonial cleansing” that is described as ineffective in 9:10 and 9:13. This section is followed by the description of Christ’s role as covenant mediator prefigured by the covenant inauguration at Sinai, which is also read in terms of moral cleansing and redemption for sins. In 9:21-23 some see a shift to the imagery of ceremonial cleansing, a move that seems abrupt or arbitrary and is often interpreted as a metaphor in which the vessels, tabernacle, and heavenly things listed in the text are symbolic of the people of God and their consciences.
There are several axioms at work to substantiate this consensus which I will now try to summarize in a few lines:[1]
- Ceremonial impurity and cleansing serve as a metaphor for moral impurity and cleansing.
- Ceremonial and moral cleansing can be differentiated in that ceremonial cleansing may be applied to things or persons. Moral cleansing is only applied to persons.
- Moral impurity is the true impediment to humanity’s access to the presence of God.[2]
- Ceremonial cleansing is external. Moral cleansing is internal. [3] Sin stains the inner person resulting in moral defilement. Moral cleansing involves the cleansing of the conscience of the inner person.
These precepts undergird interpretation of Hebrews 9:13-14 which contrasts the blood of bulls and goats that sanctify the flesh with the blood of Jesus that cleanses the conscience from dead works. Reading that contrast in this framework leads to the conclusion that the cleansing of the conscience must refer to consciousness of sins and the cleansing must be moral in nature.
In this view, ceremonial cleansing may be applied to persons or things, making them clean for regular use, or holy for God’s use. Therefore, cleansing that is applied to things is not moral, but ceremonial. While cleansing that is applied to persons may be ceremonial or moral, in Hebrews 9, it should be understood as moral. This leads some interpreters read the “heavenly things” of Hebrews 9:23 and even sometimes the “vessels” in 9:20 as persons.[4]
- The Problem
Our concern here is a question of frame. What conceptions of the world were shared so deeply by the writer and audience of Hebrews, that their implications were implicitly embedded in the logic of the letter? The frame outlined above is a set of beliefs embedded in the logic of interpreters. I have written elsewhere on historical factors that contributed to that frame. Our present question is, where did the writer and the audience of Hebrews get their frame for their sacrificial logic, and does it resemble the one outlined above?
The sacrificial logic that shaped the writer and the readers of Hebrews emerged at least in part from the Torah and the practices with which they were familiar. The amount of content in Hebrews 9 that is Torah-dependent, is remarkably high, containing quotations, mentions and allusions. In testing this, one might ask what in Hebrews 9 could be said were the Torah not extant in the culture.
Years of scholarship have labored to move the sacrificial logic of the New Testament outside of the Jewish context. Sociological and anthropological attempts to place New Testament sacrificial logic into a universal lexicon of sacrifice have come up inconclusive.[5] Attempts to place sacrificial logic of the New Testament within contemporary Greek culture have been quelled for now.[6] Neusner’s survey of 2nd Temple sources and sectarian sources has concluded that despite criticisms of current practices and polemic uses of the Torah’s sacrificial system, the arguments over practice and legitimacy of the temple system were in fact dependent upon fairly uniform understanding of Israel’s sacrificial logic and even the most sectarian groups understood what Leviticus meant largely in terms of what Leviticus said.[7] Our plan is to compare the sacrificial logic of Hebrews’ contemporary interpreters with that of Leviticus and see if there is some or any common ground in their divisions of moral and ceremonial purity.
Harrington, Milgrom, Neusner and Klawans have written helpful books on purity distinctions in Leviticus. Of these, Klawans’ criteria of distinctions are especially clear and succinct. We will proceed by using his categories to explore Israel’s purity system, to reconstruct a rudimentary framework for the distinctions among cleansings that served as foundations for the thinking of first century community.
- A Framework of Cleansing Distinctions, from Klawans
One of the difficulties is that our language of kinds of cleansing is not native to the text. Klawans suggests rather than “moral” and “ceremonial” impurity, that it might be more clarifying to speak of “moral” and “physical” impurity. Both the biblical and rabbinic classifications of impurity make distinctions between impurity and defilement we will keep that distinction and not use impurity and defilement as synonyms.
- Physical Impurity- Klawans points out several characteristics of physical impurity, it is normal, unavoidable, and morally neutral.[8] It may be confusing that physical impurity, and its remedies are classed together in Leviticus with normal and inadvertent sins. By Klawan’s reckoning, these matters are addressed by the offerings in Leviticus 1-7 for the kinds of sins, impurities, and occasions detailed in Leviticus 8-15. This indicates that most sin does not produce moral defilement. Sins may require confession and payment, in the אָשָׁם offerings. Sins that also involved impurities, may also include חַטָּאת offerings. An impurity could become a sin if one neglected to address it.[9] While, at this level, sin and uncleanness are largely classed together, remedies for sins do not involve blood applications to persons, but to things, the brazen altar, the outer veil, the golden altar or the inner veil.
- Moral defilement[10] is addressed by the remedies listed in Leviticus 16-17 for those matters listed in Leviticus 18-20. The sins that result in moral defilement are threefold, sexual immorality, idolatry and illicit bloodshed.[11] These are not said to defile persons. Rather they stain the sanctuary and the land. Left unchecked these sins result in exile, the land will spew the people out, and divine judgment, in which the LORD removes his presence from his people so as not to destroy them. Whereas physical impurity keeps one out of the sanctuary, moral impurity does not. Rather moral defilement may reach a threshold at which God will depart from among his people as in Exodus 32-33, or from his sanctuary as in Ezekiel 8:6-18. That moral defilement need not bar one from the sanctuary can be shown by the adultery ordeal of Numbers 5:11-31. The one accused of adultery is brought to the sanctuary to undergo the ordeal. Note the contrast in a case of physical impurity, in which a woman after childbirth must remain outside the sanctuary until her days of purification.[12] Moral defilement is kept in check by application of blood on the ark, and the cleansing of the golden altar.[13] According to Milgrom[14] and others, those stains on the golden altar served as visible reminders, before the LORD of the iniquities of His people. Though we are right to say that sin cannot remain in the presence of God, those visible stains spoke of the impeding need for either repentance and cleansing or judgment.
- A review of our original suppositions in the light of the Levitical framework,
We began with the following precepts that undergird interpretation of Hebrews 9. Now we can ask if they are in keeping with the Law’s logic of sin, impurity and atonement.
- Ceremonial impurity and cleansing serve as a metaphor for moral impurity and cleansing.
- Ceremonial and moral cleansing can be differentiated in that ceremonial cleansing may be applied to things or persons. Moral cleansing is only applied to persons.
- Moral impurity is the true impediment to humanity’s access to the presence of God.
- Ceremonial cleansing is external. Moral cleansing is internal. [15] Sins stain the inner person resulting in moral defilement. Moral cleansing involves the cleansing of the conscience of the inner person.
We will take these in turn, using our clarified categories.
To deny the actuality of physical impurity and relegate it to “metaphor” contains a logical problem. For physical impurity to be a metaphor for moral impurity, physical impurity must first exist.[16] To use something nebulous or fictitious as a metaphor for something understood inverts the function of metaphor. While it is correct to say that Scripture sometimes uses physical impurity as a metaphor for moral impurity, as does Psalm 51, if most or all references to physical impurity are metaphorical, the metaphor becomes useless in understanding moral impurity.
As we have seen from above, physical impurity, not moral defilement is the chief impediment to entering the presence of God. Requirements for the priests regarding the consecration, cleansing and clothing, needed to enter the LORD’s presence were spoken of in the most serious terms, “lest they die.”[17] What is more, neglect of physical impurity is blatant disobedience to God’s commandments and can become sin. While the morally impure may come to the sanctuary, and are sometimes commanded to, those who persist in becoming morally defiled may find the LORD has left his sanctuary, they be cut off from His people, and they may be expelled from the land. These are not generally people who fear drawing near. Rather they are people who have failed to fear.
While physical impurity stains the person, it can be, in most cases, easily remedied by washing, sprinkling of blood and waiting periods. Moral impurity stains the land and the sanctuary and requires much more extreme and dangerous remedies, not done by the worshipper, but applied only by the high priest. Moral impurities are remedied by repentance; however, they are removed by cleansing the furnishings of the sanctuary.
Both moral and physical impurity have external and internal effects. Scripture records accounts of those who persist in sins only to be struck with cases of physical impurity, like skin diseases or death. Those who are physically impure, though they have undergone cleansing, may fear that their cleansing is incomplete, causing them to shrink back from entering the presence of God.[18] It is possible, then, that the cleansing of the conscience may be needed for those cleansed from physical impurities as well as those in the pre-judgement stages of moral defilement.
- Revisiting Categories in Hebrews 9:11-23
Those cleansings in Hebrews 9:11-14 refer to the sprinkling of persons, washings, food and drink restrictions, and imposed waiting periods are all in service of proximity to God. All of these would be “ceremonial” cleansing. Likewise, in Hebrews 9:15-21, the consecration of persons within covenant, and the consecration of things for use in the sanctuary are also aligned with the characteristics of physical or “ceremonial” cleansing.[19]
Sacrifices for redemption are mentioned two times in 9:11-23. Both instances may be seen to occur prior to the present cleansing actions, “Christ entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption” and “a death has taken place for transgressions under the first covenant.” While these do not speak directly of moral cleansing, the second one definitely addresses sin. In the Levitical framework, the אָשָׁם or “guilt” offering carries sense of payment, however the language of “reparations” rather than “redemption” is used. The language of redemption in the sacrificial system comes from an entirely different context which we will explore in the next article.
Working from Klawan’s categories, the cultic action that speaks most clearly of cleansing from moral defilement is Hebrews 9:21-23’s “cleansing of heavenly things”. Ironically, modern interpreters have metaphorized this clear reference to the cleansing of moral defilement to fit it to our conception of cleansing moral defilement. As we go on it will become apparent that we will not understand Hebrews 9:23 until we reframe our minds to understand that moral cleansing, in its most extreme cases, necessitates the cleansing of “things.”
- Conclusion
These explorations may cause us to question our common way of reading Hebrews 9:11-23. Why would the writer use the language of cleansing ceremonial impurity to speak of Christ’s removal of moral defilement and use the customary way of discussing the removal of moral defilement to speak of ceremonial cleansing? It is possible that though we have created a frame that allows us to make sense of the writer’s words, that frame might distort the writer’s meaning, and would have been confusing to the original readers. While our common frame has given us a way to understand 9:11-14 it also renders Hebrews 9:22-23 nearly incomprehensible. Might nuancing our understanding of the biblical functions of cleansing bring clarity and unity to our interpretations of the whole of Hebrews 9?
[1] See the introduction to my thesis, “The Cleansing of Heavenly Things: The Future of Atonement in Hebrews 9:22-23” for a list of 40+ commentaries and their understandings of the cultic language in Hebrews 9.
[2] Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, 196. “Now we see what our author wishes to teach his readers. The really effective barrier to a man’s free access to God is an inward and not a material one; it exists in his conscience. It is only when the conscience is purified that a man is set free to approach God without reservation and offer Him acceptable service and worship.”
[3] Luke Timothy Johnson, Hebrews, A Commentary, The New Testament Library (Louisville, 2006), 238-39. See also Hagner (2005)137.
[4] Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, 218. “What required to be cleansed was the defiled conscience of men and women; this is a cleansing which belongs to the spiritual sphere.”
[5] Helmer Ringgren, Sacrifice in the Bible (Cambridge, 1962), 17.
[6] Martin Hengel, The Atonement: A Study of the Origins of the Doctrine in the New Testament (London, 1981).
[7] Jacob Neusner, ‘The Idea of Purity in Ancient Judaism’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 43/1 (1975), 15–26.
[8] Jonathan Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (Oxford, 2000), 22–6.
[9] Leviticus 5:2
[10] Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism, 26–32.
[11] Note the early church requires gentile Christians also avoid these very things in Acts 15:2.
[12] Leviticus 12
[13] Exodus 30:10, Leviticus 16:18,
[14] Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics, Continental Commentaries (Minneapolis, 2004).
[15] Luke Timothy Johnson, Hebrews, A Commentary, The New Testament Library (Louisville, 2006), 238-39. See also Hagner (2005)137.
[16] Klawans, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism, 32–3.
[17] Exodus 28:35, 43, 30:20-21
[18] Hebrews 10:39
[19] Blood, in this case speaks of both consecration to the King of the covenant and of the consequences of breaking the covenant. While the death of Christ redeems from sins committed under the former covenant, the function of the blood of Jesus in augurating the New Covenant is that of ceremonial consecration.