least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more (Jer. xxxi. 31-34). In that He saith, A new [Covenant], He hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away' (Heb. viii. 6-13). The ninth chapter, as a whole, is taken up with detailed comparisons between the work of Christ and the Mosaic types. Then verily the first [Covenant] had also ordinances of divine service, and a worldly sanctuary. For there, &c.' 'But CHRIST being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; neither by the blood of goats and of calves, but by His own blood He entered in once into the Holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?' (Heb. ix. 11-14). III. Objections to the usual rendering of Heb. ix. 15—18.

I. This vexed passage, as commonly rendered, is hard to reconcile with its context; although in the passage itself (ver. 15-18) a superficial simplification is introduced by the disuse of the word Covenant-thus far consistently adopted as the rendering of dialýкn-and the temporary intrusion of another meaning, whereof many great authorities affirm unhesitatingly that there is no trace elsewhere throughout Holy Scripture.

The meaning alluded to is Testament or Will; the former word being adopted in the Authorized Version. Since however this word has lost much of its definiteness by its theological usage in the passage before us, and still more by its employment as a designation of the Canonical Books; it may not be amiss to transcribe the vexed passage, using Will for Testament, and thereby exhibiting perhaps more strikingly the

marked change, not to say incongruity, which is brought about by the departure from the rendering of dialýêŋ which is used both before and after.

As a conclusion following upon ver. 14, we should thus read :

'And for this cause He is the Mediator of the new Will, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first Will, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. For where a Will is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a Will is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth. Whereupon neither the first Will was dedicated without blood. For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water and scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book, and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the Will which God hath enjoined unto you. Moreover he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry. And almost all things are by the law purged with blood: and without shedding of blood there is no remission. It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these' (Heb. ix. 15-23).

There are several difficulties in the way of reconciling the passage, if thus rendered, with the context.

a.

Three significant words are common to Heb. viii. 6 and ix. 15, viz. Promise, Covenant, and the remarkable technical word, Mediator; yet whereas in the former verse JESUS is styled 'the Mediator of a better Covenant,' in the latter He is said to be the 'Mediator of the new Will,' although the same Greek word represents in both cases that whereof He is the Mediator.

b. After detailed allusion to sacrificial atonement and purgation we read that, 'For this cause He is the Mediator of the new Will, that by means of death for the redemption of transgressions, &c.' But in the case of a Will, there is no

redemption of transgressions:' the testator does not offer himself up as a sacrifice for those in whose favour the will is made.

c. With regard to a will being of no strength at all while the testator liveth, we may remark (1) (with Codurcus1) that a disposition of property, as in the case of the Prodigal Son (Luke xv. 12), is none the less valid for the Father's being alive; and (2) that the Prodigal seems to have regarded the portion asked for as one which would have fallen to him of right, and without testamentary disposition (Deut. xxi. 17), on the death of his Father. Moreover the Hebrew word which the LXX. render by Sia@nen certainly does not mean a Will; and many have affirmed that the very idea of a Will (the classical dialńkn) was altogether foreign to ancient Jewish modes of thought. 'The very idea of a Will or Testament,' argues Mr Wratislaw, 'is unknown throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, and was probably unknown in the ordinary life of the Jews, as such, in our Lord's earthly lifetime, although King Herod the Great left both a will and codicils attached to it.'

d. What is meant by the Mediator of a Will? It would seem that (1) there is no third party concerned in such cases; and (2) if there were, he (the peoirns) must be identical with the dialéμevos (ver. 15, 16). Who, then, are the other two? e. The second Stańkn, like the first (ver. 18), must be dedicated not without blood. This first is elsewhere alluded to as a Covenant, and is here made by some to be a Will, by the reverse process of assimilation to the second Will;' although it is apparently the aim of the writer to shew that the second has a detailed antitypical correspondence with the first, whereof the ceremonial sanctions are supposed familiar to the reader. But, granted that dianen is here a Will, what is meant by 'the blood of the Will2;' for how does blood, as a

1 Critici Sacri, Vol. VII. p. 4278. The blood of a dialnкn is spoken of in Ex. xxiv. 8; Zech. ix. 11; Heb. x. 29; xiii. 20: also in Matt. xxvi. 28; Mark xiv. 24; Heb. ix. 20. Cp. Luke

xxii. 20; 1 Cor. xi. 25. In the first series of passages dianкn is rendered covenant; in the second, testament; the identity of Ex. xxiv. 8 and Heb. ix. 20 notwithstanding.

symbol of death by violence, enter into the conception of a Will?

f. Codurcus, dismissing the supposition that God the Father is the Testator,' goes on to remark that neque CHRISTUS mortuus est quasi Testator, quasi dominus bonorum: sed quasi vas et sponsor, tanquam debitor, tanquam obnoxius, tanquam reus,...tanquam damnatus, tanquam servus.' And to this it may be added, that through His humiliation unto death CHRIST obtained to Himself a kingdom, and did not leave by way of testamentary bequest a kingdom of which He had been previously in possession (Phil. ii. 8—11).

g. There is perhaps little to be urged directly in favour of 'Testament' as a rendering of dia@nen in the passage before us, except (1) the implied death of the testator (ver. 16); and (2) the use of the word λnpovoμía in the preceding verse. The former analogy is a but slight one, seeing that the death in question is violent and expiatory: the latter-prima facie plausibility notwithstanding-is equally inconclusive, as may be shewn by the comparison of passages wherein the like collocation of διαθήκη and κληρονομία occurs. One such passage

is Gal. iii. 15, 18, where, in the opinion of Dr Lightfoot, the mere mention of the inheritance is not sufficient to establish the sense a Testament, which is ill-suited to the context.' Dean Alford to the same effect: 'not Testament...for there is no introduction of that idea: the promise spoken to Abraham was strictly a covenant, and designated diabýŋ in the passages which were now in the Apostle's mind.' Thus we are brought round once more to the same Covenant of Promise with Abraham which is alluded to in Heb. vi. 13-18, and into which the idea of λnpovoμía enters, but not so (it will be granted) that of testamentary bequest. In Gen. xv. 7, 8, we read with respect to it :-'I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it. And he said, LORD God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it? And thereupon follows the sacrificial ratification of the Covenant. If then in this, the original account, 'inheritance' does not import a testamentary sense into dialŋŋ,

it cannot be inferred from the same collocation in citations of the passage that Sialkŋ must mean not covenant but will.

2. The foregoing objections shew the meagreness of the analogy between the old Covenant and the new so-called 'Testament;' which is further granted, not only by those who make this their non-correspondence an argument against the rendering 'Testament,' but by others who here adopt the meaning Testament, while yet regarding it as unique and unprecedented in Holy Scripture. Thus Dr Lightfoot loc. cit.:—

SiaOnκny] a covenant. This word in classical writers almost always signifies, 'a will,' a testament'... On the other hand in the LXX. it is as universally used of a covenant, whether as a stipulation between two parties (σvvýêŋ, ‘a covenant' in the strict sense) or as an engagement on the part of one. Nor in the New Testament is it ever found in any other sense, with one exception. Even in this exceptional case, Heb. ix. 15— 17, the sacred writer starts from the sense of 'a covenant,' and glides into that of ‘a testament,' to which he is led by two points of analogy, (1) the inheritance conferred by the covenant, and (2) the death of the person making it. 'The disposition in this case,' he says in effect, 'was a testamentary disposition or will.'

Le Clerc too regards the passage as a rhetorical play upon the word dialýn, 'ex qua nihil philosophice colligas.' But it seems incredible that the sacred writer should here turn from his course to pursue a slight lateral analogy, and should dwell with strong emphasis upon the natural death which concurs with a testamentary bequest, when the central argument of the context is made to depend upon Christ's expiatory and sacrificial death. With this remark we pass on to a passage which is sometimes adduced in favour of the testamentary rendering in Heb. ix. 15 sqq.

IV. On the meanings of διαθήκη and διαθέσθαι.

I. A particular passage, wherein CHRIST on the eve of departure claims to be in some sense a diabéμevos, has been