NOTES for Heb 5:1-10
1 For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins: |
2 Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity. |
3 And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins. |
4 And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron. |
5 So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to day have I begotten thee. |
6 As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. |
7 Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; |
8 Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; |
9 And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him; |
10 Called of God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec. |
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As he further unfolds the image of the Messiah-High Priest, the author of the letter turns to the Yahwist and Jewish tradition, for which the image of the Messiah was connected not only with royal rule but also with priestly ministry. He reinterprets the corresponding quotations from the Book of Psalms (vv. 5-6; see respectively Ps 2:7 and Ps 109:4) in the context of ideas, widespread in his time in the Church, about Christ as the living Torah. According to views generally accepted in the earliest Christian era among both Jews and Christians, the Torah already existed before God created the world, and the coming of the Messiah was predetermined then as well. It is no surprise that the words about the spiritual birth of the king from Psalm 2, which in all probability speaks of Solomon, were transferred to the Messiah, who, like Solomon, was to be a descendant of David. The author of the letter supplemented the tradition by connecting the eternal nature of God's design concerning the Messiah with the eternal nature of the Torah, of which the Messiah became the living embodiment. He reinterprets in the same way the traditional comparison of the Messiah with Melchizedek.
Already in the pre-exilic period Melchizedek had become a living example of a charismatic figure who blessed a man of God, though Melchizedek himself did not know that man's God. And the Messiah could become high priest only charismatically, since He, as everyone knew, was not supposed to be a Levite, while a high priest, like any priest at all, was always a Levite by definition. The author of the letter confirms this by comparing Christ with Melchizedek (vv. 1-6) and by reminding his readers that, having become human and completed His earthly path to the end, He opened to His followers a possibility that the "lawful" high priests could not give them: the possibility of salvation (vv. 7-10).
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