Hebrews 13:10

Christianity and Judaism are so totally distinct, that "they who serve the (Jewish) tabernacle," have no right to eat our spiritual Gospel meat, namely, the Jewish priests, and those who follow their guidance in serving the ceremonial ordinance. He says, "serve the tabernacle," not "serve IN the tabernacle." Contrast with this servile worship ours.

an altar--the cross of Christ, whereon His body was offered. The Lord's table represents this altar, the cross; as the bread and wine represent the sacrifice offered on it. Our meat, which we by faith spiritually eat, is the flesh of Christ, in contrast to the typical ceremonial meats. The two cannot be combined (Gal 5:2). That not a literal eating of the sacrifice of Christ is meant in the Lord's Supper, but a spiritual is meant, appears from comparing Heb 13:9 with Heb 13:10, "with GRACE, NOT with MEATS."

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Heb_13:10

We have an altar

Our altar:

I.

OUR CHRISTIAN ALTAR. The very living heart of the gospel is an altar and a sacrifice. That idea saturates the whole New Testament, from the page where John the Forerunners proclamation is, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world, to the last triumphant visions in which the Apocalyptic seer beheld a Lamb as it had been slain, the eternal Co-Regnant of the universe, and the Mediator through whom the whole surrounding Church for ever worships the Father. Jesus Christ is all which temple, priest, altar, sacrifice proclaimed should one day be. And just as the relation between Christs work and the Judaic system of external ritual sacri-rices is that of shadow and substance, prophecy and fulfilment, so, in analogous manner, the relation between the altar and sacrifice of the New Testament and all the systems of heathenism, with their smoking altars, is that these declare a want, and this affords its supply; that these are the confession of humanity that it is conscious of sin, separation, alienation, and the need of a sacrifice, and that Christ is what heathenism in all lands has wailed that it needs, and has desperately hoped that it might find. Christ in His representative relation, in His true affinity to every man upon earth, has in His life and death taken upon Himself the consequences of human transgression, not merely by sympathy, nor only by reason of the uniqueness of His representative relation, but by willing submission to that awful separation from the Father, of which the cry out of the thick darkness of the Cross, Why hast Thou forsaken Me? is the unfathomable witness. Thus, bearing our sin, He bears it away, and we have an altar.

II. OUR FEAST ON THE SACRIFICE. The Christ who died for my sins is not only my means of reconciliation with God, but His sacrifice and death are the sustenance of my spiritual life. The life of the Christian is the indwelling Christ. But how is that feeding on the sacrifice accomplished? He that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me. He that believeth, eateth. He that with humble faith makes Christ his very own, and appropriates as the nourishment and basis of his own better life the facts of that life and death of sacrifice, he truly lives thereby. To eat is to believe; to believe is to live. I need not remind you how, though there be no reference in the words of my text, as I have tried to show, to the external rite of the communion of the Lords body and blood, and though altar: here has no reference whatever to that table, yet there is a connection between the two representations, inasmuch as the one declares in words what the other sets forth in symbol, and the meaning of the feast on the sacrifice is expressed by this great word. This is My body, broken for you. This is the new covenant in My blood. Drink ye all of it.

III. OUR CHRISTIAN OFFERINGS ON THE ALTAR. What are these offerings? Christs death stands alone, incapable of repetition, needing no repetition, the eternal, sole, sufficient obligation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. But there be other kinds of sacrifice. There are sacrifices of thanksgiving as well as for propitiation. And we, on the footing of that great sacrifice to which we can add nothing, and on which alone we must rest, may bring the offerings of our thankful hearts. These offerings are of a twofold sort, says the writer. There are words of praise, there are works of beneficence. The service of man is sacrifice to God. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

The Jewish and the Christian altar

I. ATTEND TO A FEW PARTICULARS RESPECTING THE JEWISH ALTAR.

1. It had its origin in Divine appointment.

2. The altar being built, it was afterwards dedicated, and in a solemn manner set apart for God.

3. When the altar was consecrated, it was ever afterwards reputed holy.

II. TRACE THE RESEMBLANCE, IN SOME INSTANCES, BETWEEN THE JEWISH AND THE CHRISTIAN ALTAR.

1. The altar was principally designed for sacrifice, and was, therefore, called the altar of burnt-offering (Exo_40:10). Now Christ is both the Sacrifice, the Altar, and the Priest.

2. The altar was designed for worship, and its most solemn acts were there performed. I will wash my hands in innocency, &c. I will go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy (Psa_26:6; Psa_43:4). And what the altar was to the Jews, that is Jesus to us; all our services are to be performed in His name, all our prayers and praises offered up through His mediation.

3. The altar was a place of refuge. Christ is in the truest sense the refuge of all who flee from the wrath to come, and who lay hold on the hope that is set before them in the gospel. (B. Beddome M.A.)

The altar of the Christian dispensation

I. THE LORD CHRIST, IN THE ONE SACRIFICE OF HIMSELF, IS THE ONLY ALTAR OF THE CHURCH OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

II. THIS ALTAR IS EVERY WAY SUFFICIENT IN ITSELF FOR THE ENDS OF AN ALTAR; NAMELY, THE SANCTIFICATION OF THE PEOPLE, as Heb_13:12.

III. THE ERECTION OF ANY OTHER ALTAR IN THE CHURCH, OR THE INTRODUCTION OF ANY OTHER SACRIFICE REQUIRING A MATERIAL ALTAR, IS DEROGATORY TO THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST, AND EXCLUSIVE OF HIM FROM BEING OUR ALTAR.

IV. Whereas the design of the apostle in the whole of his discourse is to declare the glory of the gospel and its worship above that of the law, of our priest above theirs, of our sacrifice above theirs, of our altar above theirs, IT IS FOND TO THINK THAT BY OUR ALTAR, HE INTENDS SUCH A MATERIAL FABRIC AS IS EVERY WAY INFERIOR UNTO THAT OF OLD.

V. When God appointed a material altar for His service, HE HIMSELF ENJOINED THE MAKING OF IT, PRESCRIBED ITS FORM AND USE, WITH ALL ITS UTENSILS, SERVICES, AND CEREMONIES, ALLOWING OF NOTHING IN IT OR ABOUT IT BUT WHAT WAS BY HIMSELF APPOINTED. It is not, therefore, probable that under the New Testament there should be a material altar of equal necessity with that under the Old, accompanied in its administrations with various utensils, ceremonies, and services; while neither this altar itself, nor any of its services, were of Divine appointment.

VI. SINNERS, UNDER A SENSE OF GUILT, HAVE IN THE GOSPEL AN ALTAR OF

ATONEMENT, WHEREUNTO THEY MAY HAVE CONTINUAL ACCESS FOR THE

EXPIATION OF THEIR SINS. He is the propitiation.

VII. ALL PRIVILEGES, OF WHAT NATURE SOEVER, WITHOUT A

PARTICIPATION OF CHRIST AS THE ALTAR AND SACRIFICE OF THE CHURCH,

ARE OF NO ADVANTAGE UNTO THEM THAT ENJOY THEM. (John Owen, D. D.)

An altar in the Christian economy

1. The very name, institution, and existence of an altar implies that man is a sinner-that there is a quarrel between us and God. If no sin, there is needed no sacrifice; if an altar, there must be sin to necessitate the institution of that altar.

2. It teaches also another grand lesson, namely, that the wages of sin is death.

3. An altar suggests to us a disruption between God and man. It is one of the instinctive suggestions of the heart of man that there is a quarrel between him and God; and until he can see it in the light of revelation, he knows not the origin of that quarrel, he knows not how that quarrel may be made up. The existence of an altar in the Christian economy teaches that there is forgiveness with God, that He may be feared.

4. An altar suggests to us the important, that there being one altar, it is the only way of acceptance. If this be infinite in its sufficiency why seek anything else?

5. Another idea suggested by the name altar is protection. We read occasionally in the Bible of fleeing to the horns of the altar, laying hold upon the horns of the altar; thus, too, the Christian has in his altar perfect protection. Protection from what? Not from illness, from poverty, from losses, from crosses? These are sanctifying and may not therefore be prevented. But you will have protection from all that is penal; for the inscription most luminous upon the very face of that altar is There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.

6. This altar suggests to us the very important truth that through it and by it we always have acceptance with God; that not only is it the only way of acceptance, but it is the standing evidence of access to God.

7. This altar and the idea of an altar teaches us this great lesson, that without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. A great crime cleaves to humanity; a stain deep as hell has fallen upon the human heart. All the tears of penitence cannot wipe it out, all the blood of martyrs cannot cancel it, no length of time will waste it, no ingenuity of man can mitigate it. There is only one element that can wash it away. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.

8. We learn another lesson from the name altar: it is the altar that sanctifies the gift. The way to have all the sorrows of your life sanctified, to have your great things made greater, and your little things made precious, and the way to receive them again a thousandfold, is to bring and offer them all upon Christ, the glorious altar that sanctifies the gift. What a magnificent idea does this give us of a Christian l The least act that a Christian does is thus a sacerdotal act. All Christians are priests.

9. This use of the word altar implies that there is a priest who offers the sacrifice; who is this priest? We have but one altar, we have therefore but one priest, and we do not need any other. Wherever the winds blow, wherever the waves of the ocean roll, wherever mans heart beats, and mans lungs breathe, and mans soul longs for a sense of the presence of

God, the great High Priest is accessible, able to save to the uttermost all that come to God by Him.

10. But this name, altar, having suggested to us so many truths, where, you ask, is the altar situated on which the great propitiation has been made, by which that everlasting High Priest continually stands and ministers for ever? Our altar is in the heaven, on the earth: wheresoever two or three meet in the name of Christ, there the altar stands, and there the altar is approached; for I am present in the midst of them. (J. Cumming, D. D.)

The Christian altar

I. First, we have an altar--THAT IS TO SAY, CHRISTIANITY RESTS FOR ITS BASIS ON THE INSTITUTION OF SACRIFICE. Though men have been divided from each other by oceans and continents, united neither by commerce nor by any mode of communication, though they have differed in their views of polity and government and religion, they seem to have been as one in this matter of sacrifice. They have all equally thought that the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth must die to propitiate God. And we would have you farther observe, as a proof of the Divine origin of this custom, that it was not an idea which would naturally originate with man. If it had been at all likely, according to the teaching of unassisted reason, that God would have been pleased with this mode of worship, then we might imagine that man had himself devised this mode of approaching his Creator. But let Reason sit in judgment on this custom of animal sacrifices, and what will be her verdict? To kill the unoffending--can that be pleasing to God? When I am conscious of guilt, and anxious for pardon, am I likely to appease Gods wrath by putting to death an innocent victim? We must surely admit that the practice of sacrificing animals, unless Divinely commanded, was an act of wanton cruelty, which, so far from disposing God to mercy, must have stirred Him to greater indignation; and that a custom so manifestly not suggested by reason, should yet have spread itself over the whole earth, seems to us the strongest possible proof of the divinity of its origin. Throughout the whole of the Jewish system there was a continual offering of the blood of animals upon the altars where God was worshipped; and however blind the Jews were, however hard their hearts were, however many truths they missed which the Almighty had meant them to learn, they did lay hold of tiffs truth--that there is no acceptable worship without sacrifice. And when the new religion appeared we can well imagine that this was one of the difficulties to a Jewish mind--that the votaries of the new system abandoned the altars of their fathers, and set up new altars of their own. We can conceive a Jewish objector approaching the apostles, and saying, How is this? From the time when men first began to call upon the name of the Lord, they have always worshipped at altars. Those altars have always reeked with blood. It is thus that our fathers have worshipped ever since the giving of the law, and even before the days of Moses. It is thus that Abraham worshipped on Mount Moriah. It was thus that Noah worshipped under the arch of the covenant bow. It was thus that Abel worshipped when men sought earliest to win back their way to Paradise. If you are worshippers of the true God, the God of our fathers, where are your altars? what are your sacrifices? Now, the words of our text seem to reply to such an objector, We have an altar; as though the writer said, We recognise the great principle which has been revealed to men all through the days of the law, which has been known even by heathen men among their grossest superstitions--the truth that without the shedding of blood there is no remission, and we, too, have an altar. We need not tell you that the altar here referred to is the Cross, and that the sacrifice offered upon it was the only begotten Son of God. Thus the text affirms that Christianity rests upon basis of sacrifice.

II. The text further affirms THAT THE CHRISTIAN SACRIFICE IS AN OFFERING, FOR SIN. Through the whole of the Jewish system men were taught that as it is the life which man forfeited by sin, so it is the life which must atone for sin. There is a passage in Leviticus which distinctly affirms it: The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. The passage occurs in connection with the command not to eat flesh in which there blood remained. The teaching seems to be this: You must not eat of blood because that is appointed as the symbol of atonement, and the blood is the symbol of atonement because it represents the life of the animal from which it is taken. It is not the matter of the blood that atones, but the life it bears and represents. The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it you upon the altar to atone for your lives, for the blood atones through the life. Hence you will find in the Jewish system that before the victim died the offerer was commanded to lay his hands upon its head. Now, in Scripture the laying on of hands was a symbolical action. It represented the transfer of something from the person imposing his hands to the person or thing upon which hands were laid. What had the offerer to transfer to the victim? Evidently his sin. He came to God as a sinner. His anxious desire was to obtain the forgiveness of his sin. His prayer was that the guilt of his sin might pass from him to the victim that he offered. And the Jews believed that where there was a frank confession and true renouncement of sin there was an actual transfer of sin from the man to the animal. Now, in this text before us the writer identifies the death of Jesus with those particular sacrifices. We have an altar, he says, of which they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. They might eat the free-will offerings and the thank-offerings, but they must not eat that particular sin-offering; for he goes on to say: The bodies of those beasts whose blood is brought into the sanctuary for sin are burned without the camp. They had been so burned in the days of Moses when the camp was pitched in the wilderness. They were so burned still in the days of the apostles, outside the walls of Jerusalem. Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate. You see that this text clearly connects the death of Jesus with the Jewish sin-offering, not with thank-offerings or with free-will-offerings, but with the sin-offering, and with the most sacred and impressive of all the sin-offerings--the offering whose blood was taken to the holiest place by the high priest for sin. We need not enlarge on the correspondence between the death of Jesus and the transactions on that day of atonement. We are taught that by the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, graciously offered as a sacrifice for us, a way has been opened to the holiest as through a veil, that veil no longer excluding and concealing from the presence of God, but rent on purpose to receive every penitent transgressor. We are taught that by the blood of Jesus shed for our sins we are permitted to come, not only with safety, but with boldness into the region of Gods manifested presence. We are taught that the offering, being infinitely precious, is attended by none of the imperfections which mark the Jewish sacrifices, but is adequate to meet all the requirements of a guilty conscience, and to present a sinner, soul and body, with perfect acceptance before the holy God.

III. But this text teaches us, further, THAT THE CHRISTIAN ALTAR WILL HAVE NO RIVAL, NO COMPETITOR YOU observe that the apostle has been telling us in this text that the Christian sacrifice corresponds with the Jewish sin-offering. A little further study will show that he tells us that the Christian sacrifice avails for none who put their trust in the old temple sacrifices. He describes the Jewish system as a camp pitched in the wilderness. It was not a continuing city. He tells us that Jesus went out of the camp, and he exhorts us to follow Him. For himself, he had long since resolved to know nothing among men save Jesus Christ and Him crucified; to worship at no altar but the altar of the Cross; and he here exhorts all his fellow Christians to copy his example, and, at whatever cost and suffering and reproach, to go forth to Him who, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate. There is no need for us to emphasize this exhortation not to trust in Jewish sacrifices. Within seven or eight years after this letter was written Jerusalem was destroyed--the temple was abolished. From that day to this no Jewish sacrifices have been offered, so far was that from being a continuing city. But is there nothing that we may learn from this solemn admonition not to trust in the Jewish sacrifices? The underlying principle is this--that Christ will be the Saviour of none who mingle any other confidence with their simple rest upon His merit. You have to come to Jesus and to Jesus only; and if some of you have been looking for salvation long, do you not see here the reason that has kept you back from it? There has not been the renouncement of all other confidences which there must be. We have an altar all-sufficient to save us to the uttermost; but they have no right to eat of it, they have no saving share in the merit of it, who trust in the sacrifices of the temple. But that is not all that this text teaches us. Not only are we here taught that it is utterly destructive of Christian faith to follow the Jewish ceremonies as a ground of merit; we are further taught that it was dangerous to the simplicity of faith to follow them at all. Now, why were the apostles so anxious to have the Jewish ceremonies abolished? With a ritual that was the most gorgeous the world has ever known, if mankind could learn the truth from ceremonies and symbols, no ceremonies could be imagined more impressive than those which God Himself appointed in the temple at Jerusalem. Why not continue the types to help Christians to understand the Antitype? Why not have an order of priests on earth to remind us of the one Priest in heaven? Why not have sacrifices offered on Christian altars to remind us of the one Sacrifice by which our sins are taken away? Alas, the apostles knew too well how prone men are to rest in shadows and forget the substance, In all ages elaborate ceremonial has been destructive of the simplicity of faith. What, then, does this teach us as to our practical duty? It shows that there is a city out of which we have all to come. We all love it; we all cling to it--the city sometimes of gorgeous ritualistic pomp, the city sometimes of orderly Nonconformist worship; the city of mere outward morality and formal attendance upon the means of grace; the city of personal self-righteousness. Out of it we have to come if we mean to be saved by Christ--away from all that as a ground of trust. Out of it? Whither? To the ignominious place where criminals suffered. To the scene where the bodies of the beasts whose blood had been taken into the sanctuary for atonement were burnt with fire. To Golgotha, the place of a skull. There is our altar.

IV. But, lastly, THE ALTAR DEMANDS SACRIFICE. We are not to escape and think that it is all accomplished because the sacrifice has once been offered. Read on to the fifteenth verse. By Him let us offer the sacrifice of praise, the Jewish free-will offering, the thank-offering. Let us do this continually; not simply, as the Jews did, on great festivals and stated occasions, but always. And let this sacrifice of praise be the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. Mark it, the fruit of our lips--not simply the words of our lips. A great many words pass our lips that are not the fruit. Fruit has a root. The fruit of the lip grows out of the heart; and only when what the lip says is what the heart feels is that the fruit of our lips. There must be the fruit of our lips--the thanks to God that spring out of a truly renewed and grateful nature: the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. The margin says, confessing His name, and that is the best thanks we can give to God--not to talk about ourselves, but about Him, to confess what He is and what He has done for us. The fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. But that is not all. Forget not that there is something beyond even that. The sixteenth verse tells you: To do good and to communicate forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. Though the Jewish ritual has been abolished, though the nursing mother no longer brings her pair of turtle doves and her two young pigeons for an offering, though the man recovered from sickness no longer drives his bullock or his flock of sheep to the temple door, the heart of a Christian will be as grateful as the heart of a Jew. If we do not bring the victims we may bring the worth of them. (F. Greeves, D. D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Heb 13:10. We have an altar — That is, a sacrifice upon an altar, namely, Christ, who was sacrificed on the altar of the cross, who also is the only Christian altar, to which we bring all our sacrifices and services. The apostle, having set forth the only way of the establishment of the heart in faith and holiness, and the uselessness of all distinctions of meats for that purpose, here declares the foundation of all this; for whereas the ground of all distinction of meats and other ceremonies among the Jews was the altar in the tabernacle, with its nature, use, and services, he lets them know that Christians have an altar, and services quite of another kind than those which arose from the altar of old, such as he describes Heb 13:13-16. This seems to be the direct design of the apostle in this place, and a proper analysis of his words. Whereof they have no right to eat — To partake of the benefits which we receive therefrom; who serve the tabernacle — Who adhere to the Mosaic law, or who maintain the necessity, and continue the observance, of the Jewish ceremonies and worship. For this in effect was to deny Christ to be come in the flesh, and to have offered himself a sacrifice on the cross.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Hebrews

OUR ALTAR

Heb 13:10; Heb 13:15

‘We have an altar.’ There is a certain militant emphasis on the words in the original, as if they were an assertion of something that had been denied. Who the deniers are is plain enough. They were the adherents of Judaism, who naturally found Christianity a strange contrast to their worship, of which altar and sacrifice were prominent features.

Just as to heathen nations the ritual of Judaism, its empty shrine, and temple without a God, were a puzzle and a scoff, so to heathen and Jew, the bare, starved worship of the Church, without temple, priest, sacrifice, or altar, was a mystery and a puzzle.

The writer of this letter in those words, then, in accordance with the central theme of his whole Epistle, insists that Christianity has more truly than heathenism or Judaism, altar and sacrifice.

And he is not content with alleging its possession o the reality of the altar, but he goes further, insists upon the superiority, even in that respect, of the Christian system.

He points to the fact that the great sin-offering of the Jewish ritual was not partaken of by the offerers, but consumed by fire without the camp, and he implies, in the earlier words of my text, that the Christian sacrifice differs from, and is superior to, the Jewish in this particular, that on it the worshippers feasted and fed.

Then, in the last words of my text, he touches upon another point of superiority - viz., that all Christian men are priests of this altar, and have to offer upon it sacrifices of thanksgiving.

And so he exalts the purely spiritual worship of Christianity as not only possessed of all which the gorgeous rituals round about it presented, but as being high above them even in regard to that which seemed their special prerogative. So, then, we have three things here - our Christian altar; our Christian feast on the sacrifice; and our Christian sacrifices on the altar. Let us regard these successively.

I. First, then, our Christian altar.

‘We have,’ says the writer, with a triumphant emphasis upon the word, ‘We have an altar’; ‘though there seems none visible in our external worship; and some of our converts miss the sensuous presentation to which they were accustomed; and others are puzzled by it, and taunt us with its absence.’

Now it is to be noticed, I think, that though in sacrificial religions the altar is the centre-point round which the temple is reared, it is of no moment in itself, and only comes into consideration as being that upon which the sacrifice is offered. So I do not suppose that any specific object was in the mind of the writer as answering to the altar in those sacrificial systems. He was thinking most of the sacrifice that was laid upon the altar, and of the altar only in connection therewith. But if we are not satisfied with such an explanation of the words, there are two interpretations open to us.

One is that the Cross is the altar. But that seems to me too gross and material, and savouring too much of the very error which this whole Epistle is written to destroy - viz., that the material is of moment, as measured against the spiritual. The other explanation is much to be preferred, according to which, if the altar has any special significance, it means the divine-human personality of Jesus Christ, on and in which the sacrifice is offered.

But the main thing to be laid hold of here is, I take it, that the central fact of Christianity is an altar, on which lies a sacrifice. If we are to accept the significance that I have suggested as possible for the emblem of my text, then the altar expresses the great mystery and gospel of the Incarnation, and the sacrifice expresses the great mystery and gospel of the passion of Christ’s life and death, which is the atonement for our sins.

But that possibly is too much of a refinement, and so I confine myself here to the general ideas suggested - that the very living heart of the gospel is an altar and a sacrifice. That idea saturates the whole New Testament, from the page where John the forerunner’s proclamation is, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,’ to the last triumphant vision in which the Apocalyptic seer ‘beheld a Lamb as it had been slain’; the eternal Co-Regnant of the universe, and the mediation through whom the whole surrounding Church for ever worships the Father.

The days are past, as it seems to me, when any man can reasonably contend that the New Testament does not teach - in every page of it, I was going to say - this truth of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Time was when violent contortions and effort were resorted to in order to explain its language as not necessarily involving that significance. But we have got beyond that now, and we oftener hear from deniers this: ‘Oh yes! I admit that throughout the New Testament this sacrificial idea is present, but that is only a chip of the old shell of Judaism, and we are above that level of religious thought.’

Now, I am not going to enter upon a discussion, for which neither place nor time are suited; but I will just suggest that the relation between the ancient system of revelation, with its sacrifice, altar, priest, temple, and the new system of Christianity is far more profoundly, and, I believe, far more philosophically, set forth in this Epistle to the Hebrews, as being the relation between shadow and substance, between prophecy and fulfilment, than when the old is contemptuously brushed aside as ‘Hebrew old clothes,’ with which the true Christianity has no concern. Judaism teas because Christ was to be, and the ancient ritual {whether modern ideas of the date of its origin be accepted or no} was a God-appointed mirror, in which, the shadow of the coming event was presented. Jesus Christ is all which temple, priest, altar, sacrifice proclaimed should one day be. And just as the relation between Christ’s work and the Judaic system of external ritual sacrifices is that of shadow and substance, prophecy and fulfilment, so, in analogous manner, the relation between the altar and sacrifice of the New Testament and all the systems of heathenism, with their smoking altars, is that these declare a want, and this affords its supply; that these are the confession of humanity that it is conscious of sin, separation, alienation, and that need of a sacrifice, and that Christ is what heathenism in all lands has wailed that it needs, and has desperately hoped that it might find.

There are many attempts made to explain on other grounds the universality of sacrifice, and to weaken the force of its witness to the deep necessities of humanity as rooted in the consciousness of sin, but I venture to affirm that all these are superficial, and that the study of comparative religions goes on wrong lines unless it recognises in the whole heathen world a longing, the supply of which it recognises in Jesus Christ and His work. I venture to say that that is a truer philosophy of religion than much that nowadays calls itself by the name.

And what lies in this great thought? I am not going to attempt a theory of the Atonement. I do not believe that any such thing is completely possible for us. But this, at least, I recognise as being fundamental and essential to the thought of my text; ‘we have an altar,’ that Christ in His representative relation, in His true affinity to every man upon earth, has in His life or death taken upon Himself the consequences of human transgression, not merely by sympathy, nor only by reason of the uniqueness-of His representative relation, but by willing submission to that awful separation from the Father, of which the cry out of the thick darkness of the Cross, ‘Why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ is the unfathomable witness. Thus, bearing our sin, He bears it away, and ‘we have an altar.’

Now notice that this great truth has a distinct teaching for those who hanker after externalities of ritual The writer of this Epistle uses it for the purpose of declaring that in the Christian Church, because of its possession of the true sacrifice, there is no room for any other; that priest, temple, altar, sacrifice in any material external forms are an anachronism and a contradiction of the very central idea of the gospel And it seems very strange that sections of Christendom should so have been blind to the very meaning of my text, and so missed the lesson which it teaches, and fallen into the error which it opposes, as that these very words, which are a protest against any materialisation of the idea of altar and sacrifice, should have been twisted to mean by the altar the table of the Lord, and by sacrifice the communion of His body and blood. But so it is. So strong are the tendencies in our weak humanity to grasp at some sensuous embodiment of the truth that the Christian Church, as a whole, has not been able to keep on the lofty levels of my text, and has hungered after some external signs to which it may attach notions of efficacy which attach only to the spiritual sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Thus we have got a strange contradiction, as it seems to me, of the spirit and letter of my text, and of the whole Epistle from which it comes, and there, has crept surreptitiously into, and been obstinately maintained in, large sections of the Christian Church the idea o a sacrificing priesthood, and of a true sacrifice offered upon a material altar. My text protests against all that, and said to these early Christians what it says to us: ‘Go into your upper rooms and there offer your worship, which to sense seems so bare and starved. Never mind though people say there is nothing in your system for sense to lay hold of. So much the better. Never mind though you can present no ritual with an altar, and a priest, and a sacrifice. All these are swept away for ever, because once Jesus Christ hath put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Our temple is His body; our priest is before the throne. We rear no altar; He has died. Our sacrifice was offered on Calvary, and henceforward our worship, cleared from these materialities, rises unto loftier regions, and we worship God in the spirit, and have no confidence in the flesh.’

Still further, this truth has a bearing on the opposite pole of error, on those who would fain have a Christianity without an altar. I am not going to say how far genuine discipleship of Jesus Christ is possible with the omission of this article from the creed. It is no business of mine to determine that, but it is my business, as I think, to assert this, that a Christianity without an altar is a Christianity without power; impotent to move the world or to control the individual heart, inadequate to meet the needs and the cravings of men. Where are the decaying Christians? Where are the Christians that have let go the central fact of an incarnate sacrifice for the world’s sin? The answer to the two questions is the same. Wherever you find a feeble grasp of that central truth, or a faltering utterance of it on the part of the preachers, there you find deadness and formality.

Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ’s servants, I was going to say, obey the same law, and that law is, no cross, no crown. If Christ has not died, the world’s sacrifice, He will never reign, the world’s King. If His Cross be an altar it is a throne. If it be not, it is merely a gallows, on which a religious enthusiast, with many sweet and lovable qualities, died a long time ago, and it is nothing to me. ‘We have an altar,’ or else we have no religion worth keeping.

II. Mark here, secondly, our feast on the sacrifice.

From this altar, says the writer, the adherents of the ancient system have no right to partake. That implies that those who have left the ancient system have the right to partake, and do partake. Now the writer is drawing a contrast, which he proceeds to elaborate, between the great sacrifice on the Day of Atonement and the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. The former was not, as many other sacrifices were, partaken of by priests and worshippers, but simply the blood was brought within the holy place, and the whole of the rest of the sacrifice consumed in a waste spot without the camp. And this contrast is in the writer’s mind. We have a sacrifice on which we feast.

That is to say, the Christ who died for my sins is not only my means of reconciliation with God, but His sacrifice and death are the sustenance of my spiritual life. We live upon the Christ that died for us. That this is no mere metaphor, but goes penetratingly and deep down to the very basis of the spiritual life, is attested sufficiently by many a word of Scripture on which I cannot now dwell. The life of the Christian is the indwelling Christ. For he whose heart hath not received that Christ within him is dead whilst he lives, and has no possession of the one true Hie for a human spirit, viz., the fife of union with God. Christ in us is the consequence of Christ for us; and that Christianity is all imperfect which does not grasp with equal emphasis the thought of the sacrifice or the cross, and of the feast or the sacrifice.

But how is that feeding on the sacrifice accomplished? ‘He that eateth Me, even he shall ‘live by Me.’ He that believeth, eateth. He that with humble faith makes Christ his very own, and appropriates as the nourishment and basis of his own better life the facts of the life and death of sacrifice, he truly lives thereby. To eat is to believe; to believe is to live.

I need not remind you, I suppose, how, though there be no reference in the words of my text, as I have tried to show, to the external rite of the communion of the Lord’s body and blood, and though the ‘altar’ here has no reference whatever to that table, yet there is a connection between the two representations, inasmuch as the one declares in words what the other sets forth in symbol, and the meaning of the feast on the sacrifice is expressed by this great word. ‘This is My body, broken for you.’ ‘This is the new covenant in My blood’: ‘Drink ye all of it.’ ‘We have an altar,’ and though it be not the table on which the symbols of our Lord’s sacrificial death are spread for us, yet these symbols and the words of my text, like the words of His great discourse in the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, point to the same fact, that the spiritual participation of Christ by faith is the reality of ‘eating of Him,’ and the condition of living for ever.

III. And now, lastly, my text suggests our Christian offerings on the altar.

‘By Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually.’ What are these offerings? Christ’s death stands alone, incapable of repetition, meeting no repetition, the eternal, sole, ‘sufficient obligation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.’ But there be other kinds of sacrifice. There are sacrifices of thanksgiving as well as for propitiation. And we, on the footing of that great sacrifice to which we can add nothing, and on which alone we must rest, may bring the offerings of our thankful hearts. These offerings are of a two-fold sort, says the writer. There are words of praise. There are works of beneficence. The service of man is sacrifice to God. That is a deep saying and reaches far. Such praise and such beneficence are only possible on the footing of Christ’s sacrifice, for only on that footing is our praise acceptable; and only when moved by that infinite mercy and love shall we yield ourselves, thank offerings to God. And thus, brethren, the whole extent of the Christian life, in its inmost springs, and in its outward manifestations, is covered by these two thoughts - the ‘feast on the sacrifice once offered, and the sacrifices which we in our turn offer on the altar. If we thus, moved by the mercy of God, ‘yield ourselves as living sacrifices, which is our reasonable service,’ then not only will life be one long thank-offering, but as the Apostle puts it in another place, death itself may become, too, a thankful surrender to Him. For He says, ‘I am ready to be offered.’ And so the thankful heart, resting on the sacrificial life and death of Jesus Christ, makes all life a thanksgiving, ‘death God’s endless mercy seals, and makes the sacrifice complete.’ There is one Christ that can thus hallow and make acceptable our living and our dying, and that is the Christ that has died for us, and lives that in Him we may be priests to God. There is only one Christianity that will do for us what we will need, and that is the Christianity whose centre is an altar, on which the Son of God, our Passover, is slain for us.

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Heb 13:10. Ἔχομεν, we have) This verse has two clauses: on the first, Heb 13:15-16 depend; on the second, the verses that intervene. Chiasmus.—θυσιαστήριον, an altar) the Cross of Christ, on which His body was sacrificed.—ἐξ οὗ) of (from) which. They are partakers also of this altar who eat the sacrifice offered upon it, not on the other: comp. 1Co 10:18.—φαγεῖν, to eat) The meat, the flesh of Christ given for us. It is an antithesis to ceremonial meats. It is chiefly eaten in the Sacred Supper, where His body is set forth as given up for us, and His blood shed for us, in that single sacrifice of the cross.—οὐκ, not) Gal 5:2, etc.—τῇ σκηνῇ, the tabernacle) A parabolic Amphibology, such as we find at ch. Heb 9:8, note. For the tabernacle, if we consider the Protasis, expressed at Heb 13:11, denotes the anterior part of the sanctuary; but if we consider the Apodosis, which is found at Heb 13:12, it implies the whole Levitical worship. There is also a point in the fact, that he says, τῇ σκηνῇ, not ἐν τῇ σκηνῇ, “who serve the tabernacle,” not in the tabernacle. In like manner paul, Rom 7:6, note.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Heb_13:10. Justification of οὐ βρώμασιν, Heb_13:9, by the emphasizing of the incompatibility of the Christian altar with that of Judaism. We possess an altar, of which they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle, i.e. he who seeks in the Jewish sacrificial meals, and consequently in the Jewish sacrificial worship, a stay and support for his heart, thereby shuts himself out from Christianity, for he makes himself a servant of the tabernacle; but he who serves the tabernacle has no claim or title to the altar of Christians. That the subject in ἔχομεν is the Christian, is acknowledged on all sides. But equally little ought it ever to have been disputed that by οἱ τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντες persons must be denoted who are contrasted with the Christians. For, in accordance with the expression chosen, the author can only mean to say that the Christians possess the right to eat of the altar; those τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντες, on the other hand, forego this right. Quite in a wrong sense, therefore, have Schlichting, Schulz, Heinrichs, Wieseler (Schriften der Univ. Kiel aus d. J. 1861, p. 42), Kurtz, and others, referred οἱ τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντες likewise to the Christians,[125] in that they found expressed the thought: for Christians there exists no other sacrifice than one of which it is not permitted them to eat. They then suppose to be intended by οἱ τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντες either, as Schlichting, omnes in universum Christiani, or, as Schulz, particular officers of the society, who conducted the Christian worship. But in the first caseapart from the fact that then, what would alone be natural, ἐξ οὗ φαγεῖν οὐκ ἔχομεν ἐξουσίαν would have been written instead of ἐξ οὗ φαγεῖν οὐκ ἔχουσιν ἐξουσίαν οἱ τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντεςthe Christians would, as Bleek has already justly observed, have been designated by a characteristic which could not possibly be predicated of them; in the second, an anachronistic separation into clerics and laity would be imputed to the author, and the sense arising would be unsuitable, since the proposition, that the warrant for eating of the Christian sacrifice is wanting, could not possibly hold good of the clergy alone, but must have its application to Christians in general. By ἡ σκηνή can thus be understood nothing other than the earthly, Jewish sanctuary, as opposed to the ἀληθινή and τελειοτέρα σκηνή of Christians, Heb_8:2, Heb_9:11. The τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντες, however, are not specially, as Bleek, de Wette, Delitzsch, Riehm (Lehrbegr. des Hebräerbr. p. 161), Alford, and others suppose, the Jewish priests (Heb_8:5), but the members of the Jewish covenant people universally (Heb_9:9, Heb_10:2).

The θυσιαστήριον further is the altar, upon which the sacrifice of the New Covenant, namely, the body of Christ (comp. Heb_13:12), has been presented. Not ipse Christus (Piscator, Owen, Wolf; comp. Calvin), or the θυσία itself which has been presented (Limborch, Whitby, MLean, Heinrichs, and others), nor yet the cultus (Grotius), can be denoted thereby. But likewise the explaining of the table of the Supper, the τράπεζα κυρίου, 1Co_10:21, with Corn. a Lapide, Chr. Fr. Schmid, Böhme, Bähr (Stud. u. Krit. 1849, H. 4, p. 938), Ebrard, Bisping, Maier, and others (comp. also Rückert, das Abendmahl. Sein Wesen und seine Geschichte in der alten Kirche, Leipz. 1856, pp. 242246), is inadmissible. For then there would underlie our passage the conception that the body of the Lord is offered in the Supper, Christs sacrifice is thus one constantly repeated; but such conception is unbiblical, and in particular is remote from the thought of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in which the presentation of the sacrifice of Christ once for all, and the all-sufficiency of this sacrifice by its one presentation, is frequently urged with emphasis; comp. Heb_7:27, Heb_9:12; Heb_9:25 ff., Heb_10:10. Exclusively correct is it, accordingly, to understand by the altar, with Thomas Aquinas, Estius, Jac. Cappellus, Bengel, Bleek, de Wette, Stengel, Delitzsch, Riehm, l.c., Alford, Kluge, Moll, Kurtz, Woerner, and others, the spot on which the Saviour offered Himself, i.e. the cross of Christ. But to eat of this altar, i.e. to partake of the sacrifice presented thereon, signifies: to attain to the enjoyment of the spiritual blessings resulting from Christs sacrificial death for believers; the same thing as is represented, Joh_6:51 ff., as the eating of the flesh and drinking of the blood of Christ.

[125] So also Hofmann (Schriftbew. II. 1, 2 Aufl. p. 457 ff.), who will have only the twofold fact to be accentuated at ver. 10 : that we are priests, and that we possess a means of expiation, and brings out as the sense of the verse: that we, whose only propitiatory sacrifice, and one for all alike, is Christ, have no other profit from our means of expiation, than that we are reconciled. (!)

On Heb_13:11-13, comp. Bähr in the Stud. u. Krit. 1849, H. 4, p. 936 ff.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Whereof they cannot be partakers which stubbornly retain the rites of the Law.

He refuteth their error by an apt and fit comparison. They which in times past served the Tabernacle, did not eat of the sacrifices whose blood was brought for sin into the holy place by the high Priest. Moreover these sacrifices did represent Christ our offering. Therefore they cannot be partakers of him which serve the Tabernacle, that is, such as stand in the service of the Law: but let not us be ashamed to follow him out of Jerusalem, from whence he was cast out and suffered: for in this also Christ, who is the truth, answereth that figure, in that he suffered without the gate.

By the Altar, he meaneth the offering.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Verse 10. We have an altar] The altar is here put for the sacrifice on the altar; the Christian altar is the Christian sacrifice, which is Christ Jesus, with all the benefits of his passion and death. To these privileges they had no right who continued to offer the Levitical sacrifices, and to trust in them for remission of sins.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

10. We have an altar, etc. This is a beautiful adaptation of an old rite under the Law, to the present state of the Church. There was a kind of sacrifice appointed, mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus, no part of which returned to the priests and Levites. This, as he now shows by a suitable allusion, was accomplished in Christ; for he was sacrificed on this condition, that they who serve the tabernacle should not feed on him. But by the ministers of the tabernacle he means all those who performed the ceremonies. Then that we may partake of Christ, he intimates that we must renounce the tabernacle; for as the word altar includes sacrificing and the victim; so tabernacle, all the external types connected with it.

Then the meaning is, “No wonder if the rites of the Law have now ceased, for this is what was typified by the sacrifice which the Levites brought without the camp to be there burnt; for as the ministers of the tabernacle did eat nothing of it, so if we serve the tabernacle, that is, retain its ceremonies, we shall not be partakers of that sacrifice which Christ once offered, nor of the expiation which he once made by his own blood; for his own blood he brought into the heavenly sanctuary that he might atone for the sin of the world.”

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(10, 11) “We need not such profitless teaching; we already have sustenance which is ‘meat indeed,’ by which the heart is established.” According to the Law, the priests (they. who “serve the Tabernacle,” see Heb_8:5) received for themselves a greater or smaller portion of the animals offered as peace-offerings and trespass-offerings; in some cases, also, the flesh of the sin-offerings fell to their lot (Leviticus 4, 5, 7, 23). When the high priest presented a sin-offering on his own behalf (Lev_4:3-12), or for the congregation (Heb_13:13-21), he sprinkled some of the blood in the Holy Place in front of the veil; on the Day of Atonement alone was the blood taken within the veil into the Most Holy Place. In the case of these three offerings the priest received no part of the animal sacrificed; certain portions were burnt on the altar of burnt-offering, and the rest of the body was carried forth “without the camp,” and wholly consumed by fire. Though the writer here speaks of animals whose blood is brought into the Holy Place through the high priest, as an offering for sin, it is probable that (as in Hebrews 5-9) he has in thought the Day of Atonement only, so that here “the Holy Place” bears the sense of the “Holiest of all.” (See Note on Heb_9:2.) (It will be noted that throughout he uses the present tense; see the same Note). For us there is but one sacrifice for sin, the efficacy of which endures for ever (Heb_10:12): Jesus entering the Holiest Place for us in virtue of His own sacrifice has fulfilled the type contained in the high priest’s sprinkling of the blood. But whereas those priests might not eat of their sin-offering, to us greater privilege is given; we feed on Him who was slain for us, whose flesh war for the life of the world (Joh_6:51-56). We then (who are all “priests unto God”) “have an altar of which,” on the very principles of their Law, “they that serve the Tabernacle (see Heb_8:5) have no right to eat.” The stress is laid on the sacrifice, of which we eat, not upon the altar itself. If separately interpreted, the altar will be the place of sacrifice, the Cross.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

10–16. The One Sacrifice of the Christian, and the sacrifices which he must offer

10. We have an altar] These seven verses form a little episode of argument in the midst of moral exhortations. They revert once more to the main subject of the Epistle—the contrast between the two dispensations. The connecting link in the thought of the writer is to be found in the Jewish boasts to which he has just referred in the word “meats.” Besides trying to alarm the Christians by denunciations founded on their indifference to the Levitical Law and the oral traditions based upon it, the Jews would doubtless taunt them with their inability henceforth to share in eating the sacrifices (1Co_9:13) since they were all under the Cherem—the ban of Jewish excommunication. The writer meets the taunt by pointing out (in an allusive manner) that of the most solemn sacrifices in the whole Jewish year—and of those offered on the Day of Atonement—not even the Priests, not even the High Priest himself, could partake (Lev_6:12; Lev_6:23; Lev_6:30; Lev_16:27). But of our Sacrifice, which is Christ, and from (ἐξ) our Altar, which is the Cross—on which, as on an Altar, our Lord was offered—we may eat. The “Altar” is here understood of the Cross, not only by Bleek and De Wette, but even by St Thomas Aquinas and Estius; but the mere figure implied by the “altar” is so subordinate to that of our participation in spiritual privileges that if it be regarded as an objection that the Cross was looked on by Jews as “the accursed tree,” we may adopt the alternative view suggested by Thomas Aquinas—that the Altar means Christ Himself. To eat from it will then be “to partake of the fruit of Christ’s Passion.” So too Cyril says, “He is Himself the Altar.” We therefore have loftier privileges than they who “serve the tabernacle.” The other incidental expressions will be illustrated as we proceed; but, meanwhile, we may observe that the word “Altar” is altogether subordinate and (so to speak) “out of the Figure.” There is no reference whatever to the material “table of the Lord,” and only a very indirect reference (if any) to the Lord’s Supper. Nothing can prove more strikingly and conclusively the writer’s total freedom from any conceptions resembling those of the “sacrifice of the mass” than the fact that here he speaks of our sacrifices as being “the bullocks of our lips.” The Christian Priest is only a Presbyter, not a Sacrificing Priest. He is only a Sacrificing Priest in exactly the same sense as every Christian is metaphorically so called, because alike Presbyter and people offer “spiritual sacrifices,” which are alone acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1Pe_2:5). The main point is “we too have one great sacrifice,” and we (unlike the Jews, as regards their chief sacrifice, Lev_4:12; Lev_6:30; Lev_16:27) may perpetually partake of it, and live by it (Joh_6:51-56). We live not on anything material, which profiteth nothing, but on the words of Christ, which are spirit and truth; and we feed on Him—a symbol of the close communion whereby we are one with Him—only in a heavenly and spiritual manner.

whereof] Lit. “from which.”

they have no right to eat] Because they utterly reject Him whose flesh is meat indeed and whose blood is drink indeed (Joh_6:54-55). Forbidden to eat of the type (see Heb_13:11) they could not of course, in any sense, partake of the antitype which they rejected.

which serve the tabernacle] See Heb_8:5. It is remarkable that not even here, though the participle is in the present tense, does he use the word “Temple” or “Shrine” anymore than he does throughout the whole Epistle. There may, as Bengel says, be a slight irony in the phrase “who serve the Tabernacle,” rather than “in the Tabernacle.”

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

We have an altar,.... By which is meant, not the cross of Christ, on which he was crucified; nor the Lord's table, where his flesh and blood are presented to faith, as food, though not offered; but Christ himself, who is altar, sacrifice, and priest; he was typified by the altar of the burnt offering, and the sacrifice that was offered upon it; the altar was made of Shittim wood, and covered with brass, denoting the incorruptibleness, duration, and strength of Christ: the horns of it, at the four corners, were for refuge; whoever fled to it, and laid hold on them, were safe; so Christ is a refuge to his people, that come from the four corners of the earth; and who believe in him, and lay hold on him, are preserved and protected by his power and grace: the use of it was for sacrifice to be offered upon it; which being a male, without blemish, and wholly burnt with fire, was a sweet savour to God; and which was typical of Christ's human nature, offered on the altar of his divine nature; which was pure and holy, suffered the fire of divine wrath, and was for a sweet smelling savour to God: this altar was but one, and most holy, and sanctified what was put upon it; all which is true of Christ: now this altar the saints have, and have a right to eat of it; even all Christ's friends and beloved ones; all that are made priests unto God by him; all that know him, believe in him, have a spiritual discerning of him, and hunger and thirst after him:

whereof they have no right to eat that serve the tabernacle: there is something of this altar, or that was offered up upon this altar, that is to be eaten, even the flesh and blood of Christ; and to "eat" of it is to believe that Christ is come in the flesh, and is become an offering for sin, and for us that eat; it is to receive, embrace, and possess the blessings procured by it; which is done by faith, with spiritual joy and gladness, and with sincerity and singleness of heart: now those, who served the tabernacle, or adhered to the service of the ceremonial law, they had no right to eat of this altar: the allusion is to the priests' eating of the sacrifices, and to some sacrifices, of which they might not eat, Lev 2:10 and this is not to be understood of believers, before the coming of Christ, who did attend tabernacle service; for they ate the same spiritual meat, and drank the same spiritual drink, as believers do now; but of such, who obstinately persisted in the ceremonies of the law, when they were abolished; and so cut off themselves from all right to the substance of these shadows. See Gal 5:2.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

10 We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle.

Ver. 10. We have an altar] That is, a sacrifice, even Christ our passover, whose flesh is meat indeed, Joh 6:35; Joh 6:53, but to believers only, not to those that pertinaciously plead for ceremonies and services of the law, Gal 5:4. Hic edere, est credere.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

We have an altar - We who are Christians. The Jews had an altar on which their sacrifices were offered which was regarded as sacred, and of the benefit of which no others might partake. The design of the apostle is to show that the same thing substantially, so far as “privilege” and “sanctifying influence” were concerned, was enjoyed by Christians. The “altar” to which he here refers is evidently the cross on which the great sacrifice was made.

Whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle - A part of the meat offered in sacrifice among the Jews became the property of the priests and Levites, and they had, by the Law, a right to this as a part of their support; see Lev 6:25-26; Num 18:9-10. But the apostle says that there is a higher and more valuable sacrifice of which they have no right to partake while they remain in the service of the “tabernacle” or temple; that is, while they remain Jews. The participation in the great Christian sacrifice appertained only to those who were the friends of the Redeemer, and however much they might value themselves on the privilege of partaking of the sacrifices offered under the Jewish Law, that of partaking of the great sacrifice made by the Son of God was much greater.

Which serve the tabernacle - notes, Heb 9:2-3. The Jewish priests and Levites.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

We, Christians, have at present an altar,[3] and consequently a sacrifice, whereof they have no power to eat, who serve the tabernacle, confiding in the law and in Moses, not in Christ and the gospel. He does not say, we had an altar. (Witham) --- St. Paul has often mentioned the high priest and victim; here he tells us we have an altar, and of course a sacrifice. Let us then go out of ourselves to offer to God by, with, and in Jesus Christ, this his beloved Son, in the holy Eucharist, for this is a victim of praise worthy of God, and let us not forget to offer ourselves to our eternal Father daily, in union with our great high priest and victim, Jesus Christ; 1st, on the cross; 2ndly, in the Eucharist; and 3rdly, in heaven, the immaculate Lamb slain as it were from the beginning before the throne of God.

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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]

Habemus altare, Greek: thusiasterion, sacrificatorium: Greek: thusiasterion is not used for the oblation itself.

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

We have an altar: these strange doctrines are not only unprofitable, but perilous to Christians, since they disinterest all that entertain them, as to any participation of Christ; since his subjects, adhering to his simple and immutable doctrine, have a right and just claim to, and an actual use of, Christ, as their altar, in opposition to the Mosaical; and from whom they have altar sustenance for their souls, in opposition to the Jewish meats, while they attend on him; all the quickening benefits issuing from the sacrifice of his human nature on the altar of his Godhead, as reconciliation and adoption to God, justification of our persons, renovation of our nature, growth in grace, and perseverance therein, to the perfecting of it in glory, Joh 6:55-57; 1Co 9:13; 10:16-18. We have altar sanctification of our persons and offerings in our access to God from him, Heb 13:15; Mat 23:19; Eph 5:20; Col 3:17; so as all is accepted with the Father. We have altar protection and salvation, keeping us who attend on him unto the revelation of God in glory, Exo 21:14; Rev 6:9,11. This is altar individuation to all Christians; God had but one altar under the law, and he prohibited all others, and complained of and threatened the increase of them, Exo 20:24-26; 27:1,2; 2Ch 4:1; Hos 8:11; 10:1. This one altar did type out that true one of Christ, by which only sinners can come to God, and find acceptance.

Whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle; of this altar privilege all Jews or Judaizing Christians, who adhered to the Mosaical administration of the covenant in meats and ceremonies, have no lawful right or title to partake; they cannot have this honour while they cleave to them, because they thereby deny this altar, reject the Son of God, and are in it rejected by him.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. Here there is a plain allusion to the eating of offered sacrifices. If, then, there was no such allusion in the preceding verse, what is the connection of thought? It appears to be this: "Some would teach you that meats are of religious importance. Nay, but what are meats to us who have Christ himself for our spiritual food? This is our peculiar privilege, not shared by the very priests of the old dispensation." Then, in ver. 11, "That this is so is shown by the very symbolism of the Day of Atonement." Then, in ver. 12, "Let us, then, be well content to leave Judaism entirely, and cleave to Christ alone." By "those that serve ( latreuontev) the tabernacle" are meant the priests of the Law, whose service is, as in former passages, referred to as still going on. It is evidently implied that we have the right which they have not.

The Christian altar. "We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat, etc. Here are three points which require notice.

I THE CHRISTIAN ALTAR. "We have an altar." One of the positions which the writer of this Epistle endeavors to establish is this, that by the renunciation of Judaism these Hebrew Christians had not lost anything of real value, or that the good in Judaism was perfected in Christianity. He shows that in Jesus Christ, the Head of the Christian dispensation, they had One far greater than Moses, by whom the elder economy was given. For giving up the Levitical priesthood there was far more than compensation in the possession of an interest in the great High Priest. Moreover, the tabernacle in which our great High Priest appears for us is "greater and more perfect" than either the tabernacle in the wilderness or the temple at Jerusalem. And in our text he points out that Christians have also an altar with its provisions and blessings. By this altar we understand the cross upon which our Lord offered himself a Sacrifice for human sin.

1. On this altar the perfect Sacrifice was offered. (We have already dealt with the perfection of Christ"s sacrifice in our homilies on Heb_10:5-10, and Heb 12 Heb 13)

2. This altar has superseded all other altars. The perfection of this sacrifice rendered its repetition unnecessary, and abolished forever the imperfect and typical sacrifices of the earlier dispensation. (cf. Heb_7:27 Heb_10:10-18)

II THE PROVISION WHICH THIS ALTAR FURNISHES. The writer speaks of eating of this altar. The reference is to the fact that certain portions of some of the sacrifices under the Mosaic economy were eaten by the priests, and certain by the Levites also. (cf. Lev_6:14-18, 24-30 Le 7 Num_18:8-11 1Co_9:13) The provision from the Christian altar is Jesus Christ himself, the great Sacrifice. By faith" we become partakers of Christ;" we appropriate him as the Life and the Sustenance of the soul. Our Lord said, "I am the living Bread which came down out of heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever," etc. (Joh_6:51-58)

1. This provision is spiritual. Not of the literal or material flesh and blood of Jesus do we eat and drink, but by faith we become partakers of his mind, his feelings, his principles, his spirit, his life, himself. Hence St. Paul writes, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," etc. (Gal_2:20) Again, "Christ our Life". (Col_3:3, Col_3:4)

2. This provision is delightful. To those who are healthy the eating of suitable provision; Is not only necessary and satisfying, but pleasurable. It gratifies the palate. The spiritual appropriation of Christ is joy-inspiring. In Christianity we have "a feast of fat things.

3. This provision is free, and free to all. Some of the Levitical sacrifices belonged to the sacrificing priest only, others only to the priest and Levites. But all may come to Christ by faith, and partake of the inestimable benefits of his great sacrifice. "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,". (Isa_4:1, 2 Rev_22:17)

III THE EXCLUSION OF SOME FROM" PARTICIPATION IN THIS PROVISION. "Whereof they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle." The reference is to the Jewish priests and Levites. They who clung to Judaism rejected Christianity, and were necessarily excluded from its benefits. They were self-excluded. They would not come unto Christ that they might have life. All who reject the Lord Jesus are in a similar condition: e.g. the self-righteous moralist, the modem representative of the ancient Pharisee; the captious and the scoffing skeptic; the worlding who elects to have his portion in this life; and others. The provision is free, free for all; but these exclude themselves from participation therein. How is it possible for any one to enjoy the blessings of Christianity who rejects the Christ? W.J.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

On the former part of this verse, the fifteenth and sixteenth depend; on the latter, the intermediate verses. We have an altar - The cross of Christ. Whereof they have no right to eat - To partake of the benefits which we receive therefrom. Who serve the tabernacle - Who adhere to the Mosaic law.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

These words are brought in as a farther reason why the Christian Hebrews should not return to Judaism, or any other doctrine different from the gospel of Christ: We Christians, says the apostle, have an altar: that is, a sacrifice, a priest offered upon, and sanctified by, the altar of the cross.

Note here, that the church of Christ alone and his sacrifice; for he was both priest, altar, and sacrifice, all himself, and still continueth so to be.

Note, 2. That this altar, is every way sufficient in itself for the ends of an altar; and therefore the introduction of any other sacrifice requiring a material altar, is derogatory to the sacrifice of Christ, and exclusive of him from being an altar.

Observe next, The persons excluded from having any right unto, or expectation of benefit by, this altar, namely, such as serve the tabernacle; that is, such as cleave still to the worship appointed for the Jewish tabernacle, and adhere to the Mosaical observations.

They have no right to this altar by any divine instituation, no right by virtue of their office and relation to the tabernacle.

Learn hence, That all privileges, of what nature soever, without a participataion of Christ, as the altar and sacrifice of his church, are of no advantage to them that enjoy them; We have an altar, whereof they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

ARGUMENT 19

THE TWO OFFERINGS.

While the Father so loved this lost world that He gave His only Son, to die a ransom and redeem every son and daughter of Adam’s ruined race from the doom of sin, death, and hell, yet it is a significant fact here unequivocally revealed, that Jesus gave Himself to suffer and die that He may sanctify His people by His blood. Hence we see the double offering, i.e., that of the Father for a wicked world, and that of the Son to sanctify the Church.

10. The altar here is the cross of Calvary on which the Lamb of God bled and died. Allusion is here made to the Levitical priests who fed on the sacrifices offered in the sanctuary.

11. This verse describes the sin-offering, which the priests were not allowed to eat, because the law required them to carry it out beyond the lines of the encampment, and utterly consume it with fire, thus vividly emblematizing God’s method with sin, which is absolute extermination. This sin-offering typifies Christ, whose human life was utterly exterminated without the wall of Jerusalem, for the sins of the whole world. Just as the priests had no right to partake of the sin-offering, so ecclesiastical clergy have no official right to partake of Christ. They have to come, divested of official distinction, low down in the dust like all other sinners, or make their bed in hell. Away with the pompous pretensions of popery, prelacy and priestcraft! It is a hotch-potch of Satan’s lies. hatched in hell for the damnation of them and their deluded votaries. For this reason, doubtless, Christ did not spring from the tribe of Levi, to which all the priests belonged, but from Judah, in which there were no priests. Despite this impassable chasm between Christ and the clergy, yet the official appropriation of the Christhood by the ecclesiastical custodians and conservators has been the heresy of all heresies, blinding the popular mind, ritualizing the churches, plunging them into idolatry and engulfing millions in hell.

12. “Therefore Jesus in order that He might sanctify the people by His own blood suffered without the gate.” This verse reveals the great fact that after the Father had given the Son to die a ransom for a guilty world, the Son spontaneously gave Himself that He may sanctify His people by His own blood. Oh, how prominent in the Bible the two works of grace, i.e., the one to redeem a guilty world, and the other to sanctify the redeemed Church. Why did Jesus die outside the walls of Jerusalem? It was to deliver the world from the heresy of priestcraft and ecclesiasticism, and illustrate His accessibility to the guilty millions of all ages and races. Jesus died not within the pales of the Church where His atonement is appropriated and doled out by an intriguing clergy and carnal officiary, but His expiation of human guilt takes place on Mount Calvary, standing without the wall in the open firmament of this great sin-debauched world, perfectly accessible to every lost soul of all ages and nations. These indisputable facts eternally sweep away all the arrogant claims of popes, bishops, priests, pastors and ecclesiastical officials and church rites. This one thing is certain beyond all defalcation: in the plan of salvation there are only two parties, i.e., the sinner and Christ.

13. “Consequently let us go forth to Him, without the camp, bearing His reproach.” In this we do not see Comeoutism. We certainly should remain in our churches, to shine and shout for Jesus and save others. But in harmony with the pure spirituality of the Bible we are to understand this commandment. If you depend on your preacher and church for salvation, and especially for sanctification, you will never get it. You have to leave church rites, clerical manipulations and human help, and go away alone to Jesus and settle the problem of your regeneration as a sinner and your sanctification as a Christian. Beware how you take the ipse dixit of a man on this momentous question involving for your soul heaven or hell. Be sure you leave all sects, creeds, pastors, evangelists and official boards; go and settle these immortal issues with Jesus only. When God does the work He is certain to notify you. Never rest without the witness of the Spirit to your regeneration as a sinner, and your sanctification as a Christian, as the meridian sun in his noonday glory.

14. This epistle was written but a short time before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, to which here is evidently a prophetical allusion, corroborated by the mournful evanescence of all things temporal.

15. “Therefore through Him let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is the fruit of our lips confessing His name.” Oh, what a positive commandment and fervent exhortation in favor of the incessant testimony, which the holiness people are forever ringing out! The dead churches, like Ananias and Sapphira, keep back a part of the price, i.e., the “fruits of their lips,” and, like them, plunge into spiritual death, toppling into hell. Take warning and learn to obey this command, i.e., “incessantly offering unto God the fruit of your lips,” i.e., everlastingly and eternally with your mouth open, testifying for God.

16. “Do not forget benefaction and fellowship: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” So, when you get the clear witness of the Spirit to your regeneration as a sinner and sanctification as a Christian and go on with your mouth open, ringing out your testimony, “incessantly offering unto God the fruit of your lips,” amid all, be sure that you are always doing good, and extending your loving Christian fellowship to all you meet. In that case you have the blessed assurance in this Scripture that God is not simply reconciled to you, but “delighted” with you.

17. This long verse is a fervent exhortation to follow the spiritual leaders whom the Holy Ghost has sent among you, especially in view of the fact that you must meet them before the great white throne, when God will put them on the witness-block to testify in your case. As you desire their testimony to acquit you in that awful hour, be diligent to obey their Godly precept and emulate their saintly example.

18. “Pray for us... wishing to deport ourselves beautifully among all.”

Here Apollos and his evangelistic comrades, fifteen hundred miles beyond the seas in Italy, beseech their consanguinity in Palestine to pray for them that they may move throughout the whole world shining in the beauty of holiness.

19. How naturally do we all sigh to behold again the beautiful green hills and sunny skies of our native land. Here Apollos and his comrades ask their kindred at Jerusalem to pray that they may once more see the Holy City. I trow that prayer was never answered. The storms of war and death, which so soon deluged the Holy Land with blood, and whitened it with bones, were too nigh to admit the reasonable probability that these brethren would be likely to get back from Italy, and make an evangelistic tour in Palestine, as the R man armies not only destroyed the city, but slew a million of Jews by sword, pestilence and famine, selling a million more into slavery, and driving the scathed and peeled remnant out of the country to roam among the Gentiles. The Emperor Adrian even went so far as to make it a penalty of death for Jews in other countries to be found traveling with their faces toward Jerusalem. Such was his devotion to the Roman gods and his implacable hatred to the Jewish and Christian religion that he did his utmost to obliterate their memory from the earth. He even cast away the name “Jerusalem,” having the city rebuilt by the Gentiles under the name “Elia Capitolina,” which name it retained two hundred years, meanwhile “Jerusalem” was slumbering in oblivion. When the Emperor Constantine and his mother, Queen Helena, were converted to Christianity, A.D. 325, they came to Jerusalem, hunted up the sacred places, had the city rebuilt in splendor and beauty, restoring the good old name, “Jerusalem,” which it has ever retained.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

10. We have an altar. We have no need of the temple altar for we have an altar, that on which Christ offered himself, to which those who cling to the tabernacle service have no right. Christ's altar implies the abolition of the tabernacle and the old covenant. Those who cling to these show their lack of faith in Christ.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

10–16. THE ONE SACRIFICE OF THE CHRISTIAN, AND THE SACRIFICES WHICH HE MUST OFFER

10. ἕχομεν θυσιαστήριον. These seven verses form a little episode of argument in the midst of moral exhortations. They revert once more to the main subject of the Epistle—the contrast between the two dispensations. The connecting link in the thought of the writer is to be found in the Jewish boasts to which he has just referred in the word “meats.” Besides trying to alarm the Christians by denunciations founded on their indifference to the Levitical Law and the oral traditions based upon it, the Jews would doubtless taunt them with their inability henceforth to share in eating the sacrifices (1Co 9:13), since they were all under the Cherem—the ban of Jewish excommunication. The writer meets the taunt by pointing out (in an allusive manner) that of the most solemn sacrifices in the whole Jewish year—and of those offered on the Day of Atonement—not even the priests, not even the High-priest himself, could partake (Lev 6:12; Lev 6:23; Lev 6:30; Lev 16:27). But of our Sacrifice, which is Christ, and from (ἐξ) our Altar, which is the Cross—on which, as on an altar, our Lord was offered—we may eat. The “Altar” is here understood of the Cross, not only by Bleek and De Wette, but even by St Thomas Aquinas and Estius; but the mere figure implied by the “altar” is so subordinate to that of our participation in spiritual privileges that if it be regarded as an objection that the Cross was looked on by Jews as “the accursed tree,” we may adopt the alternative view suggested by Thomas Aquinas—that the Altar means Christ Himself. To eat from it will then be “to partake of the fruit of Christ’s Passion.” So too Cyril says, “He is Himself the Altar.” We therefore have loftier privileges than they who “serve the tabernacle.” The other incidental expressions will be illustrated as we proceed; but, meanwhile, we may observe that the word “Altar” is altogether secondary and (so to speak) “out of the Figure.” There is no reference whatever to the material “table of the Lord,” and only a very indirect reference (if any) to the Lord’s Supper. Nothing can prove more strikingly and conclusively the writer’s total freedom from any conceptions resembling those of the “sacrifice of the mass” than the fact that here he speaks of our sacrifices as being “the bullocks of our lips.” The Christian priest is only a presbyter, not a sacrificing priest. He is only a sacrificing priest in exactly the same sense as every Christian is metaphorically so called, because alike presbyter and people offer “spiritual sacrifices,” which are alone acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1Pe 2:5). The main point is “we too have one great sacrifice,” and we (unlike the Jews, as regards their chief sacrifice, Lev 4:12; Lev 6:30; Lev 16:27) may perpetually partake of it, and live by it (Joh 6:51-56). We live not on anything material, which profiteth nothing, but on the words of Christ, which are spirit and truth; and we feed on Him—a symbol of the close communion whereby we are one with Him—only in a heavenly and spiritual manner.

ἐξ οὖ. Lit., “from which.” It is one of the numerous forms of constr. praegnans, implying “to take from the altar and eat.”

οὐκ ἔχουσιν ἐξουσίαν. Because they utterly reject Him whose flesh is meat indeed and whose blood is drink indeed (Joh 6:54-55). Forbidden to eat of the type (see Heb 13:11) they could not of course, in any sense, partake of the antitype which they rejected.

τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντες. See Heb 8:5. It is remarkable that not even here, though the participle is in the present tense, does he use the word “Temple” or “Shrine” any more than he does throughout the whole Epistle. There may, as Bengel says, be a slight irony in the phrase “who serve the Tabernacle,” rather than “in the Tabernacle.”

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

10.] What is the connexion with ver. 9? It is represented as being entirely done away by our interpretation of βρώματα. If I regard it aright, it is not only not done away, but established in its proper light. Those ancient distinctions are profitless: one distinction remains: that ourtrue meat is not to be partaken of by those who adhere to those old distinctions: that Christianity and Judaism are necessarily and totally distinct. See more below. We have an altar (to what does the Writer allude? Some have said (Schlichting, Sykes, Michaelis, Kuinoel, and even Tholuck) that no distinct idea was before him, but that he merely used the term altar, to help the figure which he was about to introduce. And this view has just so much truth in it, that there is no emphasis on θυσιαστήριον; it is not θυσιαστήριον ἔχομεν. The altar bears only a secondary place in the figure; but still I cannot think that it has not a definite meaning. Others understand by the altar, Christ himself. So Suicer, Wolf, al. So Cyr.-alex. de Adoratione, ix. vol. i. p. 310, αὐτὸς οὖν ἄρα ἐστὶ τὸ θυσιαστήριον, αὐτὸς δὲ τὸ θυμίαμα, καὶ ἀρχιερεύς. This again has so much truth in it, that the Victim is so superior to the altar as to cast it altogether into shade; but still is not Himself the altar. Some again (Corn. a-Lapide, Böhme, Bähr, Ebrard, Bisping, Stier, al.) understand, the table of the Lord, at which we eat the Lord’s Supper. This is so far true, that that table may be said to represent to us the Cross whereupon the Sacrifice was offered, just as the bread and wine, laid on it, represent the oblation itself: but it is not the altar, in any propriety of language, however we may be justified, in common parlance, in so calling it. Some again, as Bretschneider, have interpreted it to mean the heavenly place, where Christ now offers the virtue of His Blood to the Father for us. This again is so far true that it is the antitype of the Cross, just as the Cross is the antitype of the Lord’s table: but we do not want, in this word, the heavenly thing represented by, any more than the enduring ordinance representing, the original historic concrete material altar: we want that altar itself: and that altar is, the Cross, on which the Lord suffered. That is our altar: not to be emphasized, nor exalted into any comparison with the adorable Victim thereon offered; but still our altar, that wherein we glory, that for which, as “pro aris,” we contend: of which our banners, our tokens, our adornments, our churches, are full: severed from which, we know not Christ; laid upon which, He is the power of God, and the wisdom of God. And so it is here explained by Thos. Aquinas, Jac. Cappell., Estius, Bengel, Ernesti, Bleek, De Wette, Stengel, Lünem., Delitzsch) to eat of which (cf. esp. 1Co 9:13, οἱ τὰ ἱερὰ ἐργαζόμενοι ἐκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἐσθίουσιν· οἱ τῷ θυσιαστηρίῳ προσεδρεύοντες τῷ θυσιαστηρίῳ συμμερίζονται) they have not licence who serve the tabernacle (who are these? Some, as Schlichting, Morus, and strange to say more recently Hofmann, Schriftb. ii. 1. 322 ff., understand by them the same, viz. Christians, as the subject of ἔχομεν. We Christians have an altar whereof (even) they who serve the (Christian) tabernacle have no right to eat: i. e. as explained by Hofmann, as the high priest himself did not eat of the sin-offerings whose blood was brought into the tabernacle, but they were burnt without the camp, so we Christians have no sacrifice of which we have any right to eat, no further profit to be derived from that one sacrifice, by which we have been reconciled to God. But this is, 1. false in fact. We have a right to eat of our Sacrifice, and are commanded so to do. All that our Lord says of eating His Flesh and drinking His Blood (explain it how we will) would be nullified and set aside by such an interpretation. And, 2. it is directly against the whole context, in which the βρώματα, whatever they are, are pronounced profitless, and they who walked in them contrasted with us who have higher privileges. To what purpose then would it be to say, that we have an altar of which we cannot eat? that we have a sacrifice which brings us no profit, but only shame? I pass over the interpretation which understands by the words some particular class of Christians among the Hebrews, because it involves the anachronism of a distinction between clergy and laity which certainly then had no place: and also because it would furnish no sense at all suiting the passage, referring as it then would to some Christians only, not to all. The only true reference of our words, as also that which has been all but universally acknowledged, is that to the Jewish priesthood, and in them to those who have part with them in serving the rites and ordinances of the ceremonial law. These have no right to eat of our altar: for just as the bodies of those beasts whose blood was brought into the sanctuary were burnt without the camp, so Jesus suffered altogether without the gate of legal Judaism. Let us then not tarry serving that tabernacle which has no part in Him, but go forth to Him without the camp, bearing His reproach. For we cleave not to any abiding city, such as the earthly Jerusalem, but seek one to come. Let us then not tarry in the Jewish tabernacle, serving their rites, offering their sacrifices; but offer our now only possible sacrifice, that of praise, the fruit of a good confession, acceptable to God through Him. Thus and thus only does the whole context stand in harmony. Thus the words in οἱ τῇ σκηνῇ λατρεύοντες keep their former meanings: cf. ch. 8:5, where we have λατρεύοντες ὑποδείγματι καὶ σκιᾷ τῶν ἐπουρανιων: and remember that ἡ σκηνή, barely so placed, cannot by any possibility mean any part of the Christian apparatus of worship, nor have an antitypical reference, but can only import that which throughout the Epistle it has imported, viz. the Jewish tabernacle: cf. ch. 8:5; 9:21 al. Bengel, with his keen sight for nice shades of meaning, has noticed, “est aculeus, quod dicit τῇ σκηνῇ, non ἐν τῇ σκηνῇ”).

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Those who persist in adhering to the Jewish economy can have no part in the blessing of the new covenant. The two are mutually exclusive. The statement is cast in the mould of the Jewish sacrificial ritual, and in the figure of eating a sacrificial meal.

We have an altar [εχομεν θυσιαστηριον] . It is a mistake to try to find in the Christian economy some specific object answering to altar - either the cross, or the eucharistic table, or Christ himself. Rather the ideas of approach to God, - sacrifice, atonement, pardon and acceptance, salvation, - are gathered up and generally represented in the figure of an altar, even as the Jewish altar was the point at which all these ideas converged. The application in this broader and more general sense is illustrated by Ignatius : "If one be not within the altar (ejntov tou qusiasthriou the sacred precinct), he lacketh the bread of God.... Whosoever, therefore, cometh not to the congregation [επι το αυτο] , he doth thereby show his pride, and hath separated himself," Eph. 5. Ignatius here uses the word, not of a literal altar, but of the church. Comp. Trall. 7. Again : "Hasten to come together as to one temple, even God; to one altar, even to one Jesus Christ," Magn. 7.

Of which - to eat [εξ ου - φαγειν] . The foundation of the figure is the sacrifice of the peace or thank - offering, in which the worshippers partook of the sacrifice. See Lev 7:29 - 35; Deu 12:6; Deu 27:7. The peace - offerings were either public or private. The two lambs offered every year at Pentecost (Lev 23:19) were a public offering, and their flesh was eaten only by the officiating priests, and within the holy place. The other public peace - offerings, after the priests had received their share, were eaten by the offerers themselves. Jehovah thus condescended to be the guest of his worshippers. The large scale on which such festivals were sometimes celebrated is illustrated in 1Ki 7:63. In private peace - offerings, the breast of the victim belonged to the Lord, who gave it to the priests (Lev 7:30), and the right shoulder was given directly to the priests by Israel (Lev 7:32). After the ritual of waving, the entrails were consumed, and the rest was eaten by the priest or the worshippers and their invited guests, among whom were specially included the poor and the Levites.

Right [εξουσιαν] . See on Joh 1:12.

Which serve the tabernacle [οι τη σκηνη λατρευοντες] . This does not mean the priests only, but the worshippers also. Skhnh tabernacle is used figuratively for the whole ceremonial economy. A reference to the priests alone is entirely foreign to the context, and to the whole drift of the discussion which contrasts the privileges of Christians at large (we) with those of Israel at large. The writer is speaking in the present tense, of institutions in operation in his own time, to which tabernacle, in any other than a figurative sense, would be inappropriate. Moreover, latreuein to serve is used throughout the N. T., with the single exception of Heb 8:5, of the service of the worshipper and not of the priest.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

10. ἔχομεν θυσιαστήριον) Vulg. habemus altare (hostiam d). The position of ἔχομεν and the absence of the personal pronoun indicate that the statement presents a contrast to some supposed deficiency. Christians, as such, so it appears to have been urged, are in a position of disadvantage: they have not something which others have. The reply is ‘We have an altar...’ ‘We have that which furnishes us also with a feast upon a sacrifice.’

There is not a sharp opposition between Christians and Jews at first : that difference comes out Inter. The main contention is that the exclusion from the sacrificial services of the Temple is compensated by something which answers to them and is of a nobler kind. At tho samo time tho writor, as he dovclops the thought, goos furthor. Ilithorto he has shewn that tho Christinn can dispense with the consolations of the Jewish ritual: he now prepares to draw the conclusion that if he is a Christian he ought

to give them up (0. 13 Let us go |

Sorth...).

From the connexion which has been pointed out it seems clear that the ‘altar’ (θυσιαστήριον) must correspond with the Temple altar as including

remarkable: comp. ©. viii. 5 ὑποSelypars καὶ σκιᾷ Aarpevovew. The Tabernacle iteelfi—the outward form —is represented as the object of service. Christians also serve the Antitype of the Tabernacle, but that is Christ Himself. The use of λαrpevew (the divine service) as contrasted with λειτουργεῖν (tho official service) is to be noticed. Contrast Clem. τ ad Cor. 32 (quoted above).

Brooke Foss Westcott (1825–1901), The Epistle to the Hebrews (1889) and The Epistles of St John (1883) — public domain (pre-1929). Text recovered from Internet Archive / Google Books OCR scans. Westcott’s Gospel of John commentary is not included (its OCR lost the chapter running-heads required for reliable verse-keying). Some Greek quoted in the Hebrews volume is imperfectly rendered by the OCR.