Hebrews 5:12 - Exposition

For when, by reason of the time ( i.e. the time that has elapsed since your conversion), ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that some one teach you (or, that one teach you which be ) the first principles (literally, the elements of the beginning ) of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, anti not of solid food. τῆς ἀρχῆς in this verse seems best taken in union with τὰ στοιχεῖα , rather than with τῶν λογίων ; the phrase, τὰ στοιχεῖα τῆς ἀρχῆς , meaning "the initiatory elements"—the A, B, C of Christian teaching. The word λογία ("oracles"), is used elsewhere for the revelations of the Old Testament, as Acts 7:38 ; Romans 3:2 . Here its meaning can hardly be taken as confined to them, since the first principles of the gospel are being spoken of. Still, a word that includes them in its meaning may be purposely used by way of intimating that the elements intended are those of Judaism as well as Christianity, or of the latter only in its first emergence out of Judaism. And accordingly, Hebrews 6:1 , Hebrews 6:2 , where they are enumerated, are (as will be seen) so worded as to imply no more than this; nor are the first principles there mentioned beyond what an enlightened Jew might be expected to understand readily. Be it observed that the Hebrew Church need not be supposed to have actually lost sight of these first principles, so as to require a new indoctrination into them. There may be a vein of delicate irony in what is said, after the manner of St. Paul. All that is of necessity implied is that there had been such a failure in seeing what these principles led to as to suggest the necessity of their being learnt anew. The writer does not, in fact, as he goes on, require them to be learnt anew; for he bids his readers leave them behind, as though already known, and proceed from them to perfection, though still with some misgiving as to their capability for doing so. The figure of milk for babes and solid food for full-grown men, to illustrate the teaching suitable for neophytes and for advanced Christians, is found also in 1 Corinthians 3:1 , 1 Corinthians 3:2 ; and that of νήπιος in 1 Corinthians 14:20 ; Galatians 4:19 ; Ephesians 4:14 . This correspondence, though no proof of the Pauline authorship, is among the evidences of the Pauline character of the Epistle.