Hebrews 9:8

8. The Holy Ghost By whose mind this whole system of symbols was framed.

The way Of access to, through Christ.

Into the holiest of all As all agree, not the earthly but the heavenly holiest is here designated.

Not yet made manifest For, while the first tabernacle maintained its standing as type, the antitype could not coexist with it. Its standing as type ceased when Christ went through the transition from earth to heaven, of which the high priest’s transition from the holy to the holiest was a shadow. For the holy stands for this world; the veil for the visible firmamental heaven; and the holiest for the highest heaven. Thus:

TYPICAL. ANTITYPICAL. 1. Jewish high priest. Our High Priest. 2. Passing. Ascending. 3. From the holy to the holiest. From earth to the highest heaven. 4. Through the veil. Through the firmamental heaven. 5. After offered victims. After offering of himself. 6. Once a year. Once for all. 7. For our symbolical justification. For our real justification. It was thus by the real that the ideal is banished. By Christ’s death and ascension the antitype comes, and the type vanishes. The true high priest passes through the true tabernacle to the true holiest, and the first tabernacle loses its standing.

The first tabernacle Does this mean the first or front apartment of the tabernacle, (as in Hebrews 9:2; Hebrews 9:6,) or does it mean the entire earthly tabernacle, including both apartments, as being first in relation to the heavenly as its second? The run of English commentators maintains the second view; the later German, as Lunemann and Delitzsch, followed by Alford, the first. We are obliged to coincide with those who maintain the second view. Lunemann’s view involves what seems to us the absurdity, that Christ’s redemptive entrance into heaven would be forestalled by the continued standing of the front apartment, but not by that of the second. You must abolish the holy in order to his heavenly entrance, but not the holiest. Why so? If the coming in of the antitype requires the cessation of the type, surely the holiest is much more a type of the atonement and the heavenly entrance than the holy. But certainly it is the whole tabernacle which must fade away before the antitypical fulfilment. Delitzsch argues “that it is not likely” that, having just called the front apartment the first tabernacle, he would use the same term in a changed sense. But our writer does, according to Delitzsch’s own interpretation, do just that when he calls the earthly holiest and the heavenly holiest by the same name, in the Greek of Hebrews 9:3; Hebrews 9:8, without any other warning than the context affords. Alford argues that the heavenly would in truth be the first tabernacle. But that would be making the antitype precede the type. Doubtless the heavens are earlier than any earthly structure, but not necessarily as a tabernacle for the redeemed or the Redeemer. “I go to prepare a place for you,” said Christ to the disciples; and it was his earthly death that made the place preparable. Without that death there were no tabernacle for us in heaven. And just now is the time to say, that the terms first tabernacle and second tabernacle, in Hebrews 9:2; Hebrews 9:6-7, cannot mean that there were literally two tabernacles. Such a terminology contradicts the entire usus loquendi of Scripture, which wholly unknows more than one tabernacle. The plain meaning of first tabernacle and second in those three verses is, so much of the tabernacle as is first, or front in order, and second, so much as is rear. This is a familiar Latinism, and Lunemann admits that, as suggested by Valckner, it is a perfectly allowable interpretation. We think it undoubtedly the true one. For, very plainly, while the first and second tabernacle of the previous verses are correlative to each other, the first tabernacle of this verse is antithetical and typical to the more perfect tabernacle of Hebrews 9:11.