Christ and Israel’s Story

Comparative commentary by Susan Docherty

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The author of Hebrews is particularly concerned to explain how faith in Jesus as saviour fits together with God’s self-revelation to Israel in the past. He declares that it is the same God who speaks through Jesus and in the Jewish Scriptures (1:1–2), and he situates his audience within the ongoing story of Israel. He therefore frequently quotes from Scripture, but his interpretation of it involves reshaping some of its major themes and imagery.

He opens chapter 3 by connecting Jesus to Moses, one of the most important figures in Judaism. He acknowledges Moses’s exemplary faithfulness, and his significant role in Israel’s history (v.5). Moses is called God’s ‘servant’ in the Scriptures (Numbers 12:7), a wholly positive and honorific designation. Here, however, this term is contrasted with the status of Jesus as God’s ‘son’ who rules over God’s house (Hebrews 3:6), so is even more glorious and exalted than the great Moses. This understanding of their relationship will endure in Christian theology and art. In both the text of Hebrews and the stained-glass window from Wales, Moses is presented not on his own terms or for his own sake, but as standing alongside Christ and ‘testify(ing) to the things that would be spoken later’ in Christ and the gospel (v.5).

The wilderness is the next scriptural image to be reinterpreted in light of the author’s faith in Jesus. He turns to the account given in Psalm 95 of the time spent there by the ancient Israelites on their journey from slavery in Egypt to Canaan, when they provoked the divine anger through their disobedience and lack of trust in God (Psalm 95:10–11; Hebrews 3:10–11). Their failure stands in stark contrast to Christ’s ability to faithfully withstand the temptations to abandon God’s will that he endured. Both in Briton Rivière’s painting of that temptation scene and in Hebrews, Christ now looms large against the backdrop of the wilderness, illuminating its dark depths and bringing hope that its dangers can be overcome: ‘we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin’ (4:15). As his followers make their way through the ‘wilderness’ of this earthly life towards the goal of their promised eternal inheritance, they are encouraged to look to Jesus rather than Moses for their inspiration and guide, ‘hold(ing) fast to our confession’ (v.14).

The Psalm’s closing line receives significant interpretative attention in these chapters: ‘[t]hey will not enter my rest’ (Psalm 95:11; Hebrews 3:18–4:11). Read literally and in context, ‘rest’ refers here to the promised land which many of the wandering Israelites, including Moses himself, did not reach (Deuteronomy 34:1–8).

The term has wider resonances, though, which are deliberately highlighted in this passage, since it evokes God’s ‘rest’ on the seventh day of creation (Genesis 2:2; Hebrews 4:3–5) which Jews recall every Sabbath. It is this weekly ritual of peace and contented repose which Jankel Adler captures so skilfully in his painting. The author of Hebrews draws also on Jewish traditions which presented the earthly Sabbath as a foretaste of the joyful experience of God’s presence which will be available to the righteous after death or at the end of time (Attridge 1989: 126–28). He can, therefore, argue that the ultimate meaning of the ‘rest’ promised by the psalm is neither the earthly land of Canaan, nor the weekly Sabbath observance, but God’s own heavenly ‘sabbath rest’ (Hebrews 4:9).

The original wilderness generation did not attain their ‘rest’, but this future state of bliss remains open to the followers of Jesus if they hold firm to their faith in Christ to the end (3:14).

 

References

Attridge, Harold W. 1989. The Epistle to the Hebrews. Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress)

See full exhibition for Hebrews 3–4

Hebrews 3–4

Revised Standard Version

Hebrews 3

3Therefore, holy brethren, who share in a heavenly call, consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession. 2He was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in God’s house. 3Yet Jesus has been counted worthy of as much more glory than Moses as the builder of a house has more honor than the house. 4(For every house is built by some one, but the builder of all things is God.) 5Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that were to be spoken later, 6but Christ was faithful over God’s house as a son. And we are his house if we hold fast our confidence and pride in our hope.

7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,

“Today, when you hear his voice,

8do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,

on the day of testing in the wilderness,

9where your fathers put me to the test

and saw my works for forty years.

10Therefore I was provoked with that generation,

and said, ‘They always go astray in their hearts;

they have not known my ways.’

11As I swore in my wrath,

‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”

12Take care, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14For we share in Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end, 15while it is said,

16Who were they that heard and yet were rebellious? Was it not all those who left Egypt under the leadership of Moses? 17And with whom was he provoked forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? 18And to whom did he swear that they should never enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? 19So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

4 Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest remains, let us fear lest any of you be judged to have failed to reach it. 2For good news came to us just as to them; but the message which they heard did not benefit them, because it did not meet with faith in the hearers. 3For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said,

For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way, “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.” 5And again in this place he said,

6Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, 7again he sets a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted,

8For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not speak later of another day. 9So then, there remains a sabbath rest for the people of God; 10for whoever enters God’s rest also ceases from his labors as God did from his.

11 Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, that no one fall by the same sort of disobedience. 12For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

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