Hebrews Chapter Eight, Decaying

 

Hebrews 8:13 In that He says, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

God addresses a new covenant through the prophet Jeremiah, indicating that the temporal and conditional covenant made at Sinai was—or would be—no longer valid. Otherwise, as stated in Hebrews 8:7, a second covenant would not have been sought.

Focus now on the word, “obsolete.” To garner a better understanding of this word and entire passage, we’ll examine it from a different perspective. The KJV reads, “In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.” The HCSB follows the more traditional rendering of the KJV and says, “By saying, a new covenant, He has declared the first is old. And what is old and aging is about to disappear.”

The RSV, NASB, ESV and NIV follow the NKJV translation of “obsolete,” in this verse, but the Greek seems to suggest something else. The word is “gerasko,” and means, “to be senescent.” Oxford defines “senescence” (the noun form of the term), “the process by which a living thing gradually gets worse with age.” This agrees with word “gerasko” is taken from, which is simply “geras,” and means “senility.”

The term apparently suggests less something being outdated, and likened to someone whose extremely advanced age has made him senile. That is why the KJV and the HCSB both employ terminology commensurate to someone advancing in years. They, “decayeth and waxeth old,” or become “old and aging.” Someone that has become senile loses his sense of self. They grow confused, absent-minded, or forgetful. The writer, contrasting the Sinaitic covenant expressed by Aaron with the eternal covenant in Christ, states that it is doddering; it ready to vanish away or disappear. The government of the first covenant, like the men it governed, was not mean to endure for all time and eternity. It has waxed old and the strength of its youth is spent. Even in its strength it lacked salvific power; it only had power to condemn.

It cannot be stressed enough that it is God Himself telling the Hebrew Christians this. The author is unabashed in relating that God said a new covenant was coming, rendering the first received by the Jews old, or falling into the throes of senility. This was punctuated most effectively with the destruction of the Jewish temple and the cessation of all sacrifice in 70 A.D. It had vanished away and Judaism radically changed in the wake of their temple’s loss. But Judaism’s survival demonstrated a rejection of Christ as the temple and the Law’s fulfillment.

Gieseler, in his Compendium of Ecclesiastical History, writes, “Even the synagogue that arose after the Babylonish captivity, adapted as they were to promote a more spiritual religion, served still more to advance the legal spirit of the Levitical code. Hence, there arose at this time the most obstinate attachment—yea, a fanatical zeal for the Mosaic ceremonial, apart from any real religious feeling and moral improvement, and accompanied rather by a more general and deeper corruption of the people.”

The writer, keenly aware of the Jewish desire to retain the outward rituals involved with the temple service, launches into a detailed examination of the tabernacle and its purpose in the next chapter, letting off with this verse by relating how the first covenant, inextricably linked to the temple and animal sacrifice, was old and decayed. The better way had come, ad he encouraged his brethren in Christ to accept this simple and sublime truth.