Another proof of superiority for the priesthood of Christ over Aaron's is found in the oath which Jehovah is declared to have sworn in the former case, as attested in the same fruitful verse of Psa. 110. We have already had this argument drawn from His dealings with Abraham after he was tried and found faithful as to the sacrifice of Isaac (Heb. 6). It was God's appreciation of the faith that surrendered the dearest object, and in the most painfully trying way, to Himself trusted absolutely. And the divine oath was added to the word of promise, that, by two unchangeable things in which it was impossible that God should lie, we might have a strong encouragement who have fled for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before us. Here it is yet more solemn as His appreciation of Christ's priesthood which is final and forever, as being perfectly satisfying to His nature, love, and glory, in His Son as well as the Man Who had alone glorified Him even as to sin, competent alike as God and man in one person and in all His work.
“And inasmuch as [it was] not without swearing of an oath (for they have been made priests without swearing of an oath, but he with swearing of an oath by him that saith unto him, Jehovah swore and will not change his mind, Thou [art] priest forever), by so much also hath Jesus become surety of a better covenant” (Heb. 7:20-22).
Thus did God mark the incomparable honor of Messiah's priesthood; as the Aaronic was transitory, His forever. How strange at first sight that a Jew should overlook what was so distinctly involved in this solemnity on Jehovah's part in that dignity peculiar to his own Messiah! But it ceases to be strange, if one reflect on their habitual history, not as they flatter themselves in modern times but as God has recorded it imperishably in His living oracles, where we see them ever stiffnecked and rebellious, ever forsaking their most needed mercies and their brightest glory. All this would be inexplicable if one did not remember the wily adversary, the old serpent, who has wrought with not less ruinous success in Christendom now than in Judaism of old. Nor will that sad history close for either, till He appears in His glory for the judgment of both.
But no mark of God's estimation of Christ's priesthood above the Levitical is simpler or surer than swearing as He did when inaugurating Messiah in that position. The deduction is equally irrefragable: “by so much also hath Jesus become surety of a better covenant.” If He took aught in hand, if He became responsible, heaven and earth must sooner pass than His word or His work. The Second Man stands forever. And “blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.” The old covenant cannot but be death and condemnation to the sinner. The new covenant rests on His blood shed for the remission of the believer's sins, and is truly a better covenant; as the Jew will one day be the loudest to proclaim, whatever may be his obstinacy now, proud of what has ruined him and his fathers blind for ages.
“Testament” is here quite out of place; for what has a giver of security to do with making a will? Heb. 9:16-17, is the sole passage of scripture which requires or even admits of such a sense, which is there due to “eternal inheritance” in the verse immediately preceding. The word in itself is capable of either sense, meaning in human relations a disposition, especially of property by will, and in divine things a covenant, which naturally predominates in the Septuagint and the N. T. The context decides with certainty. Thus, in Matt. 26:28, Mark 14:24, Luke 22:20, remission of sins is expressly bound up with the “new covenant,” not testament, as in Jer. 31:31-34. Even the Vulgate has here “novum foedus,” not testamentum, which ought to have sufficed to have kept Jerome right in the Gospels. And what has “blood” to do with a “will"? That it should be the basis of a covenant is a familiar truth. A will or testament is unknown to the O. T. Not less clearly is it the God of Israel's “holy covenant,” as it is rightly rendered in Luke 1:72: testament can have no relation to the oath sworn to Abraham; though the Vulgate gives that word followed by Wiclif and the Rhemish translators, as it misled all the English in the three texts first referred to in the Synoptic Gospels. Acts 3:25; 7:8, are equally plain for “covenant;” and there all the English versions are correct, save Wiclif and the Rhemists, servile as usual to the Vulgate. But they were all inexcusable, particularly as to Acts 7:8, which directly alludes to Gen. 17, where the Vulgate has uniformly “pactum,” never once “testamentum.”
The Epistles are just as unambiguous. Thus in Rom. 9:4, “the covenants” (cf. Gal. 4 and Eph. 2:12) can be the only right sense, referring to Jer. 31:31 for the new, and to Ex. 24:8 for the first or old. Here the Vulgate follows the erroneous singular, as in B D E F G etc., against the true text in A and the mass of uncial and cursive copies &c., (save that A and L omit so as to be out of court), and all critics except Lachmann, who, great a scholar as he was, can never be reckoned on for a spiritual judgment. The English are right, save Wiclif and the Rhemists and the margin of the A. V. In Rom. 11:27 the meaning is beyond doubt “covenant,” as in the English with the same exceptions; where the error of the Vulgate is the more flagrant, because in Isa. 59:21, it gives “foedus” rightly yet mistranslates as usual in the N. T. citation. 1 Cor. 11:25 falls under the remarks on the Lord's Supper in the Gospels as already seen. 2 Cor. 3:6-14 can only mean “a new covenant” and “the old covenant,” the reference being indisputable; yet here the influence of the Vulgate misled all the English discreditably. Even Beza had corrected himself; for while wrong in his edd. of 1559, 1565, and 1582, he abandons “test.” and substitutes “pactum” in his last two editions of 1588 and 1598, though without a reason given in his notes. The connection of Gal. 3:15 is conclusive for the more general “covenant” even though human only, rather than the narrower “testament,” which is here more excusable in the Vulgate, Wiclif, Tyndale, Cranmer, and the version of Rheims, while the Geneva rendering of 1557 led the A. V. to “covenant,” with “testament” in the margin. This is confirmed by ver. 17 where a last “will” or “testament” cannot rightly be understood, though here again we have the same parties similarly ranged. In Heb. 4:24 the A. V. alone of English is correct, with the marginal alternative for which there was no good reason. In Eph. 2:12 the Geneva V. was the forerunner of the A. V., Beza being right all through. This brings us, according to the usual arrangement, to our Epistle, and to this the first mention of the word, where “covenant” has been shown to be right. In Heb. 8:6, 8-9 (twice), and 10 it is unmistakably and uniformly “covenant;” for what has a “mediator” to do with a testament? Other proofs are so obvious as to need no further pointing out. So in Heb. 9:4, the ark was of the “covenant,” with which a will or testament had no congruity: and with the “tables” too in the same verse. It has been remarked also that “a mediator” goes with “a covenant,” not a testament (ver. 15), and the bearing of the “first covenant” is determined by O. T. reference. “Testament” it cannot be. But the inspiring Spirit, in the parenthesis of vers. 16, 17, avails Himself of the signification so familiar to all who spoke or read Greek, in order to impress the place that death has for introducing and giving effect to the blessing of the Christian. A covenant does not imply in any case the death of the covenanter to give it validity; a testament invariably supposes the testator's death to bring it into operation. All learning or argument to set aside testament and testator here is but beating the air. Equally vain is it to establish testament in ver. 15, or in 18 and 20, where “covenant” alone suits, alone is warranted by the O. T. God enjoined a covenant, not a testament, and that by blood. The same proof applies no less stringently to Heb. 10:16-29, Heb. 12:24, and Heb. 13:20; as also to Rev. 11:19. Now these are all the occurrences in the N. T.; and the sum is that “testament” is out of place everywhere save in Heb. 9:16-17, where alone special contextual bearing gives occasion to that sense; whereas the universal O.T. force prevails in every other. The question is here gone into fully, that no reader may allow the unbelieving notion of the least uncertainty hanging over the usage. It is in vain and even injurious to parade a crowd of the learned men opposed to another crowd not less learned, save to prove that our faith ought in no case to rest on man but on God's Word and Spirit. Thus regarded, the uncertainty of men confirms the believer in the value of the provisions of God's grace.