4. "For this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the
It is singular what confusion the translators of our, generally excellent, authorized version have made in some passages by needlessly rendering one and the same Greek word by a variety of English words. Thus the word διαθηκη, rendered uniformly throughout chapter 8 "covenant," is here rendered "testament;" covenant is surely the correct rendering. Probably they felt this in chapter 8, as seeing that to have rendered it testament would have been to make the law not a compact from God, ratified with the symbolic blood of bulls and goats, but (which it evidently is not) a testamentary deposition of the slain beast. Perhaps also in chapter 9, the, verses before us formed their difficulty, and it was one which the more easily passed from the truth of the second covenant, so far at least as it has been applied to the church being a testamentary deposition of the Lord's; though this is not the meaning of the passage.
The passage would read much more simply thus:-" And for this cause he is the mediator of the new covenant, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. For where a covenant is, there must also of necessity be the death of the thing covenanted over. For a covenant is of force upon the basis of dead things: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the thing covenanted over is alive. Whereupon, neither the first covenant was dedicated without blood. For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats, with water, and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the covenant which God hath enjoined unto you."
Whereby we get a most simple truth presented to us about the confirmation of the covenant; and the death of the Lord presented us at once the redemption of the transgressions which were under the first covenant, and the ratification of the second covenant. The transgressions under the first covenant would just be the fruits of its imperative demands upon fallen man, in weakness and in rebellion before God; the more " do and live " is pressed upon him, the more will he feel both his own inability to do, and the motions of sin which are by the law: the second covenant acts in blessed contrast to this, as it is written in Heb. 10:16: " This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin." And Oh, how wondrously full the value of the Lord's death!—at once the antitype of all the Mosaic and Levitical sacrifices! the redemption of transgressions under that covenant, and the power and virtue of that better compact of pure divine grace, wherein God pours forth out of His own abundant fullness, according to His estimate of the wants and necessities of His poor fallen creatures, and gives all blessings unto them that believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord!