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Facing the Challenge

How the author of 'Hebrews' understood the Old Testament to point to Christ

Introduction

Many people today do not know much about the Bible at all.  Others, perhaps those who have studied theology or religious studies, see it as a collection of 66 disconnected works by different authors. They know that the books of the New Testament were written hundreds of years after the Old Testament, and they may think that the Old Testament portrays God as a fierce and vengeful tribal deity, while the New Testament portrays God as full of mercy and kindness.

One of the main points we make in Facing the Challenge is that the Bible is the way God has chosen to speak to us. He could have chosen to speak in any other way, but he chose to speak through this book. As such, it is not just a random collection of 66 different human works, but one single unified message. There is progress in revelation - Abraham and Moses did not know as much about God as Peter, James and John. But it is the same God, and a single revelation.  What is newer may clarify the old, but it does not contradict it.

And the central message of the Bible is about Jesus Christ - in the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament.

But surely this is just our effort to 'read something back' into the Old Testament? Surely it will not really stand up?  We have looked elsewhere on this site at how John's Gospel understands the relationship between Jesus and the Old Testament, and at how Jesus himself understood this relationship.  This article looks in more detail at how the author of the book of Hebrews understood the relationship.

How 'Hebrews' uses the Old Testament

No-one knows for sure who wrote the book of Hebrews.  What is clear from the book itself is that he was writing for Jewish followers of Christ, that is, for people who were familiar with the Old Testament. According to one scholar,  the author of this New Testament book quotes from the Old Testament 29 times, and alludes to it another 52 times.

What is unusual (and important) is that when he quotes the Old Testament, he often ignores the human author or speaker, and quotes it as if God himself is speaking directly.  On two occasions, he even attributes words in the Old Testament to Christ (Hebrews chapter 2 verses 11-12 and chapter 10 verses 5-7).

This way of using the Old Testament emphasizes that behind the diverse human authors, there stands one divine author.  For the writer of Hebrews, 'what scripture says, God says.'

Not only that, but the author sees the Old Testament as pointing very clearly to Jesus Christ.  The Old Testament is fulfilled in Jesus.   This does not just mean that individual prophecies in the Old Testament are fulfilled in Jesus (although it does include that), but it means that the whole of the Old Testament is, in some sense, about Jesus.

Examples from chapter 1

For example, in chapter 1 alone, the author uses seven quotations from the Old Testament. He uses these quotations to make the point that Jesus is higher than any created being.

Of the seven quotations, one (Psalm 104 verse 4) is speaking about angels, and is not directly relevant to the point of this article.  The others are:

• Psalm 2 verse 7
• 2 Samuel chapter 7 verse 14 (parallel to 1 Chronicles chapter 17 verse 13)
• Deuteronomy chapter 32 verse 43
• Psalm 45 verses 6-7
• Psalm 102 verses 25-27, and
• Psalm 110 verse 1

We need to see how these passages originally functioned in the Old Testament if we are to understand how the author of Hebrews uses them - and why this is important.

Psalm 2 is a song about God's chosen king - the king of the Jewish nation. In verse 7, the king himself is speaking, and he says:

So in context in the Old Testament, these words apply to the king of the nation.  But the writer of Hebrews appropriates them to apply to Jesus Christ.   On the face of it, this is not a legitimate thing to do. But if, in some way, the whole of the Bible points to Jesus Christ, then it is legitimate.  Clearly, this is how the writer of Hebrews understood the Old Testament.   The point is not that he mis-used something that was originally written about the king, by applying it to Jesus, but that he understood the Old Testament picture of kingship itself to be a picture of Jesus, God's promised king. So it was legitimate to apply these words to Christ. In fact, even before Jesus came, some of the Jewish religious teachers had understood this Psalm to be foretelling the Messiah, God's promised deliverer.  

2 Samuel chapter 7 verse 14 (and the parallel in 1 Chronicles chapter 17 verse 13) come from the historical period when the kingdom had been established in Israel, and her greatest king, David, was looking to the future. God promises that if David and his descendants are faithful, his line will always rule over the nation. He talks about David's successor, and says:

Again, in the immediate Old Testament context, this is referring to David's son Solomon.  But there is also a cryptic reference to a later descendant of David  As far as we know, the Jewish religious teachers did not read this passage as a prediction of the Messiah. But they did expect, on other grounds, that the Messiah would be a descendant of David. (This is why the New Testament is at pains to emphasize that Jesus was a true descendant of David.)  Again, the writer's application of this passage to Jesus is legitimated by his understanding that the Old Testament kingship pointed forward to the true king, God's only son.

The use of the third quotation (Deuteronomy chapter 32 verse 43) is slightly difficult, in that it is taken from the Greek translation of the Old Testament, and the key words are not included in some of our English versions, which are translated from the Hebrew original. The important point is that the writer of Hebrews takes an Old Testament passage, in which Moses is speaking, and applies it to Jesus Christ. Not only that, but he calls Jesus God's 'firstborn'.  This can only be legitimate if he understood the whole of the Old Testament to be about Christ.

Psalm 45 is another song about the king.  Verse 6 begins with the words 'Your throne, O God...'   The important point is that the king is here addressed as a divine figure - as God himself.  And once again, the writer of Hebrews takes an Old Testament passage, and appropriates it for his description of Jesus as God's son.

When he quotes Psalm 102 verses 25-27, the writer of Hebrews is even more daring. He takes some words that in their Old Testament context are applied to God in prayer, and applies them directly to Jesus.  He does this without qualification, without explanation, and without excuse.

He was writing to people with a Jewish background.  They would have been quick enough to jump on any illegitimate use of the Old Testament.  But both the writer, and his original readers, understood the Old Testament in the same way. They understood that the Jesus of the New Testament was in some way the God of the Old Testament, and that the Old Testament pointed to him, and could legitimately be applied to him.

Finally, the writer quotes from Psalm 110 verse 1, and once again applies this Old Testament passage directly to Jesus:

In Jesus' day, the Jewish religious leaders understood this Psalm to be about the promised Messiah.  Jesus could use it in debate with them, and both sides agreed that it was about the Messiah. (Mark chapter 12 verses 35-37).   Jesus obviously understood it to apply to himself (otherwise there wouldn't have been any point in quoting it to the Jewish leaders). And he obviously understood it to apply to himself in its Messianic significance.  That is, he understood himself to be the promised Messiah, and he understood himself to be the fulfillment of this Old Testament passage, and others like it.  The New Testament writers apply this Psalm to Jesus over and over.

Conclusion

For the writer of Hebrews, as for the New Testament writers generally, and for Jesus himself, the whole of the Old Testament points towards Jesus, and he fulfills it.  So we can legitimately speak of the Bible as being one book, one message from God, centered on Jesus Christ. God's revelation of his plans and purposes is progressive, but it doesn't contradict itself between the Old Testament and the New.

This is particularly important when we read and study and teach the Old Testament.  If the way we understand it does not somehow point towards Christ, we are not understanding it as Jesus himself (and his first followers) understood it, nor - dare we say it - as God intends us to understand it.

For more on this very important subject, see Vaughan Roberts' book 'God's Big Picture: tracing the story-line of the Bible', or Graeme Goldsworthy's books According to Plan, and Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture.