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the very reason of the thing. St. Paul makes a general assertion, respecting the principle on which all covenants were ratified of old: WHEREVER there is a covenant, there also must be the death of the ratifier. Now, if by the ratifier the apostle meant one of the contracting parties, his assertion most assuredly would not be true: for there is clearly no necessity whatever, that, when two contracting parties make a covenant (as for instance, Abraham and Abimelech, or Jacob and Laban'), one of these two parties should be put to death. But, if neither of the contracting parties be meant by the phrase, then the slaughtered victim, by which the Covenant was ratified, can alone be intended. And, accordingly, when the passage is so understood, the Apostle both asserts an universally acknowledged truth, and (as we shall presently see) lays down premises from which he argues most victoriously to the nature of the two particular Covenants Levitical and Christian 2.

1 Gen. xxi. 22-32. xxxi. 44-54.

'I am no way singular in my opinion, that by the ratifier (Tov dialeμevov) of the sixteenth verse, we ought to understand the slaughtered victim by which the covenant was ratified: the very samne application of the phrase, as I have already observed, is made by Mr. Wakefield; and it is likewise made both by Mr. Peirce and Dr. Doddridge. The former of these two, on the authority of a passage in Appian, would translate re dialeμeve of the pacifier or of that sacrifice which is appointed by God to pacify: whence he would render the lat

2. In the seventeenth verse, I supply the substantive victims after the adjective dead.

For a covenant over dead victims is valid: since it is of no strength, while the ratifier is living.

That by the dead are meant the dead victims, which the contracting parties had sacrificed, is clear, both from the whole drift of the argument, and from the very phraseology employed by St. Paul.

If the ratifier, whose death was necessary for the legal validity of the covenant, be the sacrificed victim over which the covenant was made; a point, respecting which I can entertain no doubt then the dead, over which the covenant is declared to be valid, can only be the dead victims which had been sacrificed; the covenant itself being invalid, while the ratifier was living.

Accordingly, the very phraseology employed by the Apostle distinctly points out to us, what we are to understand by the dead. The Psalmist, as his meaning is most accurately explained by

ter part of the seventeenth verse; The pacifier can do nothing as long as he liveth. The latter would translate the verse, in which re dialeμɛvov occurs: For, where a covenant is, it necessarily imports the death of that by which the covenant is confirmed. Whatever may be thought of the gloss of Mr. Peirce, which (so far as I can judge) is rendered inadmissible by the turn of the Greek expressions διαθηκην διαθεσθαι and ὁ διαθηκην dialeμevos, still both he and Dr. Doddridge agree with Mr. Wakefield in the supposition that St. Paul is speaking of a sacrificed victim.

the Greek of the Seventy, introduces the Lord as saying: Gather unto me my saints, who have ratified my Covenant OVER A SACRIFICE'. St. Paul, in a similar manner, who writes in Greek and to whom the Greek version of the Seventy was perfectly familiar, argues that a covenant OVER THE DEAD is valid', since it is of no strength while the ratifier is living. Precisely the same Greek preposition is used both by the Seventy and by the Apostle, and that too in precisely the same context; for both are alike speaking of the ratification of a covenant. The phrase therefore of the Apostle, OVER THE DEAD, Will obviously be the best explained by the phrase of the Seventy, OVER A SACRIFICE: whence I think it sufficiently clear, that the two manifestly parallel phrases bear the very same meaning. Such being the case, I conceive that we are fully at liberty to supply the substantive victims after the adjective dead and thus to explain the original phrase as denoting over the dead victims'.

1 Heb. nat by: Gr. Ei Ovσiais: Lat. of Dr. Spencer, super sacrificium.

2 Gr. επι νεκροις.

Some have supposed, that the Epistle to the Hebrews was originally written in Hebrew and was afterward translated into Greek. For this opinion there seems to be no very clear warrant; but, even if we admit its propriety, my argument from identity of expression will not be materially altered. The Seventy thought i Ovriais the most proper translation of by, in Psalm 1. 5. Hence we may con

3. It may be thought a difficulty, that the Greek word', which I translate the ratifier or the maker and which I apply to the sacrificed victim over whose dead body the covenant was made or ratified, should be expressed in the masculine gender and not in the neuter.

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This difficulty, if it be a difficulty, strikes me as being by no means insurmountable. In the Greek language, the names of the clean animals devoted to sacrifice, as they are set forth by St. Paul both before and after the passage which contains the word now under consideration, are of the masculine gender'. Hence, when he speaks of some one of these animals being used as the ratifier of a covenant, he very naturally and grammatically writes the participle, which I translate the ratifier, in the masculine gender also. The sacrificial ratifier was a bull or a calf or a goat. But the Greek names of all these animals are masculine. There

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clude, if the Epistle to the Hebrews was really first written in Hebrew, that the translator's εTI VERρois, in Heb. ix. 17, would answer to the original expression; just as the ε Ovσiais of the Seventy, in Psalm 1. 5, answers to the original expression at by. In that case, St. Paul must have written On by, of which VEKODIs would be a faithful and analogous version. Thus again, the two expressions, n in Psalm 1. 5, and

parallel.

by in Heb. ix. 17, will be strictly

1 Gr. τε διαθεμενε and ὁ διαθεμενος.

2 Gr. ταυρος, μοσχος, and τραγος. Heb. ix. 12, 13, 19.

fore the participle, denoting the ratifier, is masculine likewise'.

V. The reasoning of the Apostle, throughout the entire passage contained in the eighth and ninth chapters of his Epistle to the Hebrews, will now at length, I apprehend, stand forth with abundant cogency and plainness.

1. Of the argument itself, the basis will be found in the sixteenth and seventeenth verses of the ninth chapter.

Where there is a covenant, there also it is necessary that the death of the ratifier should be. For a covenant over dead victims is valid: since it is of no strength, while the ratifier is living.

The assertion, contained in this portion of Holy Writ, is a general one. St. Paul is not speaking of this covenant or of that covenant in particular, but of ALL covenants as they were wont of old to be ratified. Hence he must be understood, as arguing, from the well-known and universally received mode of ratifying a covenant in GENERAL, to the exactly similar mode of ratifying the Levitical and the Christian covenants in PARTICULAR.

2. His reasoning therefore, if thrown into a syllogistic form, will be to the following effect.

The expression, if completed, would run, re dialeμeve tavps Οι μοσχο οι τραγs, according to the animal sacrificed in the ratification of any particular covenant.

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