EXPLANATORY NOTES AND QUAINT SAYINGS (2)

Verse 6.—“Mine ears hast thou opened.” The literal translation is, mine ears hast thou digged (or pierced) through; which may well be interpreted as meaning, “Thou hast accepted me as thy slave,” in allusion to the custom (Exod. xxi. 6) of masters boring the ear of a slave, who had refused his offered freedom, in token of retaining him.—Daniel Cresswell.

Verse 6.—John Calvin, in treating upon the interpretation, “mine ears hast thou bored,” says, “this mode of interpretation appears to be too forced and refined.”

Verse 6.—“Mine ears hast thou opened.” If it be said that the apostle to the Hebrews read this differently, I answer, this does not appear to me. It is true, he found a different, but corrupted translation (ὠτία, ears, as the learned have observed, having been changed into σῶμα, body) in the LXX, which was the version then in use; and he was obliged to quote it as he found it, under the penalty, if he altered it, of being deemed a false quoter. He therefore took the translation as he found it, especially as it served to illustrate his argument equally well. Upon this quotation from the LXX the apostle argues, verse 9, “He (Christ) taketh away the first (namely, legal sacrifices), that he may establish the second” (namely, obedience to God’s will), in offering himself a sacrifice for the sins of mankind; and thus he must have argued upon a quotation from the Hebrew text as it stands at present.—Green, quoted in S. Burder’s “Scripture Expositor.”

Verse 6.—The apostle’s reading (Heb. x. 5), though it be far distant from the letter of the Hebrew, and in part from the LXX (as I suppose it to have been originally), yet is the most perspicuous interpretation of the meaning of it: Christ’s body comprehended the ears, and that assumed on purpose to perform in it the utmost degree of obedience to the will of God, to be obedient even to death, and thereby to be as the priest.—Henry Hammond.

Verse 6.—

Verses 6, 7.—In these words an allusion is made to a custom of the Jews to bore the ears of such as were to be their perpetual servants, and to enrol their names in a book, or make some instrument of the covenant. “Sacrifice and burnt-offering thou wouldst not have;” but because I am thy vowed servant, bored with an awl, and enrolled in thy book, “I said, Lo, I come; I delight to do thy will, O my God.” These words of the Psalm are alleged by S. Paul, Heb. x. But the first of them with a most strange difference. For whereas the Psalmist hath, according to the Hebrew verity, “Sacrifice and burnt-offering thou wouldst not: mine ears thou hast bored or digged,” כָּרִיתָ; S. Paul reads with the LXX, σῶμα κατηρτίσω μοι, “A body thou hast prepared or fitted me.” What equipollency can be in sense between these two? This difficulty is so much the more augmented because most interpreters make the life of the quotation to lie in those very words where the difference is, namely, That the words, “A body thou hast prepared me,” are brought by the apostle to prove our Saviour’s incarnation; whereunto the words in the Psalm itself (“Mine ears hast thou bored, or digged, or opened”), take them how you will, will in no wise suit. I answer, therefore, That the life of the quotation lies not in the words of difference, nor can do, because this epistle was written to the Hebrews, and so first in the Hebrew tongue, where this translation of the LXX could have no place. And if the life of the quotation lay here, I cannot see how it can possibly be reconciled. It lies therefore in the words where there is no difference, namely, That Christ was such a High Priest as came to sanctify us, not with legal offerings and sacrifices, but by his obedience in doing like a devoted servant the will of his Father. Thus, the allegation will not depend at all upon the words of difference, and so they give us liberty to reconcile them: “Mine ears hast thou bored,” saith the Psalmist, i.e., Thou hast accepted me for a perpetual servant, as masters are wont, according to the law, to bore such servants’ ears as refuse to part from them. Now the LXX, according to whom the apostle’s epistle readeth, thinking perhaps the meaning of this speech would be obscure to such as knew not that custom, chose rather to translate it generally σῶμα δὲ κατηρτίσω μοι, “Thou hast fitted my body,” namely, to be thy servant in such a manner as servants’ bodies are wont to be. And so the sense is all one, though not specified to the Jewish custom of boring the ear with an awl, but left indifferently appliable to the custom of any nation in marking and stigmatising their servants’ bodies.—Joseph Mede, B.D., 1586-1638.

Verses 6-10.—Here we have in Christ for our instruction, and in David also (his type) for our example; 1. A firm purpose of obedience, in a bored ear, and a yielding heart. 2. A ready performance thereof: “Lo, I come.” 3. A careful observance of the word written: “In the volume of the book it is written of me,” verse 7. 4. A hearty delight in that observance, verse 8. 5. A public profession and communication of God’s goodness to others, verses 9, 10. Now, we should labour to express Christ to the world, to walk as he walked (1 John ii. 6): our lives should be in some sense parallel with his life, as the transcript with the original: he left us a copy to write by, saith Saint Peter, 1st Epistle ii. 21.—John Trapp.

Verse 7.—“Then said I, Lo, I come.” As his name is above every name, so this coming of his is above every coming. We sometimes call our own births, I confess, a coming into the world; but properly, none ever came into the world but he. For, 1. He only truly can be said to come, who is before he comes; so were not we, only he so. 2. He only strictly comes who comes willingly; our crying and struggling at our entrance into the world, shows how unwillingly we come into it. He alone it is that sings out, “Lo, I come.” 3. He only properly comes who comes from some place or other. Alas! we had none to come from but the womb of nothing. He only had a place to be in before he came.—Mark Frank.

Verse 7.—“Then said I, Lo, I come,” to wit, as surety, to pay the ransom, and to do thy will, O God. Every word carrieth a special emphasis as, 1. The time, “then,” even so soon as he perceived that his Father had prepared his body for such an end, then, without delay. This speed implieth forwardness and readiness; he would lose no opportunity. 2. His profession in this word, “said I;” he did not closely, secretly, timorously, as being ashamed thereof, but he maketh profession beforehand. 3. This note of observation, “Lo,” this is a kind of calling angels and men to witness, and a desire that all might know his inward intention, and the disposition of his heart; wherein was as great a willingness as any could have to anything. 4. An offering of himself without any enforcement or compulsion; this he manifesteth in this word, “I come.” 5. That very instant set out in the present tense, “I come;” he puts it not off to a future and uncertain time, but even in that moment, he saith, “I come.” 6. The first person twice expressed, thus, “I said,” “I come.” He sendeth not another person, nor substituteth any in his room; but he, even he himself in his own person, cometh. All which do abundantly evidence Christ’s singular readiness and willingness, as our surety, to do his Father’s will, though it were by suffering, and by being made a sacrifice for our sins.—Thomas Brooks.

Verse 7.—“Lo, I come,” i.e., to appear before thee; a phrase used to indicate the coming of an inferior into the presence of a superior, or of a slave before his master, Num. xxii. 38; 2 Sam. xix. 20: as in the similar expression, “Behold, here I am,” generally expressive of willingness.—J. J. Stewart Perowne.

Verse 7.—“Lo, I come.” Christ’s coming in the spirit is a joyful coming. I think this, “Lo, I come,” expresses, 1. Present joy. 2. It expresses certain joy: the “Lo,” is a note of certainty; the thing is certain and true; and his joy is certain; certain, true, solid joy. 3. It expresses communicative joy; designing his people shall share of his joy, “Lo, I come!” The joy that Christ has as Mediator is a fulness of joy, designed for his people’s use, that out of his fulness we may receive, and grace for grace, and joy for joy; grace answering grace in Jesus, and joy answering joy in him. 4. It expresses solemn joy. He comes with a solemnity; “Lo, I come!” according to the council of a glorious Trinity. Now, when the purpose of heaven is come to the birth, and the decree breaks forth, and the fulness of time is come, he makes heaven and earth witness, as it were, to his solemn march on the errand: he says it with a loud, “Lo!” that all the world of men and angels may notice, “Lo, I come!” And, indeed, all the elect angels brake forth into joyful songs of praise at this solemnity; when he came in the flesh, they sang, “Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and goodwill towards man.”—Ralph Erskine, 1685-1752.

Verse 7.—“Lo, I come,” or, am come, to wit, into the world (Heb. x. 5), and particularly to Jerusalem, to give myself a sacrifice for sin.—Henry Ainsworth.

Verse 7.—“The volume of the book.” What book is meant, whether the Scripture, or the book of life, is not certain, probably the latter.—W. Wilson, D.D.

Verse 7.—“The volume of the book.” But what volume of manuscript roll is here meant? Plainly, the one which was already extant when the Psalmist was writing. If the Psalmist was David himself (as the title of the Psalm seems to affirm), the only parts of the Hebrew Scriptures then extant, and of course, the only part to which he could refer, must have been the Pentateuch, and perhaps the book of Joshua. Beyond any reasonable doubt, then, the κεφαλὶς βιβλίον (מְגִלַּת סֵפֶר) was the Pentateuch.... But I apprehend the meaning of the writer to be, that the book of the law, which prescribes sacrifices that were merely σκιαὶ or παραβολαὶ of the great atoning sacrifice by Christ, did itself teach, by the use of these, that something of a higher and better nature was to be looked for than Levitical rites. In a word, it pointed to the Messiah; or, some of the contents of the written law had respect to him.—Moses Stuart, M.A., in “A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews,” 1851.

Verse 7.—“The volume of the book,” etc. When I first considered Rom. v. 14 and other Scriptures in the New Testament which make the first Adam, and the whole story of him both before and after, and in his sinning or falling, to be the type and lively shadow of Christ, the second Adam; likewise observing that the apostle Paul stands admiring at the greatness of this mystery or mystical type, the Christ, the second Adam should so wonderfully be shadowed forth therein, as Eph. v. 32, he cries out, “This is a great mystery,” which he speaks applying and fitting some passages about Adam and Eve unto Christ and his church; it made me more to consider an interpretation of a passage in Heb. x. 7, out of Psalm xl. 7, which I before had not only not regarded, but wholly rejected, as being too like a postil[18] gloss. The passage is, that “when Christ came into the world,” to take our nature on him, he alleged the reason of it to be the fulfilling of a Scripture written in “the beginning of God’s book,” ἐν κεφαλίδι Βιβλίου, so out of the original the words may be, and are by many interpreters, translated, though our translation reads them only thus, “In the volume of the book it is written of me.” It is true, indeed, that in the fortieth Psalm, whence they are quoted, the words in the Hebrew may signify no more than that in God’s book (the manner of writing which was anciently in rolls of parchment, folded up in a volume) Christ was everywhere written and spoken of. Yet the word κεφαλις, which out of the Septuagint’s translation the apostle took, signifying, as all know, the beginning of a book; and we finding such an emphasis set by the apostle in the fifth chapter of the Ephesians, upon the history of Adam in the beginning of Genesis, as containing the mystery, yea, the great mystery about Christ, it did somewhat induce, though not so fully persuade, me to think, that the Holy Ghost in those words might have some glance at the story of Adam in the first of the first book of Moses. And withal the rather because so, the words so understood do intimate a higher and further inducement to Christ to assume our nature, the scope of the speech, Heb. x., being to render the reason why he so willingly took man’s nature: not only because God liked not sacrifice and burnt-offering, which came in but upon occasion of sin, and after the fall, and could not take sins away, but further, that he was prophesied of, and his assuming a body prophetically foresignified as in the fortieth Psalm, so even by Adam’s story before the fall, recorded in the very beginning of Genesis, which many other Scriptures do expressly apply it unto.—Thomas Goodwin.