(2.) He describes this tabernacle by a double negation: [1.] That it was “not made with hands.” [2.] That it was “not of this building.” And this latter clause is generally taken to be exegetical of the former only, and that because of its introduction by rour’ Zorn, “that is to say.” I shall consider both :—
[1.] It was dxesporoinros,—< not made with hands.” The old tabernacle whilst it stood was the temple of God. So it is constantly called by David in the Psalms. Temples were generally sumptuous and glorious fabrics, always answering the utmost ability of them that built them. Not to have done their best therein they esteemed irreligious; for they designed to express somewhat of the greatness of what they worshipped, and
Ob xEIpo- Townrou,
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VER. 11.] EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 269
to beget a veneration of what was performed in them. And this men in the degenerate state of Christianity are returned unto, en- deayouring to represent the greatness of God, and the holiness of ~ his worship, in magnificent structures, and costly ornaments of them. Howbeit the best of them all are made by the hands of men; and so are no way meet habitations for God, in the way he had de- signed to dwell among us. This Solomon acknowledgeth concerning the temple which he had built, which yet was the most glorious that ever was erected, and built by God’s own appointment: 2 Chron. ii. 5, 6, “The house which I build is great: for great is our God above all gods. But who is able to build him an house, seeing the heayen and heaven of heavens cannot contain him? who am I then, that I should build him an house, save only to burn sacrifice before him?” And 1 Kings viii. 27, “ Will God indeed dwell on the earth ? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?” Service was to be done unto God in that temple according unto his appointment, but a meet habitation for him it was not. And our apostle lays it down as a principle suited unto natural light, that “ God, who made all things, could not dwell év yespororqross veors,”—“in temples made with hands,” Acts xvu. 24. Such was the tabernacle of old; but such was not that wherein our Lord Jesus administereth his office.
There seems to me to have been an apprehension among the Jews that there should be a temple wherein God would dwell, that should not be made with hands.’ Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the first year of his ministry, upon his purging of the temple, upon their requiring a sign for the justification of his authority in what he had done, says no more but only, “ Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,’ John ii. 19. He spake of the same temple, as to their destruction of it/and his own raising it again. Thus he called his own body. “He spake,” saith the evangelist, “of the temple of his body.” ‘That other fabric was a type thereof, and so partook of the same name with it; but yet was no further a temple, or a habitation of God, but as it was typical of that body of his, wherein the fulness of the Godhead did dwell. This testimony of his seemeth to have provoked the Jews above every other ;—unless it was that, when he plainly declared his divine nature unto them, affirming that he was before Abraham; for this cast them into so much madness, as that immediately “they took up stones to cast at him,” John viii. 58, 59. But their malice was more inveterate against him for what he thus spake concerning the temple; for, three years after, when they con- spired to take away his life, they made these words the ground of their accusation. But as is usual in such cases, when they could not pretend that his own words, as he spake them, were criminal, they variously wrested them to make an appearance of a crime, though
270 AN EXPOSITION OF THE (CHAP. Ix. ©
they knew not of what nature. So the psalmist prophesied that they should do, Ps. lvi. 5,.6. Some of them affirmed him to have said, “Tam able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three _ days,” Matt. xxvi. 61. Which was apparently false, as is evident in comparing his words with theirs.) Wherefore others of them ob- serving that the witness was not yet home unto their purpose, and the design of the priests, they sware positively that he said, “I will . destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands,” Mark xiv. 58. For they are not the words of the same persons, variously reported by the evangelists; for these in Mark are other witnesses, which agreed not with what was sworn before, as he observes, verse 59; “ But neither so did their witness agree together.” However, they fix on a notion that was passant among them, of a temple to be built without hands. And sundry things there are in the prophets which led them into an apprehension that God would dwell among men in a temple or tabernacle that should not be made with hands. And all their pre- dictions were accomplished when the eternal Word, by the assump- tion of our nature, fixed his tabernacle among us, John i. 14,