VOL. Iv. —28
434 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. (Ca. V.
But he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, etc. Sup- ply glorified him. He did not glorify himself, but God who styled him “son” glorified him. Thou art my Son is intro- duced thus in close connection with the call to the priesthood, in recognition of the fact that the priesthood of Christ had its basis in his sonship. ‘“Christ’s priestly vocation ceases to be an accident in his history, and becomes an essential character- istic of his position as Son: sonship, christhood, priestliness, inseparably interwoven” (Bruce).
6. Thou art a priest forever, etc. According to this verse Christ is prophetically pointed out in Ps. cx as an eternal priest, independent of fleshly descent, a king, and superior in dignity to the Levitical priests.
According to the order (xara tiv raw). According to the rank which Melchisedec held. Almost =Uike. For Mel- chisedec see ch. vii.
7. He is now to show that Christ was under training for the priesthood, and describes the process of training.
Who (és). Nominative to éuabev learned, ver. 8, to which all the participles are preparatory.
In the days of his flesh (év rais jucpais ris capKds adtod). During his mortal life.
When he had offered up prayers and supplications (Sejoes Te al ixernpias mpocevéykas). Aenoes special, defin- ite requests: ixernpias, N. T.°, is properly an adjective, per- taining to or fit for suppliants, with paBdous staves or édralas olive-branches understood. The olive-branch bound round with wool was held forth by a suppliant in token of his char- acter as such. ‘The phrase rpocdépev Sejoes N. T.°.*
* In his volume on Hebrews (1899) Professor Bruce abandons the view held by him in his Humiliation of Christ, p. 80, that, in the use of the sacri- ficial expression mpocevéyxas, the writer conceived Christ’s prayer in Geth- semane as a sacrificial offering, and found in it a parallel with the offering which the Levitical high priest presented for himself ; a view which must be regarded as fanciful. See Weiss ad loc.