Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Hebrews 9:11

τῶν μελλόντων. This is also the reading of the rec. and is better than τῶν γενομένων of BD adopted by Lachmann, &c., which is perhaps accidentally due to the preceding παραγενόμενος.

11. παραγενόμενος. “Being come among us.”

τῶν μελλόντων�. Another and perhaps better reading is “of the good things that have come” (γενομένων BD, not μελλόντων). The writer here transfers himself from the Jewish to the Christian standpoint. The “good things” of which the Law was only “the shadow” (Hebrews 10:1) were still future to the Jew, but to the Christian they had already come. Bleek takes τῶν μελλ. ἀγ. to be a gen. of dependence or reference, Delitzsch and Alford regard it as a gen. of the object.

διά. The preposition rendered “by” may mean either “through”—in which case “the greater and better tabernacle” means the outer heavens through which Christ (anthropomorphically speaking) passed (see Hebrews 9:24 and Hebrews 4:14); or “by means of”—in which case “the better tabernacle” is left undefined, and may here mean either the human nature in which for the time “He tabernacled” (Hebrews 10:20; John 1:14; John 2:19; Colossians 2:9; 2 Corinthians 5:1), or as in Hebrews 8:2, the Ideal Church of the firstborn in heaven (comp. Ephesians 1:3).

οὐ χειροποιήτου. Because whatever tabernacle is specifically meant it is one which “the Lord pitched, not man.”

οὐ ταύτης τῆς κτίσεως. The word κτίσις may mean either “building” or “creation.” If the latter, then the meaning is that the better tabernacle, through which Christ entered, does not belong to the material world. But since κτίζω means “to build,” κτίσις may mean “building,” and then the word ταύτης by a rare idiom means “vulgar,” “ordinary” (Field, Otium Norvicense, III. 142); otherwise the clause would be a mere tautology.

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Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Hebrews 9:11

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