Hebrews 8:5

who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things Namely, the priests who are ministering in that which is nothing but an outline and shadow (Hebrews 10:1; Colossians 2:17) of the heavenly things. The verb "minister" usually takes a dative of the person to whomthe ministry is paid. Here and in Hebrews 13:10 the dative is used of the thingin which the service is done. It is conceivable that there is a shade of irony in this they serve not a Living God, but a dead tabernacle. And this tabernacle is only a sketch, an outline, a ground pattern (1 Chronicles 28:11) as it were at the best a representative image of the Heavenly Archetype.

of heavenly things Perhaps rather "of the heavenly sanctuary" (Hebrews 9:23-24).

as Moses was admonished "Even as Moses, when about to complete the tabernacle has been divinely admonished".… On this use of the perfect see note on Hebrews 4:9, &c. The verb is used of divine intimations in Matthew 2:12; Luke 2:26; Acts 10:22 &c.

all things This expression is not found either in the Hebrew or the LXX. of the passages referred to (Exodus 25:40; Exodus 26:30); it seems to be due to Philo (De Leg, Alleg.iii. 33), who may, however, have followed some older reading.

according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount Here, as is so often the case in comments on Scripture, we are met by the idlest of all speculations, as to whether Moses saw this "pattern" in a dream or with his waking eyes; whether the pattern was something real or merely an impression produced upon his senses; whether the tabernacle was thus a copy or only "a copy of a copy and a shadow of a shadow," &c. Such questions are otiose, because even if they were worth asking at all they do not admit of any answer, and involve no instruction, and no result of the smallest value. The Palestinian Jews in their slavish literal way said that there was in Heaven an exact literal counterpart of the Mosaic Tabernacle with "a fiery Ark, a fiery Table, a fiery Candlestick," &c, which descended from heaven for Moses to see; and that Gabriel, in a workman's apron, shewed Moses how to make the candlestick, an inference which they founded on Numbers 8:4, "And thiswork of the candlestick" (Menachoth, f. 29. 1). Without any such fetish-worship of the letter it is quite enough to accept the simple statement that Moses worked after a pattern which God had brought before his mind. The chief historical interest in the verse is the fact that it was made the basis for the Scriptural Idealism by which Philo and the Alexandrian Jews tried to combine Judaism with the Platonic philosophy, and to treat the whole material world as a shadow of the spiritual world.