Hebrews 10:5

b. So the decisive atonement is made by Christ’s submission to the demands for Hebrews 2:5-18 .

5. Wherefore In consequence of this demand for an adequate sacrifice.

He The great unnamed, yet well-known.

Cometh into the world The words of Psalms 40:6-8 are adduced as illustrating the spirit and pure purpose of the Messiah’s entrance into our sublunary world. The psalm was probably written by David at the period when the troubles with Saul had terminated, and he was about to assume the open royalty. By experience he had learned that richest offerings were less acceptable to Jehovah than profound obedience to the divine commands. Submissively, therefore, he had waited the divine will; submissively he is now ready to come to the throne, there to perform the divine purposes. Our author sees in him a permanent type, and here, at least, a parallel, of the Son of God entering on his mediatorial office in our world. Perowne elegantly thus versifies the passage of the psalm:

“In sacrifice and offering thou hast no delight,

Mine ears hast thou opened,

Burnt-offering and sin-offering hast thou not required.

Then said I, ‘Lo, I come,

In the roll of the book it is prescribed to me:

To do thy pleasure, O my God, I delight;

Yea, thy law is in my inmost heart.’”

Sacrifice… not It was by an obedient heart and penitent soul that even under the Old Testament the sacrifice was made available. The offering was not the substitute of devout feeling, but the outward symbol and expression of it. When David wrote this, he doubtless knew that Samuel had lately said to Saul, “Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord?”

A body hast thou prepared me The Hebrew, as given by Perowne, is, “Mine ears hast thou opened.” More literally, Ears hast thou dug out for me. That is, thou hast framed me with a hearing ear-passage; so that I am a creature able to listen and obey. This the Septuagint version translated, or rather paraphrased, as quoted here by our author, a body hast thou fitted (or constructed) for me; namely, to be an obedient creature to thee. The ultimate thought is precisely the same: thou hast organized me for responsible obedience. The Hebrew makes God frame an ear-passage in order to the creature’s obedience; the Septuagint makes him frame the whole body for such obedience. The Hebrew puts a part for the whole; the Septuagint puts the whole. Such a whole, namely, a whole body, was truly framed for David at birth, and still more eminently for Christ at the incarnation. The Seventy thought that the mention of ears alone was too little intelligible, and so they explained, boldly but correctly, by substituting body.

It is often assumed that our author quotes the words as proof or at least illustration of the incarnation. That is not quite clearly the case. If, however, David’s obedient approach into the kingdom is type of Messiah’s coming into the world, then his being divinely framed with a physique for an obedient free-agent is a very fair illustration of Messiah’s incarnation.

Some critics hold that the words came into the Septuagint by a copyist’s mistake. They suppose that in the word for ears, ΩΤΙΑ , the letters ΤΙ were miswritten Μ ; and that the last letter of the preceding word, which was a C = C , was repeated so as to make C ΩΜΑ , body. This is, to say the least, ingenious. Supposing it to be a mis-writing, still, if found in the current Septuagint of the apostles’ day, our writer would properly quote as his text stood. But the above explanation of the translation by the Seventy makes the supposition as unnecessary as it is unprovable.