Hebrews 12:22

22. Are come unto In your historic progress you have attained to. Note, Hebrews 12:18. A scene infinitely more joyful opens before them than saluted and appalled the trembling Israel. As Sinai represents the terrors of the law, Zion stands for the glories of the gospel. The old mountain is basis-symbol of the pitiless decalogue; the new, is the basis of all the conceptions of mercy and glory contained in the blessed gospel. Concretely, the old is the basis of the Jewish Church; the new, is basis of the New Testament Church.

Mount Zion Delitzsch asks with much persistence, what and where is this mount Zion? Bengel had said it is “the seat of the new covenant;” which Delitzsch condemns as presenting no idea at all. He thence maintains that this mount Zion is in the highest heaven, (note on 2 Corinthians 12:2,) and is the abode celestial of God himself. So that the antithesis here is, mount Sinai in the desert and mount Zion in the third heaven! Of course, such an antithesis is utterly incongruous. To his question, Where is this mount Zion? we answer by asking, Where is this mount Sinai? And our reply to both questions is, that the literal, material mount Sinai is in the Arabian desert, and the literal mount Zion is in Jerusalem. But these two literal mountains are the representative bases of two systems of conception and truth, the one forming the doctrines and institutes of the old Church, and the other of the new. In the peculiar style of our author the first of these two systems is described, or, rather, merely implied, under a description of the physical scene at the Sinaitic lawgiving. The second of the two systems is described by first giving the physical symbolical base, namely, the mountain and city, and then a glowing series of holy idealities which are also divine realities, the clear revealing of which, is the glory of the new dispensation, the unity of which constitutes the doctrine of Christianity, and the faithful believers of which are the new Church. This bringing the significance of the two mountains into congruous relations saves us from mounting in Delitzsch’s exegetical balloon to the third heavens.

The same in principle, though varying in details, is the Jerusalem of Galatians 4:25-26, where see our notes. There we distinguish,

1. The physical Jerusalem of walls and houses.

2. The old mystical Jerusalem; namely, the old covenant dispensation and Church.

3. The heavenly Jerusalem; our new theocracy, or dispensation, identical with the “beloved city” of Revelation 20:9.

4. The glorified Jerusalem of Rev. xxi, which, after the advent, descends from heaven to earth.

We propose, however, to modify Bengel’s sevenfold gospel symbols given above, and we suggest the following scheme; (giving of the first term, Hebrews 12:22, of the seven a literal translation of the Greek, which is without the article:) 1. Zion, mountain and city of living God, heavenly Jerusalem, which is the symbolic locality of the universal Church, into full communion with which we have come by faith in Christ. 2. Myriads, a festal assembly of angels, who conceptually hover over the Church, visible by faith. 3. The historic Church of the firstborn, (Hebrews 12:23,) through all ages, in the body and on earth, yet whose names are written in heaven, anticipatively associated thereby with angels. 4. God, under whom all are as judge, in both the kingly and judicial sense of the Hebrew word. And as thus far, under God, we have had four universals, so next we have rather three specialties belonging to the new dispensation, namely: 5. Disembodied spirits of the thus far saved and made perfect. 6. Jesus the mediator, (Hebrews 12:24,) by whom they have been thus perfected. 7. The blood through which he has wrought their perfecting. And it is this advance from the old to the new which is attained by substituting our scheme for Bengel’s.

In this our sevenfold scheme the words city of the living God… heavenly Jerusalem, are simply an expanding identification of mount Zion, and so designate, unlike Bengel’s scheme, a single object. As Sinai was conceptual seat of the old covenant, this magnificent series of epithets is name of the conceptual seat of the new, which forms term 1 of the above seven.

And now, approaching this mystic Jerusalem, we descry a twofold glorious company, namely, term 2, the angels, and, 3, the firstborn.

To an innumerable Literally, to myriads of angels, who are a general assembly; in the Greek, πανηγυρει , the classic name of a general assemblage of a whole people to celebrate any public festivity, as public games, sacrifices, etc. Hence a festal assembly. The collection of holy angels are here so called as being a joyous body ever celebrating the glories of God.