Hebrews 10:1-9

Concluding Exposition: Old and New Sacrifices Contrasted

10:1 For the law possesses a shadow of the good things to come but not the reality itself, and is therefore completely unable, by the same sacrifices offered continually, year after year, to perfect those who come to worship. ¹  10:2 For otherwise would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers would have been purified once for all and so have ²  no further consciousness of sin? 10:3 But in those sacrifices ³  there is a reminder of sins year after year. 10:4 For the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins. ⁴  10:5 So when he came into the world, he said,

“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me.

10:6 “Whole burnt offerings and sin-offerings you took no delight in.

10:7 “Then I said, ‘Here I am: ⁵  I have come – it is written of me in the scroll of the book – to do your will, O God.’” ⁶ 

10:8 When he says above, “Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sin-offerings you did not desire nor did you take delight in them” ⁷  (which are offered according to the law), 10:9 then he says, “Here I am: I have come to do your will.” ⁸  He does away with ⁹  the first to establish the second.

[10:1]  ¹ tn Grk “those who approach.”

[10:2]  ² tn Grk “the worshipers, having been purified once for all, would have.”

[10:3]  ³ tn Grk “in them”; the referent (those sacrifices) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[10:4]  ⁴ tn Grk “for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”

[10:7]  ⁵ tn Grk “behold,” but this construction often means “here is/there is” (cf. BDAG 468 s.v. ἰδού 2).

[10:7]  ⁶ sn A quotation from Ps 40:6-8 (LXX). The phrase a body you prepared for me (in v. 5) is apparently an interpretive expansion of the HT reading “ears you have dug out for me.”

[10:8]  ⁷ sn Various phrases from the quotation of Ps 40:6 in Heb 10:5-6 are repeated in Heb 10:8.

[10:9]  ⁸ tc The majority of mss, especially the later ones (א² 0278^vid 1739 Ï lat), have ὁ θεός (Jo qeo", “God”) at this point, while most of the earliest and best witnesses lack such an explicit addressee (so Ì⁴⁶ א* A C D K P Ψ 33 1175 1881 2464 al). The longer reading is a palpable corruption, apparently motivated in part by the wording of Ps 40:8 (39:9 LXX) and by the word order of this same verse as quoted in Heb 10:7.

[10:9]  ⁹ tn Or “abolishes.”