For since the Law has a shadow...they [the priests, the appointed ministers,] make offering year by year with the same sacrifices continually, which can never make perfect... This is the general view of Theodoret, but such a sense of qusivai" prosfevrein is most strange, and the whole construction is singularly harsh, for there is nothing to lead to a sudden break.
If the general form of (1) and (2) be taken, for the addition of aujtw'n appears to be simply an emphasising of the action of the Levitical ministers, we must translate: For since the Law has a shadow...they [the priests] can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect... So Theophylact: but the harshness of the construction is still essentially the same as before, though it is hidden in the rendering; and, according to the teaching of the Epistle, the Law, and not the priest, is the instrument of the divine action. The Law made nothing perfect.
Hence it is best to adopt (as in the notes) the reading
duvnatai
, and to regard the construction as continuous throughout. The change from
duvnatai
to
duvnantai
(
DUNATAI
) is of a type which occurs constantly and it was suggested by
prosfevrousin
. It seems right also to adopt the
ai|"
of the same authorities (comp. Heb. 6:10), though it may be thought that such an attraction would be more likely to be introduced than changed. The preceding -
ai"
cannot be urged confidently on either side, yet it explains naturally the omission of the relative in the form
ai|"
.
Additional Note on Hebrews 10:5. The Body of Christ.
The idea of the Body of Christ has a very wide and important bearing upon the apprehension of the truth of the Incarnation. The body is the one complete organism through which the life is realised under special conditions. The body, if we may so speak, is the expression of the life in terms of the environment. Thus the one life of the Son of man is equally manifested under different circumstances by the body of humiliation and by the body of glory.
The conception of the body is fundamentally different from that of flesh and blood, the symbolic (representative) elements, which go to form our present bodies. Of these the blood is taken to symbolise the principle of the earthly life. That in us which is represented by the blood has no place in the body of the Resurrection (Luke 24:39 savrka kai; ojsteva . Compare the early addition to Eph. 5:30).
We have then to consider the relation of the Lord's body of humiliation, and of His body of glory, to humanity and to men.
The writer of the Epistle in treating finally of the Lord's redemptive and consummative work finds the lesson which he desires to convey in the words of the Psalmist spoken in the person of the Christ: Lo I am come to do Thy will, O Lord: a body didst Thou prepare for me.
This earthly body became the organ of a perfect, a universal, human life. By the offering of His body (10:10) in the absolute service of life, in the voluntary endurance of death, the Lord fulfilled the destiny of man as created, and bore the penalty which fallen man had brought upon himself. In the offering of Himself He offered to God the humanity which He had taken. The effect of this offering is both individual and social. Each believer finds himself in Christ, and in Him realises the fulfilment of his own destiny. He was potentially included in Him, so that the death of Christ was his death, and the