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what they did once they did afresh when the time came round (10:1); and such repetition could not have been required if they had been spiritually efficacious (10:2). Viewed in their real character they were designed to declare a need which they did not satisfy (10:3); and which essentially they could not satisfy (10:4).

1 For as having a shadow only of the good things to come, not the very image of the objects, the Law can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer year by year, make perfect for ever those who come to worship. 2 Since in that case would they not have ceased to be offered because the worshippers would have had no more conscience of sins, when they had been cleansed once for all? 3 But in them sins are called to remembrance year by year; 4 for it is impossible that blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.

10:1. skiavn ... teleiw'sai ] The sentence is complicated, and the natural order of the words is modified by the desire of the writer to emphasise the main ideas of his statement. If we adopt the reading duvnatai the rendering appears to be fairly clear: For as having a shadow only of the good things to come, not the very image of the objects, the Law can never, by the same sacrifices which they —the appointed ministers of the system— offer year by year , in a continually recurring cycle, make perfect for ever those who come to God on the way which it opens.

In this rendering it is assumed that the two phrases katj ejniautovn and eij" to; dihnekev" are placed (irregularly) at the head of the clauses to which they belong in order to bring out the conceptions of ‘yearly repetition’ and ‘perpetuity’ of effect, which respectively characterise the Old and New Covenants.

The same purpose of emphasis explains the fact that eij" to; dihnekev" precedes the verb to which it belongs, while elsewhere it follows it: 10:12, 14; 7:3.

The connexion of eij" to; dihnekev" with teleiw'sai is further supported by the parallel in 10:11 where the words kaqj hJmevran, ta;" aujta;" prosf. q. , exactly correspond with katj ejniautovn, tai'" aujtai'" q. a}" prosf. , and perielei'n aJmartiva" with eij" to; dihn. tel. It also agrees better with the sense of eij" to; dihnekev" .

If eij" to; dihnekev" is joined with prosfevrein in the sense of the Vulgate indesinenter , ‘without cessation,’ ‘as long as the Law lasts,’ it loses the peculiar force which it has elsewhere of marking an act which issues in a permanent result, permanent in continuous duration and not only in successive repetition; and it is specially difficult to suppose that the same combination of words should be used differently in the same chapter. skia;n ga;r e[cwn ... oujk aujth;n th;n eijk. ] For as having a shadow of the good things to come the Law ...Vulg. Umbram enim habens...non ipsam imaginem rerum ... The emphatic position of the participle (as opposed to oJ ga;r novmo" skia;n e[cwn ) contrasts forcibly the nature of the Law with the nature of Christ's work which has been just set forth. The iteration, the inefficacy, the transitoriness of the services of the Law which culminated in that on the Day of Atonement, followed from the fact that it ‘had a shadow only of the good things to come.’ It could provide nothing more than symbolic, and therefore recurrent, offerings, which in different ways witnessed to an idea that they


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