SKENE 9: the Tabernacle, a parable of the New Covenant

My translation of verse 20 in the above passage was, in fact, incomplete, for in another bold piece of typology (though ‘tupos’ is not used) the writer says of the veil “that is, the veil of Christ’s flesh”. We will return to this idea when we come to consider the incarnation, but for now we must backtrack to Hebrews 9 and to the ‘skene’ of the Tabernacle. We have seen that the Tabernacle was set up, appropriately, at the centre of the cross-shaped formation of the twelve tribes of Israel in their desert encampment, and that the Tabernacle could be seen as standing at the crossroads between earth and heaven, time and eternity. The next theme which the writer develops is the superiority of the new covenant to the old: three different words are used for ‘better’ in 8.6, whose central statement is that “Jesus is the mediator of a better covenant”. Most of the rest of the chapter is a quotation from Jeremiah (31.31-4) promising a new covenant, which God would not have needed to do, the writer shrewdly observes, if the old covenant had been perfect. It then becomes clear in chapter 9 that the Tabernacle stands at the crossroads also between the two covenants, and so introduces us to another striking paradox: the Tabernacle is both the epitome of the old covenant, and, at the same time, a parable of the new (9.9 – the Greek word translated ‘illustration’ in NIV is ‘parabole’). The essence of the old covenant was the law, and the Tabernacle could be seen as the law made visible. Its construction was the exact and detailed fulfilment of God’s commandment to Moses on Mount Sinai, a perfect keeping of the law – a point hammered home by the succession of more-or-less word-for-word repetitions of God’s instructions in chapters 25-30 in the account of the construction of the Tabernacle in chapters 35-9. Moreover, the daily rituals of sacrifice and purification performed in the Tabernacle enacted the ceremonials of the law; and, most significant of all, at the most sacred centre of the Tabernacle, behind the veil, inside the Holy of Holies, within the Ark of the (old) Covenant, were the engraved tablets of the law itself (9.4). Yet the very existence of the Tabernacle was an expression of its imperfection. A tent is, as we have seen, by definition temporary, so that the old covenant was a provisional arrangement, not God’s final plan of salvation. And the very repetition of the sacrificial rituals day by day showed the inadequacy of animal sacrifices, since they “did not have the power to make the worshipper perfect in his conscience” (9.9). In particular, the writer says, the annual day of atonement, the one day of the year on which the High Priest could enter the second tent, God’s very presence, was merely “a demonstration by the Holy Spirit that the way into the Holy of Holies had not yet been made open as long as the first tent was still functioning” (v.8). The ultimate purpose of the sacrifices, daily and annual, performed in the ‘first tent’ was to serve as a ‘parable’ of the perfect sacrifice that was to come. This, of course, as we have seen, and as verses 11-12 make clear, was the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, both Lamb of God and High Priest. This ‘parable’, the writer says, was especially relevant “for the particular time that has come upon us”; he was writing at a time when that “one perfect and sufficient sacrifice” had been offered on the cross, but animal sacrifices continued to be made in a Judaism which had rejected its Christ.