Heroes of the Priesthood (5:1–10)
My hero can beat up your hero. Did you ever get into an argument like that when you were a kid? We love our heroes, don’t we? By admiring a hero or heroine, we claim something for ourselves. The virtues, strengths, and accomplishments of that person represent who I am or who I aspire to be. That hero or heroine could represent my family, like an uncle or aunt who became a leader in local government. The hero or heroine could be a model for my country, like a war hero or someone who gave great service to the country by fighting against a disease or working toward justice for an oppressed segment of the population. A hero or heroine could also be an icon of a religion. He or she embodies the best of what that religion has to offer. To extol the virtues of that person, is to extol the virtues of the religion.
I had a long line of heroes as I was growing up. I had a Batman phase. I remember getting a Batman disguise, it was sort of a hard plastic helmet. But I couldn’t really be Batman without the cape. I went to the neighbor lady and asked her about what I could use for a cape. She gave me a long, black, silky piece of material for a cape. For days I went around with this old lady’s slip tied around my neck. I had other heroes too, most of them ones you would recognize: Superman, Green Hornet, John Glenn (my space phase), and Hercules (my Classic Comic book phase in third grade).
I can’t say that Jesus was ever my hero. I didn’t act like the Ned Flanders twins on The Simpsons and act out scenes from the gospels as a child. “No, I want to play Jesus this time, you played him last time.” Imagine your sister complaining, “I don’t want to be the woman caught in adultery again. You throw too hard.”
Jesus is a hero, even though we may think that designation is too mortal to apply to the divinity of Jesus. Jesus has been compared to other religious figures, like the Buddha, Moses or Mohammed, or to people like Gandhi. The more we can say about our religious representative in comparison to others, the more we can say about our own religion and its ability to raise us up to be like that person.
The Greco-Roman world loved its heroes—the super-human, semi-human, or simply human figures that represent the character and virtues of the city or nation. Poems and plays depict their stories with their great feats of prowess and wisdom. Praise speeches extol the nobility, upbringing, education, offices, and service to the city-state. One way to amplify the virtues of a person was to draw a comparison between him and some other figure from popular culture. Teachers of Greek rhetoric left behind for us instructions on how to write a comparison and gave models for its composition. As we’ve been seeing, the author of Hebrews is familiar with the writing of comparisons and uses them throughout the book of Hebrews.
Remember what we’ve said about the writing of comparisons. The goal of a comparison is to show how your subject is equal to or better than some other good subject for the purpose of praising your subject and exhorting others to model themselves after the virtues of the subject. One wouldn’t choose an inferior subject for comparison. It does little good to compare the virtue of loyalty with that of laziness. Of course loyalty excels laziness; that would be a weak comparison. The form of the comparison is also important. A more forceful comparison is one that treats one topic at a time in a series of comparative exchanges. Another form of comparison practiced in Greek literature is one in which the topics for comparison are treated for one subject and then the topics are covered for the second subject under comparison. This latter type is what we find in this comparison in Hebrews.
In the comparison in chapter five, Hebrews is going to treat each topic for one character, the High Priesthood and then those same topics beginning at verse five in reverse order for the other character, Jesus. The ordering of topics creates what’s called a chiasm. Chiastic structures occur when an author deals with several topics and then returns to the same topics but in reverse order. The outline below illustrates the chiastic structure. Not only are the topics in the comparisons similar, but the author uses key terms that are either linguistically related or are synonymous words in Greek.
Points of Comparison: High Priest (5:1–4)
1A Appointment (kathistatai) to High Priesthood (5:1)
1B Ability to have empathy (metriopathein) with weak (5:2)
1C Makes offerings (prospherein) (5:3)
1D Honor (timēn) of High Priesthood Not Taken (5:4)
Points of Comparison: Christ (5:5–10)
2D Christ did not glorify (edoxasen) Himself (5:5–6)
2C Offers prayers (prosenegkas) (5:7)
2B Learned obedience through experiences (epathen) (5:8)
2A Designated (prosagoreutheis) a High Priest (5:9–10)
The goal of the comparison is not simply to reinterpret Old Testament texts for a new context. It is rather to persuade the audience to value the excellency of God’s work in Christ and encourage the audience to remain committed to God and to the community of faith in spite of persecution and suffering. This comparison actually does not assert Jesus as more excellent than the high priest, but simply attempts to show equality. Jesus deserves our loyalty by being everything that a high priest should be: someone appointed to the role (5:1 and 5:9–10), who feels for people (5:2 and 5:8), makes offerings for them (5:3 and 5:7), and who is divinely appointed rather than self-seeking (5:4 and 5:5–6).
Appointment to Priesthood (5:1 and 5:9–10)
First on the list for comparison is the appointment of the high priest. In 5:1 Hebrews describes the high priest as “put in charge.” Then in verse 9 and 10, Jesus is also described as “having been designated” by God as a high priest. Both terms refer to the appointment of a high priest.
The language of verse nine may be surprising to us. It says of Jesus, “having been made perfect.” We typically think of Jesus as the perfect Son of God made incarnate in the world and then slowly revealing his true nature. We don’t tend to think in terms of Jesus as a young man who handled life in a way that caused him to become a complete, mature, perfect human and by means of that perfection to become the source of salvation. But that’s what Hebrews says. In Jesus’ early years, according to Luke 2:52, “Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” In Jesus’ final years, according to Hebrews, Jesus matured in the fullest sense and God exalted him.
The culmination of this section is the reference to Melchizedek. With this reference, the author of Hebrews will begin a parenthetical section that comes back around again to the topic of Melchizedek at the end of chapter six. Chapter 7 contains a comparison focused on the character of the Melchizedek priesthood. The primary lineage of high priests comes through the line of Aaron, which we begin to read about in the book of Exodus. Before that priesthood, however, we find in Genesis a person that Abram meets: “King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was priest of God Most High” (Gen 14:18). Nothing much is known of this prototype of the priesthood. Notice that he is both a king and a priest. His name means “my king is righteous.” The city is named Salem (a term related to shalom, “peace”), which is considered the area later known as Jerusalem. You can see that “salem” remained in the name of the city of Jerusalem.
The point of the comparison is Jesus’ equality with the high priest. Just as high priests were appointed to the role, so also was Jesus appointed by God to the role of high priest. In Hebrews chapter seven, the author will argue that Jesus’ priesthood is greater, since it is an eternal priesthood.
How might we think about this aspect of the priesthood? For most of us, when we think about priests, we think about the Roman Catholic Church. For the sake of illustration, let’s imagine two young men, good Italian Catholics. They live in the same city but are from different parishes. Antonio is from the Saint Dominic’s parish; his friend Marco is from Saint Sophia’s. Saint Sophia’s has a new priest, Father Jesús. Marco admires his new priest and thinks that wonderful things are happening at Saint Sophia’s. Antonio is skeptical of the new priest at Saint Sophia’s and considers their priest at Saint Dominic’s to be a regular guy, someone who really is in touch with the people. Antonio claims that