It is to a man's honor to keep aloof from strife, while every fool is quick to quarrel, parallels the avoidance of foolish questionings and disputes. The sapiential praise of those who refrain from quarreling shapes Paul's verdict that strife is unprofitable and vain.

It is an honor for a man to keep aloof from strife; but every fool will be quarreling.


As charcoal kindles fire, a contentious man kindles strife, illuminating the warning against the factious person who must be avoided. The wisdom portrait of the quarrel-feeder informs the directive to reject the divisive after two warnings.

As coals are to hot embers, and wood to fire, so is a contentious man to kindling strife.


Ben Sira warns against contending with the powerful and against quarreling with the loud-mouthed and contentious, advice that parallels shunning disputes and the factious man. The deuterocanonical counsel to avoid futile contention reinforces Titus' rejection of vain wrangling.

Contend not with a mighty man, Lest haply you fall into his hands. Strive not with a rich man, lest haply he overweigh you: For gold has destroyed many, And turned away the hearts of kings. Contend not with a man that is full of tongue, And heap not wood upon his fire.


Refrain from strife and you will lessen sins, for a hasty quarrel kindles fire, echoes the diagnosis that the factious man sins and is self-condemned. Ben Sira treats quarreling as sin-producing, matching the moral framing of strife as unprofitable and corrupting.

Abstain from strife, and you will diminish your sins: For a passionate man will kindle strife; And a man that is a sinner will trouble friends, And will make debate among those who are at peace. As is the fuel of the fire, so will it burn; And as the stoutness of the strife is, so will it burn: As is the strength of the man, so will be his wrath; And as is his wealth, so will he exalt his anger. A contention begun in haste kindles a fire; And a hasty […]


Conviction on the evidence of two or three witnesses, then purging the evil from the midst, lies behind the pattern of a first and second warning followed by rejecting the divisive person. The Mosaic procedure of repeated testimony then removal supplies the disciplinary template.

At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, he who is to die shall be put to death. At the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death. The hand of the witnesses shall be first on him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. So you shall remove the evil from your midst.


The requirement that a matter be established by two or three witnesses informs the first-and-second-warning structure preceding the rejection of the factious man. The legal norm of repeated attestation underlies the procedural fairness of two admonitions.

One witness shall not rise up against a man for any iniquity, or for any sin, in any sin that he sins. At the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses, shall a matter be established.


The Aaronic blessing's bestowal of the LORD's grace and peace lies faintly behind the closing benediction, grace be with you all. The epistolary grace-greeting draws on the priestly tradition of invoking divine favor upon the congregation.

‘Yahweh bless you, and keep you. Yahweh make his face to shine on you, and be gracious to you. Yahweh lift up his face toward you, and give you peace.’


Paul says the hearts (literally bowels/inward parts) of the saints have been 'refreshed' through Philemon. Proverbs likens a faithful messenger to the cold of snow that 'refreshes the soul' of his masters, the nearest sapiential parallel to this language of inward refreshment. The link is verbal and thematic rather than a citation, and Paul develops it more pointedly at v20.

As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so is a faithful messenger to those who send him; for he refreshes the soul of his masters.


Paul asks Philemon to receive Onesimus 'no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother.' The Holiness Code forbids treating an impoverished Israelite who sells himself as a slave, requiring instead that he be held as a hired worker and a brother, not ruled over harshly. Paul effectively extends this Israelite kinship-over-bondage principle to a Christian master and his returning slave.

“‘If your brother has grown poor among you, and sells himself to you; you shall not make him to serve as a slave. As a hired servant, and as a temporary resident, he shall be with you; he shall serve with you until the Year of Jubilee: then he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and shall return to his own family, and to the possession of his fathers. For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. They shall not be […]


The Deuteronomic slave law mandates release of a Hebrew bondservant and generous provision out of remembered solidarity ('you were a slave in Egypt'). Paul's reconfiguring of Onesimus from slave to beloved brother, no longer held under necessity, resonates with this manumission-and-fraternity ethic, though Paul never cites the statute.

If your brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, and serves you six years; then in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you. When you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty. You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your wine press. As Yahweh your God has blessed you, you shall give to him. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and […]


The law forbids returning an escaped slave to his master and requires letting him dwell freely where he chooses. Paul's careful handling of the fugitive Onesimus, sending him back only as a free brother and asking Philemon not to reclaim him as property, stands in deliberate tension and dialogue with this provision. Many read the whole letter as Paul navigating around the spirit of this command.

You shall not deliver to his master a servant who has escaped from his master to you. He shall dwell with you, in your midst, in the place which he shall choose within one of your gates, where it pleases him best. You shall not oppress him.


'Perhaps he was separated from you for a while, that you would have him forever' echoes Joseph's providential reading of his own separation from his family: 'God sent me before you to preserve life... it was not you who sent me here, but God.' Paul, like Joseph, reframes a painful parting as hidden divine purpose that yields a greater, lasting reunion.

Now don’t be grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are yet five years, in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth, and to save you alive by a great deliverance. So now it wasn’t you who sent me here, but God, and he has made me a father to Pharaoh, lord […]


Joseph's summary, 'you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good,' undergirds Paul's 'perhaps' of v15, where Onesimus's wrong and flight are recast as occasion for good. The thematic kinship is strong even though Paul borrows no wording.

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save many people alive.


Onesimus is now to be received as a brother 'both in the flesh and in the Lord.' Laban's welcome of Jacob, 'surely you are my bone and my flesh,' is the paradigmatic Hebrew idiom for kinship recognition that overrides prior status. The connection is faint and conceptual.

Laban said to him, “Surely you are my bone and my flesh.” He lived with him for a month.


'If he has wronged you or owes you anything, put that to my account... I will repay it' enacts the role of surety. Judah pledges himself for Benjamin: 'I will be surety for him; of my hand you shall require him.' Paul stands as personal guarantor for Onesimus exactly as Judah does for his brother, assuming the debt against himself.

I’ll be collateral for him. From my hand will you require him. If I don’t bring him to you, and set him before you, then let me bear the blame forever,


Judah restates his suretyship before Joseph, 'I became surety for the boy to my father,' offering to bear the consequence in the brother's place. Paul's handwritten pledge to absorb Onesimus's debt and stand in his stead closely parallels this self-substituting guarantee for a kinsman.

For your servant became collateral for the boy to my father, saying, ‘If I don’t bring him to you, then I will bear the blame to my father forever.’


Proverbs repeatedly treats the giving of surety for another as a weighty, self-binding act ('if you have struck your hands in pledge for a stranger... you are snared by the words of your mouth'). Paul knowingly takes on precisely this binding pledge for Onesimus, inverting the proverb's caution into voluntary love.

My son, if you have become collateral for your neighbor, if you have struck your hands in pledge for a stranger; You are trapped by the words of your mouth. You are ensnared with the words of your mouth. Do this now, my son, and deliver yourself, since you have come into the hand of your neighbor. Go, humble yourself. Press your plea with your neighbor.


'He who is surety for a stranger will suffer for it.' Paul's assumption of Onesimus's liability deliberately embraces the cost the proverb warns against, making the sapiential surety-language a backdrop for his act of intercession.

He who is collateral for a stranger will suffer for it, but he who refuses pledges of collateral is secure.


'Refresh my heart in the Lord' picks up the language of inward refreshment from v7. Proverbs' image of the faithful messenger who 'refreshes the soul of his masters' is the closest wisdom parallel to this petition for refreshment as the fruit of obedient love.


'Prepare a guest room for me' faintly recalls the Shunammite woman who prepares a small upper room for Elisha so the man of God may lodge with her. The shared motif is hospitality of a lodging readied for an honored servant of God, though Paul uses ordinary travel language without scriptural signal.

It fell on a day, that Elisha passed to Shunem, where there was a prominent woman; and she persuaded him to eat bread. So it was, that as often as he passed by, he turned in there to eat bread. She said to her husband, “See now, I perceive that this is a holy man of God, that passes by us continually. Please let us make a little room on the wall. Let us set for him there a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp stand. It shall be, when he comes to us, that he […]


‘Sat down on the right hand of the Majesty’ (v. 3) is a low-volume echo of Ps 110:1, planted before the catena begins and paid off as its explicit climax at 1:13. Hays' recurrence test: the same source surfaces twice, so even the faint first instance earns credence.

Yahweh says to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool for your feet.’


‘When he had by himself purified us of our sins’ (v. 3) quotes nothing, yet figurally invokes the Day of Atonement cult that chapters 9–10 will expound — the book's central typology. No verbal volume; high figural coherence (Hays, Reading Backwards).

For on this day shall atonement be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins you shall be clean before Yahweh. (Leviticus 16:30)


The marquee echo of the chapter. ‘Radiance of his glory… the very image of his substance’ (v. 3) reproduces the rare term apaugasma and the eikōn/glory pairing of Wis 7:25–26 — high verbal volume against a Second Temple text most scholars (Hays, Attridge, Beale & Carson) name as the direct source. Hebrews transfers what Wisdom says of personified Sophia to the Son. Confidence kept high despite low text-field availability, since bible-api serves only the Protestant canon.

For she is a breath of the power of God, and a clear effluence of the glory of the Almighty; therefore can nothing defiled find entrance into her. For she is an effulgence from everlasting light, and an unspotted mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness. (Wisdom of Solomon 7:25–26)


‘Through whom also he made the worlds’ (v. 2) draws on the Wisdom-as-agent-of-creation tradition that runs from Prov 8:22–31 into Wisdom and Sirach. Thematic coherence (Wisdom christology) more than verbal volume; the LXX of Prov 8:22 (‘the Lord created me’) fed the patristic debates this verse anticipates.

Yahweh possessed me in the beginning of his work, before his deeds of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, before the earth existed. When there were no depths, I was born, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled in place, before the hills, I was born; while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the beginning of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there; when he set a circle on the surface of the deep, when he established the clouds above, when the springs of the deep became strong, when he gave to the sea its boundary, that the waters should not violate his commandment, when he marked out the foundations of the earth; then I was the craftsman by his side. I was a delight day by day, always rejoicing before him, rejoicing in his whole world. My delight was with the sons of men.


‘Whom he appointed heir of all things’ (v. 2) sounds the inheritance grant of Ps 2:8 — the same psalm quoted outright at 1:5. Recurrence (Hays): Ps 2 is demonstrably available and re-used, so the inheritance language is heard as its anticipatory echo.

Ask of me, and I will give the nations for your inheritance, the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession.


‘Heir of all things’ and the universal, unending dominion granted the one ‘like a son of man’ (Dan 7:14) share thematic coherence with the Son's inheritance and session. Faint, contested — no verbal volume — but a stock messianic substrate scholars note behind the exaltation language.

Dominion was given him, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which will not pass away, and his kingdom that which will not be destroyed.


‘Upholding all things by the word of his power’ (v. 3) ascribes to the Son the sole-creator role Isa 44:24 reserves to YHWH — a faint conceptual echo that prepares the bolder Ps 102 transfer at 1:10–12. Low volume; coherence with the creation theme of the prologue.

Yahweh, your Redeemer, and he who formed you from the womb says: ‘I am Yahweh, who makes all things; who alone stretches out the heavens; who spreads out the earth by myself;’


‘Having become so much better than the angels’ (v. 4) faintly recalls the incomparability formula of Ps 89:6, which sets YHWH above the ‘sons of the heavenly beings.’ A dashed echo seeding the angel-comparison the catena exists to make; Ps 89 recurs at 1:6 (‘firstborn’).

For who in the skies can be compared to Yahweh? Who among the sons of the heavenly beings is like Yahweh,


The royal-enthronement decree, applied to the Son. Verbatim (high volume) and recurrent — Ps 2 returns at Heb 5:5. The first link in the chain.

I will tell of the decree. Yahweh said to me, ‘You are my son. Today I have become your father.’


Nathan's dynastic oracle to David, read messianically and welded to Ps 2:7 by shared father/son language — a classic gezerah shavah (linking two texts by a common phrase). The author silently drops the clause about iniquity.

I will be his father, and he will be my son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men;


Ps 89:26–27 reworks the Nathan oracle into ‘You are my Father… I will appoint him my firstborn,’ the same father/firstborn nexus Hebrews exploits across 1:5–6. The verbatim text-field shows Ps 89:6 (what bible-api returns for psalm+89:6); the relevant 26–27 wording is quoted inline. Medium volume, strong thematic coherence linking this verse to 1:6's prōtotokos.

For who in the skies can be compared to Yahweh? Who among the sons of the heavenly beings is like Yahweh, (Psalm 89:6; vv. 26–27: ‘He will call to me, “You are my Father, my God, and the rock of my salvation.” I will also appoint him my firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.’)


The clause immediately preceding the quoted 7:14 promises an everlasting throne — the dynastic-permanence note Hebrews develops into the eternal Son (cf. ‘your throne… forever’ at 1:8). A contiguous echo riding on the formal citation.

He will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.


The Chronicler's parallel of the Nathan oracle drops the conditional ‘if he commits iniquity,’ giving the unconditioned father/son form Hebrews actually uses. A faint witness that the author's tradition already read the oracle as Hebrews does; low independent volume.

I will be his father, and he will be my son. I will not take my loving kindness away from him, as I took it from him that was before you;


A textual fork. The Hebrew of Deut 32:43 (‘Rejoice, you nations, with his people…’) has no such line; the clause exists only in the Septuagint the author read. Hays' first test — availability — in action: the Scripture available to him was the Greek Bible, and that is the text he quotes.

Rejoice, you nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants. He will take vengeance on his adversaries, and will make atonement for his land and for his people.

Rejoice, ye heavens, with him, and let all the angels of God worship him; rejoice ye Gentiles, with his people, and let all the sons of God strengthen themselves in him; for he will avenge the blood of his sons, and he will render vengeance, and recompense justice to his enemies, and will reward them that hate him; and the Lord shall purge the land of his people.


‘The firstborn’ (prōtotokos) carries the Davidic-king title of Ps 89:27 — a verbal allusion, not a formal citation, transferring the king's rank to the Son.

I will also appoint him my firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.


The LXX of Ps 97:7 renders the Hebrew ‘all you gods (elohim)’ as ‘all his angels,’ giving the very clause Hebrews cites — hence many (Beale & Carson, NA28 margin) read Ps 97:7 LXX, not Deut 32:43, as the primary source. The WEB (Hebrew) shown here lacks the angelic wording; the divergence is the whole contest. A theophany-of-judgment psalm bent to the enthronement of the firstborn.

Let all them be shamed who serve engraved images, who boast in their idols. Worship him, all you gods!

Let all that worship graven images be ashamed, who boast of their idols; worship him, all ye his angels.


The Masoretic Hebrew of Deut 32:43 (shown here) shows what the Greek expanded: no command to worship and no angels. Included to mark the Hebrew-vs-LXX gap figurally — the Song of Moses' eschatological vindication is the frame into which the Greek tradition inserted the angelic homage Hebrews needs. Low volume; contested.


A creation psalm. The Hebrew (here, WEB) reads ‘makes winds his messengers’; Hebrews follows the Greek word order — ‘makes his angels winds’ — bending the line toward angelology. The same reversible ambiguity the argument needs: angels are mutable servants, the Son is enthroned.

He makes his messengers winds; his servants flames of fire.

Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flaming fire.


The picture of wind and fire as God's compliant agents (‘stormy wind, fulfilling his word’) shares the mutable-creature theme Hebrews presses against the angels. A faint thematic echo, no verbal volume — listed for the maximal inventory.

lightning and hail, snow and clouds; stormy wind, fulfilling his word;


A royal wedding psalm in which the king is addressed as ‘God.’ Hebrews reads the vocative christologically — the figural payload (the Son addressed as God) rides on a high-volume, verbatim quotation.

Your throne, God, is forever and ever. A scepter of equity is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness, and hated wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.


The same psalm opens by setting the king ‘above the sons of men,’ matching ‘above your fellows’ (v. 9). A contiguous echo from the immediate context of the citation, reinforcing the Son's surpassing rank (recurrence within one source).

You are the most excellent of the sons of men. Grace has anointed your lips, therefore God has blessed you forever.


‘Has anointed you with the oil of gladness’ (v. 9) draws on the messianic-anointing register that Isa 61:1 made canonical for the title ‘Christ/anointed.’ Faint, no verbal volume — thematic coherence with the Son's anointing above his fellows.

The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh is on me; because Yahweh has anointed me to preach good news to the humble. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to those who are bound;

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me; he has sent me to preach glad tidings to the poor, to heal the broken in heart, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind;


‘You have loved righteousness’ (v. 9) sits within the ‘last words of David,’ where the ideal ruler is defined by righteous rule. A low-volume conceptual echo of the just-king ideal Hebrews applies to the Son.

The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spoke to me, ‘One who rules over men righteously, who rules in the fear of God,


The boldest move in the catena: a psalm addressed to YHWH the creator is applied to the Son. Thematic coherence with the prologue — ‘through whom he made the worlds’ (1:2) — is what licenses the transfer.

Of old, you laid the foundation of the earth. The heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will endure. Yes, all of them will wear out like a garment. You will change them like a cloak, and they will be changed. But you are the same. Your years will have no end.


‘They all will grow old like a garment’ (v. 11) shares the exact heavens-wear-out-like-a-garment versus God-endures contrast of Isa 51:6 — the same cosmic-impermanence topos that stands behind the Ps 102 citation. Medium volume on the ‘garment’ simile; strong thematic coherence.

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look on the earth beneath; for the heavens will vanish away like smoke, and the earth will wear out like a garment; and its inhabitants will die in the same way: but my salvation will be forever, and my righteousness will not be abolished.


‘You will roll them up like a mantle’ (v. 12) echoes the apocalyptic ‘sky rolled up like a scroll’ of Isa 34:4 (cf. Rev 6:14). The rolling-up image reinforces the dissolution of the heavens against the Son's permanence; an allusion clustering with the Ps 102 quotation.

All of the army of the sky will be dissolved. The sky will be rolled up like a scroll, and all its armies will fade away, as a leaf fades from off a vine or a fig tree.


Within the same psalm, v. 12 already voices the ‘but you remain’ permanence that vv. 25–27 cosmologize. ‘But you are the same. Your years will not fail’ (v. 12 of Hebrews) sounds this nearer verse too — recurrence inside the cited source.

But you, Yahweh, will remain forever; your renown endures to all generations.


‘You, Lord, in the beginning, laid the foundation of the earth’ (v. 10) reaches back to the opening of creation itself (Gen 1:1), now spoken to the Son. Faint verbal contact on ‘in the beginning… heavens and earth’; figural coherence with the Son as agent of creation.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.


‘But you are the same’ (v. 12) — the divine immutability — figurally invokes the self-identical ‘I AM’ of Exod 3:14, the name of the unchanging God now predicated of the Son. No verbal volume; a contested figural reading scholars note behind Hebrews' immutability claims (cf. 13:8).

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM,” and he said, “You shall tell the children of Israel this: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”


The session-at-the-right-hand oracle, the most-cited verse in the New Testament. It pays off the quiet echo of v. 3 and brackets the chapter — Hays' recurrence and satisfaction tests both met.

Yahweh says to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool for your feet.’


‘Until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet’ shares the ‘all things under his feet’ subjection imagery of Ps 8:6 — the very psalm Hebrews quotes next at 2:6–8. Recurrence (Hays): the two enthronement texts are linked by the shared ‘feet’ motif (gezerah shavah), and Ps 8 is demonstrably available across the seam of chapters 1–2.

You make him ruler over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet:


Angels as ‘serving spirits’ who do God's bidding echoes the obedient heavenly host of Ps 103:20–21 — conceptual rather than verbatim (a dashed allusion). It closes the angel/Son contrast the catena was built to make.

Praise Yahweh, you angels of his, who are mighty in strength, who fulfill his word, obeying the voice of his word. Praise Yahweh, all you armies of his, you servants of his, who do his pleasure.


‘Sent out to do service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation’ recalls the protective, ministering commission of angels in Ps 91:11. A faint thematic echo of the angels-serve-the-faithful motif; no verbal volume, included for the maximal inventory.

For he will put his angels in charge of you, to guard you in all your ways.


‘The word spoken through angels’ (v. 2) invokes the tradition that the Law was mediated at Sinai by angels — read out of the Greek of Deut 33:2 and assumed in Acts 7:53 and Gal 3:19. The lesser, angel-given word frames the argument that the Son's word is greater.

Yahweh came from Sinai, and rose from Seir to them. He shone from Mount Paran. He came from the ten thousands of holy ones. At his right hand was a fiery law for them.


A psalm on humanity's place in creation. Hebrews hears ‘son of man’ christologically and presses ‘a little lower than the angels’ against the temporary humiliation of Jesus — the ‘not yet’ of v. 8 is the whole argument. High volume; the figural turn rides on the quotation.

what is man, that you think of him? What is the son of man, that you care for him? For you have made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor. You make him ruler over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet:


Beale & Carson note that Hebrews reads Ps 8's ‘all things under his feet’ through Ps 110:1's ‘enemies… your footstool’ — the same subjection-of-all language welded the two psalms together (gezerah shavah). Recurrence is high: Ps 110:1 brackets ch. 1 (1:3, 1:13) and returns at 10:12–13, so its subjection motif is audible behind the ‘nothing… not subject to him’ of v. 8.


Hays' thematic-coherence test: the ‘son of man’ who is given ‘dominion… glory… and a kingdom’ over ‘all’ coheres with Hebrews' enthroned-and-crowned Son, leading many to hear Dan 7's heavenly ‘son of man’ resonating beneath the Ps 8 ‘son of man’ — the human title carrying eschatological dominion. Verbal volume is low (the shared phrase ‘son of man,’ huios anthrōpou, is generic in the LXX), so the link is contested.

I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. Dominion was given him, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which will not pass away, and his kingdom that which will not be destroyed.


Faint and contested. ‘He didn't subject the world to come… to angels’ (v. 5) is heard by some against the Second Temple reading of Deut 32:8 — where the LXX/Qumran witnesses read ‘according to the number of the angels [sons of God],’ implying the present-age nations were apportioned to angelic powers while the ‘world to come’ is reserved for the Son. The WEB above follows the Masoretic ‘children of Israel’; the divergence is exactly the LXX-vs-Hebrew fork on which the echo depends, so volume is low.

When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the children of men, he set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel.


From the great psalm of the righteous sufferer (Ps 22, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’). The vindicated one calls the redeemed ‘brothers’ — the citation grounds the solidarity Hebrews needs between the Son and the ‘many children.’

I will declare your name to my brothers. Among the assembly, I will praise you.


‘I will put my trust in him’ follows the Greek of Isa 8:17; the same clause appears at 2 Sam 22:3 and Isa 12:2 LXX, so the exact source is debated. Volume is low (one clause), but its pairing with the next line from the same Isaiah passage tips the identification toward Isa 8.

I will wait for Yahweh, who hides his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him.


Quoted immediately after 8:17 from the same breath of Isaiah. The prophet's ‘children’ become the Son's ‘children’ — Isaiah's household read as a figure of the redeemed gathered around Christ.

Behold, I and the children whom Yahweh has given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from Yahweh of Armies, who dwells in Mount Zion.


Listed as the competing source for ‘I will put my trust in him’: Isa 12:2 LXX reads pepoithōs esomai ep' autō, verbally even closer than Isa 8:17. Beale & Carson treat it as the likeliest single donor, so it is heard here as a low-volume alternate behind the same clause. Contested precisely because Hebrews seems to have conflated the Isaianic ‘trust’ texts.

Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust, and will not be afraid; for Yah, Yahweh, is my strength and song; and he has become my salvation.”


A faint recurrence echo: having quoted Ps 22:22, the author's ‘in the congregation I will sing your praise’ keeps sounding the same psalm's assembly-of-praise language (Ps 22:25, ‘praise in the great assembly’). Low verbal volume beyond the shared ‘assembly/praise,’ but Hays' recurrence test favors hearing the wider psalm once it has been opened.

Of you comes my praise in the great assembly.
I will pay my vows before those who fear him.


Several scholars (noted in Beale & Carson) hear the Wisdom-of-Solomon portrait of the righteous sufferer, perfected and numbered among God's ‘sons,’ behind Heb 2:10's ‘author of their salvation perfect through sufferings’ bringing ‘many sons to glory.’ Thematic coherence is strong; verbal volume is low and the source is deuterocanonical, hence low confidence.

But let us lie in wait for the righteous man, because he is of disservice to us, and is contrary to our works, and upbraids us with sins against the law... But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will touch them. (Wisdom of Solomon 2:12; 3:1)


‘He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified’ (v. 11) anticipates the sanctifying, sin-cleansing high-priestly work that chs. 9–10 ground in the Day of Atonement (Lev 16). No verbal volume — a faint forward-pointing figure of the cult the letter will expound, consistent with the seeding pattern Hays calls satisfaction.

He shall sprinkle of the blood on it with his finger seven times, and cleanse it, and make it holy from the uncleanness of the children of Israel.


‘To make atonement for the sins of the people’ (v. 17) reintroduces the Day of Atonement figure first sounded at 1:3 and expounded in chs 9–10. No quotation — the high-priestly, sacrificial pattern itself is the borrowing (figural). The recurrence is the point: the motif is being seeded before the argument arrives.

For on this day shall atonement be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins you shall be clean before Yahweh. (Leviticus 16:30)


‘He gives help to the offspring of Abraham’ (v. 16) echoes Isa 41:8–9, where God ‘takes hold of’ (epilambanomai, the very verb Hebrews uses) the chosen ‘offspring of Abraham’ his servant. The shared rare verb plus the ‘seed of Abraham’ phrase gives real verbal volume; thematic coherence (election, help, servant) is strong, so the allusion is widely heard (Beale & Carson).

But you, Israel, my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the offspring of Abraham my friend, You whom I have taken hold of from the ends of the earth, and called from its corners, and said to you, ‘You are my servant, I have chosen you and have not cast you away.’


‘Through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil’ (v. 14) is read by many as the protoevangelium fulfilled: the woman's offspring crushing the serpent's head, the serpent being identified with the devil in Second Temple and NT tradition. No verbal volume — a figural/typological link resting on thematic coherence (the seed defeats the death-dealing adversary).

I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.


Wisdom 2:24 is the standard Second Temple text identifying the devil with the bringer of death, exactly the equation Heb 2:14 makes (‘him who had the power of death, that is, the devil’). Beale & Carson cite it for the conceptual background; verbal volume is nil and the source deuterocanonical, hence low confidence and an echo at the level of shared idea.

But by the envy of the devil death entered into the world, and those who are of his portion make trial thereof. (Wisdom of Solomon 2:24)


‘Deliver all of them who through fear of death were… subject to bondage’ (vv. 14–15) faintly sounds Hosea's promise to ransom from ‘the power of death/Sheol.’ The taunt over death's power coheres with Hebrews' deliverance theme (and with 1 Cor 15:55, which quotes it), but verbal volume here is low and the link is contested.

I will ransom them from the power of Sheol. I will redeem them from death! Death, where are your plagues? Sheol, where is your destruction? ‘Compassion will be hidden from my eyes.’


God's own commendation of Moses — ‘faithful in all my house’ — is woven in twice (vv. 2, 5) and then turned on its pivot: Moses faithful as a servant in the house, Christ faithful as a Son over it. The whole Moses/Christ comparison hangs on this one verse.

My servant Moses is not so. He is faithful in all my house.


The wider Numbers 12 oracle, not just v. 7, shapes the comparison: Moses is the unrivaled prophet who sees God's form and is ‘faithful in all my house,’ and Hebrews silently grants him that supreme rank in order to place Christ higher still. Hays' criterion of thematic coherence: the ‘servant… in the house’ vs. ‘Son… over the house’ antithesis presupposes the whole oracle, where Moses' unique status is precisely the point being surpassed.

He said, “Hear now my words. If there is a prophet among you, I Yahweh will make myself known to him in a vision. I will speak with him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so. He is faithful in all my house. With him I will speak mouth to mouth, even plainly, and not in riddles; and he shall see Yahweh’s form. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant, against Moses?”


The wordplay on ‘house’ (the one who builds it has more honor, vv. 3–4) draws on Nathan's oracle, where ‘house’ slides between temple and dynasty and the Davidic son who ‘builds a house’ is also called God's ‘son.’ Hebrews has already quoted 2 Sam 7:14 at 1:5 (recurrence), and here the building-the-house / Son-over-the-house logic coheres with the same Davidic son-and-house complex.

He will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. If he commits iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men;


The fusion of house-builder, royal Son, and priest in 3:1–6 (the ‘High Priest’ who ‘built the house’ and rules ‘as a Son over his house’) coheres with Zechariah's Branch, who alone among the prophets both builds the temple and is ‘a priest on his throne.’ Low verbal volume and contested, but the king-builds-temple-and-is-priest pattern is the conceptual world Hebrews assumes.

and speak to him, saying, ‘Yahweh of Armies says, “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: and he shall grow up out of his place; and he shall build Yahweh’s temple; even he shall build Yahweh’s temple; and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule on his throne; and he shall be a priest on his throne; and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.”’


The Chronicler's recension of Nathan's oracle sharpens the ‘house’ motif — ‘I will settle him in my house’ — and so reinforces the same Davidic son-and-house pattern behind 3:6 (‘a Son over his house; whose house we are’). A faint, redundant echo flagged for completeness; verbal volume is low and it largely overlaps 2 Sam 7.

He shall build me a house, and I will establish his throne forever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son. I will not take my loving kindness away from him, as I took it from him that was before you; but I will settle him in my house and in my kingdom forever. His throne shall be established forever.”


The text the next chapter and a half expounds. Attributed not to David but to ‘the Holy Spirit’ speaking ‘today’ — Hebrews treats the psalm as a live word addressed to its own hearers. The wilderness generation's forfeited ‘rest’ becomes the standing warning.

for he is our God. We are the people of his pasture, and the sheep in his care. Today, oh that you would hear his voice! Don't harden your heart, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers tempted me, tested me, and saw my work. Forty long years I was grieved with that generation, and said, ‘It is a people that errs in their heart. They have not known my ways.’ Therefore I swore in my wrath, ‘They won't enter into my rest.’


Psalm 95 is itself a poetic compression of this Numbers 14 verdict, and Hebrews mines it directly: ‘tested me… saw my deeds’ (v. 9) answers ‘seen my glory and my signs… tempted me,’ while the sworn exclusion ‘they shall not see the land’ underlies ‘they will not enter into my rest.’ Hays' recurrence and thematic coherence: the wilderness-rebellion narrative is the substrate the homily presupposes and re-mines in 3:16–18.

because all those men who have seen my glory, and my signs, which I worked in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have tempted me these ten times, and have not listened to my voice; surely they shall not see the land which I swore to their fathers, neither shall any of those who despised me see it.


God's sworn sentence on the wilderness generation supplies both the divine oath (‘I swore… they will not enter,’ v. 11) and the ‘forty years’ (v. 9) that Hebrews will press in 3:17 (‘whose bodies fell in the wilderness’). High thematic coherence and recurrence across the pericope; the oath-formula ‘surely you shall not come into the land’ is the precursor of ‘they will not enter into my rest.’

Tell them, ‘As I live, says Yahweh, surely as you have spoken in my ears, so will I do to you. Your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness; and all who were counted of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, who have murmured against me, surely you shall not come into the land, concerning which I swore that I would make you dwell therein, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun. But your little ones, that you said should be captured or killed, them I will bring in, and they shall know the land which you have rejected. But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. Your children shall be wanderers in the wilderness forty years, and shall bear your prostitution, until your dead bodies are consumed in the wilderness. After the number of the days in which you spied out the land, even forty days, for every day a year, you will bear your iniquities, even forty years, and you will know my alienation.’ I, Yahweh, have spoken. I will surely do this to all this evil congregation, who are gathered together against me. In this wilderness they shall be consumed, and there they shall die.”


‘The rebellion… the day of the trial’ (vv. 8–9) renders the LXX of Ps 95, which itself flattens the place-names Meribah/Massah (‘quarreling/testing’) into common nouns; behind them stands Exodus 17:7, the founding episode where Israel ‘tested Yahweh.’ LXX-vs-Hebrew divergence: where the Hebrew psalm names the places, the Greek the author quotes generalizes them to ‘rebellion’ and ‘testing,’ loosening the link to Exod 17 while preserving the motif.

He called the name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because the children of Israel quarreled, and because they tested Yahweh, saying, “Is Yahweh among us, or not?”


Moses' own retelling of the verdict in Deuteronomy doubles the oath behind ‘as I swore in my wrath, they will not enter into my rest’ (v. 11): God ‘was angry, and swore… not one of this evil generation shall see the good land.’ The recurrence of the sworn exclusion across Num 14 / Deut 1 strengthens the thematic coherence Hebrews exploits.

Yahweh heard the voice of your words, and was angry, and swore, saying, “Surely not one of these men of this evil generation shall see the good land, which I swore to give to your fathers,


Psalm 78, the other great wilderness-rebellion psalm, supplies the ‘stubborn and rebellious generation’ whose ‘heart’ was not right — coherent with ‘they always err in their heart’ (v. 10) and ‘don't harden your hearts.’ Faint and contested (no verbal citation), included as part of the maximal wilderness substrate scholars hear behind the homily.

and might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that didn’t make their hearts loyal, whose spirit was not steadfast with God.


The homily keeps re-sounding its own text — re-citing ‘Today…’ at v. 15 and then mining each phrase (‘today,’ ‘harden,’ ‘rest,’ ‘they could not enter’). Recurrence is doing the interpretive work (Hays): the same verses return until the warning lands.

Today, oh that you would hear his voice! Don't harden your heart, as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah in the wilderness


‘Whose bodies fell in the wilderness’ (v. 17) is a near-verbatim borrowing of Num 14:29 (LXX: ‘your corpses shall fall in this wilderness’) — the highest-volume verbal link in the pericope. Hebrews lifts the very phrase, then makes ‘they were not able to enter in because of unbelief’ (v. 19) the moral. Verbal volume and recurrence both high.

Your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness; and all who were counted of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, who have murmured against me,


The sworn exclusion ‘surely they shall not see the land’ stands directly behind ‘to whom did he swear that they wouldn't enter… we see that they were not able to enter in’ (vv. 18–19). The same Numbers 14 oath that Ps 95:11 versifies is now read back through the narrative. Recurrence across 3:7–11 and 3:12–19 ties the homily's argument to the Pentateuchal source.


The oath ‘you shall not come into the land… concerning which I swore’ is the precise template of ‘to whom did he swear that they wouldn't enter into his rest’ (v. 18), with ‘land’ transposed to ‘rest.’ The named exceptions (Caleb and Joshua) silently underwrite Hebrews' later Joshua/rest argument at 4:8. Thematic coherence high; verbal volume moderate.

surely you shall not come into the land, concerning which I swore that I would make you dwell therein, except Caleb the son of Jephunneh, and Joshua the son of Nun.


Moses' summary indictment — Israel ‘rebellious against Yahweh’ from Egypt onward — coheres with ‘who, when they heard, rebelled? … all those who came out of Egypt by Moses’ (v. 16). Faint and contested (no citation), folded in as part of the wider Deuteronomic wilderness-rebellion frame the homily presumes.

Remember, and don’t forget, how you provoked Yahweh your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day that you left the land of Egypt, until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against Yahweh.


The Meribah tradition (which Ps 95:8 names) recurs at Num 20, the rebellion that even barred Moses from the land — a faint figural deepening of ‘they were not able to enter in.’ Very low volume and contested; included for maximal coverage of the strife-in-the-wilderness substrate.

These are the waters of Meribah; because the children of Israel strove with Yahweh, and he was sanctified in them.


The ‘rest’ clause is lifted out and turned on a hinge: if God still says ‘today,’ the rest must remain open. Recurrence again — the argument advances by re-citing a single phrase.

Therefore I swore in my wrath, ‘They won't enter into my rest.’


Joined to Ps 95 by the catchword ‘rest’ (gezerah shavah): God's own Sabbath rest at creation defines the ‘rest’ the psalm holds open. Two texts fused by a shared word to make a third meaning.

On the seventh day God finished his work which he had done; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done.


‘Although the works were finished from the foundation of the world’ (v. 3) echoes the completion formula of Gen 2:1, immediately preceding the Sabbath verse the author goes on to quote. Verbal volume is modest (the verb ‘finished/completed,’ synteleō in the LXX), but its tight pairing with the Gen 2:2 quotation (recurrence within one breath) makes the allusion audible: the rest is grounded in a creation already complete.

The heavens, the earth, and all their vast array were finished.


The oath of exclusion that Ps 95:11 itself recalls originates in Num 14, the Kadesh rebellion: God swears that the unbelieving wilderness generation ‘will not see the land.’ Hebrews quotes the psalm, but the narrative substrate (‘the word they heard didn't profit them, because it wasn't mixed with faith,’ v. 2) is the Numbers episode. Thematic coherence is strong; the link is mediated through the psalm rather than cited directly, hence allusion.

but in very deed, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with Yahweh's glory; because all those men who have seen my glory, and my signs, which I worked in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have tempted me these ten times, and have not listened to my voice; surely they shall not see the land which I swore to their fathers, neither shall any of those who despised me see it.


‘We have had good news preached to us, even as they also did’ (v. 2) keeps the ‘today’ frame of the homily's governing text alive even before it is re-cited in 4:7. Low verbal volume here, but the recurrence of Ps 95 across chs 3–4 (Hays) licenses hearing its opening summons under the contrast between the two audiences who ‘heard.’


Re-cited a final time and dated: ‘through David so long a time afterward.’ Because the psalm still says ‘today’ centuries after Joshua, the promised rest was never exhausted by entering Canaan — a chronological argument from a single recurring word. The pun underneath: ‘Joshua’ and ‘Jesus’ are one name in Greek, so the rest Joshua could not give, Jesus does.


‘For if Joshua had given them rest…’ (v. 8) plays directly against the conquest narrative's own claim that Joshua did give Israel ‘rest’ (Josh 21:44). Hebrews concedes the historical rest only to deny it was the final one — high thematic coherence, and the Greek Iēsous makes ‘Joshua’ and ‘Jesus’ the same name, sharpening the typology. Verbal volume rests on the keyword katepausen / katapausis (‘gave rest’/‘rest’).

Yahweh gave them rest all around, according to all that he swore to their fathers. Not a man of all their enemies stood before them. Yahweh delivered all their enemies into their hand.


A second statement that ‘Yahweh your God has given rest’ under Joshua, reinforcing the conquest-rest that Heb 4:8 declares incomplete. Lower volume than 21:44 but the same catchword (‘given rest’) and theme; scholars (Beale & Carson) note both as the background to the Joshua argument.

Now Yahweh your God has given rest to your brothers, as he spoke to them. Therefore now return and go to your tents, to the land of your possession, which Moses the servant of Yahweh gave you beyond the Jordan.


‘He who has entered into his rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from his’ (v. 10) re-sounds Gen 2:2 (quoted at 4:4) to define the promised rest as a sharing in God's own Sabbath — the coinage sabbatismos (‘a Sabbath rest,’ v. 9) is built on it. Recurrence within the same pericope cluster (Hays).


Deuteronomy already pairs ‘rest’ (menuchah / katapausis) with ‘inheritance,’ defining the land-entry as the moment Israel reaches ‘the rest.’ Some commentators hear it behind Hebrews' fusion of rest-language with promise/inheritance; the link is faint (no verbal quotation, mediated through the broader rest-tradition), hence a low-confidence allusion.

for you haven't yet come to the rest and to the inheritance, which Yahweh your God gives you. But when you go over the Jordan, and dwell in the land which Yahweh your God causes you to inherit, and he gives you rest from all your enemies around you, so that you dwell in safety;


‘The word of God… sharper than any two-edged sword’ (v. 12) draws on the prophetic image of speech as a sword — the Servant's mouth ‘like a sharp sword’ in Isa 49:2. Verbal volume is the shared ‘sharp sword’ + ‘word/mouth’ collocation; Hays' criterion of thematic coherence (God's effective utterance) supports it, though Hebrews has no formula and the trope is widespread (cf. Isa 11:4; Eph 6:17; Rev 1:16).

He has made my mouth like a sharp sword. He has hidden me in the shadow of his hand. He has made me a polished shaft. He has kept me close in his quiver.


The closest single parallel: in Wisdom God's hypostatized ‘all-powerful word’ (logos) is a warrior ‘bearing as a sharp sword’ God's commandment and is ‘living/active’ in execution. Hebrews shares the personification of the logos as a living, sword-bearing agent — a Second Temple commonplace the author and his hearers knew. Verbal volume (logos + sharp sword + active power) is high for an allusion; scholars (Beale & Carson) flag it as the proximate background.

Your all-powerful word leaped from heaven out of the royal throne, A stern warrior, into the midst of the doomed land, Bearing as a sharp sword your unfeigned commandment; And standing it filled all things with death; And while it touched the heaven it trode upon the earth.


‘Able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart’ (v. 12) restates the OT axiom that God ‘searches all hearts and understands every imagination of the thoughts.’ Thematic coherence is exact; the link is conceptual rather than verbatim, so allusion. The agent shifts from ‘Yahweh’ to ‘the word of God,’ which then resolves into ‘his sight… to whom we must give an account’ (v. 13).

You, Solomon my son, know the God of your father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind; for Yahweh searches all hearts, and understands all the imaginations of the thoughts.


A second witness to the heart-searching God who judges ‘according to his ways’ — coherent with Hebrews' ‘him to whom we must give an account’ (v. 13). Like 1 Chr 28:9 it supplies the conceptual substrate for the word that ‘discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart’; no verbal quotation, hence allusion.

I, Yahweh, search the mind. I try the heart, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.


‘There is no creature that is hidden from his sight’ (v. 13) echoes the psalmist's God who from heaven ‘sees all the sons of men… considers all their works.’ Low verbal volume; the coherence is the all-seeing, work-weighing gaze before which nothing is concealed.

Yahweh looks from heaven. He sees all the sons of men. From the place of his habitation he looks out on all the inhabitants of the earth, he who fashions all of their hearts; and he considers all of their works.


The classic psalm of the inescapable, all-knowing gaze — God who knows the thought ‘from afar’ and every word ‘on my tongue.’ Faint and uncited, but thematically the nearest psalmic parallel to ‘no creature hidden from his sight… all things naked and laid open’ (vv. 12–13).

Yahweh, you have searched me, and you know me. You know my sitting down and my rising up. You perceive my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but, behold, Yahweh, you know it altogether.


The striking word ‘naked’ (gymna) before God in v. 13 has a faint precursor in the wisdom topos that even Sheol lies ‘naked’ and ‘uncovered’ before God. Verbal volume rests on the single image of nakedness/exposure; widely noted as a faint echo (NA28/UBS margin).

Sheol is naked before God, and Abaddon has no covering.


Parallel to Job 26:6, and closer still to Hebrews' move from cosmic exposure to the human heart: if Sheol lies open, ‘how much more the hearts of men.’ A faint a-fortiori echo behind ‘naked and laid open… the thoughts and intentions of the heart.’

Sheol and Abaddon are before Yahweh—how much more then the hearts of the children of men!


‘Having then a great high priest… Jesus, the Son of God’ (v. 14) introduces, without citation, the high-priestly theme grounded in Ps 110:4 (quoted at 5:6; 7:17) — the verse that controls the whole central argument. No verbal volume here, but high recurrence in Hebrews makes the figural anticipation audible: the transition from the searching word to the sympathetic priest is the book's hinge.

Yahweh has sworn, and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.’


The priest ‘who has passed through the heavens’ and the invitation to ‘draw near… to the throne of grace’ (vv. 14, 16) presuppose the enthronement of Ps 110:1, the catena's bracket (1:13; 10:12). Faint and figural — the throne-of-grace language assumes the session at the right hand the letter has already established.

Yahweh says to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool for your feet.’


‘He is called by God, just like Aaron’ (v. 4) names Aaron's installation directly; Exod 28:1 is the foundational text where God ‘brings near’ Aaron to the priesthood. Moderate verbal volume (the proper name Aaron is shared) plus high thematic coherence with the high-priest argument seeded since 2:17 (Hays' recurrence).

“Bring Aaron your brother, and his sons with him, near to you from among the children of Israel, that he may minister to me in the priest’s office, even Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, Aaron’s sons.


‘Nobody takes this honor on himself’ (v. 4) recalls the Korah rebellion (Num 16–17), the locus classicus for seizing priesthood uninvited; the bronze-censer memorial of 16:40 warns against the ‘stranger’ who presumes. No verbatim quotation — a thematic allusion to the negative type behind Hebrews' rule of divine calling.

to be a memorial to the children of Israel, to the end that no stranger, who isn’t of the offspring of Aaron, would come near to burn incense before Yahweh, that he not be as Korah, and as his company; as Yahweh spoke to him by Moses.


‘He must offer sacrifices for sins for the people, as well as for himself’ (v. 3) compresses the cultic logic of Lev 9:7, where Aaron atones first ‘for yourself’ then ‘for the people.’ Verbal coherence (the doubled for-himself/for-the-people structure) marks this as the underlying script; the divergence Hebrews exploits is that Christ, sinless (4:15; 7:27), needs no offering for himself.

Moses said to Aaron, “Draw near to the altar, and offer your sin offering, and your burnt offering, and make atonement for yourself, and for the people; and offer the offering of the people, and make atonement for them; as Yahweh commanded.”


The Day-of-Atonement requirement that the high priest atone ‘for himself’ (Lev 16:6) undergirds v. 3 and is the foil Hebrews overturns at 7:27. A faint echo paralleling Lev 9:7; recurrence of the Lev 16 figure already running through the letter (1:3; 9:7) raises its credence (Hays).

“Aaron shall offer the bull of the sin offering, which is for himself, and make atonement for himself and for his house.


Re-cited from 1:5, now welded to priesthood: the same divine ‘today’ that enthrones the Son also installs him as high priest. Recurrence binding the two halves of the letter together.

I will tell of the decree. Yahweh said to me, ‘You are my son. Today I have become your father.’


The hinge of the whole letter. Ps 110:1 crowned the Son at 1:13; now verse 4 of the same psalm makes him priest — a priesthood older than Aaron's, sworn by an oath. Named here, expounded at length in chapter 7.


The name ‘Melchizedek’ (vv. 6, 10) points beyond Ps 110:4 to its narrative root in Gen 14:18, the only other Old Testament Melchizedek text and the one ch. 7 will expound at length. The repeated naming is Hays' recurrence in advance — the figure is planted here and harvested in chapter 7.

Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine: and he was priest of God Most High.


‘Strong crying… having been heard for his godly fear’ (v. 7) reads the righteous sufferer's vindication: the very psalm of the cross (Ps 22, already cited at 2:12) testifies that God ‘heard’ the afflicted one's cry. Thematic coherence and recurrence of Ps 22 in Hebrews make this a heard, if unquoted, link to the Passion.

For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, Neither has he hidden his face from him; but when he cried to him, he heard.


‘Prayers and petitions… to him who was able to save him from death, and having been heard’ (v. 7) closely tracks the lament-deliverance pattern of Ps 116: encircled by the ‘cords of death,’ the petitioner cries and is heard. Scholars (Beale & Carson) hear the Gethsemane prayer voiced through the lament psalms; medium volume, strong thematic fit.

I love Yahweh, because he listens to my voice, and my cries for mercy. Because he has turned his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live. The cords of death surrounded me, the pains of Sheol got a hold of me. I found trouble and sorrow. Then I called on Yahweh’s name: “Yahweh, I beg you, deliver my soul.”


‘With strong crying and tears’ (v. 7) — the explicit ‘tears’ — faintly echoes the lament topos of Ps 39:12, where the sufferer begs God not to ‘be silent at my tears.’ Low verbal volume and a contested identification (any lament psalm could supply the motif), included for maximal coverage.

“Hear my prayer, Yahweh, and give ear to my cry. Don’t be silent at my tears. For I am a stranger with you, a foreigner, as all my fathers were.


‘Having been made perfect’ (teleiōtheis, v. 9) carries the cultic sense of priestly ‘perfecting/consecration’ — the LXX teleioō word-group renders the ‘fill the hand’ ordination of Lev 8 (cf. 8:33, the seven-day consecration). A faint figural link: Christ's perfecting through suffering reworks the priest's installation rite. LXX-specific; invisible in the Hebrew ‘fill the hands.’

You shall not go out from the door of the Tent of Meeting for seven days, until the days of your consecration are fulfilled: for he shall consecrate you seven days.


The milk-versus-maturity reproach (vv. 12–13) faintly echoes Isaiah's taunt that only the ‘weaned from the milk’ can receive teaching. Low verbal volume — the milk/solid-food trope is a wisdom commonplace (cf. 1 Cor 3:1–2) — but Isa 28:9 is the nearest scriptural antecedent of teaching figured as feeding. Contested as a deliberate echo.

Whom will he teach knowledge? To whom will he explain the message? Those who are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts?


‘Senses exercised to discern good and evil’ (v. 14) reuses the Eden phrase ‘knowing good and evil’ (Gen 2–3). Probably an idiom of moral maturity rather than a pointed citation, but the verbal pair is verbatim with the Genesis tree; included as a faint, contested figural-tinged echo for maximal coverage.

for God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”


‘Bears thorns and thistles… near being cursed’ (v. 8) is a high-volume verbal allusion: the exact pairing ‘thorns and thistles’ (akanthas kai tribolous) plus the verb ‘cursed’ reproduces the Edenic curse on the ground. The LXX of Gen 3:18 reads the same word-pair Hebrews uses, so the verbal volume is strongest against the Greek. Thematic coherence: fruitless ground under divine curse is exactly the apostate's end.

To Adam he said, ‘Because you have listened to your wife's voice, and ate from the tree, about which I commanded you, saying, “You shall not eat of it,” the ground is cursed for your sake. You will eat from it with much labor all the days of your life. It will yield thorns and thistles to you; and you will eat the herb of the field.’


The Song of the Vineyard underwrites the whole 6:7–8 figure: cultivated ground that, despite the owner's labor and rain, yields only thorns and is given over to ruin. Hays' thematic coherence is strong (well-tilled land judged by its fruit; rain withheld), and ‘briers and thorns’ recurs as the marker of covenant failure (cf. Isa 7:23–25).

Let me sing for my well beloved a song of my beloved about his vineyard. My beloved had a vineyard on a very fruitful hill. He dug it up, gathered out its stones, planted it with the choicest vine, built a tower in the middle of it, and also cut out a wine press therein. He looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes... I will lay it a wasteland. It won't be pruned nor hoed, but it will grow briers and thorns. I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain on it.


‘The land which has drunk the rain… receives blessing from God’ (v. 7) echoes the Deuteronomic land that ‘drinks water from the rain of the sky’ — the blessing-or-curse alternative set before Israel (Deut 11:11–17, 26–28). Low verbal volume (the verb ‘drink the rain’ is the hinge), but high thematic coherence: fertility as covenant blessing, drought as curse.

but the land, where you go over to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys which drinks water from the rain of the sky,


The portrait of those ‘once enlightened… and then fell away’ whom it is ‘impossible to renew to repentance’ (vv. 4–6) recurs to the wilderness generation that saw God's glory and signs yet was barred from the land — the same exemplum Hebrews built in 3:7–4:11 (Hays' recurrence test across the homily). Conceptual, not verbatim.

because all those men who have seen my glory, and my signs, which I worked in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet have tempted me these ten times, and have not listened to my voice; surely they shall not see the land which I swore to their fathers, neither shall any of those who despised me see it.


‘Whose end is to be burned’ (v. 8) faintly recalls the Deuteronomic curse of a barren, burning land that ‘doesn't produce.’ Verbal volume is low (the shared note is land that yields nothing and is consigned to burning), but the covenant blessing/curse frame coheres with the field imagery; flagged contested.

and that all of its land is sulfur, salt, and burning, that it is not sown, doesn't produce, nor does any grass grow in it, like the overthrow of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which Yahweh overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath;


The catechetical pair ‘resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment’ (v. 2) draws on the apocalyptic two-outcome resurrection of Dan 12:2 (life vs. everlasting contempt). Faint and topical rather than verbal — these were stock elements of early Jewish-Christian instruction — but Daniel is its clearest scriptural anchor.

Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.


‘God is not unrighteous, so as to forget your work and the labor of love… you served the saints’ (v. 10) sounds the wisdom axiom that mercy to the needy is a loan God repays. Low verbal volume and contested, but the theme — God's unfailing reward of ministry to others — coheres, and the formula reappears in the ‘rewarder’ of 11:6.

He who has pity on the poor lends to Yahweh; he will reward him.


‘Imitators of those who through faith and perseverance inherited the promises’ (v. 12) anticipates Abraham, named immediately in v. 13 as the one who, ‘having patiently endured, obtained the promise.’ The echo is the seam that joins the warning to the Abraham oath of the next pericope (Hays' recurrence — the same exemplar carries across the paragraph break).

and said, ‘I have sworn by myself, says Yahweh, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son, that I will bless you greatly, and I will multiply your offspring greatly like the stars of the heavens, and like the sand which is on the seashore.’


God's oath to Abraham at the binding of Isaac — sworn ‘by myself’ because there is none greater. Hebrews seizes on the oath itself: God condescends to swear, so the promise rests on ‘two immutable things’ (v. 18), his word and his oath.


The chapter closes by sounding Melchizedek again (v. 20), the cue for the full exposition in ch. 7. Recurrence threading the priesthood theme through a warning passage.

Yahweh has sworn, and will not change his mind: ‘You are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek.’


‘Entering into that which is within the veil’ (v. 19) names the inner sanctum that Lev 16 reserves for the high priest on the Day of Atonement alone. Hebrews reads the veil figurally as the boundary Jesus crossed once for all ‘as a forerunner’ — the same Day-of-Atonement typology seeded at 1:3 and expounded in chs. 9–10 (Hays' recurrence and figural coherence).

and Yahweh said to Moses, ‘Tell Aaron your brother, not to come at all times into the Most Holy Place within the veil, before the mercy seat which is on the ark; lest he die: for I will appear in the cloud on the mercy seat.’


The tabernacle veil ‘within’ which the ark stood is the architectural referent of ‘within the veil’ (v. 19). Hebrews' word katapetasma matches the LXX term for this dividing curtain; the figure of the believer's hope as an anchor reaching past the veil presupposes the two-roomed sanctuary of Exod 26 (cf. the same veil at Heb 9:3; 10:20).

You shall hang up the veil under the clasps, and shall bring the ark of the testimony in there within the veil: and the veil shall separate the holy place from the most holy for you.


‘It is impossible for God to lie’ (v. 18) restates Balaam's axiom that God, unlike a man, cannot lie or repent of his word. Conceptual allusion (no shared catchword), but the thought is verbatim in substance and undergirds the ‘two immutable things’ argument; the divine truthfulness theme returns at Heb 10:23 and Titus 1:2.

God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should repent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not make it good?


A second witness to the same maxim behind ‘impossible for God to lie’ (v. 18): the Glory/Strength of Israel ‘will not lie nor repent.’ Paired with Num 23:19 as the gezerah-shavah-style backdrop (the immutability of God's sworn counsel), though here verbal volume is low and the link is contested.

Also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent; for he is not a man, that he should repent.


‘We who have fled for refuge to take hold of the hope’ (v. 18) faintly evokes the cities of refuge to which the manslayer ‘fled’ and was held safe ‘until the high priest dies’ — a poignant counterpoint, since here safety comes through the high priest who lives forever (v. 20). Low volume and contested; some read only a general ‘flee for refuge’ idiom.

The congregation shall deliver the man slayer out of the hand of the avenger of blood, and the congregation shall restore him to his city of refuge, where he had fled.


The argument reads the silences of the Genesis story figurally: Melchizedek enters with no genealogy, no birth, no death on record, so ‘he remains a priest continually’ — a figure of an eternal priesthood. Classic figural reasoning from what the narrative does not say. Even the names are mined: Melchizedek = ‘king of righteousness,’ Salem = ‘peace.’

Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine: and he was priest of God Most High. He blessed him, and said, ‘Blessed be Abram of God Most High, possessor of heaven and earth:’ and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand.' Abram gave him a tenth of all.


‘Who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings’ (v. 1) lifts the narrative frame verbatim from the verse immediately preceding the Melchizedek scene. High verbal volume on the ‘slaughter of the kings’ phrase; the surrounding verses (14:18–20) are the figural core, so this opening clause is a near-quotation supplying the setting.

The king of Sodom went out to meet him after his return from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, at the valley of Shaveh (that is, the King's Valley).


‘The sons of Levi… have a commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law’ (v. 5) alludes directly to the Levitical tithe-statute. Strong thematic coherence: the whole pericope contrasts the Levites who receive tithes by legal mandate with Melchizedek, who received them from Abraham himself, the Levites' ancestor. Verbal overlap on ‘tithe’ and ‘the children of Levi.’

To the children of Levi, behold, I have given all the tithe in Israel for an inheritance, in return for their service which they serve, even the service of the Tent of Meeting.


The gloss ‘king of Salem, which means king of peace’ trades on the identification of Salem with Zion/Jerusalem found at Ps 76:2, the one other place Scripture names ‘Salem.’ Modest verbal volume (the shared toponym) but high thematic coherence — it licenses the peace etymology (Salem/shalom) on which the wordplay depends.

His tabernacle is also in Salem; His dwelling place in Zion.


‘Remains a priest continually’ (v. 3) reads the Genesis silences through the lens of Ps 110:4, the verse this whole chapter expounds — the eternal Melchizedekian priesthood. Recurrence is decisive (Hays): the psalm is quoted explicitly at vv. 17 and 21, so its perpetuity language is already audible here in the figural portrait.


Quoted as proof (v. 17) that a priesthood ‘after the order of Melchizedek’ — not Aaron's — was always promised. If the priesthood changes, Hebrews argues, the law itself must change with it: the letter's most radical claim, carried by a single verse.


‘It is evident that our Lord has sprung out of Judah’ (v. 14) presupposes the Judah-tribe messianism of Jacob's blessing — the scepter that ‘will not depart from Judah.’ No verbatim citation (a dashed allusion), but high thematic coherence: the argument needs a Messiah from a non-priestly tribe, and Gen 49:10 is the locus classicus for the ruler from Judah.

The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler's staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs; and to him will the obedience of the peoples be.


The Davidic-from-Judah origin (‘sprung out of Judah,’ v. 14) faintly sounds the Jesse/David shoot of Isa 11:1. Low verbal volume — the link is conceptual (Messiah from Judah's royal line, not Levi) — but it reinforces the same tribal-displacement logic the pericope is pressing.

A shoot will come out of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of his roots will bear fruit.


A faint, contested echo: ‘our Lord has sprung out of Judah’ overlaps with Micah's ‘ruler in Israel’ coming ‘out of’ Bethlehem-in-Judah. Very low volume and no verbal contact beyond the Judah-origin theme; included for maximal coverage where scholars list Judah-Messiah testimonia.

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, being small among the clans of Judah, out of you one will come out to me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings out are from of old, from ancient times.


The ‘Levitical priesthood… under which the people received the law’ (v. 11) and the contrast with a priest from a tribe that never ‘officiated at the altar’ (v. 13) presuppose the Levi-only priestly charter of Numbers 18. Recurrence within the chapter (the same statute underlies 7:5) raises confidence on an otherwise conceptual allusion.


Now the weight falls on the psalm's opening words — ‘The Lord swore and will not change his mind.’ The Levites became priests without an oath; this priest is sworn in by God, so his is the ‘better covenant.’ The same verse, re-read for its oath (recurrence).


‘He lives forever to make intercession for them’ (v. 25) and ‘to offer… for the sins of the people… he offered up himself’ (vv. 27) echo the Suffering Servant who ‘made intercession for the transgressors’ and ‘bore the sin of many.’ Verbal contact on ‘intercession’ and ‘sins of many / bear sin’; thematic coherence with Hebrews' self-offering priest is strong even without a citation formula.

After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light and be satisfied. My righteous servant will justify many by the knowledge of himself; and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore will I give him a portion with the great, and he will divide the plunder with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death, and was counted with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.


‘Made higher than the heavens’ (v. 26) faintly sounds the session-at-the-right-hand of Ps 110:1, the psalm's first verse paired throughout Hebrews with its fourth (1:13; 8:1; 10:12). Low volume here, but recurrence across the letter makes even the faint exaltation language audible as Ps 110:1.

Yahweh says to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool for your feet.’


‘He did this once for all, when he offered up himself’ (v. 27), set against high priests who ‘offer up sacrifices daily… first for his own sins,’ figurally invokes the Day of Atonement (Lev 16), the cult expounded in chs 9–10. No quotation; the once-versus-repeated, self-offering-versus-for-his-own-sins contrast is the borrowed pattern. The motif recurs from 1:3 onward (Hays' recurrence).

for on this day shall atonement be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins you shall be clean before Yahweh. (Leviticus 16:30)


God's instruction to Moses — build the tabernacle to the ‘pattern shown on the mountain’ — becomes Hebrews' warrant that the earthly sanctuary is only a ‘copy and shadow’ of a heavenly original. One verse turns Israel's tent into a replica of things in the heavens.

See that you make them after their pattern, which has been shown to you on the mountain.


‘Who sat down on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens’ (v. 1) sounds Ps 110:1 once more — the session-oracle that bracketed chapter 1 (1:3, 1:13) and recurs at 10:12. By Hays' recurrence test the saturation of Ps 110 through Hebrews makes even this unmarked allusion certain; here it is fused with the priesthood of Ps 110:4 so that the same enthroned Lord is the heavenly high priest.


The ‘pattern on the mountain’ motif Hebrews quotes (8:5) is not isolated to Exod 25:40 but recurs across the tabernacle instructions (Exod 25:9; 26:30; 27:8), and the LXX typos (‘pattern/type’) is precisely the word Hebrews exploits. Recurrence within the source itself strengthens the figural reading; medium volume because it is the cluster, not this single verse, that is heard.

You shall set up the tabernacle according to the way that it was shown to you on the mountain.


‘The true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched (epēxen), not man’ (v. 2) faintly echoes Balaam's oracle, where the LXX of Num 24:6 reads ‘tents which the Lord pitched’ (skēnai has epēxen Kyrios) — the same rare verb for God, not man, pitching the tent. Low verbal volume and contested, but scholars (Attridge) note the lexical link; flagged because the echo lives only in the Greek.

As valleys they are spread out, as gardens by the riverside, as aloes which Yahweh has planted, as cedar trees beside the waters.


The contrast between the ‘true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, not man’ (v. 2) and the human tent of meeting Moses himself pitched (Exod 33:7) is a faint thematic echo: the wilderness tent, set up by a man, is the very ‘copy and shadow’ Hebrews relativizes. Thematic coherence rather than verbal volume; a contested, low-volume link.

Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far away from the camp, and he called it ‘The Tent of Meeting.’


‘He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which on better promises has been given as law’ (v. 6) pre-echoes the Jeremiah ‘new covenant’ oracle the very next pericope quotes in full (8:8–12). Hays' recurrence and satisfaction tests: the keyword ‘covenant… better’ seeds the citation about to dominate, so the faint anticipation is heard in retrospect.

“Behold, the days come,” says Yahweh, “that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:


The longest Old Testament quotation in the New Testament. Hebrews lets Jeremiah's promise of a ‘new’ covenant do the demolition: the mere word ‘new’ pronounces the first ‘old… near to vanishing.’ Re-cited in part at 10:16–17 to bracket the central argument.

Behold, the days come, says Yahweh, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which covenant of mine they broke, although I was a husband to them, says Yahweh. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says Yahweh: I will put my law in their inward parts, and I will write it in their heart. I will be their God, and they shall be my people. They will no longer each teach his neighbor, and every man teach his brother, saying, ‘Know Yahweh;’ for they will all know me, from their least to their greatest, says Yahweh: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.


Flagged as a textual fork within the quotation: where the Hebrew of Jer 31:32 reads ‘although I was a husband to them (or: their master),’ the LXX Hebrews follows reads ‘and I disregarded them’ (ēmelēsa) — the rendering printed at 8:9. A classic Greek-vs-Hebrew divergence (Beale & Carson) carried inside the long citation; included separately to mark the seam Hebrews' argument leans on.

“that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which covenant of mine they broke, although I was a husband to them,” says Yahweh.


‘The covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt’ (v. 9) points, through Jeremiah's words, back to the Sinai covenant ratified in blood at Exod 24:8 — the ‘first covenant’ Hebrews names as now ‘old.’ Thematic coherence with the blood-of-the-covenant argument Hebrews makes explicit at 9:18–20; faint here, low volume.

Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, ‘Look, this is the blood of the covenant, which Yahweh has made with you concerning all these words.’


The two-roomed tabernacle and ‘the high priest alone, once in the year, not without blood’ (v. 7) describe the Day of Atonement (Lev 16). Hebrews reads the very architecture figurally — the veil barring the way in is ‘the Holy Spirit indicating’ that access to God was not yet open. The figure first heard at 1:3 now becomes the argument.

For on this day shall atonement be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins you shall be clean before Yahweh. (Leviticus 16:30)


‘Into the second the high priest alone, once in the year’ (v. 7) restates the controlling restriction of Lev 16:2 — entry behind the veil only on the one prescribed day. High thematic coherence and verbal volume (‘within the veil… mercy seat… ark’); the prohibition is precisely the ‘way not yet revealed’ Hebrews exploits (v. 8).

and Yahweh said to Moses, “Tell Aaron your brother, not to come at all times into the Most Holy Place within the veil, before the mercy seat which is on the ark; lest he die: for I will appear in the cloud on the mercy seat.


‘Not without blood, which he offers for himself, and for the errors of the people’ (v. 7) compresses the bull-for-himself / goat-for-the-people sequence of Lev 16:14–15. Recurrence within Hebrews (the same blood-rite returns at 9:25) and thematic coherence support the link, though no clause is quoted verbatim.

He shall take some of the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it with his finger on the mercy seat on the east; and before the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times. “Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering, that is for the people, and bring his blood within the veil, and do with his blood as he did with the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it on the mercy seat, and before the mercy seat.


‘The lamp stand’ in the first room (v. 2) names the menorah commanded in Exod 25:31–37. Verbal volume is a single furnishing word, but the whole catalogue of vv. 2–5 systematically recapitulates the Exodus tabernacle inventory — recurrence across furnishings makes each item's source secure.

You shall make a lamp stand of pure gold. Of hammered work shall the lamp stand be made, even its base, its shaft, its cups, its buds, and its flowers, shall be of one piece with it. There shall be six branches going out of its sides... You shall make its lamps seven, and they shall light its lamps to give light to the space in front of it.


‘The table, and the show bread’ (v. 2) draw on the table of the Presence in Exod 25:23–30 (‘bread of the presence… before me always’). Part of the running tabernacle-inventory allusion; thematic coherence is exact even where verbal contact is just the furnishing names.

“You shall make a table of acacia wood... You shall overlay it with pure gold, and make a gold molding around it... You shall set bread of the presence on the table before me always.


‘A golden altar of incense’ (v. 4) recalls Exod 30:1–6. Contested because Exod 30:6 locates the incense altar before the veil (in the Holy Place), while Hebrews places it with the inner room — a famous topographical divergence the author may be following the LXX/Second-Temple tradition on. The verbal echo ‘golden… altar of incense’ is strong; the placement is the crux.

“You shall make an altar to burn incense on. You shall make it of acacia wood... You shall overlay it with pure gold... You shall put it before the veil that is by the ark of the testimony, before the mercy seat that is over the testimony, where I will meet with you.


‘The tablets of the covenant’ inside the ark (v. 4) answer Exod 25:16 (‘put the testimony… into the ark’). High thematic coherence; the ‘testimony’ = the tablets, which Hebrews lists among the ark's contents.

You shall put the testimony which I shall give you into the ark.


‘A golden pot holding the manna’ (v. 4) draws on Exod 16:33. The LXX adds ‘golden’ (the Hebrew says only ‘a pot’), so Hebrews follows the Greek detail — an availability/divergence point. Strong thematic coherence with the ark's stored memorials.

Moses said to Aaron, “Take a pot, and put an omer-full of manna in it, and lay it up before Yahweh, to be kept throughout your generations.”


‘Aaron's rod that budded’ (v. 4) recalls Num 17:10, where the rod is laid up ‘before the testimony’ as a token. Together with the manna pot and tablets it completes the ark's contents; recurrence of the storage formula (‘before the testimony / before Yahweh’) ties the three memorials together.

Yahweh said to Moses, “Put back the rod of Aaron before the testimony, to be kept for a token against the children of rebellion; that you may make an end of their murmurings against me, that they not die.”


‘Cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat’ (v. 5) is verbally dense with Exod 25:18–22 (‘cherubim… covering the mercy seat with their wings’). High volume on ‘cherubim’ + ‘mercy seat’; this is the closest-to-quotation of the inventory allusions.

You shall make two cherubim of hammered gold... The cherubim shall spread out their wings upward, covering the mercy seat with their wings... There I will meet with you, and I will tell you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are on the ark of the testimony.


‘After the second veil’ (v. 3) presupposes Exod 26:31–33, the veil that ‘separates the holy place from the most holy.’ Hebrews' phrase ‘second veil’ reflects the two-curtain reading of the tent; the dividing-veil that bars the way in is the load-bearing image for v. 8.

“You shall make a veil of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen, with cherubim... the veil shall separate the holy place from the most holy for you.


A faint, contested figural undertone: cherubim ‘overshadowing’ and a veil that bars ‘the way into the Holy Place’ (v. 8) recall the cherubim who ‘guard the way’ to Eden's tree of life (Gen 3:24). Low verbal volume and no recurrence in Hebrews, but some readers (Hays-style figural coherence) hear the blocked-access motif of paradise behind the closed sanctuary.

So he drove out the man; and he placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.


Moses' words at Sinai, inaugurating the first covenant in blood. Hebrews quotes them to make blood the necessary seal of any covenant — and so to read Christ's death as the blood that ratifies the new one: ‘apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.’


Beyond the quoted clause (v. 8), the whole narrative frame of vv. 19–20 — Moses reading ‘every commandment to all the people,’ then sprinkling — retells Exod 24:6–8. Hebrews adds details (water, scarlet wool, hyssop, sprinkling the book) not in Exod 24, conflating it with the purification rites (Num 19; Lev 14): high recurrence of the sprinkling motif drives the link.

Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. He took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people, and they said, “All that Yahweh has spoken will we do, and be obedient.” Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, “Look, this is the blood of the covenant, which Yahweh has made with you concerning all these words.”


‘The ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled’ (v. 13) names the red-heifer rite of Num 19:9. Strong verbal volume (‘ashes of the heifer… cleansing impurity’) and exact thematic coherence: an outward cleansing ‘of the flesh’ that Hebrews contrasts with the inward cleansing of conscience by Christ's blood.

“A man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up outside of the camp in a clean place; and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for use in water for cleansing impurity. It is a sin offering.


The mechanics of v. 13 (ashes + water sprinkled on the defiled) and the ‘water… and hyssop’ of vv. 19–21 echo Num 19:17–18, where hyssop dips the ash-water and sprinkles ‘the tent, all the vessels, the persons.’ Hebrews' phrase ‘sprinkled the tabernacle and all the vessels’ tracks this list closely — recurrence of sprinkling vocabulary.

“For the unclean, they shall take of the ashes of the burning of the sin offering; and running water shall be poured into a vessel. A clean person shall take hyssop, dip it in the water, and sprinkle it on the tent, on all the vessels, on the persons who were there...


‘With water and scarlet wool and hyssop’ (v. 19) imports the ‘hyssop and scarlet’ of the heifer rite (Num 19:6) into the retelling of the Sinai covenant-cutting, which had neither. The conflation shows Hebrews reading all the blood-rites as one figural system; verbal contact on ‘scarlet… hyssop’ is the tell.

The priest shall take cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet, and cast it into the middle of the burning of the heifer.


‘Apart from shedding of blood there is no remission’ (v. 22) crystallizes the principle of Lev 17:11 — blood makes atonement because the life is in it. No verbatim quotation, but high thematic coherence: this is the axiom on which the whole sacrificial argument of vv. 11–22 rests.

For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you on the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life.


‘The blood of goats and calves’ / ‘goats and bulls’ (vv. 12–13, 19) generalizes the Day-of-Atonement victims (bull and goat, Lev 16:3, 5–15). Faint and diffuse — Hebrews blends Day-of-Atonement animals with covenant-inauguration animals (Exod 24) — so verbal volume is low and the source is one strand among several.

“Aaron shall come into the sanctuary with a young bull for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering.


The Day-of-Atonement figure reaches its payoff: where the high priest ‘enters the holy place year by year,’ Christ enters heaven itself ‘once at the end of the ages.’ The whole typology turns on once versus yearly — the repeated rite was always pointing past itself to a single, final sacrifice.

For on this day shall atonement be made for you, to cleanse you; from all your sins you shall be clean before Yahweh. (Leviticus 16:30)


‘Having been offered once to bear the sins of many’ (v. 28) verbally echoes Isa 53:12, ‘he bore the sin of many.’ The Greek of Isaiah (anēnenken hamartias pollōn) overlaps Hebrews' wording closely — high verbal volume for an allusion, and thematic coherence with the suffering servant who ‘poured out his soul to death.’ The only Servant-Song echo in the letter, which makes it contested by the recurrence test even as the verbal volume is strong.

Therefore will I give him a portion with the great, and he will divide the plunder with the strong; because he poured out his soul to death, and was counted with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.


‘As the high priest enters into the holy place year by year’ (v. 25) restates the ‘once in the year’ statute of Lev 16:34. The contrast Hebrews builds (yearly repetition vs. Christ's single entry) hangs on this annual cadence; verbal contact on ‘once in the year.’

“This shall be an everlasting statute for you, to make atonement for the children of Israel once in the year because of all their sins.”


‘With blood not his own’ (v. 25) points to the bull-and-goat blood the high priest carries within the veil in Lev 16:14–15 — ‘blood not his own’ in contrast to Christ's self-offering. An echo (the rite is presupposed, not quoted); recurrence of the same Lev 16 blood-entry across 9:7, 9:12, and here.

He shall take some of the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it with his finger on the mercy seat on the east; and before the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times. “Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering, that is for the people, and bring his blood within the veil, and do with his blood as he did with the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it on the mercy seat, and before the mercy seat.


‘Or else he must have suffered often since the foundation of the world’ (v. 26) is a faint temporal echo reaching back to creation and the entrance of sin (Gen 2–3). No quotation and no fetched verse anchors a single line; included as a low-confidence figural horizon under Hays' criterion of thematic coherence, since Hebrews dates the once-for-all offering against the whole span ‘from the foundation of the world.’

[allusive phrase] ‘since the foundation of the world’ (v. 26), echoing the primeval frame of creation and the first sin in Genesis 2–3.


Another Greek/Hebrew fork, and the most consequential one. Where the Hebrew reads ‘ears you have opened (dug),’ the Septuagint that Hebrews quotes reads ‘a body you prepared for me’ — and on that ‘body’ the whole argument of the once-for-all bodily offering turns (v. 10). Availability again: the author's Bible was the Greek.

Sacrifice and offering you didn’t desire. You have opened my ears. You have not required burnt offering and sin offering. Then I said, “Behold, I have come. It is written about me in the book in the scroll. I delight to do your will, my God. Yes, your law is within my heart.”

Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not; but a body hast thou prepared me: whole-burnt-offering and sacrifice for sin thou didst not require. Then I said, Behold, I come: in the volume of the book it is written concerning me, I desired to do thy will, O my God, and thy law in the midst of mine heart.


‘The same sacrifices year by year… a yearly reminder of sins’ (vv. 1, 3) presupposes the once-a-year Day of Atonement statute. High thematic coherence with the book's central typology (chs 9–10): the very repetition Leviticus commands is what Hebrews turns into proof of the law's inability to perfect.

This shall be an everlasting statute for you, to make atonement for the children of Israel once in the year because of all their sins.


The prophetic critique of mere sacrifice stands behind both Ps 40 and Hebrews' gloss. ‘The blood of bulls and goats’ (v. 4) sounds Isaiah's ‘blood of bulls… and of male goats’ — thematic coherence (Hays) with the prophets' sacrifice-vs-obedience polemic, even if the verbal volume is faint and mediated through the psalm.

"What are the multitude of your sacrifices to me?", says Yahweh. "I have had enough of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed animals. I don't delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of male goats.


Samuel's ‘to obey is better than sacrifice’ is the classic locus of the obedience-over-offering theme that Ps 40:6–8 versifies and Hebrews exploits (‘I have come to do your will’ replacing ‘sacrifice… you didn't desire’). Conceptual coherence rather than verbal volume; scholars (Beale & Carson) note it as the OT backdrop of the contrast.

Has Yahweh as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying Yahweh's voice? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.


A faint cousin-echo: David's penitential ‘you don't delight in sacrifice… you have no pleasure in burnt offering’ runs verbally parallel to Ps 40's and Hebrews' ‘you didn't desire… had no pleasure.’ Low volume and contested as a direct source, but the shared psalmic formula reinforces the thematic field of sacrifice displaced by the will of the heart.

For you don't delight in sacrifice, or else I would give it. You have no pleasure in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.


‘Sat down… waiting until his enemies are made the footstool of his feet’ (vv. 12–13) sounds Ps 110:1 yet again — the seated, finished priest set against the standing priests who never sit, because their work is never done.

Yahweh says to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool for your feet.’


Jeremiah's new covenant, quoted in full at 8:8–12, returns here in brief to close the case: if sins are remembered ‘no more,’ then ‘there is no more offering for sin.’ The recurrence brackets the whole central section (Hays).

I will put my law in their inward parts, and I will write it in their heart... for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.


‘Every priest indeed stands day by day… often offering the same sacrifices’ (v. 11) alludes to the prescribed tamid, the continual daily offering of Num 28. The endless dailiness Numbers legislates is exactly what Hebrews contrasts with Christ's single seated offering — thematic coherence carrying a low-volume allusion.

You shall tell them, ‘This is the offering made by fire which you shall offer to Yahweh: male lambs a year old without defect, two day by day, for a continual burnt offering.


‘Hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience… body washed with pure water’ (v. 22) fuses sprinkling and washing exactly as Ezekiel's new-covenant promise of cleansing does. High verbal volume on ‘sprinkle… clean water’; the coherence with the chapter's interior-cleansing argument (cf. 9:13–14) lifts it from echo to allusion.

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness, and from all your idols.


‘Body washed with pure water’ figurally extends the priestly consecration of Aaron and his sons (washed with water before approaching). Hebrews makes every believer a priest who ‘draws near’; the priest-ordination rite is the type. Moderate volume, strong typological coherence.

You shall bring Aaron and his sons to the door of the Tent of Meeting, and shall wash them with water.


The narrative enactment of Exod 29:4 — Moses washing Aaron and his sons at their ordination — reinforces the same priestly-washing type behind ‘body washed with pure water.’ Low independent volume; cited by scholars (Beale & Carson) alongside Exod 29 as the consecration backdrop.

Moses brought Aaron and his sons, and washed them with water.


The verse immediately following the sprinkling promise: ‘draw near with a true heart’ (v. 22) faintly carries Ezekiel's new-heart language into the same breath as his clean-water language. Low volume, but recurrence of the Ezek 36:25–27 unit in early-Christian new-covenant texts (cf. the Spirit ‘written on hearts’ motif) gives it standing.

I will also give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.


‘Boldness to enter into the holy place… through the veil’ (vv. 19–20) inverts the Day-of-Atonement restriction: where Aaron must not come within the veil ‘at all times’ lest he die, believers now have boldness to enter always. Figural reversal of the Lev 16 prohibition — the veil that barred access (cf. 9:8) is now the opened ‘new and living way.’

and Yahweh said to Moses, ‘Tell Aaron your brother, not to come at all times into the Most Holy Place within the veil, before the mercy seat which is on the ark; lest he die: for I will appear in the cloud on the mercy seat.’


The ‘water for cleansing impurity’ of the red-heifer rite (invoked explicitly at 9:13) lingers behind ‘body washed with pure water.’ Faint and contested as a distinct source here, but Hebrews has already paired heifer-ashes with sprinkling, so the recurrence keeps the lustration imagery in play.

A man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer, and lay them up outside of the camp in a clean place; and it shall be kept for the congregation of the children of Israel for use in water for cleansing impurity. It is a sin offering.


From the Song of Moses. ‘Vengeance is mine’ is wielded as warning, not comfort — the same God who saves will judge those who spurn the saving.

Vengeance is mine, and recompense, at the time when their foot slides; for the day of their calamity is at hand. Their doom rushes at them.