Hebrews 7:11 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The apostle, having cleared his way from objections, now enters on his principal argument concerning the priesthood of Christ, and all the consequences of it with respect to righteousness, salvation, and the worship of God which depend thereon. If, therefore, or, now if perfection were by the Levitical priesthood If it perfectly answered all God's designs and man's wants; what further need was there that another priest A priest of a new order; should rise Or be set up; and not one after the order of Aaron? As if he had said, Since by what has been advanced it appears from Scripture that another priesthood was to arise after Aaron's, of another order, it follows hence that perfection could not be attained by that of Aaron; for if it could, that certainly would not have been removed, and another substituted in its place. In other words, the prediction of the rising up of a priest of a different order from that of Aaron, is a declaration of the inefficacy of the Levitical priesthood, and of God's intention to change it. Instead of the clause, for under it, (namely, the Levitical priesthood,) Macknight reads, on account of it, the people received the law Observing that the law “was prior to the priesthood, being given for the purpose of forming and establishing the priesthood; and that the Jewish people themselves were separated from the rest of mankind, and made a people by the law, merely that they might, as a nation, worship the only true God according to the Levitical ritual, in settling which most of the precepts of the law were employed. This being the case, is it any wonder that such of the Jews as looked no farther than the outside of the priesthood and law, imagined that perfection, in respect of pardon and acceptance with God, was to be obtained by the Levitical priesthood and sacrifices, and in that persuasion believed they never would be abolished? Nevertheless, if they had understood the true meaning of the law, they would have known that it was a typical oracle, in which, by its services, the priesthood and sacrifice of the Son of God were prefigured, and that by calling his Son a priest, not after the order of Aaron, but after that of Melchisedec, God declared that his services as a High-Priest, and the sacrifice of himself which he was to offer, were entirely different, both in their nature and effects, from the Levitical services and sacrifices, and that they were to be substituted in the room of these services, for which there was no occasion after the priest and sacrifices which they prefigured, were come.”