Hebrews 9:17 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

For a testament is of force, &c.— For a covenant made where death is, is valid. The verse may be paraphrased thus: "For you know that sacrificial rites have ever attended the most celebrated covenants which God hath made with man; so that I may say, a covenant is confirmed over the dead; so that it does not avail, nor has any force at all, while he, by whom it is confirmed, liveth." It may be proper to remark, that Parkhurst is of opinion that the word Διαθηκη should be rendered, when referring to God's transactions with man, not a covenant, but an institution, or dispensation. The word signifies, says Junius, neither a testament, nor a covenant, nor an agreement; but, as the import of the word simply requires, a disposition or institution of God: and in this view our English word dispensation seems very happily to answer it; and thus the dispensation of faith, and free justification, of which Christ is the Mediator, is called new, in respect of the old or Sinaitical one, of which Moses was the mediator. See his Lexicon on the words Βιβαιος and Διαθηκη. The apostle having, in these verses, spoken of the nature of covenants or dispensations in the general, proceeds in what follows to apply it to the Mosaic and Christian institutions; shewing, that as Moses, the mediator of the covenant between God and the Jewish people, ratified the covenant by the blood of the sacrifices; so the Lord Jesus Christ, the Mediator between God and all mankind, ratified the Christian covenant, by the sacrifice of himself, (Hebrews 9:26.) the great antetype of all the sacrifices slain under the law; himself, as the destined victim, paying the penalty due on man's part for the broken covenant, and, as the great High priest, entering into the presence of God, once for all, with that atoning blood which he had shed for us, Hebrews 9:24.