We have an altar whereof they have no power to eat who serve the tabernacle.
εχομεν θυσιαστηριον εξ ου φαγειν ουκ εχουσιν εξουσιαν οι τη σκηνη λατρευοντες
12 Church Fathers comment on this verse
What we have, he says, is not like the Jewish practice, so that even the Jewish high priest is not permitted to share in our mysteries. When he said, "Do not observe teachings about food," he seemed to be refuting his own practices. Therefore he returns to the same point again. But, they will say, do we not observe this? We do observe it, and very strictly, so strictly that we do not even permit Jewish priests to share in our mysteries.
Having said that there is no need for strict observance concerning foods, he does not want our freedom from such observance to seem contemptible. Therefore he says that we too have an observance, but not concerning those foods. It concerns the altar, or the bloodless sacrifice of the Life-giving Body. For it is impossible for the high priests of the Old Testament law to participate in this sacrifice while they serve the tabernacle, that is, the passing images of the law, which are subject to destruction. Or while they serve this world, since even the people, as unworthy, did not participate in the sacrifices of the Old Testament law.
We have an altar superior to their ordinances. From it not only ordinary Jews, but even the Levites who serve the tabernacle, have no authority to eat.
"We have an altar from which those who serve the shadow have no authority to eat," that is, an altar far more honorable than that of the Old Testament. For that one is a shadow. That one receives irrational sacrifices upon itself, but ours receives a rational and divine sacrifice. Therefore none of those priests partakes of this sacrifice unless he first receives faith in the Lord.
Not even the priests of the Old Covenant have this right, unless they receive faith in Christ and holy baptism. They had many things to observe. He then points out those sacred things among the Jews which served as types of our Christian realities.
For Christ, our Pascha, has been sacrificed for us (1 Cor 5:7), as the apostle says. God the Son was crucified as the new and true redeeming sacrifice to the Father, but not within the Temple, whose worship had already come to an end. Nor was Christ crucified within the walls of the city, which awaited destruction for its crimes, but outside the camp. Thus, when the mystery of the old sacrifices was exhausted, a new sacrifice was offered upon a new altar. The Cross of Christ is the altar not of the Church alone, but now of the whole world.
The Redeemer and Lord most wisely and very well commanded the one who undertook to follow Him to strip himself and go out from the world (cf. Mt 19:21), because a man must first cast away everything that leads to slackness and only then approach the work. When the Lord Himself began the battle with the devil, He waged it in the driest wilderness. Paul advises those who take up the cross of Christ to go out of the city. “Let us go forth to Him,” he says, “outside the city, and bear His reproach” (Heb 13:12-13), because He suffered outside the city. For if a man separates himself from the world and from everything in the world, he quickly forgets his former habit and former manner of life. He does not labor over this for long.
But when he draws near to the world and to worldly things, the strength of his mind quickly grows slack. Therefore one must know what especially helps and leads to progress in this suffering and saving warfare. Thus it is fitting and helpful in this warfare that the monastic cell be in a poor and insufficient condition. The monk’s cell should be empty and contain nothing that arouses in him desire for repose. When the causes of slackness are removed from a man, there is no danger for him in a twofold warfare, inner and outer. Thus the man who keeps far from himself what serves pleasure gains the victory without difficulty, in comparison with the one who has near him what stirs him to desire. For here the struggle is doubled. The word “most wisely” is not in the Greek edition. It was inserted from the translation of St. Paisius.
This is said for those who ask in perplexity, “How do you say that you have an altar? What was offered on it?” This is Christ Himself, whom you despise from top to bottom and do not see that He was offered as a sacrifice. He is the Sacrifice accomplished for the whole world, and the offering, although He was not offered on your altar. For it is evident that He suffered outside the city of Jerusalem (Heb 13:12). Therefore Paul says to them: “Yes, He suffered outside. Yet precisely through this it came about that we have an altar. For among you also the bodies of sacrificial animals are not burned on the altars themselves, but outside the camp. For this further reason Jesus suffered outside the gates of Jerusalem, that all, and not only the priests, might be sanctified.
And if the sacrifice was for all, how can this not be an altar?” Yet another interpretation is also given to the expression “that He might sanctify the people.” Consider: Paul says that those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat from our altar. This is not because it is impossible for them, but because, according to their own judgment, they show themselves unworthy. For by the love for mankind of Christ, eating from the altar is not only not forbidden. Rather, He suffered precisely for this, that He might sanctify, as Paul said, not only these or those, but all the people, and give them authority to eat from this altar.
"Those who serve the shadow." In the Russian translation, in agreement with the original, it is: "those who serve the tabernacle." The tabernacle was a shadow of what was to come.
When the Apostle calls us to establish our hearts by grace and not by foods, he means those foods prepared from the remains of the Old Testament sacrifices. It is of these that the Apostle says they brought no benefit to those who occupied themselves with them and placed their hopes in them. But not all foods are useless for salvation. Otherwise one would have to claim that useless also is the Bread which Christ Himself, the High Priest of the New Testament, broke and gave to His disciples, saying: “Take, eat. Do this in remembrance of Me.” Having spoken of those foods that are useless for salvation, the Apostle then says: “We have an altar.” If we have an altar, then there are offerings, and there is a sacrifice. For without sacrifices an altar is no longer an altar.
It deserves this name only because sacrifices are offered on it. What sacrifices, or what sacrifice, are offered on our altar? It is said further that those who serve the shadow, the tabernacle, cannot eat from this altar. It is clear that on this altar something is placed and offered that can be eaten. The Apostle did not say that there is nothing to eat from this altar. He said that not everyone can eat from it. Therefore something edible is offered up to God on it and afterward set before men. Yet only Christians can partake of it. The sacrifice of praise can in no way be called edible. In another epistle the Apostle Paul said, “Those who serve at the altar share in the altar” (1 Cor 9:13). No one will say that they share spiritual sacrifices with the altar or feed on sacrifices of doxology. Here, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, he clearly says that Christians also have an altar. Therefore they offer sacrifices, and these can and must be eaten. Yet they are eaten only by Christians and Christian priests, and by no means by ministers of the Old Testament or ministers of the typological tabernacle. The excellence of this altar, the excellence of the sacrifice offered on it, and of the Food set forth on it, is the reason Christians must not return to the Old Testament foods that brought no benefit. All this firmly establishes the teaching on the Christian altar, on the Eucharistic Sacrifice offered on it, and on the Lord’s Table prepared on it. At the same time the Apostle says “altar,” not “altars,” although we have many altars, just as we have many churches. He uses the singular because the offering performed on Christian altars is the same. For the same reason he also speaks of one Cup, although then, as now, there were no fewer cups than churches (1 Cor 10:16).
In the Epistle to the Hebrews the Apostle Paul says: “We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat” (Heb 13:10). These words of the Apostle proclaim the exaltation of the mystical holy table into a divine and heavenly altar, for on this table the holy Apostles sacrificed the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. [...] “We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat” (Heb 13:10). He gives us to understand the essence of the Christian Church, which has within herself a spiritual altar. On it was offered the spiritual sacrifice commanded to the Apostles by Christ the Savior. He became High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.
He also appointed the Apostles ministers of the New Testament, which is testified to be better than the Old Testament. For “if perfection were through the Levitical priesthood, what further need was there that another priest should arise according to the order of Melchizedek?” (Heb 7:11). For it is testified in the Psalm: “Thou art a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek” (Ps 109:4). Therefore the Old is annulled, for “the law made nothing perfect.”
To implant this truth in the hearts of his readers, the Apostle shows that Christianity and Judaism’s discrimination about foods exclude one another. He also shows that it is very fitting for Christians to renounce their former Jewish habits. We Christians, says the Apostle, have our own sacrificial altar, θυσιαστήριον, that is, the place where Christ was slain, namely the Cross on Golgotha. The people of the Old Testament have no right to share with us in the fruits of Christ’s death on this altar, that is, to eat. They served God by their sacrifices in the tabernacle and then enjoyed the right to eat from the remains of those sacrifices.
To make more clearly visible the incompatibility between walking according to foods and the Christian enjoyment of the saving benefits of Christ’s death, the Apostle chooses the image of eating from the altar to denote this enjoyment. Speaking in Old Testament language, this eating would be an eating from the propitiatory sacrifice (v. 11), which the law had already forbidden to be eaten. In that case the body of the sacrificial animal was burned outside the camp. In this propitiatory sacrifice of the Old Testament, the New Testament sacrifice was presented typologically. Therefore, to fulfill the type and to offer the sacrifice of reconciliation for the sanctification of the people, Jesus suffered outside the gates of Jerusalem (v. 12). For by His time the former camp had been replaced by the city of Jerusalem. Like the camp, it represented the visible Kingdom of God. But what is the meaning of the type and of its fulfillment? In the burning of the sacrifice offered for the sins of the whole people, the people were shown that sin itself was being subdued and destroyed by this burning. This sin was united to the body of the animal that stood in man’s place. Every destruction or putting to death, so as not to defile the Hebrew community, had to take place outside the camp. From this it is clear that Christ also, as the One who put sin to death in His own body, had to accomplish this outside the holy city. Whoever does not acknowledge this great meaning of Christ’s death, and tries to find support for his life not in Christ but in the Jewish laws about food, has no right to enjoy the fruits of Christ’s death on the Cross. Therefore the Apostle exhorts his readers to go out beyond the camp and bear Christ’s reproach. That is, they must end communion with Judaism and take upon themselves the shame which renouncing Judaism entails in the eyes of the Jews.
Passages read together with this verse.
Greek text, 12 words with lemma, transliteration and Strong’s number. Tap to expand.
THEOSIS