Jim McDonald

The writer of Hebrews had in chapter 8 quoted Jeremiah 31:31 in which God, through Jeremiah, had said, “… I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah” and then commented, “in that he saith a new covenant, he hath made the first old.  But that which is becoming old and waxing aged is nigh unto vanishing away” (Hebrews 8:13). Then the writer hastens to add, “Now even the first covenant had ordinances of divine service, and it’s sanctuary, a sanctuary of this world” (Hebrews 9:1). The first covenant was from God and the services performed in its temple were divinely ordained.

The object of the Hebrew epistle is to show that the first covenant with its services and even its temple had been replaced. Yet, the writer was also careful to show that although the covenant, tabernacle, and priesthood had been replaced with better things, those former ordinances and services of the first originated in God’s mind and had been God’s arrangement through which He was worshipped and served by Israel. While those services were copies of the heavenly things and had been taken away, they were from a divine source and provided a divine work.

In chapter 9 the writer itemized things in the two sanctuaries identified as the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. In the Holy Place the writer specified there were the candle sticks, the table and the shewbread. The Most Holy Place contained the golden censer (some translations have “altar of incense”), the ark of the covenant, and the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. It is in the itemizing of things in these two sanctuaries that some charge the writer with an error. They say he said something was in the Most Holy Place which actually belonged in the Holy Place, viz. the golden altar of incense.

There is no error in Hebrews 9. The writer’s intent was to show the things which were in the second sanctuary, which was a type or copy of Christ’s heavenly service. He passed over some of the items in the first sanctuary to name the items of the second. There was a golden altar in the first upon which incense was offered morning and evening, but there was also an offering of incense in the second sanctuary, an offering that occurred once a year on the Day of Atonement. While the Greek word which was translated into “altar” in Hebrews 9:4 can properly be translated, that same Greek word is also used to translate “censer.” In Hebrews 9 “censer” is the word which belonged in the text. When Aaron, on the first time to observe the Day of Atonement entered the second sanctuary, and first offered the blood of a bull for the sins of himself and his family, and then offered the blood of a goat for the sins of the people, he also did something else. Leviticus 16:11-13 describes the action of the high priest: “… and he shall take a censer full of coals of fire before Jehovah, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it within the vail, and he shall put the incense upon the fire before Jehovah that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is upon the testimony  that he die not.” Twice daily incense was taken, along with fire from the altar before the tabernacle. Fire and incense were both put on the golden altar of incense. On the Day of Atonement, fire was taken from the brazen altar in a censer and hands full of incense were to be taken into the second sanctuary. Before the mercy seat the high priest put the incense in his hand upon the fire in the censer and a smoke of incense rose up, covering the mercy seat.

The writer precisely describes the items which were in the second sanctuary. The only difference between the censer of Hebrews 9 and Leviticus 16 is that the metal of the censer of Leviticus 16 was not named. And since it was not specified, and other items in that second sanctuary were of gold, what would be more fitting than that the censer in which incense was burned before the mercy seat should also be gold? After all, the altar upon which incense was burned daily in the first sanctuary was gold, the censer (which became in essence also an “altar”) was also made of gold. Just where the censer of gold was kept which was used for the offering of incense in the second sanctuary the record does not say, but it was somewhere in that second sanctuary.

God’s Word is true. There is no mistake in Hebrews 9. What the Hebrew writer said was in the second tabernacle, was in the second tabernacle.