ACC ~ Hebrews 7 v16

NOT BROKEN DOWN BY DEATH. EPHREM THE SYRIAN: Paul says, “If perfection had been attainable” through the Levitic house, “for under it the people received the law”—that is, through its agency the law of the people was declared—“what further need would there have been” to elevate another priest from another place, “rather than one named after the order of Aaron,” who was the patriarch of those priests, “but after the order of” the uncircumcised “Melchizedek”?

After thus proving the necessity to change priesthood, Paul begins again to prove that, with this change in the priesthood, the law is changed too. “When there is a change in the priesthood,” he says, “there is necessarily a change in the law as well.” Is there need of a sacrificial law, if sacrifices and priesthood have been abolished?

So Melchizedek, “of whom these things are spoken” even though he was from that generation, came “from another tribe from which no one has ever served at the altar,” and the one who received his priesthood was certainly not from the Levites, lest he might be estranged from Melchizedek because of his origin.

In fact, “it is evident that our Lord” Jesus Christ “was descended from Judah, and in connection with that tribe Moses said nothing about priests.”

For this reason Uzziah was stricken with leprosy, because he wanted to transfer priesthood by his action and move it to the house of Judah, before Jesus, who was from Judah, came and took it in his hour.

“This becomes even more evident” because “another priest arises in the likeness of Melchi-zedek, who has become a priest not according to a legal requirement concerning bodily descent,” that is, not by being appointed before the people through the aspersion, sanctification, and blood and anointment of priesthood, and through its garments. Our Lord, on the contrary, was appointed and accepted the priesthood “by the power of a life” which is not broken down by death.

He accepted the priesthood through the oath proffered by David, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” Therefore, “a former commandment is set aside,” as well as the previous priesthood, “because of its weakness and uselessness” as a rule. COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.

NOT BY BODILY DESCENT. THEODORET OF CYR: He is saying it is possible to bring out the likeness between the one and the other: as one did not have successors to his priesthood, so neither did the other transmit it to another—which he referred to as “bodily descent” because the law required on account of the mortality of human beings that after the death of the high priest his son would succeed to the priesthood. Now, in my view this phrasehas another meaning as well: the priests cleansed the body in particular, sprinkling and washing it; they offered sacrifices for it. In other words, it was not for murderers or wreckers of others’ marriages that they were in the habit of performing sacrifices, but for menstruating women, lepers and people who touched the bones of the dead. INTERPRETATION OF HEBREWS 7.

Heb