“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me.
10:6 “Whole burnt offerings and sin-offerings you took no delight in.
10:7 “Then I said, ‘Here I am: 2 I have come – it is written of me in the scroll of the book – to do your will, O God.’” 3
10:8 When he says above, “Sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sin-offerings you did not desire nor did you take delight in them” 4 (which are offered according to the law), 10:9 then he says, “Here I am: I have come to do your will.” 5 He does away with 6 the first to establish the second. 10:10 By his will 7 we have been made holy through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
10:19 Therefore, brothers and sisters, 8 since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, 10:20 by the fresh and living way that he inaugurated for us 9 through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 10
1 tn Grk “for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”
2 tn Grk “behold,” but this construction often means “here is/there is” (cf. BDAG 468 s.v. ἰδού 2).
3 sn A quotation from Ps 40:6-8 (LXX). The phrase a body you prepared for me (in v. 5) is apparently an interpretive expansion of the HT reading “ears you have dug out for me.”
4 sn Various phrases from the quotation of Ps 40:6 in Heb 10:5-6 are repeated in Heb 10:8.
5 tc The majority of
6 tn Or “abolishes.”
7 tn Grk “by which will.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.
8 tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 2:11.
9 tn Grk “that he inaugurated for us as a fresh and living way,” referring to the entrance mentioned in v. 19.
10 sn Through his flesh. In a bold shift the writer changes from a spatial phrase (Christ opened the way through the curtain into the inner sanctuary) to an instrumental phrase (he did this through [by means of] his flesh in his sacrifice of himself), associating the two in an allusion to the splitting of the curtain in the temple from top to bottom (Matt 27:51; Mark 15:38; Luke 23:45). Just as the curtain was split, so Christ’s body was broken for us, to give us access into God’s presence.