t
day. Or again, as it has been argued with learning and force[U], the
reference may be to the altar of incense, the golden altar of the
Holiest, on which the blood not only of the atonement victims but of all
sin-offerings was sprinkled; and every sacrifice so treated was regarded
as a holocaust; no part of it was reserved for food. But in either case
the altar in question is not of the Church but of the Tabernacle. The
"we" of ver. 10 is the community in its Hebrew rather than in its
Christian character.

[U] By the Rev. James Burkitt, in _The Golden Altar: an Exposition of
Hebrews xiii. 10, 11_.

So the whole thought centres itself in the supreme Sacrifice, as
Antitype answering to type. Jesus is our holocaust, wholly sacrificed
for our sins. His sacrifice involved in its awful ritual the shame and
agony of rejection by His own, excommunication from "the camp" of the
chosen. Then let the Hebrew believer, "receiving that inestimable
benefit," be ready also to follow his Redeemer's steps in rejection and
in shame. Let him also be prepared for casting out by priest and scribe.
Let his yearning heart, with whatever anguish, inure itself to the
thought that the beloved "city of his solemnities" is not the final and
enduring Jerusalem. Let his "thoughts to heaven the steadier rise," as
he looks, like Abraham before him, to "God's great town in the unknown
land," where sits on high the Mediator of the New Covenant, the "Priest
upon His throne."

CHAPTER XIII

LAST WORDS

HEB. xiii. 15-25

The connexion of ver. 15 with the antecedent context is suggestive. We
have been led to a contemplation of the Lord Jesus in His character as
Antitype and Fulfilment of the holocaust of the Levitical atonement.
Even as the chief animal victim of the old covenant, the symbolical
bearer of the sins of Israel, was carried "outside the camp" to be
consumed, so our Victim was led "outside the gate" of the city to His
death, that there, by His blood-shedding, by His absolute and perfect
self-immolation in our stead, He might "hallow His people," bringing
them forgiven and welcomed back to God. The point of the dread ritual of
Calvary here specially emphasized is just this, that He "suffered
outside the gate." The old Israel, guiltily unknowing, fulfilled the
type in the Antitype by refusing Him place even to die within the sacred
city. He, in His love for the new Israel, that He might in every
particular be and do what was fores