The spiritual infancy of these saints is indicated by the

figurative use of foods for doctrine.  `Ye have need of milk and

not of solid food'.

The apostle had occasion to use this same figure when writing to the

Corinthian Church, and for similar reasons:

`And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as

unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.  I have fed you with milk

and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither

yet now are ye able' (1 Cor. 3:1,2).

The milk, the rudiments of the beginning of the oracles of God, to them

had been `Jesus Christ and Him crucified' (2:2).  `Howbeit', said the

apostle, `we speak wisdom among them that are Perfect' (2:6).  The thought is

resumed and developed in chapter 13:8 -13.

Milk diet is natural and right for infants, but it has a purpose and a

limit.  `As new -born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may

Grow thereby'.  The apostle Peter adds a word to this that links it with

Hebrews 6.  `If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious' (1 Pet.

2:2,3).  Some believe that there is a definite reference to the epistle to

the Hebrews in 2 Peter 3:15,16 where Peter speaks of `our beloved brother

Paul' who had written unto the readers of 1 and 2 Peter.  In verse 16 there

is a word very like the word `difficult to interpret', dusermeneutos, of

Hebrews 5:11, where `some things hard to be uttered', dusnoetos, which those

that are unlearned and unstable wrest to their own destruction, are spoken

of.  In contrast Peter urges them to `grow in grace, and in the knowledge of

our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ' (2 Pet. 3:18).

There is much in Peter's two epistles that bears upon the teaching of

the epistle to the Hebrews.  Such subjects as the saving of the `soul', the

`fiery trial', `suffering and glory', come to mind at once as obvious

The outstanding feature of the babe that the apostle mentions in

Hebrews 5 is that such is `without experience'.  We have drawn

attention elsewhere (The Berean Expositor, Vol. 33) to the place

that `temptation' occupies in the epistles of the race and the

crown, see Hebrews 2:18; 11:17,37; James 1:2,12; 1 Peter 1:6;

Revelation 3:10, etc.  The Greek word for `tempt' is peirazo.

The Greek word for `unskillful' is apeiros, and carries with it

the thought `untested'.  Solid food belongs to the perfect.  The

perfect are placed in opposition to the untested.  It is one of

the marks of those pressing on to perfection that they endure

`temptation'.  The wilderness journey, we have seen, is the great

historical type of the early part of Hebrews, and that wilderness

journey was a `day of temptation' in more than one sense.

An important note is struck in the expression `senses exercised'.  In

Philippians 1:9 where the apostle prays for the saints who, like the Hebrews,

were reaching forward unto perfection (see chapter 3), he writes:

`And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in

knowledge and in all discernment (or perception)'.