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building", there the word translated building is the Greek ktisis "creation". The word
translated "build" in Heb. 3: 3, 4 is kataskeuazo, skeue is the "tackling" of a ship
(Acts 27: 19). Skeuos is a "vessel" and in Hebrews "the vessels of the ministry" used
in the Tabernacle erected by Moses (Heb. 9: 21). So in Heb. 9: 2 the word "made"
kataskeuazo is used of the Tabernacle, and after speaking of the candlestick, the table and
the shewbread, the golden censer, the ark and the mercy seat, the apostle says:
"Now when these things were thus ordained" kataskeuazo (Heb. 9: 6).
In Exod. 27: 19 and 36: 7 kataskeue is used in the LXX for the "vessels" and
the "stuff" of the Tabernacle. We have no need to range the universe to discover what
"house" it is that is thus built in Heb. 3: 2, 3 and 4; the house that Moses built, which is
incomparably less in glory than the house that Christ built, refers particularly to the
Tabernacle made after the pattern in the mount, which is what Moses erected, as
contrasted with the "true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man" (Heb. 8: 2).
The avoidance by the apostle of any use of the word oikodomeo "to build" is significant.
Those to whom Hebrews is written are visualized as pilgrims. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
are spoken of as "tent dwellers"; here they have "no continuing city"; they look for one
to come.
"He that built all things is God" (Heb. 3: 4).
"This verse has been a kind of offendiculum criticorum in past ages, and has never yet,
in any commentary which I have seen, been satisfactorily illustrated . . . . . if the verse be
entirely omitted, and the third verse be immediately connected with the fifth, there seems
to be nothing wanting, nothing omitted that is at all requisite to finish the comparison
which the writer is making . . . . . The amount then of the reasoning seems to be:
`Consider that Christ, as Theos and the former of all things, must be the Author too of the
Jewish and Christian dispensations, which glory belongs to Him, not only in His
mediatorial office, and as being the Head of a new dispensation, but also as the Founder
both of this and the Jewish dispensation in His divine character; while Moses is to be
honoured only as the head of the Jewish dispensation, in the quality of a commissioned
superintendent, but not as author and founder" (Moses Stuart).
Kataskeuazo is not used in the New Testament Scriptures of creation, and it is beside
the mark to bring heaven and earth as the "all things" of Heb. 3: 4 into the argument.
The divine command to Moses was "See . . . . . that thou make all things according to the
pattern shewed to thee in the mount" (Heb. 8: 5) where the words "all things" must be
limited to the Tabernacle which Moses was about to erect. In two passages in Hebrews
the A.V. leads the reader to think of the creation of "the world", where the original
speaks of "the ages" Heb. 1: 2 and 11: 3. The reader should be aware of this tendency
on the part of the A.V., and for the sake of clearness we indicate the several words that
are thus translated "world", and hope that the survey of the examples will fully justify the
diversion.
World--kosmos
"From the foundation of the world" (Heb. 4: 3; cf. ix.26).
"He condemned the world" (Heb. 11: 7).
"Of Whom the world was not worthy" (Heb. 11: 38).
World--aion (age)
"By Whom also He made the worlds" (Heb. 1: 2).
"The powers of the world to come" (Heb. 6: 5).