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Let's study Hebrews

Invaluable for preachers

LET'S STUDY HEBREWS
By Hywel R. Jones
Banner of Truth. xxii + 169pages. £5.95
ISBN 0 85151 814 1

This book is not the last word on Hebrews commentaries. It is quite dense in places and contains very little by way of application - a significant lack in a commentary that aims to be used for study in Sunday School, home, church and college groups. Some of the questions at the back of the book are extremely leading and while most are good at focusing attention back on the text, again, they rarely even point towards significant application.

However, if you are looking for a commentary as an aid to preaching and teaching Hebrews then this commentary is a must. It is one of the first I will reach for. Both the helpful introduction and the main text of the book show Jones to be a thoughtful and competent scholar (his knowledge of Greek is always used in crucial places in an understated and unobtrusive way), and I finished the book agreeing with Ted Donnelly's jacket endorsement that this commentary is 'sure-footed and profound'. But this book has one simple quality that makes it so helpful - its attention to detail and structure within individual passages.

Take, for example, the literally thorny passage of 6.4-8 and all the theological complexities that the passage brings. Jones begins by focusing on the literary form of the text and this analysis tells us that the passage: (i) is made up of two related parts (one of which illustrates the other); (ii) records something actual not theoretical; (iii) is a negation not an affirmation; (iv) uses impersonal language. My point in recording this is that here is a commentary where grammatical analysis explicitly provides the foundation and structure for theological interpretation. This leads to clarity, logical flow in expressing the passage's argument, and ultimately to rich understanding as Jones brings the details of the text into harmony with the broader context of the epistle. The whole commentary is full of this style and I constantly felt passages open before me into clear, text-controlled structures that would give shape and sharpness to sermons. At the same time there are gems of theological understanding. Commenting on 9.14, Jones writes: 'It is often forgotten that Christ was active on Calvary ƒ he was not inactive as bulls and goats were. He was making an offering to God. His priestly ministry is therefore not to be located in heaven alone. Golgotha was an altar and not just a gibbet, because Christ was acting as a priest there.'

Jones's layout of the structure of the epistle is not as convincing as that of the major commentaries of Lane and Ellingworth - Lane, for instance, sees the warning passage of 5.11-6.12 as one of five crucially placed warnings in the argument and not as part of a parenthesis, as Jones suggests. Decisions on these issues dictate the role that the whole epistle's argument will play in the individual sermon. Nevertheless, used alongside other study aids, and married to good application, this is an invaluable preacher's resource.

David Gibson, London