Hebrews 8 and the People’s Failure

The last chapter closed with a sentence from Hebrews that many readers think settles the whole question. The writer says that if the first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need for a second. The first covenant, then, had a fault, and that covenant, it is assumed, was the law given at Sinai.

From there the claim usually runs like this: “Hebrews says the first covenant had a fault, so God gave a new covenant. The law itself is perfect, of course. But people cannot keep it, and where there is law, there is wrath.”

It sounds careful, even respectful. No one is calling God’s law bad. The claim says only that the law was the wrong tool for sinners, so God put it away and brought something better. Hebrews really does say that the first covenant was not faultless, and that much is in the text.

Yet in the very next verse Hebrews says exactly with whom the fault was found, and that is the subject of this chapter.

Read One Verse Further

Here is the passage, with the verse that is usually left off:

Hebrews 8:7-9 For if that first diatheke διαθήκη dee-ath-ay'-kay(covenant) had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. For finding fault with them He says: "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new diatheke(covenant) with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah — not like the diatheke(covenant) that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; for they did not continue in my diatheke(covenant), and so I paid no heed to them, declares the Lord.

Verse 7 says that the first covenant was not “faultless,” and verse 8 gives the reason: “For finding fault with them He says.” The fault is found with them, not with the law.

The two words are related. In verse 7, “faultless” is amemptos ἄμεμπτος am'-emp-tos, literally “without blame.” In verse 8, “finding fault” is memphomai μέμφομαι mem'-fom-ahee, to blame or find fault. The writer uses the same root in back-to-back verses, so that we cannot miss the connection. The first covenant was not without blame, and the blame landed on them.

Verse 9 names who “they” are and what they did: “for they did not continue in my diatheke(covenant).” The fault was found with the people who did not stay in the covenant. Jeremiah, whom Hebrews is quoting, says it even more bluntly: “which My covenant (berit בְּרִית ber-eeth') they broke” (Jeremiah 31:32).

The fault, then, was real. It was simply with the people, not with the law.

The Program and the Machine

Picture a team of programmers who have written a clean and elegant piece of software that does exactly what it was designed to do. Now suppose it is installed on an old laptop with a cracked fan and a dying hard drive, and every time it is opened, the screen freezes.

No one would call the programmers and tell them to throw out their code and write something entirely different. Nothing is wrong with the program; the machine is the problem. If the programmers care for the owner, they will not hand him different software. They will hand him a new machine, one that can actually run what they wrote.

That is the shape of Hebrews 8. The passage goes on to say what God promises to do about the fault:

Hebrews 8:10 For this is the diatheke(covenant) that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my nomoi νόμοι nom'-os(laws) into their dianoia διάνοια dee-an'-oy-ah(thought), and write them on their kardiai(hearts, soul-domains), and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Some things here are new and some are not. The house of Israel is the same. God is the same: “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” What is written is “my nomoi(laws),” and as we saw in Chapter 8, the verse Hebrews is quoting, Jeremiah 31:33, reads “My Torah.” What changes is where it is written: “into their dianoia(thought)” and “on their kardiai(hearts, soul-domains).”

Had the problem been with the law, the remedy would have been a different law. Because the problem lay on the people’s side, the repair is on the people’s side as well. The new covenant does not change the law. It changes the people’s hearts, so that the law is within them.

This is not God trying one plan, watching it fail, and starting over with another. It is the same God with the same Torah, keeping His word to the same people, and this time writing it on their hearts.

Where There Is Law, There Is Wrath?

The second half of the claim, “where there is law, there is wrath,” comes from Paul:

Romans 4:15 for the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law) produces orge ὀργή or-gay'(wrath) — but where there is no nomos(law), there is also no transgression.

We met this verse in Chapter 27, where we saw the word for transgression, parabasis παράβασις par-ab'-as-is, the stepping over of a line. Here the way Paul builds the sentence matters. He does not stop at “the nomos(law) produces orge(wrath).” He attaches the reason immediately: “where there is no nomos(law), there is also no transgression.”

Read together, the two halves explain each other. The law does not pour out wrath on people who walk within it. What it does is mark a line, so that crossing the line becomes a transgression. Where there is no line, there is nothing to step over, and where there is a line, stepping over it has a name.

Wrath, then, does not come because there is law. It comes because there is parabasis, a stepping over. The law marks the line, and the one who steps over it brings the wrath.

Sin Used the Good Thing

A few chapters later Paul himself raised the obvious objection. If the commandment is the line that turns my sin into transgression, has the good commandment become death to me? Here is his answer:

Romans 7:13 Did then what is good become death to me? May it never be! Rather it was sin — so that sin might be shown to be sin, producing death in me through what is good — so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.

Paul calls the commandment good, and he refuses to blame it for his death. “Rather it was sin.” Sin was the killer. It took a good thing and used it, “producing death in me through what is good.”

The verse also shows what the commandment accomplished in all this: “so that sin might be shown to be sin,” and “so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.” The commandment did not create the sin. Through the commandment, sin was shown to be sin.

The cause of death, therefore, is not the law but sin. Paul says so directly, and twice in a single verse.

The Fault Was Ours

Set side by side, the two passages take the claim apart quietly.

Hebrews does say that the first covenant was not faultless. But it says that God found fault “with them,” with people who “did not continue” in His covenant, and the remedy it describes is not a new law but a new heart with God’s laws written on it.

Romans does say that the law produces wrath. But in the same sentence it ties wrath to transgression, and a few chapters later it names sin, not the law, as what brings death.

The law was never on trial; we were.

Another familiar picture is often used to describe what the law can and cannot do: the mirror. Where does that picture actually come from?