Bible Synapse
Is God’s law perfect, or was the first covenant faulty?
Hard question · Salvation and the Christian life · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
“The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul”; his statutes are right and his commandment pure.
The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.
“As for God, his way is perfect: the word of the Lord is tried”.
As for God, his way is perfect: the word of the Lord is tried: he is a buckler to all those that trust in him.
Christ mediates a better covenant: “if that first covenant had been faultless”, no second would have been needed; God, “finding fault with them”, promised a new covenant.
But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second. For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord.
The objection
The psalmist says “The law of the Lord is perfect”. Hebrews says that the first covenant was not faultless, and that this is why God replaced it. Was God’s law perfect or faulty?
The answer
The two passages measure different things. The psalm speaks of God’s law as his word: what it teaches about God and his will is true and good, and it is “perfect” (Hebrew temimah, whole, without defect) for the work the psalm describes, “converting the soul” and “making wise the simple” (19:7). Paul says the same in the New Testament: “the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good” (Romans 7:12).
Hebrews asks a different question: could the covenant made at Sinai, with its priests and sacrifices, bring God’s people to their final goal, a cleansed conscience and lasting access to God? It could not, and the Old Testament itself foretold a new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34). The fault Hebrews names is chiefly with the people, not with the law. God speaks “finding fault with them”, because “they continued not in my covenant” (8:8-9). Paul puts it the same way: the law was “weak through the flesh” (Romans 8:3). Its commands were right, but it could not change the hearts of those who received it. The new covenant does what the old could not: “I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts” (Hebrews 8:10). So the law can be perfect as God’s word and yet the first covenant can be not ‘faultless’ (amemptos) as a means of bringing sinners to perfection. God designed it to prepare for something better.
Other answers Christians give
‘Finding fault, he says to them’
Some interpreters, such as Grotius and Moses Stuart, punctuate Hebrews 8:8 as ‘finding fault, he says to them’, so that the fault found is with the covenant rather than the people. Albert Barnes prefers this punctuation, though he grants that the Greek can bear either construction, and that on either reading the old covenant had no real moral faults: it simply lacked the full provision for pardon that the gospel brings.
From the classic commentators
The meaning is not that that first covenant made under Moses had any real faults - or inculcated what was wrong, but that it did not contain the ample provision for the pardon of sin and the salvation of the soul which was desirable. It was merely "preparatory" to the gospel.Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible, on Hebrews 8