New Testament Studies (2023), 69, 230–234

doi:10.1017/S0028688522000261

S H O RT S T U DY

‘I Will Complete a New Covenant’ (Heb 8.8): Christology

and New Creation in Hebrews

Euntaek D. Shin
School of Biblical and Theological Studies, Wheaton College, 501 College Ave, Wheaton, IL 60187, USA
Email: [email protected]

Abstract
The use of συντελέω to speak of God’s ‘completion’ of the new covenant (Heb 8.8) has generated
various explanations. Yet none of them factor in an important clue in Hebrews, namely, the rest
discourse. By establishing literary and theological connections between Heb 3.7–4.13 and 8.8–12,
this study argues that the promise of the completion of the new covenant evokes the completion
of creation and its ensuing sabbath rest. Such an evocation brings to surface a logic of
Christology and new creation embedded in Hebrews.

Keywords: Hebrews; Christology; completion; new creation; new covenant; sabbath rest

The Christological exposition of Hebrews is drawn to a climax with an inclusio formed by

the quotation of Jer 31.31–4 (LXX 38.31–4) in Heb 8.8–12 and Jer 31.33–4 (LXX 38.33–4) in
Heb 10.16–17. The new covenant inaugurated by Christ’s death (9.15–22) brings into effect
the promise that God will complete (συντελέσω) a new covenant (8.8). The peculiar use of
συντελέσω instead of the commonly attested διαθήσομαι has generated varying explana-
tions.1 The use may be stylistic;2 it may denote the efficacy or finality of the new coven-
ant;3 or it may reflect the perfection motif in Hebrews.4 Minimally, the use of συντελέσω

1
Most LXX manuscripts attest διαθήσομαι except for Aquila (κοψω) and Symmachus (συντελεσω), which is
also possibly reflected in the Syro-hexaplaric translation.
2
E.g. F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews (NICNT; rev. edn, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990) 186 n. 40; Paul
Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Greek Text (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993)
416; William L. Lane, Hebrews 1–8 (WBC 47A; Dallas: Word, 1991) 209; James Moffatt, A Critical and Exegetical
Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1952) 110; Hans-Friedrich Weiß, Der Brief
an die Hebräer (KEK; 15th edn; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991) 445.
3
E.g. Erich Gräßer, An die Hebräer (Hebr 7.1–10.18) (EKKNT 17/2; Zürich: Benziger/Neukirchen-Vluyn:
Neukirchener, 1993) 98; and 98 n. 28; David Peterson, Hebrews and Perfection: An Examination of the Concept of
Perfection in the ‘Epistle to the Hebrews’ (SNTSMS 47; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) 40–1 and
206 n. 86; Ceslas Spicq, L’épitre aux Hébreux II. – Commentaire (Ebib; 3rd edn.; Paris: Gabalda, 1953) 241; Kenneth
J. Thomas, ‘The Old Testament Citations in Hebrews’, NTS 11 (1965) 310; Brooke Foss Westcott, The Epistle to
the Hebrews: The Greek Text with Notes and Essays (2nd edn.; reprinted, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984) 221.
4
E.g. Harold Attridge, Hebrews: A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress,
1989) 227; Craig R. Koester, Hebrews: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 36; New Haven:
Yale University Press, 2010) 385–6; Alan C. Mitchell, Hebrews (SP 13; Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2007) 168.

© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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 New Testament Studies 231

bears no significance.5 At best, it echoes an important motif in the book. In all cases, its
use makes little difference to the reading of Hebrews.
Yet it is intriguing that the author would opt for συντελέω in Heb 8.8. Nowhere else in
Hebrews does συντελέω appear, and the author’s choice leaves aside τελειόω and
ἐπιτελέω attested in Hebrews.6 Either one of these verbs could convey stylistic variation,
denote efficacy/finality, or reflect the perfection motif. Moreover, while the prefix συν is
generally absent in nouns and adjectives that hold the root τελ- (παντελής, τέλειος,
τελειότης, τελείωσις, τελειωτής, and τέλος),7 one finds an exception when Hebrews writes
of the consummation (συντέλεια) of the ages (9.26). The relationship between συντελέω
and συντέλεια will become clear towards the end. This short study contends that scholars
have overlooked a clue within an earlier discourse in Hebrews, namely, the rest discourse.
Συντελέσω, I submit, evokes the completion of creation and its ensuing promise of rest.
The literary connections between Heb 3.17–4.13 and 8.8–12 will not only proffer an
explanation for the use of συντελέσω, but also establish a theological connection between
Christology and new creation.
The rest discourse (3.7–4.13) and the promise of the new covenant (8.8–12) share com-
mon words and concepts. The notion of day (ἡμέρα) gives temporal orientation to the
readers – as epitomised with the word ‘today’ (σήμερον). In Hebrews 8 the quotation
reads that the days are coming when God will complete a new covenant (8.8), which
will be made with the house of Israel after those days (8.10). In Heb 3.7–4.13 ἡμέρα is
used to describe the day of testing God in the wilderness (3.8), the day when God speaks,
i.e. ‘today’ (σήμερον, 3.13, 15; 4.7)8 and the seventh day (4.4). The overlap is theologically
driven. The contrast between the old days and the present day evokes (the continuity and)
the uniqueness of God’s speech through the Son in these last days (ἐπ’ ἐσχάτου τῶν
ἡμερῶν τούτων) (1.1–2), i.e. the consummation (συντέλεια) of the ages (9.26). Hebrews
further highlights this contrast, by noting that the new covenant is not one that God
made with the fathers when he led them out of the land of Egypt (8.9), that is, the
Sinai covenant. Those fathers who had come out of Egypt provoked God and put God
to the test (3.9, 16).9 By contrast, the new covenant promises that the people of the
new covenant will be the people (λαός) of God (8.10), for whom remains a sabbath cele-
bration (4.9). The shared words and concepts thus underscore God’s promise for his peo-
ple in these last days.

5
Some do not comment on this verb, e.g. Gareth Lee Cockerill, The Epistle to the Hebrews (NICNT; Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2012); Susan E. Docherty, The Use of the Old Testament in Hebrews: A Case Study in Early Jewish Bible
Interpretation (WUNT II/260; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009); Jean Héring, L’Épitre aux Hébreux (CNT 12; Paris:
Delachaux & Niestlé, 1954); Luke Timothy Johnson, Hebrews: A Commentary (NTL; Louisville: Westminster John
Knox, 2006); Susanne Lehne, The New Covenant in Hebrews (JSNTSup 44; Sheffield: JSOT, 1990); Hugh Montefiore,
A Commentary on the Epistles to the Hebrews (HNTC; New York: Harper & Row, 1964); Gert J. Steyn, A Quest for
the Assumed LXX Vorlage of the Explicit Quotations in Hebrews (FRLANT 235; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 2011) 248–71; Georg A. Walser, Old Testament Quotations in Hebrews: Studies in their Textual and
Contextual Background (WUNT II/356; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013).
6
In Hebrews, τελειόω is used to refer to the perfection of believers (7.19; 9.9; 10.1.14; 11.40; 12.23) and the
perfection of Christ (2.10; 5.9; 7.28); ἐπιτελέω is used to refer to the completion of the tabernacle (8.5) and
the performance of worship (9.6).
7
Παντελής is used to describe Jesus’s salvific character (7.25); τέλειος is used to refer to mature/perfect
believers (5.14) and the (more) perfect tabernacle (9.11); τελειότης is used to depict the goal of perfection
that believers should strive for (6.1); τελείωσις refers to the perfection that the Levitical priesthood failed to
bring (7.11); τελειωτής is used to designate Christ the perfecter of faith (12.2); τέλος is used to speak of an
end in temporal terms (3.14; 6.811; 7.3).
8
This has been well-observed by others, e.g. Steyn, Quest for the Assumed LXX, 269.
9
Though lacking lexical overlap, the new covenant critiques the exodus generation who failed to remain in
God’s covenant (8.9). So Attridge, Hebrews, 227; Koester, Hebrews, 386.

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 232 Euntaek D. Shin

God’s promise, according to Heb 3.7–4.13 and 8.8–12, addresses an underlying, per-
sistent issue: sin. Going astray in one’s heart (3.10, 12) is resolved, as God writes his law
on their hearts (8.10).10 Sin (ἁμαρτία, 3.13), which leads to the hardness of heart, will
no longer be remembered (8.12). The completion of the new covenant, mediated by the
great high priest (8.6; 9.15), enables God’s people to enter into rest, which was available
since the completion of creation. It is no wonder then that Hebrews frames the rest
discourse with Christology (3.1–6; 4.14–5.10),11 and that the motif of Christ runs
through the rest discourse with wordplay. One might say that the faithful (πιστός)
high priest (2.17; 3.2, 6) guards believers against having an unfaithful (ἀπιστία) heart
(3.12); the one who was tempted (πειράζω), yet without sin, is able to help those
who are being tempted (2.18; 4.15) on the day of testing (πειρασμός) like those in
the wilderness (3.8).
Given such theologically driven connections, it is no surprise that LXX Jer 38.31,
quoted in Heb 8.8, displays divergences that draw one to look back at the rest discourse.
Stating that God completes a new covenant with the house of Israel and Judah, Hebrews
uses a prepositional phrase, ἐπί τὸν οἶκον, rather than the dative τῷ οἴκῳ (LXX Jer 38.31).
It may be the case that ἐπί is the natural preposition that follows συντελέω.12 What is
hard to ignore, however, is that the word οἶκος is concentrated in the pericope leading
up to the rest discourse (3.1–6). Moses was faithful in (ἐν) the house of God (3.2, 5).
Christ is faithful ‘over the house (ἐπὶ τὸν οἶκον)’ of God (3.6).13 The failure to enter
into rest under the leadership of Moses will not be the same with Christ, who is over
the house of God, so Hebrews seems to imply. Furthermore, when introducing the
Jeremiah quotation, instead of saying, wησὶ[ν] κύριος (LXX Jer 38.31, 33), Hebrews says,
λέγει κύριος (8.8, 10). It is true that λέγω is a common word in Hebrews, and it may
be the case that λέγει results from the variant readings in Sinaiticus and Alexandrinus.
It is nonetheless curious that the rest discourse begins with Διό, καθὼς, λέγει τὸ
πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον (3.7; see also 3.10, 15; 4.3–4, 7). One way to understand these divergences
is to say that those who hear God’s voice ‘today’ are to remember the new covenant, inau-
gurated and mediated by the one who is ‘over’ them. Indeed, the one who is over God’s
people is the agent of God’s speech in these last days (1.1–4); thus, God’s people are to
pay attention to what was heard (i.e. God’s speech spoken through the Son) (2.1), and con-
sider Jesus, the sent one (ἀπόστολος) and high priest (3.1).
In the same vein, the promise of completing (συντελέσω) a new covenant could have
echoed a passage also echoed in Hebrews 4 – thereby echoing the idea of the completion
of creation and its ensuing rest.14 According to Hebrews 4, unlike the disobedient Exodus

10
So observed by Koester, Hebrews, 392.
11
The framing of the rest discourse with Christological motifs has been recognised by others, e.g. Koester,
Hebrews, 276 n. 131; Jon Laansma, ‘I Will Give You Rest’: The Rest Motif in the New Testament with Special Reference
to Mt 11 and Heb 3-4 (WUNT II/98; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997) 268–72; Nicholas J. Moore, ‘Jesus as ‘The One
who Entered His Rest’: The Christological Reading of Hebrews 4.10’, JSNT 36 (2014) 383–400.
12
Attridge, Hebrews, 227.
13
Outside the Jeremiah quotations, οἶκος also occurs in Heb 10.21 (καὶ ἱερέα μέγαν ἐπὶ τὸν οἶον τοῦ θεοῦ),
which probably refers back to Heb 3.1–6. Another instance is found in Heb 11.7, where Hebrews writes of Noah’s
preparation (κατασκευάζω) of an ark for the salvation of his household, which might refer to the motif of God as
the builder (κατασκευάζω) of all things (3.3–4).
14
Following Richard Hays, I am using the term ‘echo’ as ‘metalepsis’, which ‘places the reader within a field of
whispered or unstated correspondences’ (Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1989) 20; see also 14–21). Elsewhere he writes, ‘Metalepsis is a rhetorical and poetic device in
which one text alludes to an earlier text in a way that evokes resonances of the earlier text beyond those explicitly
cited. The result is that the interpretation of a metalepsis requires the reader to recover unstated or suppressed
correspondences between the two texts’ (Richard B. Hays, The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of
Israel’s Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005) 2 (emphasis original)).

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 New Testament Studies 233

generation who had failed to enter rest, those who hear God’s voice ‘today’ are called to
strive to enter into rest (4.11). Explaining that such a rest was available from the foun-
dation of the world (4.3), the author writes, καὶ κατέπαυσεν ὁ θεὸς ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ
ἑβδόμῃ ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν ἔργων αὐτοῦ (4.4; see also 4.10). The shared words (as others
have observed) suggest that Heb 4.4 echoes Gen 2.2, the latter half of which reads, καὶ
κατέπαυσεν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ ἑβδόμῃ ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν ἔργων αὐτοῦ, ὧν ἐποίησεν
(Gen 2.2b).15 If this is the case, the statement that comes before Gen 2.2b would also
have been evoked, that is, καὶ συνετέλεσεν ὁ θεὸς ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ ἕκτῃ τὰ ἔργα
αὐτοῦ, ἃ ἐποίησεν (Gen 2.2a). Based on the already established literary connections,
we might then consider the possibility that God’s completion (συντελέω) of the new
covenant (8.8) echoes the completion (συντελέω) of God’s creation and the rest that
followed.
At the same time, the loose introduction to the echo, εἴρηκεν [γάρ] που, allows us to
examine another passage. Exod 31.17 resembles Heb 4.4 when it says καὶ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ
ἑβδόμῃ ἐπαύσατο καὶ κατέπαυσεν (Exod 31.17b).16 This potential echo is noteworthy
because the verses which lead up to v. 17 establish the sabbath as an everlasting covenant
(διαθήκη αἰώνιος, Exod 31.16). Its evocation in Heb 4.4 would have prepared the readers
for the motif of διαθήκην καινήν (8.8), which is also described as διαθήκης αἰωνίου
(13.20).17 To be sure, συντελέσω does not occur in Exod 31.17, yet the grounding of the
observance of the sabbath on the account of creation presents reason to evoke the com-
pletion of creation. Echoing Gen 2.2 or Exod 31.17, συντελέσω evokes the completion of
creation and its ensuing sabbath rest.
If the literary and theological connections of this study are valid, we are justified in
believing that the motifs of rest and the new covenant are closely knitted, reflecting a
logic embedded in Hebrews. God had created the world through Christ (1.2; 11.3),
which had culminated in rest on the seventh day (Gen 2.2; Exod 31.17; Heb 4.4). In the
consummation (συντέλεια) of the ages (9.26) God draws his people into rest through
the same agent, Christ, who has inaugurated and now mediates the new covenant
(8.6, 8; 9.15). What Hebrews envisions, since creation was completed in the beginning,
seems to be a new creation that is incomplete yet being realized through the already ‘com-
pleted’ new covenant. In short, Christ who is the agent of creation is also the agent of new
creation – a logic familiar to the early church.18 The God who created (καταρτίζω) the
world (11.3) creates (καταρτίζω) his people anew (13.21). In these last days God does so
through Christ, for whom a body was prepared (καταρτίζω) (10.5), so that he would par-
ticipate in humanity and be a faithful high priest (2.14–18). But why covenant? Covenant
points to God’s operation ad extra through the ‘two hands of God’, to borrow the words of
Irenaeus.19 Christ has inaugurated and mediates the new covenant, and ‘today’ the Spirit
reminds the believers of God’s law given on their minds and written on their hearts
(3.7–4.13; 8.10; 10.16), drawing believers into rest.

15
Hebrews’ divergences from Genesis (i.e. the addition of the subject ὁ θεὸς and the rendering of the dative τῇ
ἡμέρᾳ τῇ ἑβδόμῃ into a prepositional phrase) is minor.
16
So Gabriella Gelardini, ‘Hebrews, an Ancient Synagogue Homily for Tisha be-Av: Its Function, its Basis, its
Theological Interpretation’, Hebrews: Contemporary Methods – New Insights (ed. Gabriella Gelardini; BIS 75;
Leiden: Brill, 2005) 120, though exclusively opting for the allusion to Exod 31.17b instead of Gen 2.2; see also
idem, „Verhärtet eure Herzen nicht“: Der Hebräer, eine Synagogenhomilie zu Tischa be-Aw (BIS 83; Leiden: Brill, 2007).
17
Hebrews uses αἰώνιος to depict Christ’s salvation (5.9; 9.12, 15), eternal judgment (6.2), and the eternal
Spirit (9.14).
18
See Sean M. McDonough, Christ as Creator: Origins of a New Testament Doctrine (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2009).
19
Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4.20.1; 5.6.1.

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 234 Euntaek D. Shin

Acknowledgements. I am grateful to Sean McDonough for his interaction with this study as well as the
anonymous reviewer and the editor of NTS for their suggestions.

Competing interests. The author declares none.

Cite this article: Shin ED (2023). ‘I Will Complete a New Covenant’ (Heb 8.8): Christology and New Creation in
Hebrews. New Testament Studies 69, 230–234. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0028688522000261

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0028688522000261 Published online by Cambridge University Press