Sadly, most of the
proposals for translating ιλαστηριον are obscure in English. “Propitiation” and “expiation”
are not modern English, “atonement” is a good novel, but also not in common
usage. “Mercy seat” has the benefit of an established use in the OT and is used
in Heb 9:5, with the NIV an outlier, rendering the word in Rom 3:24 and elsewhere
as “atonement cover.”
The mercy seat
interpretation connects directly to the temple theme in Romans and thereby the
third pillar of Judaism. Although Paul never explicitly rejects the Jewish Temple
and its priesthood and sacrifice, he implies as much in his use of cultic
imagery to refer to the work of Christ. With respect to the temple in Romans Paul
identifies Christ as the mercy seat (3:21-26), calls on believers to offer
their bodies as living sacrifices with cultic terminology in 12:1-2, and Paul
characterizes his mission in terms of “priestly service” in 15:17, but not, it
must be said, in the Jerusalem Temple. Once again, we observe a pattern of
rejection, though in this case implicit, and elaborate reappropriation of a
central symbol of Judaism.
The purpose (εις + accusative)
of God displaying Jesus as the mercy seat by his blood is to demonstrate his
righteousness. How does it do this? God’s righteous character might have been
called into question since he had passed over sins prior to the sacrifice of Christ
without punishing them. But the death of Christ vindicates God’s righteous
character in the present era “showing that the forgiveness granted did not compromise
his justice” (Schreiner, Romans, 204); thus God remains righteous when
declaring righteous those who believe in Jesus.
A possible weakness
of this interpretation of 3:25b-26 is that the demonstration of God’s
righteousness here is his judging righteousness rather than his saving
righteousness. However, δικαισυνη
θεου
appears in Rom 3:5 as God’s judging righteousness and the cognate term, δικαιοκρισια, in Rom 2:5 refers to God’s “just verdict” in punishing sinners. (BDAG
s.v. δικαικρισια [246]) And as Schreiner points out, “the presence of δικαιον [in
3:26] indicates that God’s righteousness can’t be confined to his saving
righteousness.” (Schreiner, Romans, 206) In other words, not only God’s saving
righteousness but also his judging righteousness are displayed in the death of
Christ. (Brian S. Rosner, "The Revelation of God’s Saving Righteousness (Romans
3:21-31)," in Paul's Letter to the Romans: Theological Essays, ed.
Douglas J. Moo, Eckhard J. Schnabel, Thomas R. Schreiner, and Frank Thielman
[Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Academic, 2023], 121-22)
The linguistic evidence overwhelmingly
favors the rendering “cover of the ark of the covenant.” Hilastērion in
the LXX regularly appears as a translation for kapporet (the cover of
the ark of the covenant; e.g., Exod 25:18-22; Elv 16:2, 13-15; Num 7:89; and
see Heb 9:5). Kapporet appears four times in the Dead Sea Scrolls,
always with reference to a feature of the temple (4Q364 17.3; 4Q365 8a-b.1;
11Q19 3.9; 11Q19 7.9; similarly in Philo, Cherubim 25; Flight
100; Moses 2.95-96). Hilastērion can also be used for gifts
offered to the gods, as an offering made to Athena (Dio Chrysostom, Or.
11.121), or a tomb built by Hyrcanus (Josephus, Ant. 16.182). The word is
used metaphorically in 4 Macc 17:22, where the phrase “the hilastērion
of their death” refers to the death of martyrs; yet this phrase, like Rom 3:25,
seems to be the figurative use of a conventional term for a place or a thing
rather than an abstract concept (Baily 2000).
Despite this strong evidence,
translating hilastērion as a figurative reference to the cover of the
ark of the covenant prompts some objections. One such objection is grammatical;
in the LXX hilastērion virtually always carries the definite article, as
it does in Heb 9:5, but there is no definite article in 3:25, leading to the conclusion
that the referent is a general act of mercy rather than a specific place
(Cranfield 1:214-15). However, hilastērion is a predicate accusative,
which does not regularly take the article (Smyth 1956, §1614); in addition, hilastērion
could be understood by Paul as a one-of-a-kind object, which again does not
require the article (Wallace 1996, 248).
A second objection to translating hilastērion
as a figurative reference to the cover of the ark of the covenant is that
gentiles among Phoebe’s auditors at Rome would not understand the reference (Käsemann
97). This objection loses considerable force, however, if the Roman gentile
Christians are understood as sebomenoi who are familiar with Scripture—knowledge
of which is certainly presumed in the letter.
Third, the identification of Jesus
with a “thing” even with “a piece of furniture” (Cranfield, 1:215), proves
unimaginable to some, yet this objection misunderstands the role of the cover
of the ark of the covenant, to say nothing of misconceiving metaphorical language.
It appears not to be problematic when the Johannine Jesus compares himself with
a vine or with bread (John 6:31-58; 15:1-6), and it should not be problematic
in Romans if Paul compares Jesus Christ with the cover of the ark of the covenant.
To the contrary, the identification of
Jesus Christ with the hilastērion is a powerful one. Among the most
obvious features of the ark of the covenant is that human beings constructed it
following God’s specifications. The instructions in Exod 25:10-22 repeatedly
insist, “You shall make” or “You shall put.” In Romans, of course, it is explicitly
God who puts Jesus forward as the cover. Consistent with the contrast between
divine and human action elsewhere in this letter, Paul once again draws
attention to God’s role in making this hilastērion happen.
More to the point, Scripture
identifies the hilastērion as the place at which God makes himself known.
Culminating the building plan in Exod 25 is the declaration “There I will meet
you, and from above the cover, from between the two cherubim that are on the
ark of the covenant, I will tell you all that I am commanding you for the
Israelites” (Exod 25:22 NRSVue). This point comes to expression even more forcefully
in Lev 16, with God’s instructions regarding the Day of Atonement ritual. Aaron
is warned against coming before the hilastērion at any time other than
the Day of Atonement, because he will die there, so powerful is God’s holy
presence in that place (16:2; and see Num 7:89). (While the term hilastērion
has clear association with the Day of Atonement, that does not necessarily mean
that Paul sees Jesus as a replacement for the temple sacrifice, a move that
would be more at home in the book of Hebrews than in Paul) In the Second Temple
there is, of course, no ark of the covenant, and thus no hilastērion. As
Josephus writes (J.W. 5.219), at the very center of the holy of holies
there is nothing. Yet an association is made between hilastērion and God’s
glory (as in Philo, Moses 2.95-100; Cherubim 25). The identification
of Christ Jesus with this hilastērion, then, also calls up the very holiness
of God and God’s self-revelation. Jesus is put forward as the holiest place at
which God makes himself known to humankind. Given the emphasis in the early chapters
of Romans on the glory of God and of humanity’s refusal to acknowledge that
glory, this reference to Jesus as the center of the holy of holies is
significant.
One thing that should be noted here is
the easy way in which Pual refers to “his” blood and then “his” righteousness,
without carefully sorting out which “his” belongs to which agent. This slight
unclarity may suggest that disengaging the two agents is less an issue for Paul
than for his interpreters. To be sure ,the actor here is God, but the notion that
redemption is “in Christ Jesus” already indicates that God is not acting with
this agent in the same way as God acted with Moses or Abraham or David. God’s
self-revealing act is bound up with Jesus.
Construing the relationships among the
string of prepositional phrases that follow is a challenge. The hilastērion
is said to be both “through faith” (dia tēs pisteōs) and “by his blood”
(en tō autou haimati), which can be rendered “through faith in his
blood,” as in the KJV and the NIV. Nowhere else, however, does Paul or any
other NT text refer to belief in the blood of Jesus. Paul rarely follows
either the noun pistis or the verb pisteuō with en, as in “belief
in” or “believe in.” (Rom 10:9 refers to the location of trust or belief as “in
your heart,” and Gal 3:26 to faith or trust “in Christ Jesus”) It is also
unclear how God’s offering of Jesus as the cover of the ark of the covenant is accomplished
through belief in blood. Instead of linking “through faith” with “by his
blood,” the two prepositional phrases stand in apposition: God acted through
faith, that is, through God’s own faithfulness, as in Rom 3:3, and God
acted by means of Jesus’s blood. Coupled with the reference to the holy of
holies, the graphic reference to blood suggests a connection to sacrifice, but
that connection should not be overstated, especially at 5:9 again uses “blood”
metonymically to refer to death. (Beverly Roberts Gaventa, Romans: A
Commentary [The New Testament Library; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John
Knox Press, 2024], 113-15)