It was therefore necessary that the patterns
of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things
themselves with better sacrifices than these. (Heb 9:23)
Arguing that
the “heavenly things” in Heb 9:23 is heaven itself, Craig Koester noted:
The Tabernacle was holy, yet it needed
purification. Although people were not understood to sin within the Tabernacle,
the sanctuary was threatened by defilement from people’s sins. In the same way,
one need not envision heavenly beings committing sins to think that
purification of heaven would be appropriate. Since sin affects all creation,
Christ’s work extends to all creation . . . Some refer to Satan being expelled
from heaven (Luke 10:18; John 12:31; Rev 12:7-9) and to evil beings inhabiting
the air (Eph 6:12; Col 1:20), so that even “the heavens are not clean in his
sight” (Job 15:15; 1 Clem. 39:5; Ign.
Smyrn. 6:1 . . .). This is not a primary
though in Hebrews, however . . . The peculiar idea that the heavenly sanctuary
might need cleansing . . . reflects a view of revelation. The author
understands fundamental reality to be heavenly rather than earthly. If the earthly
sanctuary is a representation of the heavenly one (8:2, 5), then laws
pertaining to the earthly tent presumably disclose something about the heavenly
tent that it represents. One might conclude that the earthy sanctuary was
cleansed because its heavenly counterpart was also to be cleansed. Christ did
not purify the heavenly sanctuary because he was bound to follow the Levitical pattern;
rather, the reverse is true. Levitical practice foreshadows Christ’s cleansing
of the heavenly tent at the turn of the ages (10:1). (Craig R. Koester, Hebrews: A New Translation with Introduction
and Commentary [AB 36; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001], 421, 427)
