For those who interact with Christadelphians, Heb 2:14 is a key “proof-text” they use to support their understanding of Satan (see, for e.g., this article by Duncan Heaster).
The following,
from David M. Moffitt, reveals that the author of Hebrews did believe in an
external, supernatural “Satan,” and that Heb 2:14 supports, not negates, this
interpretation:
Jesus’ Death in Hebrews: New Passover and
New Covenant Inauguration
What then of the death of Jesus in Hebrews? I argue extensively
elsewhere that Jesus’ death is linked in Heb. 9.15– 21 with the rituals that
ratified or inaugurated the Mosaic covenant and the use of the tabernacle. 25
Nevertheless, in Hebrews, as in the Pentateuch, inauguration and initial purification
are prerequisite to the use of the tabernacle and so to the offering of the
sacrifices that maintain the covenant. Hebrews interprets inauguration in terms
of initial purification, as noted above by Haber, but the basic logic that
things must first be consecrated and set in order, and then sacrifices may be
offered is affirmed in Hebrews. As the author says in 9.6– 7, everything must
first be set up and prepared, then the priests can enter and minister. There
is, however, another way in which the role that Jesus’ death plays in Hebrews
aligns with the larger narrative of the Pentateuch. In Heb. 2.14– 15 Jesus’
death is identified as liberating God’s people from their bondage to the fear
of death and from the one who wields the power of death – the Devil. Th is
passage, I argue, contains an allusion to Passover.
Hebrews' relative silence regarding Passover is well known. The author
explicitly mentions it only once in 11.28 where he states that Moses performed the
Passover and the aspersion of blood by faith so that 'the destroyer of the firstborn'
would not touch the people of Israel. This 'destroyer' (ό όλεθρεύων) clearly
alludes to the strange statement in Exod. 12.23. Exodus 12.23 LXX states that,
on account of the Passover blood on the doorposts, the LORD would 'not permit
the destroyer' (ούκ άφήσει τόν όλεθρεύοντα) to enter the houses of the
Israelites and strike them. While throughout the Passover story the LORD
himself is the one who strikes the Egyptian firstborn (e.g. Exod. 12.13), here
in Exod. 12.23 some other agent, the destroyer, is identified as the one who
does the smiting.
Hebrews' identification of the audience as part of 'the congregation
of the firstborn' enrolled in the heavens in Heb. 12.23, together with the
author's earlier comment in 2.14 that Jesus defeated the Devil, the one who
holds the power of death, suggest the inference that 'the destroyer of the
firstborn' in 11.28 who was kept away by the paschal blood that Moses sprinkled
is this same malevolent angelic figure referred to in Heb. 2.14. That is to
say, given that the destroyer targeted the 'firstborn', and given that the
audience is among the 'congregation of the firstborn', it is hardly a stretch
to conclude that the author assumes that the audience's enemy - the Devil - is
the very destroyer whom Moses in some sense defeated at the first Passover. If
this connection is valid, then the author likely alludes to the exodus, if not
Passover itself, when he speaks in 2.14-16 of Jesus' death defeating the Devil
and obtaining liberation from the fear of death.
At least two additional arguments further support this conclusion.
First, some Second Temple Jewish traditions clearly identify the destroying
agent of Exod. 12.23 with the malevolent angelic being who wields the power of
death and who stands in the heavenly court accusing God's people. Jubilees
49.2, for example, states that 'all the powers of Mastema were sent to kill all
of the first- born of the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh to the
firstborn of the captive maidservant who was at the millstone and to the
cattle'. Throughout Jubilees it is clear that Prince Mastema is the
chief angelic opponent of God's people. In fact, in Jubilees 48 he is
identified as the evil spiritual force that motivates Pharaoh and the Egyptians
to oppose Moses and the people. It is only when some of the good angels bind
Mastema for a time that Pharaoh finally relents and allows the people to go.
Once Mastema is again released, however, Pharaoh changes his mind and pursues
the people. Thus, Jubilees allows the inference that at least some Second
Temple Jews conceived of the first Passover not only as liberation from Pharaoh
but also, if only in a limited way, as liberation from Mastema who was at work
in Pharaoh. Moreover, in those passages where Jubilees envisions the
eschatological future in which the land is ultimately purified and people's
sins and impurities are finally done away with, the text affirms that there
will also be no more Satan or evil one who destroys (see Jub. 23.29; cf.
50.5). It appears that Mastema is the primary figure the text thinks of as a
Satan and destroyer who will one day be no more.
Evidence such as this strengthens the plausibility of the idea that
Jesus' defeat of the Devil in Heb. 2.14-16 is conceptually linked with the
Passover, when Moses sprinkled blood in order to prevent the Destroyer from
harming Israel. Indeed, the notion of the seed of Abraham being delivered from
bond-age (δουλεία) appears to echo the exodus event. (Every use of the term
δουλεία in Septuagint Exodus and Deuteronomy refers to enslavement in Egypt.)
A second piece of evidence, however, concerns the remarkable
similarity between the narrative logic of the first Passover and the exodus in
the Pentateuch and the actual development of Hebrews’ argument. The point can
be illustrated as follows: the first Passover marked the liberation of God’s
people from their enslavement to Pharaoh in Egypt. As such, Moses led the
people out of Egypt and into the wilderness where they journeyed to Sinai,
ratified the covenant, inaugurated the tabernacle and sacrifices, and moved
towards the promised inheritance only for the people to fail to attain it at
Kadesh.
Intriguingly, shortly after discussing Jesus' liberation of his
brothers and sisters from the Devil in Hebrews 2, the author draws an explicit
analogy between the audience and Israel in the wilderness in Hebrews 3-4. This
can hardly be an accident. From the perspective of the kind of pentateuchally shaped
narrative laid out above, the author's logic here makes perfect sense. If
Jesus' death is being conceived of along the lines of a new Passover, then Hebrews'
emphasis on the wilderness identity of the audience follows nicely. The
audience can and must recognize their current position in space and time as
analogous to that of the firstborn who have been freed from their slavery and,
like Israel under Moses, are now journeying in the eschatological
wilderness.
If all this is more or less correct, Hebrews has made some conflations
in the larger Pentateuchal story. Passover/exodus and covenant inauguration are
all directly linked in Hebrews with Jesus' death. Nothing about this conflation
is, however, inherently anti-Jewish. This very linkage has biblical precedent. Jeremiah
31.32, for example, directly connects God's act of taking Israel out of Egypt
with his making a covenant with them. The new exodus motif of Jeremiah 31 with
its emphasis on liberation from an enslaving power and the making of a new
covenant with Israel and Judah are, by Jeremiah's comparison to the Mosaic
covenant, tightly bound together, even conflated.
More significantly, though, Hebrews' Yom Kippur analogy - the author's
discussion of Jesus' presentation of his atoning sacrifice to the Father and
his ongoing high-priestly ministry in the heavenly holy of holies - can be seen
to stand at some remove from the event of Jesus' death once the role of Jesus'
resurrection and bodily ascension in the homily's logic are recognized. The
sequence of Jesus' death, resurrection and ascension suggests that, to return
to Susan Haber's argument discussed above, Hebrews has not in fact conflated
covenant inauguration with covenant maintenance. Jesus' death in Hebrews is not
the sum total of his sacrifice. The author does not confuse the presentation of
Jesus' sacrifice or Jesus' intercession for his people with the act that
liberates his people and inaugurates the new covenant. On the contrary, if the
presentation of Jesus' sacrifice occurs after his resurrection, then Hebrews'
location of Jesus' Yom Kippur sacrifice and high-priestly intercession on the
other side of that event suggests that the author understands that Jesus'
sacrifice is meaningful and necessary within the bounds of an already
inaugurated covenant relationship. Jesus' offering of his sacrifice and his
high-priestly intercession at God's right hand can therefore be understood to
be the means by which he maintains the new covenant relationship inaugurated at
his death.
In sum, two key ways that Hebrews conceives of Jesus' death are as the
event that liberated God's people from slavery to their spiritual foe, the
Devil (2.14-15) and as the act that inaugurated the new covenant between them and
God (9.15-18). After this liberating and inaugurating work, however, Jesus rose
from the dead and ascended into the highest heaven as the new covenant's great
high priest. There he performs his high-priestly service in God's presence
being in himself both high priest and sacrifice. This ministry consists, then,
both of the presentation of his atoning sacrifice to the Father, something that
is effectively a perpetual reality by virtue of his remaining in the Father's
presence, and of his perpetual intercession there for his people.
If the preceding points are granted, it follows that the author thinks
about the new covenant and its cult and sacrifice in ways that are strikingly
analogous to both the Pentateuch's logic of covenant and cult and its larger
narrative arc. In Hebrews, as in the Pentateuch, God liberated his people and inaugurated
a covenant with them. That covenant is then partly maintained by way of
sacrifice and high-priestly intercession. But how might all of this relate to
the question of identity in Hebrews? I turn next to address this question. (David
M. Moffitt, “Wilderness Identity and Pentateuchal Narrative: Distinguishing
between Jesus’ Inauguration and Maintenance of the New Covenant in Hebrews,” in
Muted Voices of the New Testament: Readings in the Catholic Epistles and
Hebrews [Library of New Testament Studies 587; London: T&T Clark,
2017], 164-68)
