As with Ps 8, so here also the
story of Jesus provides the template for the preacher’s explication of the
psalm. In this case, however, a distinctive reading in the OG version of Ps
39(40):7—unattested in Hebrew manuscripts or in other ancient witnesses to the
Hebrew text—proves indispensable to the homilist’s interpretation. In the
second half of Ps 39(40):7a, the Masoretic text offers a striking image: אָזנְיַםִ
כּ רִָית לִּי “ears you have hollowed out for me.” Most English translations
have followed the KJV in understanding the expression to mean that God has “opened”
the psalmist’s ears to hear and obey. The OG translator, however, appears to
have taken this as an instance of synecdoche—ear for body—and discovered
thereby a reference to God’s fashioning of the human being out of the dust of
the ground. Seeking to clarify the figure for his readers, then, the translator
will have chosen a more prosaic rendering of the Hebrew: “A body you have
fashioned for me” (σῶμα κατηρτίσω μοι).
. . .
Jesus’s body is the medium of his
obedience to God. “In the days of his flesh,” the preacher recounts, Jesus
offered up impassioned prayers and petitions, trusting God to save him from the
power of death; and he was heard because of his godly fear (Heb 5:7). In his
body, “he learned obedience through what he suffered,” and in this way he was
made perfect for his high-priestly vocation (Heb 5:8–9). As high priest, Jesus
offered himself up to God once for all. Raised bodily from the dead, he has
entered heaven itself, there to present himself a living sacrifice for the sins
of the people (Heb 9:12, 14, 26). What is more, the blood and flesh of the
embodied Jesus now open the way for his brothers and sisters to enter the
heavenly sanctuary themselves (Heb 10:19–22). Through the power of his
indestructible life, this great high priest ever lives to make intercession for
his people (7:25), granting them freedom of access to the very throne of God,
where they can obtain mercy and find grace to help them in their time of need
(4:14–16). (J. Ross Wagner, “Performing the Psalms with Jesus: Christ and
Community in the Letters to the Hebrews,” in A Scribe Trained for the
Kingdom of Heaven: Essays on Christology and Ethics in Honor of Richard B. Hays,
ed. David M. Moffitt and Isaac Augustine Morales [Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books,
2021], 160-61)
