Last Will or Covenant in Hebrews 9

Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. 16 For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. 17 For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. 18 Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood.
Hebrews 9:15-18 ESV

Most English translations of this passage in Hebrews translate διαθήκη (diatheke) as “covenant” in vs 15 and 18, but as “will” in vs 16-17. This is a bizarre switch. Hebrews 9:16-17 is referring to the sacrificial victim of the covenant, not to a person who is instigating the covenant, nor to a person who has died and left an inheritance.

Reasons We Can Know Hebrews 9:16-17 Is about Covenants not Wills

There are four reasons we can know this without reasonable doubt:

First, a “last will” isn’t the topic in Hebrews. It spends several chapters talking about covenants and then switches to wills for just 2 verses? Verse 18 clearly shows that 16-17 are talking about covenants, not last wills. This passage has nothing at all to do with last wills.

Second, Hebrews 9:16-17 is the only place in the Bible where διαθήκη is translated as “will” instead of “covenant”. This is bizarre and completely contrary to the context of these verses. It should be translated as covenant here, like everywhere else.

That’s not just my opinion.

The ESV Global Study Bible includes a footnote stating that “covenant” is also a possible translation: “…or an ancient Near Eastern “covenant.” Making such covenants included offering an animal sacrifice. Thus both are carried out only after a death.” However “possible” seems to be a severe understatement.

Here’s what John Wesley wrote about v16:

I say by means of death; for where such a covenant is, there must be the death of him by whom it is confirmed – Seeing it is by his death that the benefits of it are purchased. It seems beneath the dignity of the apostle to play upon the ambiguity of the Greek word, as the common translation supposes him to do.

Adam Clarke cites a “learned and judicious” friend with the initials J.C. for this alternate translation:

For where there is a covenant, it is necessary that the death of the appointed victim should be exhibited, because a covenant is confirmed over dead victims, since it is not at all valid while the appointed victim is alive.

He also cites Gilbert Wakefield for this translation:

For where a covenant is, there must be necessarily introduced the death of that which establisheth the covenant; because a covenant is confirmed over dead things, and is of no force at all whilst that which establisheth the covenant is alive.

And Clarke adds, “This is undoubtedly the meaning of this passage; and we should endeavor to forget that testament and testator were ever introduced, as they totally change the apostle’s meaning.”

Third, God’s other covenants were established with a sacrifice. The texts describing the Noahic, Abrahamic, Sinai, and Aaronic include the sacrificial ceremony explicitly. It’s the same with man-made covenants, such as the one between Jacob and Laban, and the one between Abraham and Abimelech.

For the Noahic Covenant:

Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
Genesis 8:20 ESV

For the Abrahamic Covenant:

He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half.
Genesis 15:9-10 ESV

For the Sinai Covenant:

And Moses wrote down all the words of the LORD. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the LORD. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.”
Exodus 24:4-7 ESV

Not every text concerning a covenant describes the sacrifices involved, but the pattern is clear.

Fourth, the New Covenant was not made between the Son and Israel/Judah. It was made between ALL of God and Israel/Judah, and only the Son died. The Son is the sacrificial victim that sealed the New Covenant, not a rich man who died and left postmortem instructions to his survivors.

Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD.
Jeremiah 31:31-32 ESV

The New Covenant Does Not Replace the Old

We can also know that the establishment of a new covenant does not annul or override a previous covenant. We can know this by two reasons:

First, none of God’s previous covenants annulled or overrode any of his other covenants. God’s covenant with Israel at the end of the wilderness journey (the Deuteronomic Covenant, which was not a renewal of the Sinai, but a new covenant “besides the covenant that he had made with them at Horeb” per Deuteronomy 29:1) didn’t replace his covenant with Phinehas, which didn’t replace his covenant with Aaron, which didn’t replace the Sinai Covenant, which didn’t replace the Abrahamic, which didn’t replace the Noahic.

Second, Paul says in Galatians 3:15 that even with a man-made covenant, a new covenant doesn’t annul or modify an older one. Then in v17 he gives an example of how this applies to God’s covenants: the Sinai Covenant did not annul the Abrahamic Covenant. Each covenant has a different purpose (v18-19) and so they operate simultaneously.

To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, “And to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one, “And to your offspring,” who is Christ. This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise.
Galatians 3:15-18 ESV

The New Covenant was in full force from the moment Jesus died, yet when Hebrews was written 30-50 years later, it did not replace the Sinai Covenant. Hebrews plainly says they are both in operation at that time, even if one is “becoming obsolete and growing old” and “is ready to vanish away”.

In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
Hebrews 8:13 ESV

If both covenants were in force at one time–just like all of the previous covenants that God has ever made–then modern Christian theology has a completely scrambled idea of how covenants work.

The Letter to the Hebrews is so egregiously and commonly misinterpreted as to make it say the opposite of what it actually says. It doesn’t say that the New Covenant replaces the old nor that the priesthood of Jesus replaces that of Aaron. It says that the New Covenant is *superior* because it has superior promises and a superior priesthood.

Those very few verses that appear to say otherwise are easily interpreted in complete harmony with all the rest of the biblical testimony on covenants without any literary sleight of hand. It only appears to be sleight of hand because the harmonized interpretation is so foreign to what our churches have been teaching us.

We shouldn’t be surprised.

O LORD, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble, to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say: “Our fathers have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit.
Jeremiah 16:19 ESV

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For a more detailed look at the nature of covenants and how they interact with each other, see this video. Please watch the whole thing to the end.