Hebrews 10:19-39. HORTATORY PORTION OF THE EPISTLE.
The great doctrine of Christ's eternal priesthood having been led up to, established by argument, and at length fully expounded, it remains only to press the practical result of a belief in it in alternate tones of encouragement and of warning.
We have seen that, even in the earlier chapters, hortatory passages were frequently interposed, showing the purpose all along in the writer's mind. In the central and deepest part of the argument (Heb 7:1-10:19) there were none, close and uninterrupted attention to the course of thought being then demanded. But now, the argument being completed, the previous exhortations are taken up again, and enforced in consequently fuller and deeper tones. The connection of thought between these final admonitions and those previously interposed is evident when we compare the very expressions in Hebrews 10:19-23 with those in Hebrews 4:14-16, and the warnings of Hebrews 10:26, etc., with those of Hebrews 6:4, etc. Thus appears, as in other ways also, the carefully arranged plan of the Epistle, different in this respect from the undoubted Epistles of St. Paul, in which the thoughts generally follow each other without great regard to artistic arrangement. This, however, is in itself by no means conclusive against St. Paul's authorship, since there would be likely to be just this difference between a set treatise composed for a purpose, and a letter written currente calamo by the same author. It does, however, mark a different class of composition, and is suggestive, as far as it goes, of a different writer.