Hebrews 5King James Version
Christ as high priest after the order of Melchizedek. Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.
Every high priest is taken from among humans, able to deal gently with the ignorant because he shares their weakness. Christ qualifies on the same terms: he learned obedience through suffering and was designated high priest by the Father, not by self-appointment. The order is not Aaron's but Melchizedek's, a priesthood the author promises to explain in depth. But first, a rebuke: the audience should be teachers by now and are instead back on milk, unable to handle solid food. The doctrine of Melchizedek is solid food.
Christ's high priesthood was earned through genuine human suffering and appointed by divine oath, which makes him both sympathetic and authoritative in a way Aaron's line never achieved.
5:8: "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered": sonship did not exempt him from the school of obedience; it enrolled him in it.
A congregation that began well, that witnessed signs and heard solid teaching in its early days, has been slowly retreating to familiar Jewish categories under the pressure of social exclusion. The author can see it from a distance. They are reaching back for milk when they were supposed to be feeding others.
Aaron as the model of legitimate priestly appointment, used to frame Christ's qualifications. Melchizedek named but not yet explained, carrying the weight of a promised argument. The audience, gently but firmly called spiritually immature, people who have drifted toward the shallow end.
Chapter 5 bridges the high priest introduction from chapter 4 with the Melchizedek exposition coming in chapter 7, and it inserts a pastoral interruption in between. The delay is deliberate: before the author advances the argument, he checks whether his readers are equipped to receive it. The rebuke is not contemptuous but pointed. Time has passed. Growth was possible and did not happen.
There is disappointment in verses 11 through 14, the kind a teacher feels for students who had every resource and remained unchanged. But it is disappointment that still expects better, which is different from giving up.
1For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins:
2Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity.
3And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins.
4And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.
5So also Christ glorified not himself to be made an high priest; but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to day have I begotten thee.
6As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.
7Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;
8Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;
9And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him;
10Called of God an high priest after the order of Melchisedec.
11Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing.
12For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.
13For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe.
14But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.