1.1 Structure of Heb 9.23–8

I will argue here that the internal structure of 9.23–8, especially 9.23–6, crucially informs how we should understand 9.23; see Fig. 1. Footnote ¹²

Figure 1.

Structure of Hebrews 9.23–8

Foundational to my analysis is the way the two ‘not this, but this’ contrasts of 9.24–6 elaborate the assertion of 9.23b (i.B). In 9.24, Christ's sacrifice is superior to the old covenant's in that he did not enter a handmade inner sanctum but heaven itself (ii.A–ii.B.1). In 9.25–6a (ii.C–D), Jesus’ sacrifice is superior because he did not enter the heavenly Holy of Holies in order to offer himself many times, as the high priest yearly entered its earthly counterpart ‘with another's blood’, but instead was manifested once, at the end of the ages, to set aside sin by his sacrifice.

In addition to their formal and material similarities, the parallel nature of the contrasts in 9.24 and 9.25–6 is indicated by the οὐ–οὐδέ pair with which they open. The οὐδέ in 9.25 has the sense of ‘nor’;Footnote ¹³ 9.25–9.6a both contrasts with 9.26b and correlates with 9.24. As the explanatory γάρ of 9.24 corroborates, the two contrasts of 9.24–6 supply two senses in which Christ's sacrifice is ‘better’ than its old covenant anticipations.Footnote ¹⁴ In other words, 9.23 supplies the thematic bud that blossoms in the next three verses. Finally, in 9.27–8, the author introduces a new development of the singularity of Christ's sacrifice, a prominent theme in 9.25–6, by comparing the sequence ‘offer then return’ to the universal human fate of ‘death then judgement’.

Most scholars treat 9.23–8 as a unit.Footnote ¹⁵ However, Albert Vanhoye has argued that the unit begins at 9.24, with 9.23 concluding the preceding section as well as introducing the next. Vanhoye sees 9.23 as evoking both 9.15–16 with its mention of necessity (ἀνάγκη, cf. 9.16) and 9.22 with its reference to purification.Footnote ¹⁶ Yet the assertions that death is necessary to inaugurate a covenant and that blood is necessary to purify the ‘heavenly things themselves’ are less alike than Vanhoye's analysis presupposes. Further, the inferential particle οὖν in 9.23 points most immediately to the principle stated in 9.22, and more broadly to 9.18–21, on which 9.22 draws. To posit reference to 9.15–16 is to extend the particle's scope beyond reasonable warrant. And, as we have already seen, 9.23 is a thesis of which 9.24 and 9.25–6 provide twofold elaboration. While οὖν clearly ties 9.23 to what precedes, structurally speaking the verse is tied even more tightly to what follows.Footnote ¹⁷

1.2 Looking Backwards: Covenant and Cult Inauguration in Heb 9.18–22

As we have seen, while Heb 9.23 structurally belongs with what follows, materially it looks both backwards and forward. Since 9.23 draws an inference from the preceding, it depends conceptually on the discussion of covenantal and cultic inauguration in 9.18–22. Since it is followed by γάρ in 9.24 and is elaborated by the two contrasts of 9.24 and 9.25–6, which unequivocally invoke Yom Kippur, 9.23 also fits within the Yom Kippur typology that so strikingly stamps Hebrews’ central argument. Somehow, then, this verse stands at a conceptual intersection of covenantal or cultic inauguration and Yom Kippur.

But what role does each concept play in the verse itself? And to what use does the author put these two rites in the verse's context? Some interpreters explicitly disavow the relevance of one or the other. For instance, L. D. Hurst argues that ‘the context of 9.23 is not the annual day of atonement ritual’.Footnote ¹⁸ By contrast, I will argue that rightly interpreting 9.23 depends not only on reckoning with the influence of both cultic inauguration and Yom Kippur, but also on tracing the contours of the author's distinct appropriation of each. Thus, in this section and the next two, I will first look backwards from 9.23 to consider the author's treatment of covenant and cult inauguration in 9.18–22, then look forward to consider the function of Yom Kippur in 9.23–6, before finally considering how both bear on 9.23.

In 9.18–22 the author discusses the inauguration of the Sinai covenant, citing and embellishing Exod 24.8. Two interpretive moves are evident in the author's treatment of this biblical event. First, he depicts the inauguration of the covenant in details borrowed from the inauguration of its cult, that is, the consecration of its tabernacle and priesthood. Second, he casts cultic inauguration as a rite of purification by invoking elements of cleansing rites found elsewhere in the Levitical legislation.Footnote ¹⁹ Evidence for this first move is found, first, in the use of ἐγκεκαίνισται in 9.18 to describe the inauguration of the Sinai covenant (ἡ πρώτη) narrated in Exod 24.3–8. The verb ἐγκαινίζω is not the usual Greek word for the making of a covenant (cf. ἐποίησα and διαθήσομαι in Heb 8.9–10). Instead, ἐγκαινίζω typically refers to the inauguration, dedication or restoration of something.Footnote ²⁰ Further, the verb is used in precisely the same form in Heb 10.20 to describe the new means of access to the heavenly Holy of Holies which Christ opened by his blood. Here in 9.18, therefore, the author introduces the making of a covenant with a term that instead suggests the dedication of the cult associated with that covenant.Footnote ²¹

Confirmation that the author deliberately conflates the inauguration of the Sinai covenant with the institution of the Levitical cult is found in what he says Moses sprinkled. Hebrews depicts Moses as sprinkling not only ‘the book’ and ‘all the people’ (9.19), but also the tent and all its cultic implements (9.21). The tent and its vessels are a striking addition, since, as of Exod 24, the tabernacle has not yet been constructed, as the author of Hebrews knows well (cf. 8.5). With this mention of the sprinkling of the tent and its furnishings, the author evokes a network of biblical passages that describe the consecration of the tabernacle and the ordination of the priesthood (Exod 29; 40; Lev 8; cf. Num 7).

The most likely scriptural sources for the assertion that Moses sprinkled the tent and its furnishings with blood are Exod 40.9–10 and Lev 8.10.Footnote ²² In both passages the goal is the consecration of the tabernacle and everything in it, yet the medium of consecration is oil, not blood. However, in Lev 8, blood is at least applied to the altar: sin-offering blood is daubed on its horns, and burnt-offering blood is thrown on its sides (8.15, 19; cf. Exod 29.12, 15–16). The blood daubing of Lev 8.15 serves to purify (ויחטא / ἐκαθάρισεν) and consecrate (ויקדשהו / ἡγίασεν) the altar of burnt offering, cleansing it of impurity and setting it apart for future service. Exod 29.36–7 specifies that this process is to be repeated for seven days; in 29.36 the act narrated in Lev 8.15 is prescribed as follows: ‘And you shall perform decontamination on the altar when you effect purgation for it.’Footnote ²³ Further, in these texts Aaron and his sons are anointed with both oil (Exod 29.21; 40.12–15; Lev 8.12) and blood (Exod 29.19–21; Lev 8.22–4) as part of their ordination as priests. Since the human recipients of anointing oil also had blood applied to them, it is possible that Hebrews generalises this pattern to include the tent and cultic apparatus as well.Footnote ²⁴ In any case, in Heb 9.21 the author evokes the dedication of the tabernacle and the ordination of the priesthood in his narration of the inauguration of the Sinai covenant. He figures covenant inauguration as cult inauguration.

The second interpretive move evident in this passage is that the author goes out of his way to depict this cult inauguration as a purification rite. He does this by positing that the people and book were sprinkled not only with ‘the blood of calves and goats’ but also with ‘water and scarlet yarn and hyssop’ (9.19). These three ingredients, though absent from Exod 24.3–8, appear in the biblical instructions for both the purification of a person cured of scale-disease (Lev 14.4–7, cf. 14.49–52) and the purification of someone who had incurred defilement through contact with a corpse (Num 19.6, 12, 18–19). Counting Heb 9.19, these three are the only biblical passages in which all three items appear together. This precise coincidence of cultic elements suggests that the author is not displaying a ‘comparative indifference to secondary detail’,Footnote ²⁵ but instead deliberately conflates covenant inauguration with these rites in order to depict it as a rite of purification.

For the author of Hebrews, covenant inauguration means cult inauguration, and cult inauguration means purification. That the author figures cult inauguration as purification is corroborated by 9.22, in which the author remarks, in view of the preceding exposition: ‘Under the law almost everything is purified (καθαρίζεται) with blood.’ This also indicates that the author perceives a parallel between the inaugural cleansing by which the cult was dedicated, and the various ongoing rites by which the cult regularly operated. In 9.22, the covenant's inauguration becomes a paradigm for the various purifications-with-blood by which it was ritually maintained. How exactly the two interpretive moves evident in 9.18–21 bear on 9.23 will be discussed below when we pursue the precise sense in which 9.23 relates to what precedes. For now it is enough to underscore that, far from treating covenant inauguration as an alternative to purification, the author creatively recasts the biblical narrative of the inauguration of the Sinai covenant precisely in order to characterise it as a rite of cultic inauguration by means of blood purification.

1.3 Looking Forward: Yom Kippur in Heb 9.23–6

Two features of Heb 9.23–6 underscore the decisive significance of Yom Kippur for Heb 9.23. First, 9.23 itself already invokes Yom Kippur with its assertion that God's tabernacle – in this case, the heavenly one – required cleansing by sacrifice. There is a broad scholarly consensus that one of the key goals of Yom Kippur as narrated in Leviticus 16 is the cleansing of the tabernacle, including the Holy of Holies, from the defilement it incurred from the people's sins and impurities.Footnote ²⁶ Thus the high priest enters the Holy of Holies and sprinkles blood over and in front of the mercy seat (Lev 16.15) to cleanse the Holy of Holies: ‘And he shall purge the Holy of Holies of the impurities of the children of Israel, and of their transgressions, all their sins’ (וכפר על־הקדש מטמאת בני ישראל ומפשעיהם לכל־חטאתם, Lev 16.16). That the sanctuary and its furniture are cleansed on Yom Kippur is confirmed by the כפר clauses in which these are direct objects: in the summary statement of 16.20, for instance, the priest is again said to ‘purge the Holy of Holies and the tent of meeting and the altar’ (מכפר את־הקדש ואת־אהל מועד ואת־המזבח, cf. 16.33).Footnote ²⁷ Heb 9.23 speaks of the cleansing of the heavenly tabernacle and then immediately explains this with reference to the high priest's entry to the Holy of Holies – both the Levitical priest's in the earthly one and Christ's in the heavenly one. Christ cleansed the heavenly tabernacle when he entered the heavenly Holy of Holies, just as the earthly priest cleansed the earthly tabernacle when he entered its inner sanctum.

Second, as noted above, the two contrasts of 9.24 and 9.25–6 elaborate two senses in which Christ's sacrifice is ‘better’ than those of the earthly cult, and these contrasts draw heavily on Yom Kippur. In 9.24, unlike the earthly priest who enters a handmade sanctuary, Christ enters ‘heaven itself’, now to appear before God for his own. In 9.25–6, Christ is not like the earthly high priests, who yearly enter the Holy of Holies with another's blood in order to offer it there (cf. 9.7, 12); instead, his singular sacrifice sets aside sin.Footnote ²⁸ What is explicit in the elaboration (9.24–6), therefore, must be at least implicit in the thesis (9.23): the better sacrifice that cleansed the heavenly things themselves is Christ's self-offering conceived as his eschatological Yom Kippur sacrifice.Footnote ²⁹ This explicative link between 9.23 and 9.24–6 underscores that the source of the idea of cleansing the heavenly tabernacle is Leviticus 16, read through the vertical typology by which the author sets the earthly tabernacle, as derivative likeness, over against its heavenly original.

1.4 Mapping the Intersection: Covenant Inauguration and Yom Kippur in Heb 9.23

How exactly does the author's configuration of both covenant inauguration and Yom Kippur bear on the sense of 9.23? First, since both the thesis of 9.23b and its elaboration in 9.24–6 evoke Yom Kippur, this rite furnishes an essential cultic frame of reference for 9.23. Yom Kippur is explicit and in the foreground. Since the cleansing of the tabernacle on Yom Kippur effects the removal of antecedent defilement, there is no contextual reason to take the implied καθαρίζεσθαι of 9.23 to denote anything else. The Yom Kippur colouring of the statement confirms that the author understands Christ's sacrifice to purify the sanctuary in heaven from antecedent defilement caused by human sin. There is therefore no sense in which ‘cleansed’ in 9.23 is a cipher for ‘inaugurated’. Nor does covenant/cult inauguration provide the primary or exclusive context within which 9.23 should be read.Footnote ³⁰

But does covenant/cult inauguration bear at all on the sense of 9.23? Is the verse about purification only, or purification for inauguration – that is, the inauguration of the new covenant and its cult? Three strands of evidence point towards the latter. First, Christ's role as mediator of the new covenant is prominent throughout Hebrews: in 7.22 he is the guarantor (ἔγγυος) of a better covenant; in 8.6, 9.15 and 12.24 he is the mediator (μεσίτης) of the new covenant. In the last of these passages, Christ's mediating of the new covenant is closely correlated with his sprinkled blood (αἵματι ῥαντίσμου), a summary reference to his self-offering.Footnote ³¹

Second, in another summary reference to the Christ-event, 10.20 invokes the ‘new and living way that he inaugurated (ἐνεκαίνισεν) for us through the curtain’. Here the effect of Christ's self-offering is configured as a new means of access to the most intimate presence of God. Cultic inauguration is clearly integral to Hebrews’ construal of the Christ-event.

Third, a chain of logical connectors links the subsections of 9.11–28 to each other. In 9.15, διὰ τοῦτο links covenant inauguration in 9.15–17 to Christ's Yom Kippur offering in 9.11–14. In 9.18, ὅθεν draws the inference, illustrated in 9.18–21, that because death is necessary to inaugurate a covenant, even the first covenant was inaugurated with blood. And in 9.23, οὖν draws the inference, elaborated in 9.23–6, that just as the earthly tent and its furniture required cleansing, so also did the tabernacle in heaven, only with a better sacrifice.Footnote ³² Since 9.18–21 figures covenant inauguration as cult-inaugural purification, and 9.22 both highlights and generalises the theme of purification by blood, the οὖν of 9.23 should be taken to draw an inference that blood sacrifice is necessary to cleanse sacred space, in heaven as on earth. In other words, the οὖν does not invoke covenant/cult inauguration per se, but rather the idea of purification via blood sacrifice that the author finds in it.Footnote ³³ However, these logical ties throughout 9.11–28 unite an argument that moves seamlessly from Yom Kippur, to covenant inauguration, back to Yom Kippur. For Hebrews, while Yom Kippur-patterned cleansing is distinguishable from covenant/cult inauguration, it is nevertheless integrally linked to it.Footnote ³⁴

Christ's priestly self-offering is that which brings the new covenant into effect, just as the Sinai covenant came into effect through its own inaugural sacrifices. The idea in 9.23 is not that Christ inaugurates the heavenly tabernacle in order subsequently to offer himself there.Footnote ³⁵ Instead, Christ's sacrifice at once cleanses the heavenly tabernacle and inaugurates the new covenant cult, which consists first and foremost in believers’ access to God in the heavenly Holy of Holies (cf. 4.14–16; 6.19; 10.19–23).Footnote ³⁶ What is explicit in 9.23 is that Christ's sacrifice purifies the heavenly tabernacle. What is implicit, suggested by the structure of the argument in 9.11–28 and Hebrews’ broader treatment of the inauguration of the new covenant, is that this sacrifice also inaugurates the new covenant's heavenly cult.

2.1 How Can the Heavenly Tabernacle Be Defiled?

The most common objection to the reading of Heb 9.23 proposed here is the idea that it is improbable or even nonsensical to speak of God's dwelling in heaven incurring defilement.Footnote ³⁷ The theological intuition behind this objection seems to be that, since heaven is where God dwells, and God is perfectly holy, it is impossible for anything impure to ‘come into contact’ with God. Yet no evidence for this theological intuition is present in Hebrews; instead, its conception of heaven seems to differ in key ways from that held by many scholars.

Hebrews describes the heavenly tabernacle as a tent pitched by God (ἔπηξεν, 8.2). The heavenly tabernacle is not of this creation (9.11), but it is not uncreated. Heaven is the place from which God reigns over all (8.1). It is populated by angels, spiritual but nevertheless created beings (1.6–7, 14). Roy Gane describes the wilderness tabernacle as God's ‘earthly administrative center’.Footnote ³⁸ The same could be said, mutatis mutandis, for Hebrews’ depiction of the heavenly tabernacle. Heaven is a place of commerce between the creator and at least some of his creatures. Is it so unthinkable that the threat sin poses to such commerce could have been conceived, by a first-century Jewish believer in Jesus, as the defilement of the tabernacle in heaven? After all, the very idea of a tabernacle in heaven presents a more concrete, ‘realistic’ conception of heaven than that which many scholars bring to the text.Footnote ³⁹

Further, a few biblical and early Jewish texts seem to presuppose that heaven, or the sanctuary in heaven, can be defiled by sin. Job 15.15, for instance, declares, ‘Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in his sight’ (NRSV). While the statement is cryptic, it may suggest a connection between the sins of created beings – in this case angels – and the defilement of the heavenly realm.Footnote ⁴⁰ In Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, angels guard the purity of the heavenly sanctuary, which seems to presuppose the possibility of its defilement. In 4Q400 1 i, 14, we read of the priestly angels, ‘They do not tolerate any whose way is per-[verted]. There is n[o] unclean thing in their holy places (וא[י]ן טמא בקודשיהם) … But they propitiate his good will for all who repent of sin.’Footnote ⁴¹ This passage displays a concern that impurity not defile the heavenly sanctuary in a context wherein the angels’ heavenly cultic activity is depicted.Footnote ⁴² And in the Book of the Watchers, when the angelic watchers defile themselves through intercourse with women (1 En. 7.1; 9.8; 10.11; 12.4; 15.3–4), they are banned from the heavenly sanctuary (12.4; 14.5; 15.3), most likely because they either had already defiled it or would do so if they were to remain.Footnote ⁴³ The defilement of the heavenly sanctuary was apparently not as unthinkable within an apocalyptic early Jewish milieu as it seems to be for many modern scholars.Footnote ⁴⁴

Finally, in 9.23, it is not that the author, reasoning by analogy from the earthly cult to what Christ achieved in heaven, finds himself forced to draw the awkward inference, as it were against his better judgement, that heaven itself needed cleansing.Footnote ⁴⁵ Instead, the logic undergirding his inference seems to be that the earthly tabernacle needed to be cleansed precisely because the heavenly one would one day be cleansed by Christ.Footnote ⁴⁶ Hebrews does not begin with the purportedly non-cultic ‘facts’ of Christ's death, resurrection and exaltation and then interpret these through metaphorical use of Levitical rites, as some scholars imply.Footnote ⁴⁷ Instead, Hebrews’ logic is precisely the reverse: Jesus is the true priest and true sacrifice, and the Levitical sacrifices were patterned in advance on Christ's eschatological achievement. As we have seen, in Heb 8.5 the Levitical priests serve a ‘copy and shadow’ (ὑποδείγματι καὶ σκιᾷ) of the heavenly things. That Moses is instructed to make ‘everything’ (cf. Exod 25.9) according to the pattern shown to him underscores that the earthly tent is a model of the one in heaven. So, if the earthly tent, including its cultic vessels, is a model of the heavenly one, then there must be some sense in which the cultic activity carried out on earth is patterned after that which takes place in heaven.

Corroboration of this may be found in 10.1, which declares that the law had only a shadow of the coming good things (σκιάν … τῶν μελλόντων ἀγαθῶν), not the very form of them (οὐκ αὐτὴν τὴν εἰκόνα τῶν πραγμάτων). The point in 10.1 is to assert the inadequacy of the law, but it is striking that the author does so by saying that the law possesses a shadow of good things to come. The shadow in this case is not cast from heaven to earth (as in 8.5), but from the future to the past. Of course, in light of Hebrews’ entire argument the two ultimately imply each other: Jesus’ heavenly, eschatological sacrifice is prefigured in the earthly Levitical cult. The Christ-event, as it were, cast a shadow backwards, determining the form of the first covenant's cult.Footnote ⁴⁸ Certainly 9.23 draws an inference from earthly to heavenly, and from what preceded to what followed, but the inference is grounded in a dependence that runs the other way.

2.2 What Is Cleansed Is Ultimately Not Heaven, but Humans

As indicated in note 4 above, a number of scholars argue that what is cleansed in 9.23 is ultimately not heaven, but humans. Harold Attridge presents perhaps the most thorough recent exposition of this reading. He argues that the correspondence between heavenly and earthly realities contrasts ‘the ideal or spiritual on the one hand and the phenomenal and material on the other’. For Attridge, τὰ ἐπουράνια have ‘symbolic value’: ‘the mythical image of the heavenly sanctuary by this point is obviously being used in a metaphorical or symbolic way’. Thus, as the parallel with 9.14 suggests, ‘the heavenly or ideal realities cleansed by Christ's sacrifice are none other than the consciences of the members of the new covenant … In Hebrews, as in Platonically inspired Jews such as Philo, language of cosmic transcendence is ultimately a way of speaking about human interiority.’Footnote ⁴⁹ Others suggest that ‘heavenly’ is a designation more qualitative than spatial, referring either to humans as participants in a heavenly calling (cf. 3.1) or to their conscience, which is oriented to God and hence heavenly.Footnote ⁵⁰

To address this latter suggestion first, ‘heavenly’ in 9.23 is clearly a spatial, not merely a qualitative, designation. The plural ὑποδείγματα (‘copies’) echoes the singular ὑποδείγματι of 8.5, where the earthly tent is a copy of the one in heaven. And 9.23 activates precisely this correspondence between the two tents, since it compares Christ's sacrifice to the inaugural cleansing of the earthly tent. Moreover, nowhere in Hebrews are the earthly tent and its furnishings called ‘copies’ of people or their conscience. Finally, the corresponding phrase in 9.23a, ὑποδείγματα τῶν ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, is explicitly spatial: the originals of the earthly copies are located in heaven. This rules out a qualitative understanding of τὰ ἐπουράνια in 9.23b. The ‘heavenly things’ in 9.23b are specified by their correspondence to the ‘copies of what is in heaven’, and hence are located in heaven.

Attridge's reading is more subtle. He recognises that the referent of τὰ ἐπουράνια is the heavenly tabernacle, but contends that the heavenly tabernacle is a symbol or metaphor for something else, namely human conscience. Attridge suggests that the author invokes the apocalyptic Jewish motif of a tabernacle in heaven in order, by this stage in the argument, to transform it into a symbol of human interiority. But precisely at this stage in Hebrews’ argument, the heavenly tabernacle is not a symbol for something else but the place in heaven wherein Christ offers himself to God. In 9.24, which explains (γάρ) how the cleansing of the heavenly things takes place, Christ is said to ‘enter’ (εἰσῆλθεν) not a handmade Holy of Holies, as the high priests yearly enter the earthly one (cf. 9.25), but ‘heaven itself (εἰς αὐτὸν τὸν οὐρανόν).Footnote ⁵¹ Christ entered the heavenly tabernacle in order to come into God's presence. Further, 9.28 asserts that, after having been offered once, Christ will appear on earth a second time. Since Christ appears in heaven ‘now’ (9.24), this implies that throughout the interval between Christ's exaltation and return he remains in the heavenly tabernacle. The heavenly tabernacle is not a symbol, but a place – a transcendent place, but no less a place for that.Footnote ⁵²

2.3 Christ's Sacrifice Effects Inauguration, Not Purification

As we have seen, another group of scholars argue that 9.23b asserts only that the heavenly sanctuary was consecrated or inaugurated through Christ's sacrifice, not that it was purified from antecedent defilement. As noted above, Hurst argues that ‘the context of 9:23 is not the annual day of atonement ritual, but the initial purification of the newly built tabernacle at the inauguration of the first covenant’.Footnote ⁵³ Further, a number of scholars argue that καθαρίζω can denote ‘inaugurate’ or ‘dedicate’ instead of ‘purify’. Spicq, for example, treats καθαρίζω, ἐγκαινίζω and ἁγιάζω in 1 Macc 4.36–59 as nearly synonymous (‘à peu près synonymes’), and notes that they refer to different elements of the same rite of rededication.Footnote ⁵⁴ Hurst goes further, on the basis of other texts: ‘That the term καθαρίζω can be used interchangeably with ἁγιάζω is proved by Ex. 29:36 and Lev. 8:15 LXX, and especially by Josephus’ (referring to Ant. 3.197).Footnote ⁵⁵

I have argued above that Yom Kippur is in fact decisively relevant to 9.23, and that the author invokes covenant inauguration precisely in order to configure it as a rite of purification; both considerations contradict the ‘inauguration only’ view. Yet what should we make of these lexical claims for some type of equivalence between καθαρίζω and ἐγκαινίζω? To offer an answer, I will briefly comment on each of the passages adduced by these authors: Exod 29.36, Lev 8.15, 1 Macc 4.36–59 and Josephus, Ant. 3.197, adducing a few other relevant passages along the way. Before examining these texts we must note a pattern that will recur throughout: cultic inauguration or consecration is a multi-stage process in which the cultic implements are first cleansed of impurity, changing their status from impure to pure, and then consecrated, changing their status from common (or profane) to holy. These two steps were both requisite to the inauguration or renewal of tabernacle/temple worship.Footnote ⁵⁶

Exod 29.36 and Lev 8.15 both evidence this pattern. In Exod 29.36, as discussed above, the Lord commands Moses to purify the altar by performing purgation upon it (וחטאת על־המזבח / καθαριεῖς τὸ θυσιαστήριον). This is stage one, the move from impure to pure. After thus purifying the altar, Moses is commanded to anoint it with oil ‘so as to sanctify it’ (לקדשו / ὥστε ἁγιάσαι αὐτό). This is stage two, the move from common to holy. And Lev 8.15, which narrates the carrying out of these instructions, describes the same two-stage process, with the same Greek verbs translating the same Hebrew verbs. This process prepares the altar for its inaugural use, which Lev 9.1–24 describes as the offering of one of each class of sacrifice on the newly consecrated altar.Footnote ⁵⁷ Further, Jacob Milgrom observes that in Num 7, the tabernacle and the altar are first consecrated through being anointed with oil (7.1), then the tribal heads bring offerings called ‘initiation offerings for the altar’ (7.10, 11, 84, 88).Footnote ⁵⁸ Both stages, purification and consecration, prepare for inauguration proper, which is the initial cultic use of the altar.

1 Macc 4.36–59 attests the same two-stage sequence of purification then dedication. In 1 Macc 4.36, Judas exhorts his brothers to go up to cleanse the sanctuary and dedicate it (καθαρίσαι τὰ ἅγια καὶ ἐγκαινίσαι). The former is requisite to, and performed for the sake of, the latter. The altar has been profaned (βεβηλόω, 4.38, 44, 54) and defiled (μιαίνω, 4.45) by Gentiles. Thus in 4.43, the action described by ἐκαθάρισαν involves removing the defiled stones. And in 4.48 Judas and his brothers consecrate the rebuilt courts (τὰς αὐλὰς ἡγίασαν), rendering them holy, devoted to the Lord. The contrast is telling: what was newly built needed only consecration; what had been defiled needed purification. In the cultic reinauguration depicted in 1 Macc 4.36–59, καθαρίζω and ἐγκαινίζω are not synonyms, nor does the author use the former to describe the entire process. Instead, καθαρίζω refers to the purification of that which had been defiled, which was a constituent element in reinaugurating the defiled temple complex.

The Josephus passage, which describes Moses’ inauguration of the tabernacle, reads, ‘And he sanctified both the tabernacle and the priests in such a manner, accomplishing their purification’ (Ἥγνιζε δὲ καὶ τὴν σκηνὴν καὶ τοὺς ἱερέας τρόπῳ τοιούτῳ ποιούμενος αὐτῶν τὴν κάθαρσιν, Ant. 3.197).Footnote ⁵⁹ The context is cultic inauguration, though neither noun nor verb forms of ἐγκαινίζω appear. Given what we have observed so far, it is most probable that Josephus uses ἁγνίζω and the noun κάθαρσις to refer to sanctification and purification as complementary aspects of cultic inauguration. Confirmation of this is found in Josephus’ own account of the Maccabean restoration of temple worship.Footnote ⁶⁰ In Ant. 12.316–26, Josephus describes how the temple worship had been turned into something impure and profane (βέβηλον καὶ κοινήν, 12.320), yet Judas and his men purified and sanctified the temple (καθαρίσαι, 12.316; ἁγνίσειε, καθάρας, 12.318), resulting in the renewal of the people's customs (ἀνανέωσιν, ἀνάκτησιν, 12.324), specifically, their temple worship. As in 1 Macc 4.36–59, purification and consecration are prerequisite to the temple's reinauguration. In neither Josephus passage is καθαρίζω either lexically equivalent to ἐγκαινίζω or used to describe the entire process of inauguration. Therefore, none of the passages surveyed here support the idea that in Heb 9.23, the verb καθαρίζω, used in 9.23a and arguably implied in 9.23b, denotes ‘inauguration’ or ‘consecration’. Instead, as in all these passages, it bears its normal sense of purification from antecedent defilement.