The Death of the Testator and the Blood of the Covenant

Revision note: Substantially revised July 21, 2026. The argument has been reordered according to the classical rhetorical movement, compressed where necessary, and given one consolidated Notes and Further Reading section.

The passage that gives the series its name

The language of wills and testaments is not an illustration imported into Scripture from modern estate law. The King James Version places it at the center of Hebrews 9:

And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth. (Hebrews 9:15–17)

The words are familiar. Their interpretation is not simple.

The Greek noun translated “testament” is diathēkē, the ordinary Septuagint rendering of the Hebrew word for covenant. The chapter has already contrasted the first and greater tabernacles, animal blood and Christ’s blood, ceremonial purification and the cleansing of conscience, the old administration and the “good things to come.” Verse 15 identifies Christ as mediator of the new diathēkē. Verse 18 speaks of the first diathēkē being dedicated with blood. Verse 20 quotes the covenant ceremony of Exodus 24.

Yet verses 16–17 speak in terms naturally associated with a last will: the maker of the instrument, his death, and the instrument taking force after death. The promised benefit in verse 15 is an “eternal inheritance.” The Authorized Version’s “testament” and “testator” are therefore not arbitrary archaisms. They represent a serious reading of the argument.

We need not choose between taking the legal language seriously and keeping the passage anchored in covenant sacrifice. Hebrews itself joins them in Christ.

The argument before verses 16 and 17

Hebrews 9 opens with the “ordinances of divine service” and earthly sanctuary of the first covenant. The priests repeatedly enter the first tabernacle, while the high priest enters the second once each year, “not without blood” (vv. 6–7). The arrangement is a figure for the present time. Its gifts and sacrifices cannot make the worshiper perfect as to conscience (v. 9).

Christ, by contrast, comes as high priest of good things secured. He enters the greater and more perfect tabernacle “by his own blood,” obtaining eternal redemption (vv. 11–12). If the blood of bulls and goats ceremonially sanctified, “how much more shall the blood of Christ,” offered through the eternal Spirit, purge the conscience from dead works to serve the living God (vv. 13–14).

Verse 15 begins, “And for this cause.” Christ is mediator of the new testament because his blood accomplishes what the first-covenant sacrifices could only typify. His death redeems transgressions committed under the first administration, and the called receive the promised eternal inheritance.

Four themes converge before the disputed verses begin:

• Mediation: Christ acts between the holy God and sinful people.
• Death: redemption occurs “by means of death.”
• Inheritance: the called receive a promised, eternal possession.
• Covenant transition: the new diathēkē accomplishes what the first could not perfect.

Verses 16–17 explain why death belongs to the reception of that inheritance. Verse 18 then connects the necessity of death to the fact that even the first covenant was not dedicated without blood. The paragraph moves from Christ’s death to testamentary necessity and from testamentary necessity to covenant inauguration.

Any interpretation that erases one side of that movement is incomplete.

Three major readings

Interpreters have generally followed one of three paths.

A temporary shift to “last will”

On the traditional testamentary reading, diathēkē in verses 16–17 bears the legal sense of a will. Where a testamentary disposition exists, the death of the one who made it must be established; a will takes effect at death rather than while the testator remains alive. Christ’s death therefore secures the inheritance promised to his people.

This reading explains the language of “inheritance,” “testator,” “death,” “force,” and “while … liveth” with admirable directness. It also accounts for the long-standing English rendering. John Calvin argued along these lines, treating the new covenant as a testament ratified by the death of Christ. John Owen likewise insisted that the new covenant is also testamentary: in Christ the inheritance is freely disposed to the heirs, and his death confirms the grant.¹

The difficulty is the transition back to verse 18. The Mosaic covenant was not a last will made effective by Moses’ death. The blood sprinkled at Sinai was the blood of sacrificial animals. If verses 16–17 concern only a Greco-Roman will, “whereupon neither the first testament was dedicated without blood” can feel like an abrupt return to a different meaning of the same word.

Covenant ratified by sacrificial death

A second reading keeps “covenant” throughout. Its advocates take the disputed language to mean that a covenant requires the death of the covenant-making victim, or that death must be brought forward as the sanction under which the covenant is made. On this view, verses 16–17 describe the solemn death associated with covenant ratification, and verse 18 follows naturally: the first covenant likewise was inaugurated with blood.

This interpretation has strong contextual appeal. The entire chapter concerns priesthood, sanctuary, sacrifice, cleansing, and blood. Exodus 24 stands directly behind verses 18–22. Biblical covenants can be “cut” in sacrificial ceremonies in which death symbolizes the curse of violation.

Its difficulty is lexical and syntactical. The “one who made” the diathēkē in verse 16 is most naturally a person who makes a disposition, and verse 17, especially as represented in the traditional translation, contrasts death with the period “while the testator liveth.” A sacrificial animal does not formulate a covenant. To make the victim the “covenanter” requires an explanation that many readers find strained.

Deliberate testamentary-covenantal interplay

A third approach sees the legal sense as real without isolating it from covenant sacrifice. Hebrews exploits the range of diathēkē. The new covenant is a testamentary disposition because it grants an inheritance; its mediator is also the divine Son whose voluntary death secures the inheritance; and the same death is the sacrificial blood by which the covenant is inaugurated.

This need not be a clever pun pasted onto the argument. The realities meet in Christ. A human probate instrument and a sacrificial covenant would normally involve different persons: the testator makes the will, a victim supplies blood, and an executor administers the estate. In the economy of redemption, Christ is the mediator who offers himself, the sacrificial victim whose blood cleanses, the divine Son in whom the inheritance is granted, and the risen high priest who lives to apply his accomplished work.

The analogy is extraordinary because the person of Christ is extraordinary.

Can Christ be called the testator?

The answer requires Trinitarian and Christological care.

The new covenant is God’s covenant. Jeremiah records the Lord saying, “I will make a new covenant” and “I will put my law in their inward parts” (Jeremiah 31:31–34). The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three competing makers of three testaments. The one triune God purposes and accomplishes redemption.

Nor may we say that the divine nature as such is mortal. The eternal Son does not cease to be God. He assumes a true human nature, and in that nature he truly suffers and dies. Because the subject who dies is the divine Person of the Son, Scripture can speak of “the Lord of glory” being crucified (1 Corinthians 2:8) and of the church being purchased with God’s own blood (Acts 20:28, according to the familiar reading). The properties of either nature may be predicated of the one Person without confusing the natures.

Within that orthodox grammar, “testator” can name a genuine aspect of Christ’s mediatorial work. The Son freely gives the kingdom and the eternal inheritance to his people. He takes flesh, fulfills righteousness, bears the curse, and dies. His death is not an external event accidentally attached to a divine promise. It is the appointed means by which the heirs receive what God has covenanted to give.

Yet Christ is not merely a dead testator. Hebrews immediately destroys that reduction. He enters heaven itself “now to appear in the presence of God for us” (9:24). He will appear a second time without sin unto salvation (v. 28). Earlier, the epistle declares that he “ever liveth to make intercession” (7:25). The one who died is risen and actively administers the salvation his death obtained.

John Owen found precisely this fullness in the word testament. Christ, he argued, is not only the mediator through whom covenant terms are declared; he is the one in whom the inheritance is procured, bequeathed, and made effective by death. But Owen did not replace covenant with probate. He treated the new covenant as possessing a testamentary character because of the manner in which its promised inheritance is confirmed and bestowed.²

“This is my blood of the new testament”

Hebrews 9 must also be read backward through the words of Christ at the Supper:

For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. (Matthew 26:28)

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1. Calvin’s discussion appears in his Commentary on Hebrews 9. For the historical dispute over verses 16–17, see also the appendix preserved with the commentary, “Hebrews 9:16–17”. ↩
2. John Owen treats Hebrews 9:15–17 at length in An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, vol. 6. A public-domain scan is available through Monergism; the relevant chapter is also indexed in the StudyLight edition of Owen’s commentary. Owen’s synthesis is especially useful: the new covenant is covenantal in its divine establishment and testamentary in the free disposition of the inheritance through Christ’s death. ↩

This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you. (Luke 22:20)

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1. Calvin’s discussion appears in his Commentary on Hebrews 9. For the historical dispute over verses 16–17, see also the appendix preserved with the commentary, “Hebrews 9:16–17”. ↩
2. John Owen treats Hebrews 9:15–17 at length in An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, vol. 6. A public-domain scan is available through Monergism; the relevant chapter is also indexed in the StudyLight edition of Owen’s commentary. Owen’s synthesis is especially useful: the new covenant is covenantal in its divine establishment and testamentary in the free disposition of the inheritance through Christ’s death. ↩

This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. (1 Corinthians 11:25)

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1. Calvin’s discussion appears in his Commentary on Hebrews 9. For the historical dispute over verses 16–17, see also the appendix preserved with the commentary, “Hebrews 9:16–17”. ↩
2. John Owen treats Hebrews 9:15–17 at length in An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews, vol. 6. A public-domain scan is available through Monergism; the relevant chapter is also indexed in the StudyLight edition of Owen’s commentary. Owen’s synthesis is especially useful: the new covenant is covenantal in its divine establishment and testamentary in the free disposition of the inheritance through Christ’s death. ↩

Those sayings recall Exodus 24:8: “Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD hath made with you concerning all these words.” At Sinai, Moses reads the book, the people answer, sacrifices are offered, and blood is sprinkled. In the upper room, Christ identifies the cup with the new covenant in his own blood. He is not merely announcing his impending death; he is interpreting it as covenant sacrifice for the remission of sins.

Hebrews echoes the formula: “This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you” (9:20). The connection makes two things plain.

First, the testament is not effective through death in the abstract. Christ’s death is substitutionary, priestly, and cleansing. Blood signifies life given under judgment. The eternal inheritance comes because transgressions are redeemed.

Second, the covenant is attached to words. Exodus speaks of the blood of the covenant made “concerning all these words.” Christ speaks institutionally: “This is my blood”; “This cup is the new testament”; “this do.” Paul says he “received of the Lord” what he delivered to the church (1 Corinthians 11:23). The sacrament is not authorized religious improvisation. It is administered according to Christ’s words.

Word and sacrament therefore belong together. The covenant document declares the promise and command; the sacramental sign seals and exhibits the grace promised. Blood does not make wording irrelevant. It confirms the testament spoken.

Death, finality, and inheritance

The legal image contributes a particular kind of finality.

A draft may express an intention. A conversation may disclose a preference. A prior will may have governed at an earlier time. But when a testator dies, the operative instrument is not open to revision by beneficiaries. Death closes the testator’s opportunity for ordinary alteration; the court must determine and apply the governing disposition.

Christ’s case transcends the human pattern, but the finality is greater, not less. His cry is “It is finished” (John 19:30). He offers “one sacrifice for sins for ever” and sits down at the right hand of God (Hebrews 10:12). By one offering he has perfected forever those who are sanctified (v. 14). His blood is “the blood of the everlasting covenant” (13:20).

The church does not await a revised atonement. It does not improve the terms of justification, renegotiate access to God, or redistribute the inheritance. The mediator’s finished work objectively secures the promised blessing. His resurrection does not reopen the testament for amendment; it vindicates him, inaugurates the new creation, and ensures the living administration of what his death accomplished.

This is why the heirs receive. They do not negotiate the inheritance into existence. “They which are called” receive “the promise of eternal inheritance” (Hebrews 9:15). Faith is indispensable, but it is the empty hand of reception, not an editorial hand rewriting the instrument.

What follows for the written testament?

We should resist one overstatement and draw one necessary conclusion.

The overstatement would be: Because Hebrews calls the new covenant a testament, every rule of modern probate law applies directly to the biblical text. It does not. Hebrews is teaching redemption, not supplying a statute book for textual criticism. The civil laws of wills vary by place and time. Christ’s person and work have no exact human parallel.

The necessary conclusion is: a testamentary grant is not separable from its authoritative terms. Hebrews does not offer the church an inheritance whose identity is independent of God’s declared promise. The benefits are announced in words, accomplished by Christ, and ministered through the preached and written gospel. The same epistle that magnifies the blood also repeatedly warns its hearers to attend to what God has spoken (1:1–2; 2:1–4; 3:7–4:13; 12:25).

If a human court must distinguish an executed will from a draft, a valid codicil from an interpolation, and the governing clause from a contradictory claimant, the church has even greater reason to distinguish God’s words from scribal alternatives. The blood of the testament does not authorize indifference to the words of the testament.

That conclusion also helps us avoid a serious category error. The Old and New Testaments are not two corrupt copies competing for probate. God himself promised the new covenant, sent the mediator, and authorized the apostolic witness. The later administration is divine fulfillment, not textual mutation. Only the testator may make a testament; only the covenant Lord may institute a new covenant. That is the subject of the next article.

Notes and Further Reading