<p>5:7 <i>Who in the days of his flesh, having offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears to Him that was able to save him from death, and was heard for his Godly fear</i>- Verses 7-9 lead up to the climactic statement that therefore, the Lord was ordained as high priest at His resurrection and glorification. It could be argued that the prayers offered up refer to the prayers of believers which the Lord offered to the Father even in the days of His flesh. The plural &quot;days&quot; would encourage us to read this offering up of prayers as something which happened during His lifetime; for He did indeed pray the Father for His followers (Jn. 16:26). This was as it were training and preparation for His inauguration as High Priest over God's house which occurred at His resurrection. His behaviour and experience during His mortal life was what qualifies Him for the work He now does. And yet the prayers to be saved from death, offered with crying and tears, surely also reference the Lord's praying for personal salvation in Gethsemane. He &quot;was heard&quot;; not in the form He wished, i.e. immediate deliverance from the crucifixion process, but in that the essence of His prayer was heard, and &quot;for his Godly fear&quot; He was resurrected. The Lord's humanity is so stressed here that Trinitarians really need to recalculate their positions based on these words. The Lord's prayers for others and His prayers for His own salvation from death are really part of the same nexus. This is why it's not so much a question of two possible interpretations the prayers offered being of others, or, His own prayers for salvation; but rather these two options are really part of the same picture, and this is why they artlessly merge into each other. For as Robert Roberts put it, &quot;He died for Himself that it might be for us&quot;; His salvation was so tied up with ours.</p><p>&quot;With strong crying and tears&quot; is certainly to be connected with Rom. 8:26, which speaks of the Lord making intercession for us now&nbsp;with &quot;groanings which cannot be uttered&quot;. One might think from Heb. 5:7 that the Lord Jesus made quite a noise whilst hanging on the cross or in Gethsemane. But Rom. 8:26 says that His groaning is so intense that it cannot be audibly uttered; the physicality of sound would not do justice to the intensity of mental striving. No doubt the Lord Jesus was praying silently, or at best quietly, as He hung there. The point is that the same agonizing depth of prayer which the Lord achieved on the cross for us is what He now goes through as He intercedes for us with the Father.</p><p>Heb. 5:7 can be understood as describing the Lord on the cross as a priest offering up a guilt offering for our sins of ignorance. He did this, we are told, through &quot;prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears&quot;. This must surely be a reference to &quot;Father forgive them&quot;. Those were said with a real passion, with strong crying, with tears as He appreciated the extent of our sinfulness and offence of God. There is a connection between these words and those of Rom. 8:26,27, which describes Christ as our High Priest making intercession for us &quot;with groanings&quot;. &quot;Groanings&quot; is surely the language of suffering and crucifixion. It is as if our Lord goes through it all again when He prays for our forgiveness, He has the same passion for us now as He did then. Think of how on the cross He had that overwhelming desire for our forgiveness despite His own physical pain. That same level of desire is with Him now. Surely we can respond by confessing our sins, by getting down to realistic self-examination, by rallying our faith to truly appreciate His mediation and the forgiveness that has been achieved, to believe that all our sins, past and future, have been conquered, and to therefore rise up to the challenge of doing all we can to live a life which is appropriate to such great salvation. See on Lk. 23:34.</p><p>Oscar Cullmann translates Heb. 5:7: &quot;He was heard in his fear (anxiety)&quot;. That very human anxiety about death is reflected in the way He urges Judas to get over and done the betrayal process &quot;quickly&quot; (Jn. 13:28); He was &quot;straitened until it be accomplished&quot; (Lk. 12:50). He prayed to God just as we would when gripped by the fear of impending death. And He was heard. No wonder He is able therefore and thereby to comfort and save us, who lived all our lives in the same fear of death which He had (Heb. 2:15). This repetition of the 'fear of death' theme in Hebrews is surely significant- the Lord Jesus had the same fear of death as we do, and He prayed in desperation to God just as we do. And because He overcame, He is able to support us when <i>we</i> in our turn pray in <i>our</i> &quot;time of need&quot;- for He likewise had the very same &quot;time of need&quot; as we have, when He was in Gethsemane (Heb. 4:16). Death was &quot;the last enemy&quot; for the Lord Jesus just as it is for all humanity (1 Cor. 15:26). Reflection on these things not only emphasizes the humanity of the Lord Jesus, but also indicates He had no belief whatsoever in an 'immortal soul' consciously surviving death. The Lord had a quite genuine &quot;fear of death&quot; which enables Him now to save us from the bondage of fearing death (2:15). This &quot;fear of death&quot; within the Lord Jesus provides a profound insight into His so genuine humanity. We fear death because our human life is our greatest and most personal possession... and it was just the same with the Lord Jesus. Note that when seeking here to exemplify Christ's humanity, the writer to the Hebrews chooses His fear of death in Gethsemane as the epitome of His humanity.</p>