Faithful in All His House: Moses the Servant and Christ the Son
Old Testament: Numbers 12:7-8
But it is not so with my servant Moses who is most faithful in all my house: For I speak to him mouth to mouth: and plainly, and not by riddles and figures doth he see the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak ill of my servant Moses?
New Testament: Hebrews 3:1-6; John 8:35
Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly vocation, consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, Jesus: Who is faithful to him that made him, as was also Moses in all his house. For this man was counted worthy of greater glory than Moses, by so much as he that hath built the house, hath greater honour than the house. For every house is built by some man: but he that created all things, is God. And Moses indeed was faithful in all his house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be said: But Christ as the Son in his own house: which house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and glory of hope unto the end. ... Now the servant abideth not in the house for ever; but the son abideth for ever.
The connection
When Aaron and his sister Mary speak against Moses, God defends him with the highest praise the Old Testament gives any man: "my servant Moses who is most faithful in all my house." No prophet stands closer. God speaks to him "mouth to mouth", plainly, not in riddles. Hebrews takes that verse and lays it beside Christ, word for word. Both are "faithful", both in the same "house". But the letter reads the verse to its last word. Moses was faithful in the house "as a servant"; Christ "as the Son in his own house". And the house is not a building: "which house are we." The difference is the difference between the steward of a household and the heir who owns it, and between a house and the one who built it: "he that hath built the house, hath greater honour than the house." Christ had said the same in the Temple: "the servant abideth not in the house for ever; but the son abideth for ever." Moses served the house in his day and died outside the land. The Son abides.
Moral sense
The house is "we", "if we hold fast the confidence and glory of hope unto the end." To belong to it is to be in the care of the Son who owns it, not a servant who manages it for a season. So the Christian serves as Moses served, faithfully, but in a house that is his Father's, under a Son who has made him a son (Galatians 4:7).
Anagogical sense
Moses saw the Lord plainly, yet asked to see His glory and was shown only His back. The house of the Son is where His servants "shall see his face" (Apocalypse 22:4), and the servant who "abideth not in the house for ever" gives way to sons who abide.
The Fathers
St John Chrysostom, Homilies on Hebrews 5, on Hebrews 3:5-6: "You see again that by the appellation of The Son, he intimates true relationship. ... Perceivest thou how he separates the thing made and the maker, the servant and the son?"
Warrant
Scriptural because Hebrews 3:2-6 quotes Numbers 12:7, "faithful in all his house", and makes the comparison itself: Moses "as a servant", Christ "as the Son in his own house." St John Chrysostom (Homilies on Hebrews 5) and St Athanasius (Against the Arians II) both comment on the verse; Chrysostom draws out that it separates the maker from the thing made, the servant from the Son. John 8:35 is added as Christ's own saying on the servant and the son in the house; joining it to Hebrews 3 is the entry's.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 2576.
The verses
Numbers 12:7 · Numbers 12:8 · Hebrews 3:1 · Hebrews 3:2 · Hebrews 3:3 · Hebrews 3:4 · Hebrews 3:5 · Hebrews 3:6 · John 8:35
