The pronoun they must refer clearly to the offerings and animal sacrifices. It may be important to repeat at least some aspects of the previous statement, for example, “the things offered to God,” to make the meaning clear.
Food and drink are plural in the text: “things to eat and drink,” referring to Old Testament regulations about what might or might not be eaten and drunk. Food, drink may be rendered as “what one should eat and what one should drink” or “what God allows people to eat and drink.”
Various purification ceremonies is literally “baptisms”; see comment on 6.2. Various purification ceremonies may be rendered as “various ways in which people could purify themselves,” “… could become pure,” or “… could get rid of what made them unclean.”
Most translations are based on the same text as the UBS Greek New Testament, in which outward rules includes all the rules to do only with food, drink, and various purification ceremonies. Phillips and Zürcher Bibel follow a less likely text which makes the outward rules another item in the list: “various washings and rules for bodily conduct.” The word for rules is the one used in verse 1. Some translations put outward rules first and give the examples later; for example, Jerusalem Bible “they are rules about the outward life, connected with foods and drinks and washing at various times.” The “rules about the outward life” are contrasted with the heart or “conscience” (verse 9).
The expression outward rules may be almost meaningless if translated literally. It may be possible to speak about “rules about how one performs rituals,” but it may be clearer to translate outward rules as “rules which have nothing to do with one’s heart” or “rules which have nothing to do with the person inside each of us.”
Establish the new order: new order (Revised Standard Version “reformation”) translates a Greek word related to an adjective meaning “straight,” “upright.” In order to give the full meaning of “putting things straight,” Good News Translation fourth edition (like Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, Translator’s New Testament) uses the phrase the new order. Jerusalem Bible‘s “until it should be time to reform them,” that is, “the rules about worship,” is too narrow. Barclay‘s “only until the time when by the action of God religion is totally reformed and reconstructed” gives the meaning precisely but is rather long. The text refers to the fulfillment of the Jewish hope for a new world, not a mere improvement of this world.
Good News Bible fourth edition avoids words like “reform” and “reformation” perhaps because in current English they are increasingly used to refer to some superficial improvement in the existing situation. Establish the new order may be expressed in some languages as “make everything new,” “cause everything to be new and different,” or “cause a new way of living to come into existence.”
Quoted with permission from Ellingworth, Paul and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The Letter of the Hebrews. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1983. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .