Verses 1-14
Chapter 1
1:1-3 It was in many
parts and in many ways that God spoke to our fathers in the prophets in
time gone past; but in the end of these days he has spoken to us in One
who is a Son, a Son whom he destined to enter into possession of all
things, a Son by whose agency he made the universe. He was the very
effulgence of God's glory; he was the exact expression of God's very
essence. He bore everything onwards by the word of his power; and after
he had made purification for the sins of men, he took his royal seat at
the right hand of the glory in the heights.
This is the most sonorous piece of Greek in the whole New
Testament. It is a passage that any classical Greek orator would have
been proud to write. The writer of Hebrews has brought to it every
artifice of word and rhythm that the beautiful and flexible Greek
language could provide. In Greek the two adverbs which we have
translated in many parts and in many ways are single words, polumeros (Greek #4181) and polutropos (Greek #4187). Polu- (compare Greek #4183)
in such a combination means "many" and it was a habit of the great
Greek orators, like Demosthenes, the greatest of them all, to weave such
sonorous words into the first paragraph of a speech. The writer to the
Hebrews felt that, since he was going to speak of the supreme revelation
of God to men, he must clothe his thought in the noblest language that
it was possible to find.
There is something of interest even here. The man who wrote this
letter must have been trained in Greek oratory. When he became a
Christian he did not throw his training away. He used the talent he had
in the service of Jesus Christ. Everyone knows the lovely legend of the
acrobatic tumbler who became a monk. He felt that he had so little to
offer. One day someone saw him go into the chapel and stand before the
statue of the Virgin Mary. He hesitated for a moment and then began to
go through his acrobatic routine. When he had completed his tumbling, he
knelt in adoration; and then, says the legend, the statue of the Virgin
Mary came to life, stepped down from her pedestal and gently wiped the
sweat from the brow of the acrobat who had offered all he had to give.
When a man becomes a Christian he is not asked to abandon all the
talents he once had; he is asked to use them in the service of Jesus
Christ and of his Church.
The basic idea of this letter is that Jesus Christ alone brings
to men the full revelation of God and that he alone enables them to
enter into his very presence. The writer begins by contrasting Jesus
with the prophets who had gone before. He talks about him coming in the
end of these days. The Jews divided all time into two ages--the present
age and the age to come. In between they set The Day of the Lord. The
present age was wholly bad; the age to come was to be the golden age of
God. The Day of the Lord was to be like the birth-pangs of the new age.
So the writer to the Hebrews says, "The old time is passing away; the
age of incompleteness is gone; the time of human guessing and groping is
at an end; the new age, the age of God, has dawned in Christ." He sees
the world and the thought of men enter, as it were, into a new beginning
with Christ. In Jesus God has entered humanity, eternity has invaded
time, and things can never be the same again.
He contrasts Jesus with the prophets, for they were always
believed to be in the secret counsels of God. Long ago Amos had said:
"The Lord God does nothing without revealing his secrets to his servants
the prophets" (Amos 3:7).
Philo had said: "The prophet is the interpreter of the God who speaks
within." He had said: "The prophets are interpreters of the God who uses
them as instruments to reveal to men that which he wills." In later
days this doctrine had been completely mechanized. Athenagoras spoke of
God moving the mouths of the prophets as a man might play upon a musical
instrument and of the Spirit breathing into them as a flute-player
breathes into a flute. Justin Martyr spoke of the divine coming down
from heaven and sweeping across the prophets as a plectrum sweeps across
a harp or a lute. In the end men came to put it in such a way that the
prophets had really no more to do with their message than a musical
instrument had to do with the music it played or a pen with the message
it wrote. That was over-mechanizing the matter; for even the finest
musician is to some extent at the mercy of his instrument and can not
produce great music out of a piano in which certain notes are missing or
out of tune, and even the finest penman is to some extent at the mercy
of his pen. God can not reveal more than men can understand. His
revelation comes through the minds and the hearts of men. That is
exactly what the writer to the Hebrews saw.
He says that the revelation of God which came through the prophets was in many parts (polumeros, Greek #4181) and in many ways (polutropos, Greek #4187). There are two ideas there.
(i) The revelation of the prophets had a variegated grandeur
which made it a tremendous thing. From age to age they had spoken,
always fitting their message to the age, never letting it be out of
date. At the same time, that revelation was fragmentary and had to be
presented in such a way that the limitations of the time would
understand. One of the most interesting things is to see how time and
again the prophets are characterized by one idea. For instance, Amos is
"a cry for social justice." Isaiah had grasped the holiness of God.
Hosea, because of his own bitter home experience, had realized the
wonder of the forgiving love of God. Each prophet, out of his own
experience of life and out of the experience of Israel, had grasped and
expressed a fragment of the truth of God. None had grasped the whole
round orb of truth; but with Jesus it was different. He was not a
fragment of the truth; he was the whole truth. In him God displayed not
some part of himself but all of himself.
(ii) The prophets used many methods. They used the method of
speech. When speech failed they used the method of dramatic action
(Compare 1 Kings 11:29-32; Jeremiah 13:1-9; Jeremiah 27:1-7; Ezekiel 4:1-3; Ezekiel 5:1-4).
The prophet had to use human methods to transmit his part of the truth
of God. Again, it was different with Jesus. He revealed God by being
himself. It was not so much what he said and did that shows us what God
is like; it is what he was.
The revelation of the prophets was great and manifold, but it
was fragmentary and presented by such methods as they could find to make
it effective. The revelation of God in Jesus was complete and was
presented in Jesus himself. In a word, the prophets were the friends of
God; but Jesus was the Son. The prophets grasped part of the mind of
God; but Jesus was that mind. It is to be noted that it is no part of
the purpose of the writer to the Hebrews to belittle the prophets; it is
his aim to establish the supremacy of Jesus Christ. He is not saying
that there is a break between the Old Testament revelation and that of
the New Testament; he is stressing the fact that there is continuity,
but continuity that ends in consummation.
The writer to the Hebrews uses two great pictures to describe what Jesus was. He says that he was the apaugasma (Greek #541) of God's glory. Apaugasma (Greek #541)
can mean one of two things in Greek. It can mean effulgence, the light
which shines forth, or it can mean reflection, the light which is
reflected. Here it probably means effulgence. Jesus is the shining of
God's glory among men.
He says that he was the charakter (Greek #5481) of God's very essence. In Greek, charakter (Greek #5481)
means two things, first, a seal, and, second, the impression that the
seal leaves on the wax. The impression has the exact form of the seal.
So, when the writer to the Hebrews said that Jesus was the charakter (Greek #5481)
of the being of God, he meant that he was the exact image of God. Just
as when you look at the impression, you see exactly what the seal which
made it is like, so when you look at Jesus you see exactly what God is
like.
C. J. Vaughan has pointed out that this passage tells us six great things about Jesus:
(i) The original glory of God belongs to him. Here is a
wonderful thought. Jesus is God's glory; therefore, we see with amazing
clarity that the glory of God consists not in crushing men and reducing
them to abject servitude, but in serving them and loving them and in the
end dying for them. It is not the glory of shattering power but the
glory of suffering love.
(ii) The destined empire belongs to Jesus. The New Testament
writers never doubted his ultimate triumph. Think of it. They were
thinking of a Galilaean carpenter who was crucified as a criminal on a
cross on a hill outside the city of Jerusalem. They themselves faced
savage persecution and were the humblest of people. As Sir William
Watson said of them,
"So to the wild wolf Hate were sacrificed
The panting, huddled flock, whose crime was Christ."
And yet they never doubted the eventual victory. They were
quite certain that God's love was backed by his power and that in the
end the kingdoms of the world would be the kingdoms of the Lord and of
his Christ.
(iii) The creative action belongs to Jesus. The early Church
held that the Son had been God's agent in creation, that in some way God
had originally created the world through him. They were filled with the
thought that the One who had created the world would also be the One
who redeemed it.
(iv) The sustaining power belongs to Jesus. These early
Christians had a tremendous grip of the doctrine of providence. They did
not think of God as creating the world and then leaving it to itself.
Somehow and somewhere they saw a power that was carrying the world and
each life on to a destined end. They believed,
"That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd.
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete."
(v) To Jesus belongs the redemptive work. By his sacrifice he
paid the price of sin; by his continual presence he liberates from sin.
(vi) To Jesus belongs the mediatorial exaltation. He has taken
his place on the right hand of glory; but the tremendous thought of the
writer to the Hebrews is that he is there, not as our judge but as one
who makes intercession for us so that, when we enter into the presence
of God, we go, not to hear his justice prosecute us but his love plead
for us.
1:4-14 He was the
superior to the angels, in proportion as he had received a more
excellent rank than they. For to which of the angels did God ever say:
"It is my Son that you are; it is I who this day have begotten you"? And
again: "I will be to him a Father, and he will be to me a Son." And
again, when he brings his honoured one into the world of men, he says:
"And let all the angels of God bow down before him." As for the angels,
he says: "He who makes his angels winds and his servants a flame of
fire." But, as for the Son, he says: "God is your throne for ever and
for ever, and the sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of your
kingdom. You have loved justice and hated lawlessness; therefore God has
anointed you, even your God, with the oil of exultation above your
fellows." And, "You in the beginning, O Lord, laid the foundations of
the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands. They shall perish
but you remain unalterable. All of them will grow old like a garment,
and like a mantle you will fold them up and they will be changed. But
you are ever yourself, and your years will not fail." To which of the
angels did he ever say: "Sit at my right hand till I make your enemies
your footstool"? Are they not all ministering spirits, continually being
despatched on service, for the sake of those who are destined to enter
into possession of salvation?
In the previous passage the writer was concerned to prove the
superiority of Jesus over all the prophets. Now he is concerned to prove
his superiority over the angels. That he thinks it worth while to do
this proves the place that belief in angels had in the thought of the
Jews of his day. At this time it was on the increase. The reason was
that men were more and more impressed with what is called the
transcendence of God. They felt more and more the distance and the
difference between God and man. The result was that they came to think
of the angels as intermediaries between God and man. They came to
believe that the angels bridged the gulf between God and man; that God
spoke to man through the angels and the angels carried the prayers of
man into the presence of God. We see this process particularly in one
instance. In the Old Testament the law was given directly by God to
Moses, without need of intermediary. But in New Testament times the Jews
believed that God gave the law first to angels who then passed it on to
Moses, direct communication between man and God being unthinkable
(compare Acts 7:53; Galatians 3:19).
If we look at some of the basic Jewish beliefs about angels we
will see them reappearing in this passage. God lived surrounded by his
angelic hosts (Isaiah 6:1-13 ; 1 Kings 22:19). Sometimes the angels are thought of as God's army (Joshua 5:14 ff.). Greek for "angels" is aggeloi (Greek #32) and in Hebrew mal'akim (Hebrew #4397).
In both languages the meaning is messenger as well as angel. In fact,
messenger is the more common meaning. The angels were really the beings
who were the instruments in the bringing of God's word and the working
of God's will in the universe of men. They were said to be made of an
ethereal fiery substance like blazing light. They were created either on
the second or the fifth day of creation. They did not eat or drink and
they did not beget children. Sometimes they were believed to be
immortal, although they could be annihilated by God, but there was
another belief about their existence as we shall see. Some of them, the
seraphim (Hebrew #8314), the cherubim (see keruwb - Hebrew #3742) and the ofanim (Hebrew #212)
(-im is the plural ending of Hebrew nouns) were always around the
throne of God. They were thought of as having more knowledge than men,
especially of the future, but they did not possess that knowledge by
right but rather because of "what they had heard behind the curtain."
They were thought of as the kind of entourage, the familia, of God. They
were thought of as God's senate; God did nothing without consulting
them. For instance, when God said: "Let us make man" (Genesis 1:26),
it was to the angel senate that he was speaking. Often the angels
remonstrated with God and laid objections to his purposes. In
particular, they objected to the creation of man and at that time troops
of them were annihilated; and they objected to the giving of the law
and attacked Moses on his way up Mount Sinai. This was because they were
jealous and did not wish to share any of their place or prerogatives
with any other creature.
There were millions and millions of angels. It was not till
quite late that the Jews assigned names to them. There were, in
particular, the seven angels of the presence, who were the archangels.
Of these the principal ones were Raphael, Uriel, Phanuel, Gabriel, the
angel who brought God's messages to men, and Michael, the angel who
presided over the destinies of Israel. The angels had many duties. They
brought God's messages to men. In that case they delivered their message
and vanished ( 13:20). They intervened for God in the events of history (2 Kings 19:35-36).
There were two hundred angels who controlled the movements of the stars
and kept them in their courses. There was an angel who controlled the
never-ending succession of the years and months and days. There was an
angel, a mighty prince, who was over the sea. There were angels of the
frost, the dew, the rain, the snow, the hail, the thunder and the
lightning. There were angels who were wardens of hell and torturers of
the damned. There were recording angels who wrote down every single word
which every man spoke. There were destroying angels and angels of
punishment. There was Satan, the prosecuting angel, who on every day
except the Day of Atonement continuously brought charges against men
before God. There was the angel of death who went out only at God's
bidding and who impartially delivered his summons to good and evil
alike. Every nation had its guardian angel who had the prostasia, the
presidency over it. Every individual had his guardian angel. Even little
children had their angels (Matthew 18:10). So many were the angels that the Rabbis could even say: "Every blade of grass has its angel."
There was one special belief, held only by some, which is
indirectly referred to in this passage which we are studying. The common
belief was that the angels were immortal; but there were some who
believed that they lived only one day. There was a belief in some
rabbinic schools that "every day God creates a new company of angels who
utter a song before him and are gone." "The angels are renewed every
morning and after they have praised God they return to the stream of
fire from whence they came." 4 Ezra 8:21
speaks of the God "before whom the heavenly host stand in terror and at
thy word change to wind and fire." A rabbinic homily makes one of the
angels say: "God changes us every hour . Sometimes he makes us fire, at
other times wind." That is what the writer to the Hebrews means when he
talks of God making his angels wind and fire.
With this vast angelology there was a very real danger that the
angels would come, in men's belief, to intervene between God and them.
It was necessary to show that the Son was greater far than they and that
he who knew the Son needed no angel to be his intermediary with God.
The writer to the Hebrews does it by choosing what are for him a series
of proof texts in which the Son is given a higher place than was ever
given to any angel. The texts he quotes are: Psalms 2:7; 2 Samuel 7:14; Psalms 97:7 or Deuteronomy 32:43; Psalms 104:4; Psalms 45:7-8; Psalms 102:26-27; Psalms 110:1.
Some of these texts differ from the versions we know because the writer
to the Hebrews was quoting from the Septuagint, the Greek version of
the Old Testament, which is not always the same as the original Hebrew
from which our versions are translated. Some of the proof texts he
chooses seem very strange. For instance, 2 Samuel 7:14 is in the original a simple reference to Solomon and has nothing to do with the Son or the Messiah. Psalms 102:26-27
is a reference to God and not to the Son. But whenever the early
Christians found a text with the word son or the word Lord they
considered themselves quite entitled to take it out of its context and
to apply it to Jesus.
There was one danger which the writer to the Hebrews wished at
all costs to avoid. The doctrine of angels is a lovely thing; but it has
one danger. It introduces a series of beings other than Jesus through
whom man makes approach to God. In Christianity there is no need for
anyone else in between. Because of Jesus and what he did we have direct
access to God. As Tennyson had it:
"Speak to him thou for he hears, and Spirit with
spirit can meet--
Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than
hands and feet."
The writer to the Hebrews lays down the great truth that we
need no man or supernatural being to bring us into the presence of God.
Jesus Christ has broken every barrier down and opened a direct way for
us to God.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)