Hebrews 1:1

Πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως πάλαι ὁ θεὸς … λαλήσας. This Epistle is unique in beginning without the author’s name (St John’s first Epistle is hardly an exception, for it was probably sent to the Churches as a treatise in elucidation of the Gospel). It is hardly possible in a translation to preserve the majesty and balance of this remarkable opening sentence of the Epistle. It must be regarded as one of the most pregnant and noble passages of Scripture. The author does not begin, as St Paul invariably does, with a greeting which is almost invariably followed by a thanksgiving; but at once, and without preface, he strikes the keynote, by stating the thesis which he intends to prove. His object is to secure his Hebrew readers against the peril of an apostasy to which they were tempted (α) by the delay of Christ’s personal return, (β) by the persecutions to which they were subjected, and (γ) by the splendid memories and exalted claims of the religion in which they had been trained. He wishes therefore not only to warn and exhort them, but also to prove that Christianity is a Covenant infinitely superior to the Covenant of Judaism, alike in its Agents and its Results. The words πόσῳ μᾶλλον (Hebrews 9:14), κρείττων διαθήκη (Hebrews 8:6), διαφορώτερον ὄνομα (Hebrews 1:4), might be regarded as the keynotes of the Epistle (comp. Hebrews 3:3; Hebrews 7:19-20; Hebrews 7:22; Hebrews 8:6; Hebrews 9:23; Hebrews 10:34; Hebrews 11:40; Hebrews 12:24, &c.). In many respects, it is not so much a letter as an address. Into these opening verses he has compressed a world of meaning, and has also strongly brought out the conceptions of the contrast between the Old and New Dispensations—a contrast which involves the transcendence of the latter. Literally, the sentence may be rendered, “In many portions and in many ways, God having of old spoken to the fathers in the prophets, at the end of these days spake to us in a Son.” It was God who spoke in both dispensations; of old and in the present epoch: to the fathers and to us; to them in the Prophets, to us in a Son; to them “in many portions” and therefore “fragmentarily,” but—as the whole Epistle is meant to shew—to us with a full and complete revelation; to them “in many ways,” “multifariously,” but to us in one way—namely by revealing Himself in human nature, and becoming “a Man with men.”

πολυμερῶς, “in many parts.” The nearest English representative of the word is “fragmentarily,” which is not meant as a term of absolute but only of relative disparagement (τὰς παντοδαπὰς οἰκονομίας σημαίνει, Theodoret). It has never been God’s method to reveal all His relations to mankind at once. He revealed himself “in many portions.” He lifted the veil fold by fold. First came the Adamic dispensation; then the Noahic; then the Abrahamic; then the Mosaic; then that widening and deepening system of truth of which the Prophets were ministers; then the yet more advanced and elaborate scheme which dates from Ezra;—the final revelation, the “fulness” of revealed truth, came with the Gospel. Each of these systems was indeed fragmentary, and therefore (so far) imperfect, and yet it was the best possible system with reference to the end in view, which was the education of the human race in the love and knowledge of God. The first great truth which God prominently revealed was His Unity; then came the earliest germ of the Messianic hope; then came the Moral Law; then the development of Messianism and the belief in Immortality. Isaiah and Ezekiel, Zechariah and Malachi, the son of Sirach and John the Baptist, had each his several “portion” and element of truth to reveal. But all the sevenfold rays were united in the pure and perfect light when God had given us His Son. Finally, when, by the inbreathing of the Spirit, He had made us partakers of Himself, the last era of revelation had arrived. To this final revelation there can be no further addition, though it may be granted to age after age more and more fully to comprehend it. Complete in itself, it yet works as the leaven, and grows as the grain of mustard seed, and brightens and broadens as the Dawn. Yet even the Christian Revelation is itself but “a part”; “we know in part (ἐκ μέρους) and prophesy,” says St Paul, “in part.” Man, being finite, is only capable of partial knowledge.

πολυτρόπως, “in many manners.” The “sundry” and “divers” of our A. V. are only due to the professed fondness for variety which King James’s translators regarded as a merit. The “many manners” of the older revelation were Law and Prophecy, Type and Allegory, Promise and Threatening; the diverse individuality of many of the Prophets, Seers, Warriors, Kings, who were agents of the revelation; the method of various sacrifices; the messages which came by Urim, by dreams, by waking visions, and “face to face” (see Numbers 12:6; Psalms 89:19; Hosea 12:10; 2 Peter 1:21). The mouthpiece of the revelation was now a Gentile sorcerer, now a royal sufferer, now a rough ascetic, now a polished priest, now a gatherer of sycomore fruit. Thus the separate revelations were not complete but partial; and the methods not simple but complex.

It will be seen, then, how very far the two words (also found together in Max. Tyrius) are from being a mere rhetorical amplification of διαφόρως (Chrysostom, followed by many others). They are on the contrary of the deepest importance as containing a principle of O. T. exegesis.

The words πολυμερῶς πολυτρόπως are of the rhythm known as the Paeon quartus (). Ancient writers are fond of elaborating their opening sentences, and the author of this Epistle naturally clothed in an impressive form a clause so full of profound and original truth. Thus St Luke begins his Gospel with an Antispastus, ἐπειδήπερ () and ends his Acts with an Epitrite, ἀκωλύτως ().

πάλαι. Malachi the last prophet of the Old Covenant had died more than four centuries before Christ.

ὁ θεός. In this one word, which admits the Divine origin of Mosaism, the writer makes an immense concession to the Jews. Such expressions as St Paul had need in the fervour of controversy—when for instance he spoke of “the Law” as consisting of “weak and beggarly elements”—tended to alienate the Jews by utterly shocking their prejudices; and in very early ages, as we see from the “Epistle of Barnabas,” some Christians had developed a tendency to speak of Judaism with an extreme disparagement, which culminated in the Gnostic attribution of the Old Testament to an inferior and even malignant Deity, whom they called “the Demiurge.” The author shared no such feelings. In all his sympathies he shews himself a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and at the very outset he speaks of the Old Dispensation as coming from God.

λαλήσας. The verb λαλεῖν is often used, especially in this Epistle, of Divine revelations (Hebrews 2:2-3; Hebrews 3:5; Hebrews 7:14, &c.). It has none of the disparaging sense in comparison with λέγειν which it has in classical Greek.

λαλήσας … ἐλάλησεν. There is no relative in the Greek. Instead of “who … spake … hath spoken …” the force of the aorists would be better conveyed by “having spoken … spake.”

τοῖς πατράσιν. That is to the Jews of old. The writer, a Jew in all his sympathies, leaves unnoticed throughout this Epistle the very existence of the Gentiles. As a friend and follower of St Paul he of course recognised the call of the Gentiles to equal privileges, but the demonstration of their prerogatives had already been furnished by St Paul with a force and fulness to which nothing could be added. This writer, addressing Jews, is not in any way thinking of the Gentiles. To him “the people” means exclusively “the people of God” in the old sense, namely Israel after the flesh. It is hardly conceivable that St Paul, who was the Apostle to the Gentiles, and whose writings were mainly addressed to them, and written to secure their Gospel privileges, should, even in a single letter, have so completely left them out of sight as this author does. On the other hand, the author always tries to shew his “Hebrew” readers that their conversion does not involve any sudden discontinuity from the religious history of their race.

ἐν τοῖς προφήταις, “in the Prophets.” It is true that the ἐν (rendered “by” in the A. V.) may be only a Hebraism, representing the Hebrew בְּ in 1 Samuel 28:6; 2 Samuel 23:2. We find ἐν “in” used of agents in Matthew 9:34, “In the Prince of the demons casteth He out demons,” and in Acts 17:31. But, on the other hand, the writer may have meant the preposition to be taken in its proper sense, to imply that the Prophets were only the organs of the revelation; so that it is more emphatic than διὰ, “by means of.” (Rex mortalis loquitur per legatum, non tamen in legato, Bengel.) The same thought may be in his mind as in that of Philo when he says that “the Prophet is an interpreter, while God from within whispers what he should utter.” In fact the belief that the prophets spoke in ecstasy, i.e. with a total suppression and even obliteration of their individual powers, was a view which the Alexandrian theologians borrowed from Philo, as he had done from Plato. The ἐν must not, however, be pressed to imply the writer’s acceptance of this opinion in its whole extent, for it expresses rather the Pagan than the Scripture view of the nature of prophetic inspiration. “The Prophets,” says St Thomas Aquinas, “did not speak of themselves, but God spoke in them.” Still they spoke with full human self-consciousness and unimpaired individuality, as St Paul urges on the Corinthians πνεύματα προφητῶν προφήταις ὑποτάσσεται (1 Corinthians 14:32). Comp. 2 Corinthians 13:3. The word Prophets is here taken in that larger sense which includes Abraham, Moses, &c.