Hebrews 2:16. Verily is feeble, as is even assuredly. The word means, it is known, admitted, and admitted everywhere; it is nowhere questioned.

He took not on him; rather, ‘on angels (or in later English, of angels) He laid not hold,' but on the seed of Abraham He laid hold, i.e to help and save them (see the same word in Hebrews 8:9). It is not angels whom Christ delivers (Hebrews 2:15), nor is it angels He succours (Hebrews 2:18), but the seed of Abraham, the theocratic name of the people of God peculiar to Paul. This is now generally accepted as the meaning of the verse. In the early Church the phrase ‘took not on Him' was applied pretty generally, as in the Authorized Version, to the assumption of a human nature, and so it was understood by Calvin, Luther, Owen, and others. The active voice of the same Greek verb (here it is in the middle) is used by Greek writers in the sense of assuming a nature. But the tense is present, the voice is middle, and the word ‘nature' is not expressed, and can hardly be supplied, so that we seem shut up to the meaning which is admittedly found in Hebrews 8:9, and in other sixteen places where it is used in N. T., including 1 Timothy 6:19, and seven passages in the Acts.

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Old Testament