Hebrews 2 - Introduction
CHAPS. 1. and 2. Christ's divinity and humanity, and the bearing of each on redemption and on human feeling.... [ Continue Reading ]
CHAPS. 1. and 2. Christ's divinity and humanity, and the bearing of each on redemption and on human feeling.... [ Continue Reading ]
Hebrews 2:1. WE HAVE HEARD, rather ‘[the things] heard,' an expression less definite, and intended to include all that was spoken by our Lord and by His servants, whatever was heard by them and reported to us, or directly by ourselves. The dignity of the messenger adds greatly to the responsibility... [ Continue Reading ]
Hebrews 2:1-4. These verses are closely connected with the first chapter, and scarcely less closely with the subsequent verses of the second. It is characteristic of these warnings and exhortations that they never interrupt the thought. They spring naturally from what precedes, and lead as naturally... [ Continue Reading ]
DOCTRINAL HINTS. In this Epistle, as in the Gospel of John, the doctrine is based on the Divine nature of Christ, and on His incarnation. As in the Gospel (John 1:1-18) it is said that the Word was God and became flesh, and this double truth pervades the book, so in the Hebrews the Deity and the hu... [ Continue Reading ]
Hebrews 2:2. THE WORD SPOKEN BY (rather, through or in the midst of) ANGELS. If the attendance of angels at the giving of the Law added force and dignity to the precepts of that economy, how much greater is the honour and the authority of the Gospel which was given by Him whom angels worship and ser... [ Continue Reading ]
Hebrews 2:3. BY THE LORD, rather through, by the instrumentality of. When instrumentality is clearly expressed in the context, as when it is said, ‘By whom He made the worlds' (chap. Hebrews 1:2), no change is needed; but when, as here, ‘by' is ambiguous, making it uncertain whether it describes a m... [ Continue Reading ]
Hebrews 2:4. GOD ALSO BEARING THEM WITNESS, _i.e_ God bearing witness with them to the Gospel they preached, confirming their word by the signs that followed (Mark 16:20). WITH SIGNS, WONDERS, AND MIRACLES. This is the threefold division of the miraculous acts which prove the superhuman mission of... [ Continue Reading ]
Hebrews 2:5. FOR. This verse introduces a new proof of the superiority of the Gospel; but it is also connected with what precedes. The most natural explanation is to connect the ‘for' with Hebrews 1:14. Angels are not sons: they are ministering spirits appointed only to serve. Not unto angels is the... [ Continue Reading ]
Hebrews 2:6. BUT ONE IN A CERTAIN PLACE. Some one somewhere testifies. This is not the language of uncertainty nor even of indefiniteness. It is a common formula found in Philo and, as Schoetgenius shows, in Jewish writers, when they quote from what is supposed to be well known to their readers. Som... [ Continue Reading ]
Hebrews 2:8-9. The supremacy is certainly promised, and is intended to be complete; for nothing is excepted, though as yet (Hebrews 2:9) the promise is imperfectly fulfilled. The humiliation is clear enough, and the crowning with glory is begun. By and by there will be universal subjection, and He w... [ Continue Reading ]
Hebrews 2:10, etc. IT BECAME HIM. This arrangement (whereby one made lower than the angels was to be supreme) was not only in harmony with God's intention, as foreshadowed in nature and revealed in Scripture; it was in itself befitting. It was worthy of God, and it completed the Saviour's qualificat... [ Continue Reading ]
Hebrews 2:12. THE CHURCH. The Old Testament name is the congregation. But in modern usage the congregation is one thing, and the church is another; and it is the church that best represents the sense, the exact meaning of the original and the force of the argument.... [ Continue Reading ]
Hebrews 2:13. I WILL PUT MY TRUST IN HIM. Christ's oneness with us is not only proved by the fact that we have one Father and are brothers, all ‘partakers of a Divine nature,' but by the further fact that we have the same trials and struggles, and faith the principle of our spiritual life. The broth... [ Continue Reading ]
Hebrews 2:14. HE HIMSELF LIKEWISE. The Greek word here is not easily rendered. It implies great likeness without absolute identity; very closely like, and absolutely like so far as flesh and blood are concerned. He partook _in the main_ of our nature. His was an actual incarnation Jesus Christ in th... [ Continue Reading ]
Hebrews 2:15. THROUGH DEATH. The Fathers and the later commentators (Bengel notably) delight in marking how Christ destroyed death by dying, and cast out the prince of the world the king of death on the cross, the weakness Droving as often to be the power of God. HE MIGHT DESTROY is too strong; ab... [ Continue Reading ]
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 sav... [ Continue Reading ]
Hebrews 2:17. IT BEHOVED HIM. The word expresses moral fitness and consequent obligation, as in Hebrews 5:3; Hebrews 5:12, based on the nature of His mediatorial work. IN ALL THINGS LIKE, _i.e_ all things essential to His mediation. The exception, ‘without sin,' is expressed later (chap. Hebrews 4... [ Continue Reading ]
Hebrews 2:18. IN THAT HE SUFFERED, BEING TEMPTED, is on the whole the best rendering of the Greek. It may admit of a limited sense, ‘In that wherein He suffered, being tempted,' or, ‘having been tempted in what He suffered.' The first sense includes these senses and others too. And the wider the mea... [ Continue Reading ]