(avg. read time: 7–14 mins.)
All of my posts on biblical studies subjects this month will be devoted to the Book of Hebrews. They will be based on a “mini-commentary” that I wrote in anticipation of a semester I spent as a teaching intern for a class on exegesis of Hebrews. It is a mini-commentary in two respects. One, it is not as extensive as I would plan a full commentary to be, which I would expect to be at least the length of my dissertation, or more likely longer. I am not attempting to be comprehensive in my comments, and so I do not engage in-depth with all the matters I could. Two, I intend to engage chiefly with primary texts, and thus I do not plan on making many references to commentaries or monographs in this context. There is no specific theme I am setting out to track, no particular angle that I am analyzing the book from; I am simply including anything I have made note of. There will be fourteen parts to it.
For Heb 1, I would like to organize my thoughts in the following way. First, I want to unpack the significance of the prologue. Second, I want to make some general observations about the use of the OT in Hebrews. Third, I want to make some observations about the use of the OT in this particular chapter. Fourth, I want to make observations about both Christology and theology proper, since the latter has received much less attention. The first task will be addressed in this post and the other three will be in the next post.
1:1 By many and various ways [two hapax] long ago God spoke to the ancestors/patriarchs by the prophets,
1:2 in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, who he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages;
1:3 who, being the radiance [hapax] of his glory and the imprint/image [hapax] of his being [hypostasis], upholding all things by the word of his power, having made purification for sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
1:4 having become as much superior to angels as the name which he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
The author begins with one long sentence in 1:1–4 by referring to the diverse ways that God has spoken to their ancestors through the prophets. After all, God spoke through oracles of condemnation/judgment, oracles of promise, symbolic actions, dreams, visions, and other means. God regularly spoke through the media of prophets in these instances. This observation establishes continuity between what the author of Hebrews will claim about God’s speech-acts more recently and the speech-acts of God throughout the history they claim as their own. Indeed, the whole of the argument will show that all of these speech-acts have prepared for the climax in the shadow of which the author and the audience live (the author even hints as much in the fact that the first use of the verb for “speaking” is in the participial/dependent form, while the second reference to God “speaking” through Jesus is the main verb). This is signified by reference to “these last days” (cf. Acts 2:17; 1 Cor 10:11; Eph 3:9–12; 2 Tim 3:1; Titus 1:2–3; Jas 5:3; 1 Pet 1:20; 2 Pet 3:3; 1 John 2:18; Jude 18) and to the reference to God speaking by a Son. This logic is similar to the parable of the wicked tenants (Matt 21:33–46 // Mark 12:1–12 // Luke 20:9–19); John 1:14–18; 5:39–47; Gal 4:1–7; 2 Pet 1:16–21; and other passages in which Jesus is portrayed as the climax of prophetic or salvation history, without necessarily being referred to as the Son. In all cases, the Son is the climactic messenger and enactor of the message, the executor of God’s will. For these reasons and others, the aim of the Christology in Hebrews is ultimately to point back to God through the mediator and executor who is Christ. Christ’s actions are ultimately God’s actions with and through him. God has thus appointed Christ as heir of all things, which is another resonance with the parable of the wicked tenants (Matt 21:38 // Mark 12:7 // Luke 20:14). It also resonates with several other texts wherein the message is that the world was made for Christ and believers are given the blessing of becoming co-heirs with Christ of the world that is coming (Rom 8:17; Gal 3:29; 4:7; Titus 3:7; Jas 2:5).
As I argued in my first article on Hebrews, the sense of God creating the αἰῶνας through Jesus most likely means that God made the “ages” through the Son. Through this same Son he brought the salvation history of the ages to its climax in the last days precisely because it was through this Son that God made the ages. While this action is naturally associated with creation (Gen 1:1, 7, 16, 21, 25, 27), the emphasis in this text is not so much on creating the world in its spatial dimension but on how time and the history of events designated therein are in the hands of the one who created it. Furthermore, the statement signifies that the Creator has guided salvation history to this point and will continue to guide it to its consummation. The one who designated the functions of time and made that which governs it has also designated the function of all time, of all ages, through the Son, who also serves as the climax of the ages.
Verse 3 refers to Jesus as the radiance (ἀπαύγασμα) of God’s glory and the imprint (χαρακτήρ) of his being/nature (ὑπόστασις). This precise description of Jesus in relation to God is unique in the NT, but it reflects the only time when the word ἀπαύγασμα appears in the LXX, Wis 7:26. There, the figure of Wisdom is referred to as the radiance (ἀπαύγασμα) of eternal light and an image (εἰκών, which can be synonymous with χαρακτήρ) of God’s goodness. These connections need not imply that we are dealing with Wisdom Christology per se here. Rather, they are suggestive of how, like in John 1, notions of the Wisdom and Word of God were often drawn together and resonated similarly, and similar language with similar connotations could be used for both. Like Wisdom, the Son through whom God has spoken in the last days could, in being described with these terms, be understood as being both identified with God, in that he shares “Godness” with God the Father, and in other ways distinguished, in that he is Son and the Father is the Father. Just like Wisdom, Jesus is thus identified as God’s creative, revelatory, and salvific power operative in creation. The term ἀπαύγασμα can have a passive meaning—reflection—or an active meaning—effulgence or radiance—but in any case, it defines the relationship between the subject and another subject that stands as the source of that subject’s quality. Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory as he is the imprint of God’s being/nature. The term χαρακτήρ—from which we derive the English “character”—is related to a stamping tool, such as a token or signet ring by which a distinctive mark or seal is made. Jesus is thus the seal of God’s very being, the unique and distinctive (visual) representation of him. The term ὑπόστασις would become important in later Christian history as it would become essential to the doctrine of hypostatic union—that Jesus was a perfect union of divine and human natures—and to the Trinitarian controversies, as the popular orthodox expression for the doctrine of the Trinity would become that God was one ousia in three hypostases, although this was not a perfect solution for everyone, since the two words had largely overlapping semantic domains (including in translations across languages). In other words, the sense of ὑπόστασις here is of the foundational reality of something, the irreducible essence that defines the subject as it is. In the case of God, it is God’s “Godness.” It is in this most basic ontological sense that the author is using it here rather than in the later sense where a distinction was made between ousia and hypostasis. Jesus is the imprint of God’s very divine essence rather than God the Father himself.
Subsequent chapters will unpack this more fully, but I wanted to point out here how we are already getting hints that Jesus is the perfect embodiment of both God’s faithfulness and human faithfulness. He effected salvation, which makes him the embodiment of God’s faithfulness. In doing so as a priest, he is the embodiment of human faithfulness, fulfilling the function for which God created humans to bear the divine image. As God, he occupies the rightful place as king over the world and is faithful to that position as he works for redemptive and creative purposes to reconcile and build up creation. As the true human, he also occupies the royal throne intended for humans. In both ways, he is able to show humans how to be obedient/faithful to God’s will because he himself was the true human and did not sin when faced with temptation. These points work into the author’s exhortation to persevere and remain faithful in the face of opposition as Jesus did (as well as how their predecessors in the faith did). Because he is the incorporation of a human into God in his person, he can incorporate other humans into the divine family. As Athanasius and other patristic authors said, God became what we are so that we may become what God is. The extent to which such a doctrine is reflected in the Bible is a discussion for another time, but here and elsewhere (most clearly in 2 Pet 1:4), one of the purposes of salvation is to make humans participants in God through radiating the divine glory and image. This is why part of the preface to the author’s overall argument (the proem, the preliminary statement of facts, the anticipation of arguments, and the interpretive key), specifically the part in 1:3, is the statement that Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation/imprint of God’s nature/being. This statement is both an emphasis of his nature as the unique revelation of God and an emphasis that he is the perfect embodiment of true humanity made to bear the image and the likeness of God. Thus, it makes sense why it is essential to recognize that he is both the embodiment of divine faithfulness and human faithfulness. He unites them in his incarnation, which comes to fruition in his birth and to consummation in his death, resurrection, and exaltation. In between, his life was a faithful demonstration of the will of God and of human purpose as they are similarly to be united in the consummation of the kingdom as the fulfillment of the purpose of creation to be God’s dwelling place with his creatures and of humans to be God’s image- and likeness-bearers.
The note that Jesus upholds all things by the word of his power is possibly another connection to Wisdom (Wis 1:6–7; 7:27; 8:1), as well as to the closely associated theology about the Word of God (cf. Isa 55; Wis 9:1–2; 18:14–16; John 1:1–18). As a way of bringing both creational and salvation-historical points together, the message here is that Jesus sustains the existence of the world by the same word used to create it initially (Gen 1). Furthermore, this text is properly parallel with 1:2b, both of which feature the term “all things” (πάντων/πάντα), which indicates that the Son sustains all things because all things are his inheritance. (I have written more about these concepts in a post on Colossians, which features similar language.)
Likewise, 1:3c is properly parallel with 1:2c. Both clauses feature the verb ποιέω, but the parallel runs deeper than that. This parallel also indicates the accomplishment of God’s purpose in making the ages, so that the Son should make purification for sins by his self-sacrifice and be raised from the dead in order to be exalted and sit at the right hand of the Majesty on high. That this is the purpose for which God made the ages through the Son is indicated at several points throughout Hebrews. The prosopological exegesis of the Scripture citations in the first chapter links Jesus’s exaltation with several texts, so that this story has already been told in anticipation of its enactment in history (1:5–6, 8–13). Jesus’s death, implied resurrection, and exaltation are linked with the fulfillment of God’s purpose for humanity as outlined in Ps 8 (2:5–18). Jesus fulfilled his purpose as royal priest, according to Scripture’s anticipatory telling, by his death, resurrection to everlasting life (i.e., his salvation from death and “completion”), and everlasting session (5:5–10; 7). Jesus’s entrance into heaven as an everlasting high priest fulfills God’s promise to Abraham, the foundational covenant (6:13–20). Jesus’s sacrifice and priesthood fulfill the promise for God’s new covenant (8). Jesus’s sacrifice typologically fulfilled the institution of sacrifice in the old covenant at the denouement of the ages (9:11–10:18). The better resurrection and the final attainment of God’s promise for all of the faithful throughout history cannot happen apart from Jesus (11:35, 39–40), the one who is both the pioneer and completer of faith through his death on the cross and his attainment of the joy set as a goal before him (12:2).
The resurrection is rarely directly referenced in Hebrews, but its importance is assumed, and I hope to identify places where I find that assumption operative (as I have also done here and here). I am inclined to think that one such recurrent feature of the text signifying the importance of the resurrection is in the references to the exaltation, because we will see later that the resurrection is not simply identified with exaltation, but the latter is certainly the dominant emphasis (1:3, 13; 2:5–9; 7:26; 8:1; 10:12–13; 12:2, 25–29). This action of sitting at the right hand of the Majesty on high is presented as the outcome or goal of the aforementioned actions and qualities of Jesus mentioned heretofore in v. 3 (this is the only main verb in this part of the sentence as “being,” “upholding,” and “making” are all in participial forms). As a result of who he is and what he has done, he sits on the seat of power, an image which itself implies the larger expectation of the present and coming kingdom. One reason why the “kingdom of God” per se is not as prominent in the terminology of the Church after Jesus is because it appears implicitly every time the early Christians proclaim Jesus as Lord (i.e., King). Jesus is King and his kingdom is God’s kingdom. If he is King, people must get with the program. One of the primary functions of the epistles is to unpack the meaning of Jesus’s Lordship in these situations. Therefore, they are about life under the Lordship of Jesus, otherwise known as the kingdom/reign of God. It was the resurrection, the eschatological event of vindication and bestowal of immortality, which connected Jesus’s kingdom proclamation, his death, and his exaltation as King over the Creator’s kingdom. The resurrection was an eschatological reality which would be a feature of the kingdom of the Creator. When Jesus resurrected, he brought this eschatological reality into the present and brought also the kingdom (or rather, made clear that he had been doing so all along, climaxing in this supreme affirmation of God’s kingdom agenda). The kingdom as a present reality is not experienced as fully realized, but the dynamic power of God through the Holy Spirit and the transformative way of life are present now, having broken into the corrupted world through Jesus, revealing anew God’s creative intention. As the Gospel according to John and various works of Paul clarify, it is the work of the Spirit—the same Spirit who was at work in Jesus, the same Spirit expected as an identifying mark of the kingdom—who provides the preview of the kingdom now. It is the community in whom the Spirit dwells which will constitute the people of the kingdom when Jesus consummates it. Furthermore, the work of the Spirit is in accordance with the image of Jesus, who is the perfect image of God, meaning that the Spirit forms Christians according to the template of Jesus. This formation is another key element of the connection between resurrection and kingdom: kingdom life will be in accordance with the life of Jesus, which includes the resurrection.
But before we get to how the above plays out in this letterized sermon, verse 4 previews the first part of the argument proper as it announces that Jesus is superior to the angels and that the name Jesus inherited—Kyrios—is superior to theirs. Since this statement is something of a hook transition to the next unit, we will discuss what is important about the argument of Jesus’s superiority to the angels and how the author makes it next time.