56

GOD, EVEN THY GOD.

[HEBREWS. iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.

r Isa. lxi. 1. Acts iv, 27. & x. 38.

• Ps. cii. 25, &c.

10 And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands:

"Therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness," &c. Some would render this, "O God, thy God," making the first eos vocative, as in verse 6, but it is doubtful. The Targum translates as in our version, the first "God" as the nominative. What is "the oil of gladness?" Undoubtedly that Spirit of God by which the righteous are enabled to rejoice in God.

When did God thus anoint Him? Not at His Baptism, for then He was anointed to suffer, but on the day of His Triumph, when all suffering was over for ever. He Himself recognizes this joy, and assures us that, if we continue His, we shall partake of it, when in the parable He promises to say to those who have made their calling and election sure, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord" (Matth. xxv. 21). "Above thy fellows." Applied to a supposed earthly monarch, this may mean Thy fellow monarch," but as applied to the Christ, it may have the widest application. Thy fellows, i.e. fellow-men; thy fellows, those whom the King calls not servants, but friends.

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10. "And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth," &c. It is somewhat difficult to decide on what grounds the Apostolic writer quotes the first verse of this Psalm as addressed to the Son, as the whole seems addressed to the God of Israel, i.e., as is supposed, to the Father, and there is no introduction of a Divine Person of Whom or to Whom it can be said, "God, even thy God, hath anointed thee." There is one ground which has not, as far as I have seen, been sufficiently considered, which is this. It was a rooted principle in the mind of the Apostolic writer, that God created the worlds by His Son. This is asserted almost at the very beginning of the Epistle, "By whom also he made the worlds." Whom then would the writer have in his thoughts when he made the second allusion to creation, "Thou, Lord in the beginning... the heavens are the works," &c.? No doubt

CHAP. I.]

t

THOU REMAINEST.

11 They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment;

57

t Isa. xxxiv. 4. & li. 6. Matt. xxiv. 35. 2 Pet. iii. 7, 10. Rev. xxi. 1.

the Word, the Eternal Son. We are not to suppose that so believing a writer could hold such an idea loosely, asserting it in the most absolute way in one verse, and then dropping it at a few verses afterwards. We do not sufficiently realize what is necessarily implied in the fact that Jesus, the Son of God, is the Word by Whom all things were made. It necessarily carries with it a reference to the Eternal Word in every place, either in the Old Testament or in the New in which reference is made to creation. In the act of creation, the Father can never be contemplated without the Son, as the Apostle says, "One God the Father, from whom are all things, and we unto him. And one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom (dì oỷ) are all things” (1 Cor. viii. 6). Such assertions as John i. 3, can never be as if they were unwritten. They attribute to One Who was known amongst men as Jesus, and submitted even to death upon the Cross, in order that He might suffer the extremity of human shame and weakness, a pre-existent Nature which was One with the Divine Nature, and in and by which Nature He manifested the power and wisdom of God by creating all things. And precisely the same reasoning applies to the word Saviour. The God of Israel seems far more jealous that no one should share the name of Saviour with Him, than He is that no one should be called a creator besides Himself. And yet the New Testament is written to reveal to us that Christ is the Saviour. How can we reconcile the two Testaments? In this way only, that God saves us by His Son. The Son only became Incarnate, but it was by the will, the power, the desire, the selfabnegation of the Father, that He saved us by His Death and Resurrection. So that when we read in Isaiah xliii., "I am the Lord thy God, the Holy one of Israel, thy Saviour;" or in Hosea xiii. 4, "Thou shalt know no God but me, for there is no Saviour besides me," the true believer who has any grasp whatsoever of the Catholic Faith applies the saying to the Father and to the Son-not indifferently, by any means, but simultaneously, as it were, the Father as the supreme Decreer, the Bringer about, the Sender of Salvation, and the Son as the Agent of it. If it be asked, can we believe that the citation of "Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast

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THOU ART THE SAME.

[HEBREWS.

12 And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall

not fail.

u Ps. cx. 1.

Matt. xxii. 44.
Mark xii. 36.

Luke xx. 42.
ch. x. 12.
ver. 3.

13 But to which of the angels said he at any time, "Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool?

12. "And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up." So A., B., K., L., M., P., most Cursives, Syriac, Copt., Arm.; but N, D., d, e, f, Vulg., read, "shalt thou change them.'

laid," &c., would be understood by the Hebrews as referring to the Son, we reply that that depends upon how they were taught. If they were taught the truth that "by His Son God made the worlds" very sparingly, very infrequently, very reservedly, it is probable that they would not; but if they were taught it as a fundamental principle, that what the Father did in the past eternity He did by His Son, then they would assuredly see in such a citation only what was natural.

And there is another reason also why the Apostolic writer should cite this place as referring to the Second Person, and that is, that it is so emphatic a declaration of His unchangeableness. The reader will remember how full this Epistle is of the unchangeableness of the work of Christ. "Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedec," v. 6, vi. 20; vii. 3, "abideth a priest continually;" vii. 16, "after the power of an endless life;" vii. 24, "This man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable. priesthood;" 25, "He ever liveth ; 28, "The Son who is consecrated for ever more," viii. 7, x. 12, 13, 14; and above all, xiii. 8, "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." Again, "Here we have no continuing city;" xiii. 20; again, “the everlasting covenant," xiii. 20. We see, then, how to a believing generation the citation of the place as fully applicable to the Eternal Son, would present no difficulty whatsoever.

"As a vesture shalt thou fold them up." In the Hebrew it is "As a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed," which agrees better with the parallelism.

13. "But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand?" The whole verse reads, "The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou on," &c. The Person of whom this verse was said

CHAP. I.]

X

MINISTERING SPIRITS.

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14 Are they not all ministering spirits, sent Gen. xix. 16.

was, as our Saviour implies by his question, David's Lord in the highest sense of Lord, as David's Master and Possessor; compare Rev. xxii., “I am the root and the offspring of David."

& xxxii. 1, 2, 24. Ps. xxxiv. 7. & xci. 11. & ciii. 20, 21. Dan. iii. 28. &

vii. 10. & x. 11.

Matt. xviii. 10.

Luke i. 19. & 9, 13. Acts

xii. 7, &c. & xxvii. 23.

We may also infer from this first verse that the whole Psalm was said to no mere creature. If such words as, "Sit thou on my right hand," were never said to any angel, neither could they have been said to any king-not to David-neither could they have been said to Solomon, nor to any earthly sovereign whatsoever.

14. "Are they not all ministering spirits?' Spirits must here mean spiritual or incorporeal beings, and rules the meaning of spirits in verse 7.

"Ministering," Aerovρyià, "liturgical." The words, Eroupyos and Xerovрyía and Xerovρyev throughout this Epistle, have to do with divine service in the sense of worship. Thus x. 11, "Every priest standeth daily ministering;" also viii. 6, "Now he hath obtained a more excellent ministry" (that is, than that of the Jewish high priest); and ix. 21, "The vessels of the ministry," &c. The word then seems to look to those functions of the angels which are described in the book of Revelation, standing at the altar, offering incense, and such things. So that, taking the first half of the verse alone, it would seem to refer to what is usually called divine service, and the latter part of the verse is not at all against this, for the words " to minister" is not the same as in the first clause, and signifies a different sort of service (diaconia), and is applied to the assistance of the faithful in their conflicts and difficulties, so that the verse may be paraphrazed: "Are they not all liturgizing spirits -spirits who when in heaven are employed in the worship of heaven, but are sent at times from that exalted worship for purposes of ministry on the behalf of those who shall be heirs of salvation."

The angels of God are constantly described as ministering to the Son of God in His human nature. They ministered to Him after His temptation. One strengthened Him to support Him in His agony. They roll away the stone from the sepulchre. And as they minister to Him, so do they to the members of His Body, the Church. Even respecting little children, He says, "In heaven

€0

HEIRS OF SALVATION.

[HEBREWS.

Rom. viii. 17. forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of Tit. iii. 7. Jam.

ii. 5. 1 Pet.i.7.

salvation?

their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven" (Matt. xviii. 10). And their ministrations continue unto this day. Those who refuse to accept any account, however well authenticated, of a special intervention from a higher sphere, on the express ground that there can be no higher sphere, no intelligences above the human, no powers above those which man can see or feel or handle, have to explain away an enormous number of facts which can only be accounted for by the assumption that there is a supreme Will and Intellect, and that there are gradations of beings between that Supreme Being and us who can act upon us, or for us, or perhaps against us, according to His Will or Permission.

TH

CHAP. II.

`HEREFORE we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time

† Gr. run out we should let them slip.

as leaking

vessels.

1. "Let them slip." "Be diverted from them," Alford; "perefluamus," Vulg. See below.

1. "Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things," &c. "Heard," that is, as verse 3 shows, the things heard in the preaching of the Lord Jesus and His immediate followers.

"Lest at any time we should let them slip." The word for "slip" (πарaрρνwμεv) seems to mean to drift past the point we aim at. The metaphor is taken from ships which from the flux or reflux of the waves, or from the winds, are often hindered from reaching the port. Revisers translate "lest haply we should drift away from them." So Westcott, "Lest we be diverted from them." Alford, "miss them."