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FOR HE DID NOT SUBJECT: ou gar hupetaxen (3SAAI):
Phillips: For though in past ages God did grant authority to
angels, yet he did not put the future world of men under their control,
and it is this world that we are now talking about.
(YLT) For not to messengers did He subject the coming world,
concerning which we speak,
Note the emphatic placement of the
absolute negative "ou", emphasizing that in no way are
angels to be in authority over the world to come.
Subject (5293)
(hupotasso
from hupó = under + tasso = arrange in orderly
manner) means literally to place under in an orderly fashion.
In the
active voice
(as in the present passage)
hupotasso
means to subject, bring under
firm control, subordinate as used in (see note
Romans 8:20).
In secular Greek,
hupotásso
was a military term meaning
to draw up in order of battle, to form, array, marshal, both troops or
ships. The idea is that the various troop divisions were arranged in an
orderly fashion under the command of their leader. In this state of
subordination they were now subject to the orders of their commander (and
thus better able to achieve their objective).
As an aside, in the NT
in other passages the idea of submission
focuses not on personality but position. We need to see the authority over us
not acting to fulfill their own will per se, but as instruments in the hand of God
to fulfill His will on earth as it is in heaven. If we look
at people as acting on their own will, we will likely become bitter, but if we
can see them as acting as God sovereignly, providentially allows, we will be
far more likely to become holy. A beautiful
example of this is found in the life of Joseph. His brothers consistently
mistreated him and it would have been very easy for him to become bitter.
And yet he maintained a divine perspective on the problems with the result
that his school of adversity helped
him graduate as a holy man of God, of whom Scripture records not a single
rebuke or misstep.
Hupotasso was used for any
system of administration. God will not turn over the administration of the
future world to angels (even has He has not placed the present world under
their authority). The Messianic age to come will be the great and glorious world, the
world of perfection (see
Millennium). Whoever reigns in that world will be glorious indeed
(see notes on who reigns
Revelation 20:4;
20:5;
20:6
cp
Revelation 1:6;
Revelation 5:10).
And those who reign will not be the angels. Thus their present superiority over men is
temporary.
TO ANGELS: aggelois:
Angels (32)
(aggelos) means a messenger...who speaks and acts in place of one who
has sent him.
Angels have considerable authority in this
present world (Da 10:13; Mt 18:10), and our present inhabited earth, is
ruled by angels (see notes on the prince of the power of the air
in
Ephesians
2:2). The chief fallen angel is Satan, who is also prince of
this world. The writer of Hebrews is emphasizing that God intends to subject the world to
come to men, not angels. The first Adam lost the right to rule over the
earth, but the second Adam, Jesus Christ, acting as our "Goel" or "Kinsman
Redeemer" (see discussion of the
Goel = Kinsman Redeemer) paid the redemption price, Peter writing...
knowing that you were not redeemed with
perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited
from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and
spotless, the blood of Christ. (See notes
1 Peter 1:18;
1 Peter 1:19)
Because of what Christ our Redeemer has
accomplished men will once again be restored to the position of rulership
over the earth because of our position in Christ, the One in Whom all things
are summed up (See note
Ephesians 1:10).
THE WORLD TO COME: ten oikoumenen (PAP) ten mellousan (PAPFSA):
World (3625)
(oikoumene) refers to the inhabited earth, the
world. not the general term kosmos, which means “system,” or aion, meaning
“the ages.”
There will be an inhabited earth to come
but it cannot be referring to this present earth, because it is going to be
significantly changed (Zech. 14:9-11). Many signs, in fact, seem to indicate
that the change is near.
To come (3195)
(mello) means to occur at a point of time in the future which is
subsequent to another event and closely related to it Here the present
participle is used absolutely to denote what is coming future.
The implication is that God has allowed
Satan to rule in this present world, but his end is in sight.
The prince of the earth, of the system of the world, now is Satan. (See
related discussions on
devil = diabolos;
Excursus on the
prince of the power of the air)
“The
whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1Jn 5:19). (Comment:
John
says "we know" which is the verb (oida) expressing absolute certainty
beyond a chance. God placed this awareness in our hearts when He transferred
us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of His beloved Son. The use
of the
perfect tense
conveys the truth that this
knowledge is permanent in believers. The "world" is not oikoumene
but kosmos which in this moral or ethically use refers to the world
system of evil of which Satan is the head, all unsaved people his servants,
together with the pursuits, pleasure, purposes, people, and places where God
is not wanted. Kosmos is the hostile world of men who are living
alienated, apart from God and irrevocably opposed to Him. John minces no
words in this passage emphasizing that there are only two spheres of
spiritual existence - one is either in Christ (in His Kingdom - children of
God) or in Adam (in the world - children of Satan), the latter "spiritual
address" applying to every person who has never been saved by grace through
faith in Christ Jesus. In sum, this evil world system is the domain of the
evil one, Satan! Because the whole world belongs to Satan, Christians should
assiduously avoid its polluting and corrupting influences.)
In sum, Satan now rules the cursed planet
earth, and he is the prince or ruler of the power of the air who has
authority over all unregenerate men and women. When God created man and
woman Moses records
And God blessed them; and God said to
them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule
over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every
living thing that moves on the earth." (Genesis 1:28)
When Adam sinned in Genesis 3, in the
garden in which he was the "king", he lost his soul, but he also lost his
crown, representing his rule over the earth. He was totally sinful (sinful
from head to toe, on the outside and inside = total depravity) and became
enslaved to the power and rule of his new masters
Sin
and Satan (Devil).
Adam’s sin that brought the curse on creation. Docile creatures became
ferocious. The ground began to bring forth thorns and thistles.
And so the writer is here referring to
the new order, the salvation just described.
Peter alludes to the certain coming new
order writing...
But according to His promise we are
looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells (See
note
2 Peter 3:13)
The phrase "world to come" used by Rabbis to refer to Messianic age
when Messiah would rule the world as King from His throne in Jerusalem!
(see notes
Rev 19:11,
19:15)
CONCERNING WHICH WE ARE SPEAKING: peri es laloumen (1PPAI):
The author is discussing this new order
introduced by Christ which makes obsolete the old dispensation of rites and
symbols.
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In his book The Way Into the Holiest,
F B Meyer entitles Chapter 5
"WHAT IS MAN?"
"We see Jesus,...crowned with glory and honor." Hebrews 2:5-9.
IN the first great division of this
treatise, we have seen the incomparable superiority of the Lord Jesus to
angels, and archangels, and all the heavenly host. But now there arises an
objection which was very keenly realized by these Hebrew Christians; and
which, to a certain extent, presses upon us all; Why did the Son of God
become man? How are the sorrows, sufferings, and death of the Man of
Nazareth consistent with the sublime glories of the Son of God, the equal
and fellow of the Eternal?
These questions are answered during the
remainder of the chapter, and may be gathered up into a single sentence: He
who was above all angels became lower than the angels for a little time;
that He might lift men from their abasement, and set them on his own
glorious level in His heavenly Father's kingdom; and that he might be a
faithful and merciful High Priest for the sorrowful and tempted and dying.
Here is an act worthy of a God Here are reasons which are more than
sufficient to answer the old question, for which Anselm prepared so
elaborate a reply in his book, "Cur Deus Homo?"
"What is man?" Those three words in
Hebrews 2:6
are the fit starting point of the argument. We need not only a true
philosophy of God, but a true philosophy of man, in order to right thinking
on the Gospel. The idolater thinks man inferior to birds and beasts and
creeping things, before which he prostrates himself. The materialist reckons
him to be the chance product of natural forces which have evolved him; and
before which he is therefore likely to pass away. The pseudo-science of the
time makes him of one blood with ape and gorilla, and assigns him a common
origin with the beasts. See what gigantic systems of error have developed
from mistaken conceptions of the true nature and dignity of man! From all
such we turn to that noble ideal of man's essential dignity, given in this
sublime paragraph, which corrects our mistaken notions; and, whilst giving
us an explanation that harmonizes with all our experience and observation,
opens up to us vistas of thought worthy of God.
MAN AS GOD MADE HIM
The description given here of the origin and dignity of man is taken from
Psalm 8., which is doubtless a reminiscence of the days when David kept his
father's sheep; even if it were not composed on that very spot over which in
after-years the heavenly choirs broke upon the astonished shepherds "abiding
in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night."
Turn to that Psalm, and see how well it
expresses the emotions which must well up in devout hearts to God as we
consider the midnight heavens, the tapestry work of his fingers, and the
spheres lit by the moon and stars, which he has ordained. How impossible it
is for those who are given to devout reflection to come in contact with any
of the grander forms of natural beauty, the far-spread expanse of ocean, the
outlines of the mountains, the changing pomp of the skies without turning
from the handiwork to the great Artisan, with some such expression as the
apostrophe with which the Psalm opens and closes: "O LORD, our Lord, how
excellent is thy name in all the earth." At first sight, man is utterly
unworthy to be compared with those vast and wondrous spectacles revealed to
us by the veiling of the sun. His life is but as a breath; as a shadow
careering over the mountain-side; as the existence of the aphides on a leaf
in the vast forests of being. What can be said of his character, sin-stained
and befouled, in contrast with peaks whose virgin snows have never been
defiled; with sylvan scenes, whose peace has never been ruffled; with
silvery spheres, whose chimes of perfect harmony have never been broken by
discord? Four times over is the question asked upon the pages of Scripture,
"What is man, that thou art mindful of him?" (Psalm 144:3; Job 7:17-20;
Psalm 8:4; Heb. 2:6.) Yet it is an undeniable fact that God is mindful of
man, and that he does visit him. "Mindful!" There is not a moment in God's
existence in which he is not as mindful of this world of men as the mother
of the babe whom she has left for a moment in the next room, but whose
slightest cry or moan she is quick to catch. "I am poor and needy; yet the
Lord thinketh upon me." "How precious are thy thoughts unto me, O God!"
"Visiting!" No cot is so lowly, no heart so wayward, no life so solitary,
but God visits it. No one shall read these lines, the path around whose
heart-door is not trodden hard by the feet of him who often comes and stands
and knocks. We speak as if only our sorrows were divine visitations. Alas
for us, if it were only so! Every throb of holy desire, every gentle mercy,
every gift of Providence, is a visitation of God. But there must be some
great and sufficient reason why the Maker of the universe should take so
much interest in man. Evidently bigness is not greatness; a tiny babe is
worth more than the tallest mountain; and an empress-mother will linger in
the one room where her child is ill, though she forsake the remainder of her
almost illimitable domain. What if earth shall turn out to be the nursery of
the universe! The true clew, however, to all speculation is to be found in
the declaration by the Psalmist of God's original design in making man:
"Thou crownedst him. ...Thou madest him to have dominion. . . . Thou hast
put all things under his feet " (Psalm 8:5-6, R.V.). Nor was this lofty
ideal first given to the Psalmist's poetic vision. It had an earlier origin.
It is a fragment of the great Charta of humanity, which God gave to our
first parents in Paradise. Turn to that noble archaic record, Gen. 1:26-28,
which transcends the imaginings of modern science as far as it does those
legends of creation which make the heathen literature with which they are
incorporated incredible. Its simplicity, its sublimity, its fitness, attest
its origin and authority to be divine. We are prepared to admit that God's
work in creation was symmetrical and orderly, and that he worked out his
design according to an ever-unfolding plan. But science has discovered
nothing as yet to contradict the express statements of Scripture, that the
first man was not at all inferior to ourselves in those intellectual and
moral faculties which are the noblest heritage of mankind.
"God created man in his own image" (Gen. 1:27). -There we have the
divine likeness. Our mental and moral nature is made on the same plan as
God's: the divine in miniature. Truth, love, and purity, like the principles
of mathematics, are the same in us as in him. If it were not so, we could
not know or understand him. But since it is so, it has been possible for him
to take on himself our nature-possible also that we shall be one day
transformed to the perfect image of his beauty.
"And God said, Have dominion" (Gen. 1:28). -There you have royal
supremacy. Man was intended to be God's vice-regent and representative. King
in a palace stored with all to please him: monarch and sovereign of all the
lower orders of creation. The sun to labor for him as a very Hercules; the
moon to light his nights, or lead the waters round the earth in tides,
cleansing his coasts; elements of nature to be his slaves and messengers;
flowers to scent his path; fruits to please his taste; birds to sing for
him; fish to feed him; beasts to toil for him and carry him. Not a cringing
slave, but a king crowned with the glory of rule, and with the honor of
universal supremacy. Only a little lower than angels; because they are not,
like him, encumbered with flesh and blood. This is man as God made him to
be.
II. MAN AS SIN HAS MADE
HIM
We see not yet all things subjected to him (see note
Hebrews 2:8).
His crown is rolled in the dust, his
honor tarnished and stained. His sovereignty is strongly disputed by the
lower orders of creation. If trees nourish him, it is after strenuous care,
and they often disappoint. If the earth supplies him with food, it is in
tardy response to exhausting toil If the beasts serve him, it is because
they have been laboriously tamed and trained; whilst vast numbers roam the
forest glades, setting him at defiance. If he catch the fish of the sea, or
the bird of the air, he must wait long in cunning concealment. Some traces
of the old lordship are still apparent in the terror which the sound of the
human voice and the glance of the eye still inspire in the lower creatures,
as in the feats of lion-tamer or snake-charmer. But for the most part
anarchy and rebellion have laid waste man's fair realm. So degraded has he
become, that he has bowed before the objects that he was to command; and has
prostrated his royal form in shrines dedicated to birds, and four-footed
beasts, and creeping things. It is the fashion nowadays to extol heathen
philosophy; but how can we compare it for a moment with the religion of the
Bible, when its pyramids are filled with mummies of deified animals, and its
temples with the sacred bull! Where is the supremacy of man? Not in the
savage cowering before the beasts of the forest; nor in the civilized races
that are the slaves of lust and sensuality and swinish indulgence; nor in
those who, refusing to recognize the authority of God, fail to exercise any
authority themselves. "Sin hath reigned," as the Apostle says most truly
(Rom. 5:21). And all who bow their necks beneath its yoke are slaves and
menials and cowering subjects, in comparison with what God made and meant
them to be. Do not point to the wretched groups surrounding the doors of the
gin-palaces in the metropolis of the most Christian people of the world, and
regard their condition as a stain on the love or power of God. This is not
his work. These are the products of sin. An enemy hath done this. Would you
see man as God intended him to be, you must go back to Eden, or forward to
the New Jerusalem. Sin defiles, debases, disfigures, and blasts all it
touches. And we may shudder to think that its virus is working through our
frame, as we discover the results of its ravages upon myriads around.
III. MAN AS CHRIST CAN MAKE HIM
We behold Jesus crowned with glory and honor (see note
Hebrews 2:9)
"What help is that?" cries an objector;
"of course he is crowned with glory and honor, since he is the Son of God."
But notice, the glory and honor mentioned here are altogether different from
the glory of
Hebrews 1:3. That was the
incommunicable glory of his deity. This is the acquired glory of his
humanity. In John 17 our Lord himself distinguishes between the two. In
Hebrews 2:5,
the glory which he had with the Father as his right before all worlds. In
Hebrews 2:4,
the glory given as the reward for his sufferings, which he could not have
had unless he had taken upon himself the form of a servant, and had been
made in the fashion of man, humbling himself, and becoming obedient to the
death of the cross, "made a little lower than the angels, because of the
suffering of death; crowned with glory and honor: that he, by the grace of
God, should taste death for every man" (see notes
Philippians 2:7;
2:8;
Hebrews 2:10).
This is the crown wherewith his Father crowned him in the day of the
gladness of his heart, when, as man, he came forth victorious from the last
wrestle with the Prince of hell. All through his earthly life he fulfilled
the ancient ideal of man. He was God's image; and those who saw him saw the
Father. He was Sovereign in his commands. Winds and waves did his bidding.
Trees withered at his touch. Fish in shoals obeyed his will. Droves of
cattle fled before his scourge of small cords. Disease and death and devils
owned his sway. But all was more fully realized when he was about to return
to his Father, and said, in a noble outburst of conscious supremacy, "All
power is given unto me in heaven and in earth."
"We behold him."
Behold Him, Christian reader! The wreaths
of empire are on his brow. The keys of death and Hades swing at his girdle.
The mysterious living creatures, representatives of redeemed creation,
attest that he is worthy. All things in heaven and earth, and under the
earth, and in the seas, worship him; so do the bands of angels, beneath whom
he stooped for a little season, on our behalf.
And as He is, we too shall be. He is there as the type and specimen and
representative of redeemed men. We are linked with Him in indissoluble
union. Through Him we shall get back our lost empire. We too shall be
crowned with glory and honor. The day is not far distant when we shall sit
at His side-joint-heirs in His empire; comrades in His glory, as we have
been comrades in His sorrows; beneath our feet all things visible and
invisible, thrones and principalities and powers; whilst above us shall be
the unclouded empyrean of our Father's love, forever and forever.
Oh, destiny of surpassing bliss!
Oh, rapture of saintly hearts!
Oh, miracle of divine omnipotence!
(F. B. Meyer. The Way Into the Holiest) |
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Hebrews 2:6
But
one has
testified
somewhere,
saying,
"WHAT IS
MAN, THAT YOU
REMEMBER HIM?
OR THE
SON OF
MAN, THAT YOU
ARE
CONCERNED
ABOUT (NASB:
Lockman) |
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Greek:
diemarturato
de
pou
tis
legon,
Ti
estin
anthropos
oti
mimneske
autou,
e
huios
anthropou
oti
episkepte
auton?
Amplified: It has been solemnly and earnestly said in a certain
place, What is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that
You graciously and helpfully care for and visit and look after him? (Amplified
Bible - Lockman)
Barclay: Somewhere in scripture someone bears this witness to the
fact: “What is man that you remember him? Or the son of man that you
visit him? (Westminster
Press)
NLT: For somewhere in the Scriptures it says, "What is man that
you should think of him, and the son of man that you should care for
him? (NLT
- Tyndale House)
Phillips: But someone has said: 'What is man that you are
mindful of him, or the son of man that you take care of him? (Phillips:
Touchstone)
Wuest: But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is
man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you look upon
him in order to come to his aid? (Erdmans)
Young's Literal: and one in a certain place did testify fully,
saying, 'What is man, that Thou art mindful of him, or a son of man,
that Thou dost look after him? |
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BUT ONE HAS TESTIFIED SOMEWHERE: diemarturato (1AMI) de pou tis:
The writer quotes not from the Hebrew but
the
Septuagint (LXX)
or Greek translation of Psalm 8 (The OT Greek reads "ti estin anthropos hoti mimneske autou he huios anthropou hoti
episkepte auton" The original Hebrew according to Clarke reads "What is miserable man, that
thou rememberest him? and the son of Adam, that thou visitest him?")
It has been solemnly and earnestly said in a certain
place, What is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You
graciously and helpfully care for and visit and look after him? (Amplified)
But someone has said: 'What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son
of man that you take care of him? (Phillips)
But, as we know, a writer has solemnly said, "How
poor a creature is man, and yet Thou dost remember him, and a son of man,
and yet Thou dost come to him! (Weymouth)
Testified ( | |