Hebrews 1:2

ἐπʼ ἐσχάτου. So אABDEKLM. The rec. ἐσχάτων rose from the following τῶν.

2. ἐπʼ ἐσχάτου τῶν ἡμερῶν τούτων, “at the end of these days.” This is the better reading of אABDE, &c. for the ἐπʼ ἐσχάτων of the Textus receptus. The phrase represents the technical Hebrew expression be-acharîth ha-yâmîm (Numbers 24:14). The Jews divided the religious history of the world into “this age” (Olam hazzeh) and “the future age” (Olam habba). The “future age” was the one which was to begin at the coming of the Messiah, whose days were spoken of by the Rabbis as “the last days.” But, as Christians believed that the Messiah had now come, to them the Olam hazzeh had ended. They were practically living in the age to which their Jewish contemporaries alluded as the “age to come” (Hebrews 2:5; Hebrews 6:5). They spoke of this epoch as “the fulness of the times” (Galatians 4:4); “the last days” (James 5:3); “the last hour” (1 John 2:18); “the crisis of rectification” (Hebrews 9:10); “the close of the ages” (Hebrews 9:26). And yet, even to Christians, there was one aspect in which the new Messianic dispensation was still to be followed by “a future age,” because the kingdom of God had not yet come either completely or in its final development, which depended on the Second Advent. Hence “the last crisis,” “the later crises” (1 Peter 1:5; 1 Timothy 4:1) are still in the future, though Christians thought that it would be a near future; after which would follow the “rest,” the “Sabbatism” (Hebrews 4:4; Hebrews 4:10-11; Hebrews 11:40; Hebrews 12:28) which still awaits the people of God. The indistinctness of separation between “this age” and “the future age” arises from different views as to the period in which the actual “days of the Messiah” are to be reckoned. The Rabbis also sometimes include the Messianic reign in the former, sometimes in the latter. But the writer regarded the end as being at hand (Hebrews 10:13; Hebrews 10:25; Hebrews 10:37). He felt that the former dispensation was annulled and outworn, and anticipated rightly that it could not have many years to run.

ἐλάλησεν, “spake.” The whole revelation is ideally summed up in the one supreme moment of the Incarnation. The aoristic mode of speaking of God’s dealings, and of the Christian life, as single acts, is common throughout the New Testament, and especially in St Paul. It conveys the thought that

“Are, and were, and will be are but is,

And all creation is one act at once.”

The word “spake” is here used in its fullest and deepest meaning of Him whose very name is “the Word of God.” It is true that this author, unlike St John, does not actually apply the Alexandrian term “Logos” (“Word”) to Christ, but it always seems to be in his thoughts, and, so to speak, to be trembling on his lips. The essential and ideal Unity which dominated over the “many parts” and “many modes” of the older revelation is implied in the most striking way by the fact that it was the same God who spake to the Fathers in the Prophets and to us in a Son.

ἐν υἱῷ, “in a Son,” rather than (as in A. V.) “in His Son.” The article is purposely omitted to shew that the contrast is in the Relation rather than the Person of Christ, “in Him who was a Son.” The preposition “in” is here most applicable in its strict meaning, because “in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” “The Father, that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works” (John 14:10). The contrast of the New and Old is expressed by St John (John 1:17), “The Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” In Christ all the fragments of previous revelation were completed; all the methods of it concentrated; and all its apparent perplexities and contradictions solved and rendered intelligible.

ἔθηκεν, “He appointed.” This usage of the word is classic. The question as to the special act of God thus alluded to is hardly applicable. Our temporal expressions may involve an inherent absurdity when applied to Him whose life is the timeless Now of Eternity and in Whom there is neither before nor after, nor variableness, nor shadow cast by turning, but Who is always in the Meridian of an unconditioned Plenitude (Pleroma). See James 1:17. The fatal and fundamental blunder of the Arian heresy consisted in the failure of Arius and his followers to see that expressions of time cannot possibly be a measure of eternal relationship.

κληρονόμον πάντων. Sonship naturally suggests heirship (Galatians 4:7), and in Christ was fulfilled the immense promise to Abraham that his seed should be heir of the world. The allusion, so far as we can enter into these high mysteries of Godhead, is to Christ’s mediatorial kingdom. We only darken counsel by the multitude of words without knowledge when we attempt to define and explain the relations of the Persons of the Trinity towards each other. The doctrine of the περιχώρησις, circuminsessio or communicatio idiomatum as it was technically called—that is the relation of Divinity and Humanity as effected within the Divine Nature itself by the Incarnation—is wholly beyond the limit of our comprehension. We may in part see this from the fact that the Son Himself is (in Hebrews 1:3) represented as doing what in this verse the Father does. But that the Mediatorial Kingdom is given to the Son by the Father is distinctly stated in John 3:35; Matthew 28:18 (comp. Hebrews 2:6-8 and Psalms 2:8).

διʼ οὗ, i.e. “by whose means”; “by whom, as His agent.” Comp. “All things were made by Him” (i.e. by the Word) (John 1:3). “By Him were all things created” (Colossians 1:16). “By Whom are all things” (1 Corinthians 8:6). What the Alexandrian theosophy attributed to the Logos, had been attributed to “Wisdom” (see Proverbs 8:22-31) in what was called the Chokhmah or the Sapiential literature of the Jews. Christians were therefore familiar with the doctrine that Creation was the work of the Prae-existent Christ; which helps to explain Hebrews 1:10-12. We find in Philo, “You will discover that the cause of it (the world) is God … and the Instrument the Word of God, by whom it was equipped (κατασκευάσθη),” De Cherub. (Opp. I. 162); and again “But the shadow of God is His Word, whom he used as an Instrument in making the World,” De Leg. Alleg. III. (Opp. I. 106). The prepositions are carefully distinguished in the N.T. Thus we find in 1 Corinthians 8:6 εἶς θεὸς ἐξ οὗ τὰ πάντα … καὶ εἶς κύριος διʼ οὗ τὰ πάντα, i.e. all things derive their origin (ἐξ) from God, and are made by Christ’s agency (διʼ οὗ). The other reading διʼ ὃν in that verse would mean that all things exist for His sake (propter Illum).

καί. He who was the heir of all things was also the agent in their creation.

τοὺς αἰῶνας, עוֹלָמִים. One of the comprehensive plurals common in Hebrew Hellenistic Greek (Winer, ed. Moulton, p. 220). Literally, “the aeons” or “ages.” This word “aeon” was used by the later Gnostics to describe the various “emanations” by which they tried at once to widen and to bridge over the chasm between the Human and the Divine. Over that imaginary chasm St John had thrown the one wide arch of the Incarnation when he wrote “the Word became flesh.” In the N.T. the word “aeons” never has this Gnostic meaning. In the singular the word means “an age”; in the plural it sometimes means “ages” like the Hebrew olamim. Here it is used in its Rabbinic and post-biblical sense of “the world” as in Hebrews 11:3; Wis 13:9, and as in 1 Timothy 1:17 where God is called “the king of the world” (comp. Tob 13:6). The word κόσμος (Hebrews 10:5) means “the material world” in its order and beauty; the word αἰῶνες means the world as reflected in the mind of man and in the stream of his spiritual history; ἡ οἰκουμένη (Hebrews 1:6) means “the inhabited world.”