Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Hebrews 5:8

καίπερ ὢν υἱός. “Son though He was,” so that it might have been thought that there would be no need for the great sacrifice; no need for His learning obedience from suffering.

ἔμαθεν … τὴν ὑπακοήν. “He learnt His obedience.” The stress is not on His “learning” (of course as a man), but the whole expression is taken together, “He learnt from the things which He suffered”; in other words “He bowed to the experience of absolute submission.” “The things which He suffered” refer not only to the Agony and the Cross, but to the whole of the Saviour’s life. Some of the Fathers stumbled at this expression. Theodoret calls it hyperbolical; St Chrysostom is surprised at it; Theophylact goes so far as to say that here Paul (for he accepts the traditional authorship) “for the benefit of his hearers used such accommodation (οἰκονομίαν) as obviously to say some unreasonable things.” All such remarks would have been obviated if these fathers had borne in mind that, as St Paul says, Christ “counted not equality with God a thing at which to grasp” (Philippians 2:6). Meanwhile passages like these, of which there are several in this Epistle, are valuable as proving how completely the co-equal and co-eternal Son “emptied Himself of His glory.” Against the irreverent reverence of the Apollinarian heresy (which denied Christ’s perfect manhood) and the Monothelite heresy (which denied His possession of a human will), this passage and the earlier Chapter s of St Luke are the best bulwark. The human soul of Christ’s perfect manhood “learned” just as His human body grew (Luke 2:52). On this learning of “obedience” see Isaiah 50:5, “I was not rebellious.” Philippians 2:8, “being found in fashion as a man he became obedient (ὑπήκοος) unto death.”

ἔπαθεν. The paronomasia “he learnt (ἔμαθεν) from what He suffered (ἔπαθεν)” is one of the commonest in Greek literature, and originated the proverb μαθήματα παθήματα. For other specimens of this play of sound see Luke 21:11, λιμοὶ … λοιμοί; Acts 17:25, ζωὴν καὶ πνοήν; Romans 1:29; Romans 1:31, φθόνου, φόνου … ἀσυνέτους, ἀσυνθέτους. For the use of paronomasia in St Paul see my Life of St Paul, I. 628.

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Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Hebrews 5:8

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