Philippians 2:9

τὸ ὄνομα. So אABC, 17, Euseb Cyr. D2G2K2LP, most cursives, arm, Origen Euseb (alibi) Ath and many Greek fathers om τὸ. LTTr Alf (doubtfully) Ltft WH τὸ. Ell om. The case for omission is strong.

H. THE WORSHIP PAID TO JESUS CHRIST. (CH. Philippians 2:9)

“UPON this worship of Jesus Christ as we meet it in the apostolical age, [let us observe, that] it cannot be accounted for, and so set aside, as being part of an indiscriminating cultus of heavenly or supernatural beings in general. Such a cultus finds no place in the New Testament, except when it, or something very much resembling it, is expressly discountenanced. By the mouth of our Lord Jesus Christ the New Testament reaffirms the Sinaitic law which restricts worship to the Lord God Himself. St Peter will not sanction the self-prostrations of the grateful Cornelius lest Cornelius should think of him as more than human.… When St John fell at the feet of the angel in the Apocalypse … he was peremptorily checked on the ground that the angel too was only his fellow-slave, and that God was the one true Object of worship.… Certainly the New Testament does teach that we Christians have close communion with the blessed angels and with the sainted dead.… But the worship claimed for, and accepted by, and paid to, Jesus, stands out in the New Testament in the sharpest relief … not softened or shaded off by any instances of an inferior homage paid, whether legitimately or not, to created beings. We do not meet with any clear distinction between a primary and secondary worship, by which the force of the argument might have been more or less seriously weakened.”

9. διὸ. The glorification of the crucified Christ Jesus was, from the view-point of this passage, the Father’s reward for His supreme “regard for the things of others”; His “pleasing not Himself” (Romans 15:2). The application intended is that self-forgetting love, for the disciple as for his Lord, is the way to the true exaltation of his being.

ὑπερύψωσεν. The verb occurs only here in N. T.—St Paul loves compounds with ὑπέρ: e.g. ὑπεραυξάνειν, ὑπερεκπερισσοῦ, ὑπερνικᾶν, ὑπερπερισσεύειν, ὑπερπλεονάζειν. All these occur in his writings only, in Biblical Greek.—Render here, “highly exalted,” rather than “hath highly exalted.” The aorist refers to the historical moment of the Resurrection crowned by the Ascension. For the action of the Eternal Father in the exaltation, cp. e.g. Acts 2:23-24; Acts 2:32-33; Acts 2:36; Ephesians 1:20-22.

ἐχαρίσατο. “Bestowed,” as a gift of supreme and rejoicing love.

τὸ ὄνομα. For the reading, see critical note. Whether or not τὸ is omitted, we must render “the name which,” in view of the τὸ ὑπὲρ κτλ. next following.

What is this “Name bestowed”? Is it (a) the sacred personal name Ἰησοῦς (Alford, Ellicott). Or is it (b) “Name” in the sense of revealed majesty and glory (Lightfoot), as where the LORD proclaims His “Name” to Moses, Exodus 34:5? The difficulty of (a) is that the personal human name was of course distinctively His before His glorification, and is as a fact less used in Scripture after the Gospel narrative is closed; so that there would be a paradox in the thought of a “bestowal” of it on the glorified Christ. True, its then elevation to the highest associations, in the love and worship of the saints, was as it were a giving of the name as a new name; yet this hardly satisfies the intensity of the Apostle’s assertion here. In favour of (b) are the clear cases in the N. T. of the use of ὄνομα to denote recognized dignity or glory; e.g. Ephesians 1:21. And the true explanation seems to lie in this direction. “The Name bestowed” is the supreme Name, Κύριος (see Philippians 2:11 below), JEHOVAH. In other words the suffering Jesus was, as the once abased and slain sufferer, now raised to the eternal Throne; recognized there by the universe as He who, for man, and for the Father’s will, chose in His pre-existent glory to stoop even to the Cross. As God and Man, one Christ, as at once the co-equal Son and the sacrificed Lamb, He there receives the worship which belongs to the Eternal; Ἰησοῦς is saluted Κύριος, in the supreme sense of that “Name.”

On St Paul’s view of the unique exaltation of the Lord in comparison with every created being, see Liddon, quoted below, Appendix H.