Hebrews 1:7

καὶ πρὸς μὲν τοὺς ἀγγέλους λέγει.… The πρὸς μὲν of this verse is balanced by πρὸς δὲ in Hebrews 1:8; and in both πρός is to be rendered “with reference to,” or “of” as in Luke 20:19; Romans 10:21; Xen., Mem., iv. 2 15. Cf. Winer, p. 505: and our own expression “speak to such and such a point”. ὁ ποιῶν κ. τ. λ. cited from Psalms 104:4, Lünemann and others hold that the Hebrew is wrongly rendered and means “who maketh winds his messengers” not “who maketh His angels winds”. Calvin, too, finds no reference to angels in the words. He believes that in this Hymn of Creation the Psalmist, to illustrate how God is in all nature, says “who maketh the winds his messengers,” i.e., uses for his purposes the apparently wildest of natural forces, and “flaming fire his ministers,” the most rapid, resistless and devouring of agents controlled by the Divine hand. Cf. Shakespeare, “thought-executing fires”. The writer accepts the LXX translation and it serves his purpose of exhibiting that the characteristic function of angels is service, and that their form and appearance depend upon the will of God. This was the current Jewish view. Many of the sayings quoted by Schoettgen and Weber suggest that with some of the Rabbis the belief in angels was little more than a way of expressing their faith in a spiritual, personal power behind the forces of nature. “When they are sent on a mission to earth, they are wind: when they stand before God they are fire.” The angel said to Manoah, “I know not after what image I am made, for God changes us every hour; why, then, dost thou ask after my name? Sometimes He makes us fire, at others wind; sometimes men, at other times angels.” Sometimes they appear to have no individual existence at all, but are merely the light-radiance or halo of God's glory. “No choir of angels sings God's praises twice, for each day God creates new hosts which sing His praises and then vanish into the stream of fire from under the throne of His glory whence they came.” Cf. also the Book of Jubilees, ii. 2. “On the first day He created the heavens which are above and the earth and the waters and all the spirits which serve before Him the angels of the presence, and the angels of sanctification, and the angels of the spirit of the winds, and the angels of the spirit of the clouds, and of darkness, and of snow and of hail, and of hoar frost, and the angels of the voices of the thunder and of the lightning, and the angels of the spirits of cold and of heat, and of winter and of spring, and of autumn and of summer, and of all the spirits of His creatures which are in the heavens and on the earth, the abysses and the darkness, eventide and the light, dawn and day which He hath prepared in the knowledge of His heart.” One thing all these citations serve to bring out is that the angels were merely servants; like the physical forces of nature they were dependent and perishable. In contrast to these qualities are those ascribed to the Son.