§4 Christ is Superior to the Angels Despite His Humanity (Heb. 2:5–9)
Without question the greatest obstacle to the author’s argument about the superiority of the Son is the authentic humanity of the Son, which involved him in both suffering and death. For the first time our author uses the name of the man from Nazareth, Jesus (v. 9). The humanity, the suffering, and the death of Jesus all seem to point with unmistakable clarity to his inferiority in comparison with the angels. The matter obviously demands attention, if the author’s argument is to stand; and rather than shrinking from the problem, he effectively turns it to his advantage.
2:5 / Although in Jewish thought the present world was regarded as in some sense subject to angels, this is not the case in the world to come. When our author adds about which we are speaking, we encounter the tension between fulfillment and consummation that runs through all of Christian theology. That is, there is a sense in which the world to come has come already and yet also a sense in which it is yet to come. We have already encountered this tension in considering the meaning of the phrase “these last days” (1:2) and the quotation in 1:13. The Son has been exalted to the right hand of God, the position of all power, and yet some time is to elapse before his enemies are put under his feet. The reality of the Son’s finished work, the essence of the gospel, has nevertheless brought the world to come in the present and to the church. Thus our author has both a future and a realized eschatology. The latter is vividly expressed in 6:5 where he describes Christian experience as a tasting of “the powers of the coming age.” (See also the “you have come” of 12:22–24.) In point of fact, the world of which the author has been speaking is that new reality already brought into existence by the exaltation of the Son but the end result of which remains yet to be experienced; hence it remains that world yet to come. This tension is further manifested in the following verses.
2:6–8a / This quotation from Psalm 8:4–6 provides another indication of our author’s christological understanding of the OT. As originally written, the psalm extols the glory of the created order, in comparison with which human beings look woefully insignificant: “When I consider your heavens … the moon and the stars … what is man?” At the same time, however, according to the Genesis narrative (1:26, 28) humanity was given dominion over the rest of creation, over all animals, birds, and fish, and this position of honor is celebrated by the psalmist. Our author understands the psalm to refer to Christ, as well as to humanity, in this instance not merely because of the possible messianic associations of the psalm (i.e., in the last two lines of the quoted material) but, rather, because he regards the Son as the archetypal human being. That is, Jesus is the true embodiment of humanity, the last Adam who realizes in himself that glory and dominion that the first Adam and his children lost because of sin. In him the words of the psalmist have their fulfillment. If the words were meant originally to apply to human beings, they find their fullest realization in the one who is preeminently human, who reveals humanity as humanity was meant to be.
The application of the psalm to Jesus was clearly facilitated by the words son of man, the title that Jesus himself preferred during his ministry. This title may be rendered as “mere man” (so GNB), which is indeed the nuance of the original Hebrew (as can be seen by the parallel man in the preceding line), but which has the disadvantage of concealing what must have jumped out at our author and his readers. For them, the son of man was understood to be Jesus. Once the mind turns to Jesus in verse 6, the temporal sequence of incarnation and exaltation can readily be perceived in verse 7. The last line of the quotation has a close tie with the author’s favorite exaltation text (Ps. 110:1, quoted in 1:13) and put everything under his feet, more literally: “having subjected everything under his feet.” Thus the OT passage is effectively utilized by the author in his argument. The Son was indeed made man, and accordingly, lower than the angels. NIV takes brachy ti in the sense of degree and thus as modifying “lower,” hence a little lower. To be preferred here, however, is the alternate understanding of the words in the sense of time, hence as in NIV margin, “for a little while” (thus NASB, RSV, GNB). The author’s argument is not concerned with the degree to which Jesus was made lower than the angels. But if the words are taken in the sense of time, “for a little while,” they fit perfectly as a description of the temporary humbling of the Son in the incarnation (cf. the same problem in v. 9). Thus temporarily the Son was humbled to a status lower than the angels, but now he has been exalted (to the right hand of the Father), crowned … with glory and honor, thus having everything put in subjection under his feet. What humanity once had, but lost, has now been gained by the one who became a human being for that very purpose. In him humanity has begun to realize its true inheritance.
2:8b–9 / In these verses we encounter the first instance of our author’s midrashic treatment of an OT passage—that is, where he presents an interpretation of the quotation, utilizing specific words drawn from the quotation itself. (See the same phenomenon in 3:7–4:11; 10:5–14; 12:5–11.) The result may fairly be described as a Christian commentary (i.e., seen from the perspective of the fulfillment brought by Christ) on the passage that enables the author to drive home his point and thereby also to demonstrate the continuity he finds between old and new.
The three occurrences of the pronoun him in v. 8b can be understood as referring to humanity, in keeping with the original meaning of the portion of Psalm 8 that has just been quoted. But if, as we have argued, the latter is meant, especially through the reference to “the son of man,” to allude to Jesus (cf. v. 9), then the pronouns here may also have a deliberate ambiguity. Almost certainly the author intends here, as in the quotation, to refer not merely to humanity but also to Christ.
It is clear that the author understands the quotation from Psalm 8 to refer to Christ as well as to humanity by his application of specific words from the quotation to Jesus in verse 9: who was made a little lower (or better, “for a little while lower”; see comment on v. 7) than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor. Jesus, already so crowned, has in principle “everything under his feet” (v. 8a). We do not, however, yet see that reign in the present world. Indeed, the delay is already alluded to in a key text previously quoted (1:13): “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet” (Ps. 110:1). In fact, now we see neither man nor Christ ruling over all things; but Christ’s rule will in the future be fully consummated, and when that occurs, mankind will experience the full realization of the rule spoken of in Psalm 8 (cf. Phil. 3:21). God left nothing that is not subject to him. Our author does not specify the obvious exception noted by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:27: “It is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ.”
But we see Jesus. This is the first mention of the personal name Jesus, which is used deliberately here to focus attention upon his humanity. It is the incarnation that makes Jesus temporarily lower than the angels, and the purpose of the incarnation is to make possible his death on behalf of all, for everyone. Taste death means simply to suffer death, as the preceding clause makes clear, and not merely a partial experience of death (cf. Mark 9:1). The incarnation and its goal, the cross, are the glorious expression of the grace of God, God’s free mercy and favor. The exaltation of Jesus, his being now crowned with glory and honor, is because he suffered death. Since it was from an exalted position that Jesus was temporarily made lower than the angels, we should not press the causal aspect too far (cf. 12:2). What is primarily in view is the sequence exalted status—humiliation—exaltation (as, e.g., explicitly in Phil. 2:6–11). At the same time, the exaltation that follows the humiliation does have a new dimension of joy and triumph, standing as it does at the end of the accomplishment of God’s plan of salvation.
The full humanity of the Son, therefore, involves the greatest of advantages, including the superiority of the Son to angels as the one who makes salvation possible by fulfilling the will of God in suffering and death. Further benefits of the humanity of Jesus are explored by our author in the remainder of this chapter.
2:5 / It is presupposed that angels have an important role in the present age. Evidence indicates the widespread belief that angel-princes under God ruled the nations. Philo says that the Creator employs angels as his assistants and ministers for the care of mortals (On Dreams 1.22); according to 1 Enoch (89:59) seventy guardian angels have charge over the seventy nations (cf. Deut. 32:8 [LXX]; Dan. 10:20–21; Sirach 17:17). See Kohler, JE, vol. 1, p. 594. This vice-regency, however, apparently does not hold true when the Son of Man, Jesus, has accomplished his work.
2:6–8a / The formula that introduces the quotation is unusual: there is a place where someone has testified. Other indefinite introductory formulae are found in 4:4 (“somewhere he has spoken”) and 5:6 (“he says in another place”). This usage of indefinite introductory formulae is unique in the NT. Elsewhere, the author clearly introduces Scripture as spoken by God, Christ, or the Holy Spirit. In only two places is a human speaker referred to (9:20; 12:21), and in both we encounter Moses as the speaker in the OT narrative. See R. Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 164–70. It is especially appropriate that the son of man be understood as the representative of humanity. The title includes readily the idea of the community of the faithful, as it does in one of the sources of the concept, Dan. 7:13f., 22. (Cf. John 1:51, which some apply to the Son and the community of believers.) For “Son of Man,” see O. Michel, NIDNTT, vol. 3, pp. 613–34; P. Giles, “The Son of Man in the Epistle to the Hebrews,” ExpT 86 (1975), pp. 328–32.
The OT of NIV translates the first line of Ps. 8:5: “You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings.” The underlying Hebrew for “heavenly beings” is ’elōhim, “God” (cf. NIV margin). Hebrews depends on the LXX, whose translators indeed translated ’elōhim by angelous, “angels.” (A similar rendering of ’elōhim by a plural may be seen in Ps. 82:6, “you are gods” [John 10:34], which was probably understood as “angels.”) It is obvious that our author’s argument benefits from the LXX reading at this point, although ’elōhim could be understood also to substantiate the point being made. Although the Hebrew of Ps. 8:5 refers to the smallness of degree to which human beings are inferior, “thou hast made him little less than God” (RSV), the LXX quoted in Heb. 2:7 can also be understood in a temporal sense, hence “you made him for a little while lower.” The temporal understanding of the phrase is supported by the argument of v. 9. See brachys, BAGD.
Many manuscripts add to v. 7 the words “you made him ruler over everything you made.” Despite the textual witness in favor of its inclusion (but it is missing from P46 and B), the line is almost certainly an adaptation to the LXX, and therefore the shorter reading is to be preferred.
2:8b–9 / Four key phrases in the Greek text are picked up verbatim, or nearly so, from the preceding verses in a midrashic exposition of the quotation from Ps. 8. These are reflected in NIV’s putting everything under him; everything subject to him; was made a little lower; and crowned with glory and honor. It would not be inappropriate to put these phrases in quotation marks. In midrashic exposition the author constructs an argument by using phrases from the quotation, and hence produces a kind of commentary on the chosen passage. The author of Hebrews is a master of this technique, and in his frequent use of it he reflects his basic theological conviction that Christ and his work represent the fulfillment of the OT, not only as the fulfillment of direct prophecy, but also as the fulfillment that occurs in corresponding patterns of events that find their telos, or goal, in Christ. The author of Hebrews makes extensive use of midrashic commentary on OT texts in his treatise; indeed, he seems eager to derive his arguments from the Scriptures, and this undoubtedly reflects the importance of the OT to his readers. (See Introduction, under “Form and Structure.”)
Commentators are almost equally divided concerning whether the pronoun him in v. 8b refers to man OT to Jesus. But, as F. F. Bruce correctly points out: “the crux is only a minor one, because in any case Christ is in view as the representative Man” (Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, NICNT [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964], p. 37, n. 35).
In v. 9 so that (hopōs) … he might taste death should be linked with the statement that Jesus was made a little lower than the angels, despite the fact that the clauses are not consecutive in the Greek text (cf. GNB, and contrast the awkwardness of NASB for example).
That a few manuscripts and some early Fathers witness the more difficult reading chōris theou (“without” or “apart from God”) for chariti theou (by the grace of God) has produced much discussion. Although it is difficult to explain the origin of the former reading, and although generally the more difficult or awkward reading is to be preferred in textual criticism, here the manuscript evidence for by the grace of God is overwhelming (including the very early P46). Moreover, the phrase makes good sense as it stands and therefore is to be accepted as the original reading. On grace (charis), see note to 4:16. In he might taste death for everyone, we have the teaching of substitutionary atonement, a doctrine central to Hebrews (cf. 5:1; 7:27). On this use of the preposition for (hyper), see M. J. Harris, NIDNTT, vol. 3, pp. 1196f. For a denial that v. 9 and chaps. 1 and 2 as a whole intend to assert the preexistence of Christ, see L. D. Hurst, “The Christology of Hebrews 1 and 2,” in The Glory of Christ in the New Testament: Studies in Christology, in memory of G. B. Caird; L. D. Hurst and N. T. Wright, eds. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 151–64.