Hebrews 1:2 (ESV+LSB+MJ* references, Matthew Henry, John Calvin, Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Critical, Doctrinal and Homiletical

2 in these last days spoke to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds,

 

1-2(Genesis 49:1,8-12)Then Jacob summoned his sons and said, “Gather together that I may tell you what will befall you in the last days. 8 “Judah, as for You, Your brothers shall praise You; Your hand shall be on the neck of Your enemies; Your Father’s sons shall bow down to You. 9 Judah is a lion’s whelp; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He crouches, He lies down as a lion, and as a lioness, who dares rouse Him up? 10 The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between His feet, until Shiloh comes, and to Him shall be the obedience of the peoples. 11 He ties his foal to the vine, and His donkey’s colt to the choice vine; He washes his garments in wine, and His robes in the blood of grapes. 12 His eyes are dark from wine, and his teeth white from milk. (Psalms 2:6-9)6 “But as for Me, I have installed My King upon Zion, My holy mountain.” 7 “I will surely tell of the decree of Yahweh: He said to Me, ‘You are My Son, today I have begotten You. 8 Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, And the ends of the earth as Your possession. 9 You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like a potter’s vessel.’” (Hosea 3:1-5)Then Yahweh said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by her companion and is an adulteress, even as Yahweh loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.” 2 So I bargained for her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley. 3 Then I said to her, “You shall stay with me for many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man; so I will also be toward you.” 4 For the sons of Israel will remain for many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, and without ephod or household idols. 5 Afterward the sons of Israel will return and seek Yahweh their God and David their king; and they will come in dread to Yahweh and to His goodness in the last days. (Isaiah 9:1-7)* 9 But there will be no more gloom for her who was in anguish; in earlier times He treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali with contempt, but later on He shall make it glorious, by the way of the sea, on the other side of Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. 2 The people who walk in darkness will see a great Light; those who live in the land of the shadow of death, the Light will shine on them. 3 You shall multiply the nation, You shall make great their gladness; they will be glad in Your presence as with the gladness of harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. 4 For You shall shatter the yoke of their burden and the staff on their shoulders, the rod of their taskmaster, as at the battle of Midian. 5 For every boot of the booted warrior in the rumbling of battle, and cloak rolled in blood, will be for burning, fuel for the fire. 6 For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; and the government will rest on His shoulders; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. 7 There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore. The zeal of Yahweh of hosts will accomplish this.(Galatians 4:4-7)*4 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, 5 so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” 7 Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.(Philippians 2:9-11)*9 Therefore, God also highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.(Colossians 1:15-20)*15 Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For in Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. 18 And He is the head of the body, the church; Who is the beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.19 For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 And through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross—through Him—whether things on earth or things in heaven.(John 1:1-5)* In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. 5 And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.(1 Corinthians 8:6)* yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.(Isaiah 44:24-27)*24 Thus says Yahweh, your Redeemer, and the one who formed you from the womb, “I, Yahweh, am the maker of all things, stretching out the heavens by Myself and spreading out the earth all alone, 25 causing the omens of boasters to be annulled, and making fools out of diviners, causing wise men to turn back, and making foolishness out of their knowledge, 26 confirming the word of His servant—and the counsel of His messengers He will complete—and being the One who says of Jerusalem, ‘She shall be inhabited!’And of the cities of Judah, ‘They shall be built.’And I will raise up her waste places again. 27 It is I who says to the depth of the sea, ‘Be dried up!’And I will make your rivers dry.(Ephesians 3:8-12)*8 To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to proclaim to the Gentiles the good news of the unfathomable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light for all what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things; 10 so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. 11 This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him.(Isaiah 45:2-3,5-25)* 2 “I will go before you and make the rough places smooth; I will shatter the doors of bronze and cut through their iron bars. 3 I will give you the treasures of darkness and hidden wealth of secret places, so that you may know that it is I, Yahweh, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name. 4 For the sake of Jacob My servant, and Israel My chosen one, I have also called you by your name; I have given you a title of honor though you have not known Me. 5 I am Yahweh, and there is no other; besides Me there is no God. I will gird you, though you have not known Me, 6 That they may know from the rising to the setting of the sun that there is no one besides Me. I am Yahweh, and there is no other, 7 The One forming light and creating darkness, producing peace and creating calamity; I am Yahweh who does all these. Yahweh the Maker 8 “Drip down, O heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness; let the earth open up and salvation bear fruit, and righteousness spring up with it. I, Yahweh, have created it. 9 “Woe to the one who contends with his Maker—an earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth! Will the clay say to the potter, ‘What are you doing?’ Or the thing you are making say, ‘He has no hands’? 10 Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’ Or to a woman, ‘With what are you in labor pains?’” 11 Thus says Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel, and his Maker: “Ask Me about the things that are to come concerning My sons, and you shall commit to Me the work of My hands. 12 It is I who made the earth and created man upon it. I stretched out the heavens with My hands, and I commanded all their host. 13 I have awakened him in righteousness, and I will make all his ways smooth; He will build My city and will let My exiles go, without any payment or reward,” says Yahweh of hosts. 14 Thus says Yahweh,“The fruit of the labor of Egypt and the profit of Ethiopia and the Sabeans, men of stature, will come over to you and will be yours; they will walk behind you; they will come over in chains and will bow down to you; they will make supplication to you: ‘Surely, God is with you, and there is none else, no other God.’” 15 Truly, You are a God who hides Himself, O God of Israel, Savior! 16 They will be put to shame and even dishonored, all of them; the craftsmen of idols will go away together in dishonor. 17 Israel has been saved by Yahweh with an everlasting salvation; You will not be put to shame or dishonored to all eternity. 18 For thus says Yahweh, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it; He established it and did not create it a formless place, but formed it to be inhabited),“I am Yahweh, and there is none else. 19 I have not spoken in secret, in some dark land; I did not say to the seed of Jacob,‘Seek Me in a formless place’; I, Yahweh, speak righteousness, declaring things that are upright. 20 “Gather yourselves and come; draw near together, you who have escaped from the nations; they do not know, who carry about their graven image of wood and pray to a god who cannot save. 21 Declare and draw near with your case; indeed, let them consult together. Who has made this heard from of old? Who has long since declared it? Is it not I, Yahweh? And there is no other God besides Me, a righteous God and a Savior; there is none except Me. 22 Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other. 23 I have sworn by Myself, the word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness and will not turn back, that to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance. 24 They will say of Me, ‘Only in Yahweh are righteousness and strength.’ Men will come to Him, and all who were angry at Him will be put to shame. 25 In Yahweh all the seed of Israel will be justified and will boast.” 

 

Matthew Henry

v. 2, 3. Here observe, (1.) How the law is described: it was the word spoken by angels, and declared to be stedfast. It was the word spoken by angels, because given by the ministration of angels, they sounding the trumpet, and perhaps forming the words according to God's direction; and God, as judge, will make use of the angels to sound the trumpet a second time, and gather all to his tribunal, to receive their sentence, as they have conformed or not conformed to the law. And this law is declared to be stedfast; it is like the promise, yea and amen; it is truth and faithfulness, and it will abide and have its force whether men obey it or no; for every transgression and disobedience will receive a just recompence of reward. If men trifle with the law of God, the law will not trifle with them; it has taken hold of the sinners of former ages, and will take hold of sinners in all ages. God, as a righteous governor and judge, when he had given forth the law, would not let the contempt and breach of it go unpunished; but he has from time to time reckoned with the transgressors of it, and recompensed them according to the nature and aggravation of their disobedience. Observe, The severest punishment God ever inflicted upon sinners is no more than what sin deserves: it is a just recompence of reward; punishments are as just, and as much due to sin as rewards are to obedience, yea, more due than rewards are to imperfect obedience. (2.) How the gospel is described. It is salvation, a great salvation; so great salvation that no other salvation can compare with it; so great that none can fully express, no, nor yet conceive, how great it is. It is a great salvation that the gospel discovers, for it discovers a great Saviour, one who has manifested God to be reconciled to our nature, and reconcilable to our persons; it shows how we may be saved from so great sin and so great misery, and be restored to so great holiness and so great happiness. The gospel discovers to us a great sanctifier, to qualify us for salvation and to bring us to the Saviour. The gospel unfolds a great and excellent dispensation of grace, a new covenant; the great charter-deed and instrument is settled and secured to all those who come into the bond of the covenant. (3.) How sinning against the gospel is described: it is declared to be a neglect of this great salvation; it is a contempt put upon the saving grace of God in Christ, making light of it, not caring for it, not thinking it worth their while to acquaint themselves with it, not regarding either the worth of gospel grace or their own want of it and undone state without it; not using their endeavours to discern the truth of it, and assent to it, nor to discern the goodness of it, so as to approve of it, or apply it to themselves. In these things they discover a plain neglect of this great salvation. Let us all take heed that we be not found among those wicked wretched sinners who neglect the grace of the gospel. (4.) How the misery of such sinners is described: it is declared to be unavoidable (v. 3): How shall we escape? This intimates, [1.] That the despisers of this salvation are condemned already, under arrest and in the hands of justice already. So they were by the sin of Adam; and they have strengthened their bonds by their personal transgression. He that believeth not is condemned already, John 3 18. [2.] There is no escaping out of this condemned state, but by accepting the great salvation discovered in the gospel; as far those who neglect it, the wrath of God is upon them, and it abides upon them; they cannot disengage themselves, they cannot emerge, they cannot get from under the curse. [3.] That there is a yet more aggravated curse and condemnation waiting for all those who despise the grace of God in Christ, and that this most heavy curse they cannot escape; they cannot conceal their persons at the great day, nor deny the fact, nor bribe the judge, nor break the prison. There is no door of mercy left open for them; there will be no more sacrifice for sin; they are irrecoverably lost. The unavoidableness of the misery of such is here expressed by way of question: How shall we escape? It is an appeal to universal reason, to the consciences of sinners themselves; it is a challenge to all their power and policy, to all their interest and alliances, whether they, or any for them, can find out, or can force out, a way of escape from the vindictive justice and wrath of God. It intimates that the neglecters of this great salvation will be left not only without power, but without plea and excuse, at the judgment-day; if they be asked what they have to say that the sentence should not be executed upon them, they will be speechless, and self-condemned by their own consciences, even to a greater degree of misery than those fell under who neglected the authority of the law, or sinned without the law.

John Calvin

2.Whom he has appointed, heir, etc. He honors Christ with high commendations, in order to lead us to show him reverence; for since the Father has subjected all things to him, we are all under his authority. He also intimates that no good can be found apart from him, as he is the heir of all things. It hence follows that we must be very miserable and destitute of all good things except he supplies us with his treasures. He further adds that this honor of possessing all things belongs by right to the Son, because by him have all things been created. At the same time, these two things (10) are ascribed to Christ for different reasons.

The world was created by him, as he is the eternal wisdom of God, which is said to have been the director of all his works from the beginning; and hence is proved the eternity of Christ, for he must have existed before the world was created by him. If, then, the duration of his time be inquired of, it will be found that it has no beginning. Nor is it any derogation to his power that he is said to have created the world, as though he did not by himself create it. According to the most usual mode of speaking in Scripture, the Father is called the Creator; and it is added in some places that the world was created by wisdom, by the word, by the Son, as though wisdom itself had been the creator, [or the word, or the Son.] But still we must observe that there is a difference of persons between the Father and the Son, not only with regard to men, but with regard to God himself. But the unity of essence requires that whatever is peculiar to Deity should belong to the Son as well as to the Father, and also that whatever is applied to God only should belong to both; and yet there is nothing in this to prevent each from his own peculiar properties.

But the word heir is ascribed to Christ as manifested in the flesh; for being made man, he put on our nature, and as such received this heirship, and that for this purpose, that he might restore to us what we had lost in Adam. For God had at the beginning constituted man, as his Son, the heir of all good things; but through sin the first man became alienated from God, and deprived himself and his posterity of all good things, as well as of the favor of God. We hence only then begin to enjoy by right the good things of God, when Christ, the universal heir, admits to a union with himself; for he is an heir that he may endow us with his riches. But the Apostle now adorns him with this title, that we may know that without him we are destitute of all good things.

If you take all in the masculine gender, the meaning is, that we ought all to be subject to Christ, because we have been given to him by the Father. But I prefer reading it in the neuter gender; then it means that we are driven from the legitimate possession of all things, both in heaven and on earth, except we be united to Christ.

(10) That is, heirship and creation.

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Critical, Doctrinal and Homiletical

Hebrews 1:2. Appointed.—It were possible (with Bengel, Bleek, Lönemann) to understand this of an appointment in the divine purpose and counsel. But the connection of the clauses is not such as to indicate an enumeration of the several stages from the ante-temporal act of destining the pre-existing Son to be the inheritor of all things, to the actual fulfilment of this purpose in the redemption wrought by the Incarnated Word. The question evidently is rather of the historical Mediator of the Divine Revelation, who stands in the relation of Son. The import of this term it is now the special purpose of the writer to unfold, and this the more, in that, on the one hand, the term ‘Son of God’ has in the Old Testament itself a different signification; and, on the other, that he has hitherto spoken of that prophetic revelation of God which expresses itself in the word. For this reason he adds two clauses by way of specially defining the term Son, each of which expresses in its own peculiar manner this Son’s uniqueness of nature and infinite elevation. He is the Ruler who being worshipped as Lord (κύριος), has been by right of inheritance, and thus legitimately and by virtue of His divine Sonship, exalted to this dignity. And this exaltation is no apotheosis: no elevation of a man (as Socinianism would have it) to a divine position and dignity; it corresponds to the relation which this personage sustained to God before the ages. The Mediator of God’s final revelation in His word, is also the Mediator of the exercise of His power in creation. Thus through the relative (ὅς, who) the discourse passes over from God, the subject of the preceding clauses, to this mediator as subject of the following. In these the term ἐκάθισεν points to the joint agency of Christ in the act of His exaltation: while the participial clauses preceding bring out the indispensable and vital points of the Son’s having taken His place at the right hand of God only after accomplishing the work of redemption, and under what essential attributes of His person and agency (what being and what doing) all this has been accomplished. The participial clause ποιησάμενος (after making, etc.) gives the work which in perfect freedom the Son has accomplished before His exaltation; the participial clause γενόμενος (becoming so much greater, etc.) describes the position and recognition awarded to Him in consequence of that work; while the two participial clauses ὤν and φέρων (being, etc., and ‘bearing’ or ‘upholding,’ etc.) indicated by the closely connecting particle τε as standing in intimate relationship, and designedly placed before the others, express the unoriginated and unchangeable, and thus eternal and identical being and agency of the Mediator of Redemption and Creation. We must not deny (with Lün.) that also these latter clauses have to do with the manifested Messiah. But from this it follows neither that, as descriptive of the personal qualities of Christ, they assign the internal ground of His exaltation (de Wette), nor that they characterize the Son in the inmost and essential ground of His absolute personality (Del.), nor that referring to Him presumably merely as the exalted one, they point to merely economical relations in the accomplishment of redemption (V. Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, 2d Exodus 1:0. p. 140 ff.). They point us rather to the unchangeable essence, the ever uniform and invariable activity of the Mediator of the New Covenant. They contain “a characteristic of the Son, as designating that nature which belongs peculiarly to Christ in each and all of His various modes of existence.” (Riehm, I. 278). For the Pres. Part. marks not in itself any independent time but simply co-ordinates the action with that of the principal verb. But if, as here, the principal verb is past, the contemporaneous action in the subordinate clause is expressed not by the Pres. but by the Imperf. The Present characterizes by pointing to permanent features and essential attributes.

The worlds.—As no trace of controversy with Gnostic notions of Æons and Angels, held by Jews, is found elsewhere in our epistle, we must, were it even for this reason, decline to refer the αἰῶνες here to angels (as earlier expositors with Wolf). The passage Hebrews 11:3 proves also that αἰῶνες cannot signify secular periods (Chrys.), still less the two cardinal epochs of the world’s history, the Mosaic and the Christian (Bolten, Paulus, Stolz, Stein), but only the world as existing and moving in time. Its parallel is found in the Old Testament הָעוֹלָמִים which (from עָלַם, to veil, hide,) signifies originally only successive periods of time lying beyond the vision, but in the writings of the Rabbins, the worlds as the hidden, unfathomable, concrete product and expression of the hidden, unfathomable ages of time. The transition in signification is found Ecclesiastes 3:11. As, however, αἰών never signifies time or eternity in the abstract, but both only under the category of progress and movement in which spiritual forces are active, so with the relation of this word to the idea of the world. It denotes the world not as the mere aggregate of all things, the universe, (τὰ πάντα), not as the manifold variety of things wrought into an organic unity and harmony (κόσμος); nor again the world in its materiality, perishableness, and vanity; but as a system of spiritual relations and powers in whose phenomena we may discern the νοούμενα, Romans 1:20. These invisible, spiritual and permanent potencies of the phenomenal world are no individual Angels and Æons, no powers independently fashioning the world, and no world of Ideas after whose model God was constrained to fashion and to build the world of phenomena. Rather God has formed these through His Son, and according to Hebrews 11:3, arranged and reduced them to order by His creative word. It is these αἰῶνες which, amidst all phenomenal vicissitudes and fluctuations, and the ceaseless passing away of individual existences, remain permanent in the world. But Jehovah is ὁ θεὸς τῶν αἰώνων, Sir 36:19; ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν αἰώνων (Tob 13:6; Tob 13:10; 1 Timothy 1:17). The emphasis in our passage lies not on the fact that God through the Son has made also (=even) the Æons, but that in connexion with the fact that He constituted or appointed the Son heir of the worlds, we are also to look at the fact that through Him He made (ἐποίησεν) the world.

 

2 in these last days spoke to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds,