Chapter 1 – One God Translation

Hebrews

   1 God,[1361] after He in the past spoke to our ancestors in the prophets at many times and in many ways, 2 has in these last days spoken to us in a Son,[1362] whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He made the ages. 3 His Son is the radiance of His glory, the exact image[1363] of His person, and upholds all things by the word of his power. After he had purified us of our sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, [1364] 4 having become so much better than the angels[1365] as he has inherited a name[1366] far superior to theirs.
    5 For to which of the angels did God ever say at any time,[1367] “You are My Son; today I have fathered you”?[1368] And again, “I will be to him a Father, and he will be to Me a Son.” 6 And again, when He brings the firstborn into the world[1369] He says, “Let all the angels of God worship him.” [1370]
      7 Of the angels He says, “He makes His angels like winds, and His servants like flames of fire.”
    8 But of the Son He says, “Your throne, O god,[1371] is forever and ever. The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your Kingdom. 9 You have loved uprightness and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God,[1372] has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.” 10 And, “You, lord,[1373] in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands. [1374] 11 They will perish,[1375] but you continue. They will all grow old as clothes do. 12 You will roll them up like a robe, and they will be changed like clothes; but you are the same. Your years will never end.”
    13 But to which of the angels did God ever say at any time,[1376] “Sit at My right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”? 14 Are they not all spirits in service, sent out to serve those who are going to inherit salvation?

Hebrews

[1361]

In Greek, “the God” (as very often with the definite article), the only God known to the NT community, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the God of Jesus, the Son. The significance of the article “the God” is to ensure that no other than the God of Israel is to be imagined.

[1362]

There is a deliberate, clear contrast here between how God spoke in OT times and how he later spoke for the first time in one who was uniquely His Son. The obvious implication is of course that there was no Son during the OT times. The Son is the great new personality coming into existence by divine begetting in Mary (Lk. 1:35; Mt. 1:18: genesis of the Son; 1:20: “that which is begotten, brought into existence, in her”).

[1363]

The exact expression of any person or thing, marked likeness, precise reproduction in every respect. Cp. “We beheld his glory as of a uniquely begotten Son” (Jn. 1:14). The image of God is a human being, not God! Man is also said to be the image and glory of God (1 Cor. 11:7). Image implies visibility and so Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God. No one has seen God at any time (Jn. 1:18), which would be false if the Son was actually God and had appeared and spoken as an angel in OT times!

[1364]

Fulfilling the key decisive, explanatory text in Ps. 110:1 where the second lord, adoni in the Hebrew, is not Adonai! Adoni is, in all of its 195 occurrences, the title of non-Deity, never of Deity. No one in biblical times thought that there was more than one God! The One God is called the Father 1300 times in the NT Scriptures. Jesus as the adoni, my lord, of Ps. 110:1 is alongside the One God but certainly not a second God. Jesus is the man Messiah (1 Tim 2:5) and the second Adam.

[1365]

Obviously then, the Son of God was never an angel! And thus he was certainly not Michael, the archangel. Michael is “one of the chief angels” (Dan. 10:13). Jesus is unique. Hebrews 1 is a sustained argument against the false notion that Jesus was or is an angel. The whole point of the second Adam is that he is a human being, now immortalized.

[1366]

“Name” in the NT indicates everything a person is and stands for, in this case authority and agenda, etc. “Name” does not mean how to pronounce the name in Hebrew. The Greek NT makes no issue at all about God’s name in Hebrew, but it could have, since it records the Aramaic word used by Jesus, “Abba.”

[1367]

It is an amazing miracle of misunderstanding to claim as Jehovah’s Witnesses that Jesus was and is Michael, an archangel, which mean a high-ranking angel!

[1368]

“Begotten you.” To beget is to cause to come into existence. This shows that Jesus did not always exist and cannot be God (making two Gods!). He was begotten of course in the womb of Mary as Matt. 1:18, 20 and Luke 1:35 describe expressly. The prophecy of Deut. 18:15-18 affirmed in Acts 3:22 and 7:37 would be completely misleading if the promised Messiah were to be either an angel or GOD Himself as a second member of a Trinity.

[1369]

To be “brought into the world” points to the beginning of the Son’s existence. This verse does not refer to the later resurrection of the firstborn from the dead, but in fulfillment of Ps. 2:7 to his beginning of Jesus’ life at conception.

[1370]

All three quotations are chosen to make the same point. They refer to the beginning of existence, the begetting of the Son, i.e. in the womb of Mary. This begetting of the Son is described in Luke 1:35: “the one to be begotten”; Matt. 1:1, 18, 20: “what is begotten in her.” The first quotation, Ps. 2:7, says of the Son, “You are My Son. Today I have become your Father [=begotten you].” This statement is repeated in Ps. 110:3 in the LXX version of the OT and many Heb. manuscripts. In all probability the Hebrew Masoretic text was muddled and corrupted there by a false pointing of the vowels. That is to say that the original was probably “yeliditicha” (“I have begotten you,” as found correctly in the LXX and some Heb. manuscripts of Ps. 110:3) and not “yaldutecha” (the rather meaningless “your youth”). “This was probably in the original, but owing to corruption of the Hebrew text, not perhaps unintentional, these words had no influence in Judaism” (TDNT, Vol. 1, p. 668, emphasis mine). The second quotation is from 2 Sam. 7:14 and 1 Chron. 17:13, which drops the reference to Solomon in 2 Sam. 7, and predicts, 1000 years before Jesus the Son was begotten, brought into existence, in Mary, that God would become the Father of a genealogical descendant of David. Rom. 1:3 repeats this information perfectly, describing the Son of God as coming into existence as a descendant of David. He is at the same moment God’s Son and David’s son. This is an exact fulfillment, too, of “a child will be begotten [i.e. by God, a divine passive] to us [Israel]” (Isa. 9:6). The child to be begotten is described in that text synonymously as the “Son who will be given [by God].” Hence “God loved the world in this way: that He gave His uniquely begotten Son” (Jn. 3:16). 1 John 5:18 describes the Son as “the one begotten,” i.e. brought into existence at a point in time. The idea of the “eternal [timeless] generation” (a nonsensical “beginningless beginning”) of the Son made havoc of all these texts. It transformed the real Jesus of the Bible into a timeless figure, “God the Son,” with no beginning in history. This false idea eventually perverted the strict monotheism of the Bible as confirmed by Jesus in Mark 12:29 as “the most important” truth of all, defining the “only one who is true God,” i.e. the Father (see Jn. 17:3 for Jesus’ unitary monotheistic confession which is the great key to life in the coming age, the Life of the [future] age of Dan. 12:2, mentioned some 40 times in the NT). For confirmation, see TDNT which states that “it is correctly observed that Ps. 2:7, 2 Sam. 7:14 and the ‘firstborn’ from Ps. 89:27 stand in exact exegetical connection” (Vol. 6, p. 880).

[1371]

The word “god” here is one of only two (for certain) uses of the word theos (God) for Jesus. The quotation is from Ps. 45:6 where the NAB translation correctly translates as “god” (not God), explaining that the king is “representing God to the people.”

[1372]

Someone who has a God cannot be God! To be Son of God means that you are not God! No one in biblical times thought that God could be born! (Lk. 2:11), much less that God could die. The Son of God died (Rom. 5:10).

[1373]

This passage needs very careful study since it quotes the LXX (Greek Septuagint) and not the version found in standard OT translations from the Hebrew. In the LXX, not the Hebrew text, God addresses someone else and calls him “lord.” This is obviously the lord Messiah who is in charge of the new creation. The psalm quoted here, Ps. 102, is all about the new world order coming, the Kingdom of God on earth, when the nations will be united and at peace, in the new society (generation) of the future. For a full explanation of Heb. 1:10, please see my Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian, appendix 3. Here it suffices to say that the LXX introduced the words “He [God] answered” the supplicant. The difference occurred when the Hebrew homonym (a word spelled the same but with a different meaning) anah, to answer or to afflict, was thought by the LXX to mean “answer” rather than “afflict or weaken.” This changed entirely the sense of the text, and our writer to the Hebrews was reading the LXX and not the Hebrew. None of this is problematic, but a little technical for those not familiar with the Bible’s original languages. The LXX here has become Scripture as written in the NT book of Hebrews.

[1374]

It should be carefully noted that the whole discussion concerns not the Genesis creation but the new creation of “the society/ inhabited earth to come” about which we are speaking (as the writer says in 2:5). In Ps. 102 in the LXX God addresses another who is “lord” — obviously the lord Messiah, whom God is using to build the new creation. That agent of the New Creation is Jesus and his role is beautifully described in Isa. 51:16, where God puts His words into the mouth of His chosen agent, the Messiah, for the purpose of creating the new heavens and earth, the new society on earth. This is expected at the future Second Coming of Jesus (2 Pet. 3:12-13), linking us to the “new heavens and earth” of Isa. 65:17, where peace and prosperity will prevail worldwide and the surviving human population will live very long lives. Dying at the age of 100 will be considered a life cut off prematurely (65:20).

[1375]

There will be a shaking of heaven and earth at the end of this age and a further change at the end of the millennium. A new heaven and earth will appear at the Parousia and a further renewal after the millennium. During that thousand years the saints will reign with Messiah in that renewed world (2:5; Mt. 19:28; Rev. 2:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:2).

[1376]

Repeating the important fact that Jesus could not possibly be an angel! This point frames the whole chapter. The Jehovah’s Witnesses ignored that important scriptural truth. They also created an amazing two-class theory which (unless a JW thinks he is one of the 144,000 special class) results in the average JW confessing that he/she is not born again, not a saint (holy one) and not part of the body of the Messiah — i.e. not a Christian, not having the spirit. By an amazing feat of misunderstanding that same “second class” group is at your door to teach you the NT faith!