For to which of the angels did God ever say,
"You are my Son; today I have begotten you"? Or again, "I will
be his Father, and he will be my Son"? And again, when he brings the
firstborn into the world, he says, "Let all God's angels worship
him." Of the angels he says, "He makes his angels winds, and his
servants flames of fire." But of the Son he says, "Your throne, O
God, is1 forever and ever, and the righteous scepter is the scepter of your2
kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your
God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions."
And, "In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are
the work of your hands; they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear
out like clothing; like a cloak you will roll them up, and like clothing1 they
will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will never end." But
to which of the angels has he ever said, "Sit at my right hand until I
make your enemies a footstool for your feet"? Are not all angels1 spirits
in the divine service, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit
salvation? (Heb 1:5-14 NRSV)
Some have
appealed to the use of Deut 32:43 and Psa 102:25-27 in the above pericope to
support various Trinity theories, such as the equality of the Father and the
Son. One recent challenge to this view comes from Jared Compton (pastor of
CrossWay Community Church in Bristol, Wisconsin) based on his doctoral
dissertation:
First, it is out of step with the author’s immediate
and larger argument. The citations in vv. 5-13 are adduced to show ways the son
became greater than angels, not ways
in which he has always been greater. In v. 4, the author says that the son
became (γενομενος) greater
than angels, since he inherited (κεκληρονομηχεν) a name far superior to theirs. In v. 5 and
following, the author provides evidence for this claim, connecting the
assertion in v. 4 of the evidence in vv. 5ff. with the conjunction γαρ. It would be slightly odd,
therefore, for the author to suggest that one quality that makes the son
superior is that he is now divine.
One does not become divine, at least
in any authentically Judeo-Christian sense—which is precisely what those arguing
for this position intended (i.e., uncreated, unchanging, et al.) Added to this,
if there is any sense in which the author is trying to convince his audience of
the son’s superiority to angels so that they will not abandon their Christian
commitments (cf. 2.1-4; see also 3.1; 4.14), it would not make much sense for
him to propose a line of argumentation that requires these same commitments
(i.e., the son’s divinity) in order to be persuasive. Transparently, the author’s
argument does rely on one premise that may appear, on first glance, to be
distinctly Christian: the son has been exalted, which is to say, resurrected.
This belief, however, is hardly distinctly Christian, considering the handful
of people in Israel’s history who were brought back from the dead or translated
to heaven (11.35; cf. 11.19). The belief becomes Christian only when coupled
with an awareness of and belief in who Jesus claimed to be, along with,
perhaps, the exact nature and timing of his resurrection (i.e., not revivification
and not at the end of time). When coupled with the attention the author pays to
messianic expectation, all this could imply that the audience had at one time
identified the son with the messiah but were now in danger of abandoning this
belief based on an inadequate understanding of what that identification would
entail. Perhaps the attention the author gives to the still-unrealized aspects
of the messiah’s rule in his citation of Ps. 109.1 LXX in 1.13 and of Ps. 8.5-7
LXX in 2.5-9 or, further, to the fittingness and necessity of messiah’s death
in 2.10-18 (specifically vv. 10 and 17) suggest the specific areas where the audience
required clarification.
Moreover, if the exhortation of 2.1-4 depends
on the argument of 1.5-14 (cf. 2.1, Δια τουτο δει), one may wonder how the distinctly Christian
readings proposed for Deut 32.43 in 1.6 and Ps. 101.26-28 LXX in 1.10-12
support the inherent authority (βεβαιος) of the former revelation (ο δι’
αγγελων λαληθεις λογος 2.2), which is asserted in order to provide the basis for the author’s
a fortiori argument (περισσοτερως, 2.1, cf. τηλιχαυτης, v. 3) that
the new revelation (λαλεισθαι δια του κυριου, 2.3; cf. 1.2) is even more authoritative-due, at least in part, to its finality (cf.
1.1-2, παλαι . . . επ’ εσχατου των ημερων τουτων), In other words, the point of 1.5-14 and
2.1-4 seems to be that the previous revelation was authoritative on its own,
even while it was admittedly incomplete: a messiah was promised but not yet revealed.
And it is the new revelation’s continuity with the old, its fulfillment of the
old, that gives it a superior authority. This, in any case, seems to be the
only way one might talk about two words from the same God as having differing
authority: one stands in relation to the other as promise (incomplete) to
fulfillment (complete). The author’s attention elsewhere to precisely these
issues suggests that it would not be out of the ordinary were this first a fortiori argument to turn on
continuity of the promise-fulfllment variety (see, e.g., 2.8-9; 4.8-9; 7.12;
8.13).
Second, it simply is not the case that only
Christians could talk about creation as the work of God and an intermediate agent or of someone or something reflecting God’s
image. There were long-standing traditions within Judaism that predicated God’s
wisdom and word precisely that Hebrews does of the son . . . . The lines
connecting these traditions with Hebrew extend beyond the prologue (i.e., 1.2c,
3a-b), including the idea that someone—Israel’s king—could embody these divine qualities (for instance, in Wis. 9 the author
reflects on Solomon’s request in 1 Kgs 3 [vv. 5-9], restating it this way: ‘Give
me the wisdom that sits by you on your throne’ [9.4], the same wisdom just
described as playing a role in creation [9.1-2]). In fact, a strong case can be
made that it was these traditions—but not only these traditions—that helped
early Christians-perhaps the author and audience of Hebrews—to understand or,
at the least, begin to express what they had come to believe about Jesus of
Nazareth. (Jared Compton, Psalm 110 and
the Logic of Hebrews [Library of New Testament Studies 537; London: T&T
Clark, 2015], 24-27)
. . .
if the author is interested in proving that the son is greater than the angels
because he is equal with God, one wonders about the effectiveness of citing two
texts where, though divine language is used of the messiah, the messiah is still
clearly distinguished from God (cf. Pss. 44.8; 109.1a [not cited]). (Ibid.,
24-25 n. 23)
. . . the idea that the messiah preceded—if not
also facilitated—creation was itself not unprecedented (cf. Pesiq. Rab. 36 [161a]). The idea of arguably
present in Ps. 109.3 LXX, and in the descriptions of the messianic ‘son of man’
from Dan. 7.13 in 1 En. 48.2 and
69.27, in whom dwells ‘the spirit of wisdom’ (49.3; cf. 48.2; 51.3).
A messianic reading of Deut. 32.43, moreover,
is possible when the text’s eschatological vision is placed in a Davidic
setting, which the song’s relationship with the Psalter (i.e., Odes 2.43 [Greek: και προσκυνησατωσαν αυτω
παντες οι αγγελοι θεου]) and, especially, with Psalm 96 LXX facilitates. The citation of
Heb. 1.6 has no exact equivalent in the Greek Old Testament . . . What Deuteronomy
32 lacks, however, is any reference to a messianic figure. The text is
eschatological (especially vv. 41-43), but the one who intervenes for Israel is
none other than God himself, something v. 43 certainly attests. Psalm 96 LXX
tells a different story. Here God’s intervention for Israel is explicitly tied to
Davidic rule and, thus, messianism. The psalm’s superscription reads, ‘to David
[τω Δαυιδ], when his
land was established [καθισταται]’ (cf. 2 Sam. 7.10; also τη οικουμενη in Ps. 96.4) and then proceeds to talk about
‘the Lord [κυριος] bec[oming]
king’ (v. 1 LXX) and about his being ‘exalted far above the gods [τους
θεους//οι αγγελοι
in v. 7). One already hears echoes of Heb. 1.4 and the potential ambivalence of
the title κυριος (vv. 1, 5,
8, 9, 10, 12) has already been noted (cf. Ps. 109. 1 LXX; also 101.26 LXX). And
the language of establishment (καθισταται) in the superscription recalls Ps. 2.6,
which uses identical language to describe the son’s—David’s—enthronement (κατεσταθην), and Ps. 109.1 LXX, which uses synonymous
language to describe the same event (καθου). In fact, it also recalls Ps. 8.6-7 LXX,
where humanity is ‘crowned’ with ‘glory and honor . . . and set [or appointed, κατεστησας] over the works of [God’s] hands’
(NETS; see also Heb. 2.5-9, incl. v. 7 v.l.).
In other words, the language of the superscription is—or is not far from—the language
of enthronement.
What makes a merging of Deut. 32.43 and P.
96.7 LXX plausible is the apparent prominence of the former text (via the
second Ode) in the first century. For example, Philo calls it Moses’ ωδη μεγαλη (Det. Po. Inst. 114; Leg. All.
3.105). Added to this are the many themes both texts share. Both, for example,
address those who worship idols (Ps. 96.7 LXX; Deut. 32.16-17, 21, 37-38),
compare Yhwh with these gods (Ps. 97.9 LXX; Deut. 32.12, 31, 39), presage the
destruction of Israel’s enemies (Ps. 97.3, 10 LXX; Deut. 32.36, 41-43), and
foretell the restoration/establishment of the righteous (Ps. 97.10-12 LXX; Deut.
32.36, 43). Moreover, the idea that angels would worship someone besides God—Israel’s
king—is . . a traditional piece of Jewish anthropology. To preview, in the Life of Adam and Eve, Michael, the
archangel, orders the angelic host to worship Adam, a command Satan disobeys—precipitating
his own demise (13-16). Considering the solidarity between the son and humans
described in 2.9, 10-18, this tradition is perhaps relevant here. The messianic
king, the representative of his people (as a second Adam?), receives angelic
worship, at God’s command (cf. Heb. 1.6, λεγει), when his kingdom is established, which is
to say, when he enters the remade οικουμενην. (Ibid., 33, 35-36)