A peculiar phenomenon in the New Testament (NT)
is its practice of applying to Jesus of Nazareth various Old Testament (OT)
texts originally referring to YHWH, 1 the biblical creator of the cosmos and
divine redeemer of Israel. A clear example of this phenomenon is found in Heb
1:10–12, a description of God’s “son” (identified as Jesus in 2:9) as the
eternal and imperishable creator of the created and perishable universe. The
passage is a quotation of Ps 102:25–27, which, in its original context, refers
to YHWH as the eternal and imperishable creator. Thus, the subject of the
original OT text is YHWH, while the subject of the same text as quoted in the
NT is Jesus. 2 And since the writer to the Hebrews had already made this kind
of interpretive maneuver in his book (cf. Heb 1:6; Deut 32:43 LXX), it is
apparently his deliberate practice and not a careless oversight. (Scott
Brazil, Jesus and YHWH-Texts in the Synoptic Gospels [Library of New
Testament Studies 694; London: T&T Clark, 2024], 1)
