Thursday, April 15, 2021

Jerome H. Neyrey on the Use of Psalm 102:25-27 in Hebrews 1:10-12

 

 

Opening: Past and Future Eternity

 

In chapter 1 the author states the most honorable and exalted things that he possibly can about Jesus. The audience is thus conditioned how to label Jesus or acclaim him. In the traditional culture of the author, appeal is regularly made to authority, in this case the most solemn of authorities, the Scriptures. In a chain of quotations form the Psalms and other biblical writings, the author unmistakably calls Jesus “God” (1:8; cf. Ps 45:6) and predicates of him divine eternity, both eternity in the past and imperishability in the future.

 

Citing Ps 102:25-27, the author first acclaims Jesus’ eternity in the past. We have already been told that it is Jesus “through whom God made the world” (1:2b). Of him the psalm says: “Thou, Lord founded the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands” (1:10). Thus biblical texts (Psalm 102 in Heb 1:10 and Psalm 2 in Heb 1:5) speak to Jesus’ past, namely, to his eternity before creation. The author balances this with further remarks form Psalm 102 about his eternity in the future.

 

They will perish, but you remain,
they will grow old like a garment
(like a mantle) you will roll them up.
And they will be changed.
but you are the same
and your years are without end.
(Heb 1:11-12; cf. Ps 102:26-27)

 

Unlike the perishable world, which is subject to change, Jesus is imperishable and will not change. He “remains” and his “years are without end.”

 

Eternity in both past and future would seem to be the plain meaning of Psalm 102. If so, it speaks unmistakably of Jesus as a true god according to commonplace Hellenistic characteristics of a true deity. This may be confirmed by noting another commonplace about a true god that is here predicated of Jesus: he is said to have the two basic powers of God, creative and executive, a concept discussed earlier in regard to Romans. As we have seen in Heb 1:2 and 10, Jesus exercises “creative power,” whereby he caused the world to be.

 

Likewise 1:8 tells us that Jesus enjoys “executive power”: “Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever, the righteous scepter if the scepter of your kingdom.” The author expresses this sense of Jesus’ complete sovereignty in other terms, calling him “the heir of all things” (1:2) who is “seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (1:3).

 

Yet one quickly notes that the author of Hebrews seems considerably more interested in Jesus’ imperishability and eternity in the future than he is in his eternity in the past. Using Psalm 110:4 as another indisputable authority, the author argues that Jesus’ future existence is proclaimed: “You are a priest forever” (Heb 5:6; 7:3, 17, 21). God’s oath establishes Jesus’ future eternity in the precise role of a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Yet as this study has shown, Melchizedek is himself described in the terms used of a true god, uncreated/ungenerated in the past and imperishable in the future (7:3). (Jerome H. Neyrey, Render to God: New Testament Understandings of the Divine [Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress, 2004], 238-39)