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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Heb_1:9. Ἠγάπησας δικαιοσύνην κ . τ . λ .] Thou lovedst righteousness and hatedst wrong. In the Hebrew the corresponding verbs have a present signification: thou lovest justice and hatest wrong. Our author, however, refers the aorists of the LXX. to the historic life of the Son of God upon earth.
διὰ τοῦτο ] therefore, i.e. as a reward for the ἀγαπᾶν δικαιοσύνην καὶ μισεῖν ἀνομίαν . Comp. διό , Php_2:9. Erroneously Augustine (in Ps.), Thomas Aquinas, Gerhard, Dorscheus, Brochmann, Schöttgen, and others: for this cause, that thou mightest love righteousness, etc.
ἔχρισέν σε , ὁ θεός , ὁ θεός σου ἔλαιον κ . τ . λ .] O God, Thy God hath Thee anointed with oil of gladness above Thy companions. Here, too, the author takes ὁ θεός as an apostrophe,[39] whereas in the Hebrew àÁìÉäÄéí is the subject to îùÑÈçÂêÈ , and is taken up again into the discourse, and more nearly defined by àÁìÉäÆéêÈ . The anointing with the oil of joy in the psalm is a figurative designation of the blessing and abundance given by God. Our author, however, understands it of the anointing to be king, as a figure of the divine glory with which the Son, after His life upon earth and His exaltation to heaven, has been crowned. Comp. also Act_4:27; Act_2:36. The sense of the author is departed from when the Fathers and earlier expositors interpret the expression of the anointing of the Son with the Holy Ghost.
On the double accusative combined with ἜΧΡΙΣΕΝ (Rev_3:18), see Winer, Gramm., 7 Aufl. p. 212. As an analogon, comp. also Aristophanes, Acharn. 114: ἽΝΑ ΜΉ ΣΕ ΒΆΨΩ ΒΆΜΜΑ ΣΑΡΔΙΝΙΑΚΌΝ .
ΠΑΡᾺ ΤΟῪς ΜΕΤΌΧΟΥς ΣΟΥ ] refers in the original to the contemporary kings, the rulers of other lands. But what our author understood by it in the application is obscure. Kuinoel, Ebrard, Delitzsch, and Moll suppose the author, like the Psalmist, to intend the other kings; Riehm (Lehrbegr. des Hebräerbr. p. 306), all earthly and heavenly princes; Wittich, Braun, Cramer, the kings, high priests, and prophets of the O. T., inasmuch as they were anointed as types of Christ; Klee, all the creatures; Chrysostom, Oecumenius, Theophylact, Bengel, and Bisping, men in general; Theodoret, Calvin, Beza, Cameron, Piscator, Schlichting, Maier, Kurtz, the Christians specially [Owen hesitates between all believers and prophets and apostles]; Bleek, Olshausen, Alford, and Ewald finally, after the precedent of Peirce and others, the angels, “as beings which do not indeed appear as sitting at the right hand of God, but yet as existing in immediate proximity to the divine throne.” The last supposition is the most probable. It is true de Wette regards it as the least conceivable, because the author has “placed the angels in no other position than deeply below Christ,” and Ebrard even thinks the author must have been “beside himself” if he had referred the words to the angels. But (1) it is a question throughout the whole section of a comparison of Christ with the angels; the renewed indication of this point of comparison also in Heb_1:9 cannot therefore in itself be found unsuitable. (2) If shortly before (Heb_1:7) the angels are placed deeply below Christ, so it will be admitted their inferiority is likewise expressly intimated by means of παρά in our passage. (3) The angels were, in the conception of the author, the next in rank after Christ; for they are exalted above men. To whom, therefore, could the author more fittingly apply the designation μέτοχοι than precisely to them? The objection of Delitzsch, finally, that after all angels are not anointed ones, would be of weight only if the author were obliged of necessity to think of the μέτοχοι too as anointed; he finds, on the contrary, in the anointing only of the Son, a fact expressed, from which the exaltedness of the same above His companions, i.e. of those who of all others stand nearest to Him in dignity, is necessarily deduced. For ΠΑΡΆ is used here not in the sense of the quantity arising from the notion of comparison, but denotes the part accruing to one to the exclusion of others.
[39] On account of ver. 8 this construction is more natural than the supposition of Grimm, l.c. p. 602; Alford, and Ewald (to which Delitzsch also leaves the choice open), that we have to explain in accordance with the Hebrew: “God, even Thy God.”