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Heb_2:2. Ὁ διʼ ἀγγέλων λαληθεὶς λόγος ] the word proclaimed by angels (not: by human messengers, i.e. prophets; so Daniel Heinsius and G. Olearius, against the connection with chap. 1., and contrary to Biblical usage), i.e. the Mosaic law. Of an activity of the angels in connection with the act of legislation on Sinai nothing indeed is mentioned in Exodus 19; it was, however, a traditional view very widely spread among the Jews. See Schoettgen and Wetstein on Gal_3:19. The earliest traces thereof appear Deu_33:2, LXX., and Psa_68:18 (17). It is clearly enunciated Act_7:53; Gal_3:19; Josephus, Antiq. xv. 5. 3.
To understand other divine revelations given through the intervention of angels, like Gen_19:26, to the exclusion of the Mosaic law (Dorscheus, Calov, Schoettgen, Carpzov, Semler, al.), or with the inclusion of the same (Baumgarten, Ewald, M‘Caul: “To my mind, the transition to the law exclusively is in the present instance somewhat abrupt. Does it not rather also refer to the ministrations of angels vouchsafed from time to time during the whole of the earlier dispensation, and to which allusion is made in the concluding verse of the first chapter?”), as intended by the ὁ διʼ ἀγγέλων λαληθεὶς λόγος , is forbidden—apart from the connection in its main points, and the whole tendency of the epistle—by the expression ὁ λόγος in the singular.
The preterites ἐγένετο and ἔλαβεν characterize the period of the Mosaic law as a past one, the condition of life prevailing in the same as one now obsolete and historically surmounted.
βέβαιος ] form, i.e. inviolable and obligatory, as is evident from the explanatory clause καὶ πᾶσα … μισθαπ . immediately following.
παράβασις the objective transgression, παρακοή the subjective listless hearing or inattention, Uebertretung and Ueberhörung. Not inaptly Böhme, in preserving the paronomasia, “non commissa solum, sed omissa etiam.”
ἔνδικος ] just, in the N. T. only here and Rom_3:8. μισθαποδοσία ] selected, sonorous word, a favourite one with our author in the sense of the simple μισθός , but not occurring elsewhere in the N. T. The term is a vox media, signifies thus recompense. It is here employed in the unfavourable sense (= punishment), Heb_10:35, Heb_11:26, in the favourable sense (= reward).