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HEBREWS CHAPTER 1
Heb_1:1-3 The essential dignity of the Son, by whom God hath
revealed himself in these last days.
Heb_1:4-14 His pre-eminence above the angels in office.
God: the apostle designing the conviction of these Hebrews by this discourse, enters on it solemnly, that if a God can awe them, the consideration of Him should gain credit to his doctrine. The God he speaks of is to be apprehended here personally, as well as essentially; God the Father, the one admirable sovereign, immutable Being, the Author of first and second revelation: order is kept here in the subsistence of the relations, as in their works.
Who at sundry times; polumerwv, by many parts, turns and changes of time, seasons and opportunities, and by many parcels of revelation. God's will was discovered by piecemeal, and not all at once. He vouchsafed one promise to Adam, and so gradually opened further to Enoch, Noah, Abraham, David, pointing out a Christ to come, to come of Abraham's seed in David's family: he discovered here a little, and there a little, Isa_28:13.
And in divers manners; polutropwv, suitable to the manifold wisdom of God, in divers forms and manners, was his revelation to them; sometimes by sensible representations to them waking, as by angels, fire in the bush, the pillar of fire and cloud: terribly, as at Mount Sinai, Heb_12:18-21. Sometimes by dreams and visions, Num_12:6; by Urim and Thummim, by voice from the ark, by types and signs from heaven, by riddles, and dark speeches, and Levitical ceremonies; sometimes by immediate illapses on the soul, powerfully influencing it with a Divine light.
Spake; revealed and declared infallibly his mind and will concerning the way of man's salvation, which his wisdom contrived and his will decreed.
In time past; all that time past between Adam and Christ, about 4000 years before.
Unto the fathers; the holy ancestors of these Hebrews, from Adam, down along the Old Testament church of God: the believers of old, such as are registered, Heb_11:1-40, and all like them to the times of Christ, from Gen_3:15, to that time.
By the prophets; all those holy men to whom and by whom God revealed his will to his church throughout the successive ages of the Old Testament day; such as were but God's servants, Heb_2:4, and had his will and mind by measure; who as they preached God's will were God's mouth, as they wrote it were God's scribes; as Abel, Enoch, &c. before the flood; Noah before and after; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David. &c.; to these did God infallibly declare it, and they did infallibly deliver it to the church by word and writing; God was by gracious inhabitation in them, in their hearts, tongues, and hands, 2Pe_1:21