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It may be rendered from the original thus: He catched no hold on angels, but on man he catched hold. A metaphor taken from a person that catches hold of another who is falling down some deep and dangerous precipice, to his inevitable destruction: such a good and kind office did the Son of God for us, when he suffered angels to fall headlong from that state of happiness in which they were created, into that abyss and gulf of misery into which they had plunged themselves by their voluntary transgression: the like unto which man also has done, had he not been seasonably catched by the Son of God in the arms of preventing grace and mercy.
Learn, That it was not the angelical, but the human nature; it was the nature of fallen man, and not of lapsed angels, which the Son of God did vouchsafe to assume, and to take into a personal union with his Godhead.
Question. Why would not Christ take upon him the nature of angels?
1. Probably because they were the first transgressors, and God might judge it decent that the first breach of the divine law should be punished with death, to secure obedience for the future:
Or, 2. Because the angels sinned without a tempter, they had no superior rank of creatures already fallen, as man had, to seduce and draw them from their obedience to their Creator's will;
Or, 3. Because the angels sinned against more clear and convictive light and knowledge: there was nothing of weakness, deceit, or ignorance, to lessen the malignity of their sin; they did not sin by mispersuasion, but of purposed malice. But, after all, the reason why Christ took not hold on the angels, but on man, the seed of Abraham, must be ultimately resolved into the sovereignty of God's will, who will be merciful.
Lord!, why mercy, thy milder attribute, should be exercised towards man, and justice, thy severer attribute, be executed upon angels; why vessels of clay be chosen, and vessels of gold rejected, must be resolved into that love which passeth knowledge; and we shall never fully understand the riches of this discriminating grace, until thy dear Son shall appear at the great day, as their judge and our justifier. Then shall we feel the comfort of these words, That Christ took not upon him the nature of angels, but in the seed of Abraham.