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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Hebrews 1:10 - 1:10
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
10. καί, Σὺ κατʼ ἀρχὰς κύριε. The quotation is from Psa 102:25-27. The word “Lord” is not in the original, but it is in the LXX.; and the Hebrew Christians who already believed that it was by Christ that “God made the world” (see note on Heb 1:2) would not dispute the Messianic application of these words to Him, though the Jews did not regard it as a Messianic Psalm and it is never so applied by any Rabbi. It is a prayer of the afflicted written at some late period of the exile. Calvin (on Eph 4:8) goes so far as to say of such passages that the Apostle “by a pious diversion of their meaning (piâ deflectione) accommodates them to the Person of Christ.” The remark illustrates the courageous honesty and stern good sense of the great Reformer: but no Jewish-Christian exegete would have thought that he was practising a mere pious misapplication of the sacred words, or have admitted the objection of Cardinal Cajetan that “in a matter of such importance it was unbecoming to use such an argument.” The writer’s object is not proof—which was for his readers unnecessary; he wished to illustrate acknowledged truths by admitted principles.
κατʼ ἀρχάς. Heb. לְפָנִים, “face-wards,” i.e. of old. It is a classic phrase, and in the LXX. ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς or ἐν ἀρχῇ are more common.