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7. καὶ πρὸς μὲν τοὺς ἀγγέλους λέγει, “and with reference to the Angels, He saith.” The λέγειν πρὸς here resembles the Latin dicere in aliquem, Winer, p. 505. He has shewn that the title of “Son” is too special and too super-eminent to be ever addressed to Angels; he proceeds to shew that the Angels are but subordinate ministers, and that often God clothes them with “the changing garment of natural phenomena,” transforming them, as it were, into winds and flames.
Ὁ ποιῶν τοὺς ἀγγέλους αὐτοῦ πνεύματα καὶ τοὺς λειτουργοὺς αὐτοῦ τυρὸς φλόγα, “who maketh His Angels winds,” for the Angels are already “spirits” (Heb 1:14). This must be the meaning here, though the words might also be rendered “Who maketh winds His messengers, and fiery flames His ministers.” This latter rendering, though grammatically difficult, accords best with the context of Psa 104:4, where, however, the Targum has “Who maketh His messengers swift as winds, His ministers strong as flaming fire.” The Rabbis often refer to the fact that God makes His Angels assume any form He pleases, whether men (Gen 18:2) or women (Zec 5:9) or wind or flame (Exo 3:2; 2Ki 6:17). Thus Milton says:
“For spirits as they please
Can either sex assume, or both; so soft
And uncompounded is their essence pure;
Not tied or manacled with joint or limb
Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,
Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose,
Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure,
Can execute their aery purposes.”
But that mutable and fleeting form of existence which is the glory of the Angels would be an inferiority in the Son. He could not be clothed, as they are at God’s will, in the fleeting robes of varying material phenomena. Calvin, therefore, is much too rash and hasty when he says that the writer here draws his citation into a sense which does not belong to it, and that nothing is more certain than that the original passage has nothing to do with angels. With a wider knowledge of the views of Philo, and other Rabbis, he would have paused before pronouncing a conclusion so sweepingly dogmatic. The “Hebrew” readers of the Epistle, like the writer, were evidently familiar with Alexandrian conceptions. Now in Philo there is no sharp distinction between the Logos (who is a sort of non-incarnate Messiah) and the Logoi, who are sometimes regarded as Angels just as the Logos Himself is sometimes regarded as an Archangel (see Siegfried’s Philo, p. 22). The Rabbis too explained the “us” of Gen 1:26 (“Let us make man”) as shewing that the Angels had a share in creation, see Sanhedrin, p. 38, 2. Such a passage as Rev 19:10 may help to shew the reader that the proof of Christ’s exaltation above the Angels was necessary.