Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Hebrews · About this commentary
You Are the Same
Hebrews 1:10-14
10 And, “You, Lord, in the beginning, laid the foundation of the earth. The heavens are the works of your hands. · WEB
A psalm about the creator's permanence is applied to the Son, and the chapter closes by defining angels by what they do for other people.
The quotation continues, and its subject is the founding of the world: you, Lord, in the beginning, laid the foundation of the earth. The heavens are the works of your hands.
What follows is a comparison between two kinds of durability, and the imagery is domestic rather than cosmic. The heavens will grow old like a garment does, and they will be rolled up like a mantle. Something worn out and folded away — which is a startling thing to say about the sky, and the point is that it belongs to the category of things that get replaced.
Against that: but you are the same. Your years won't fail.
The contrast is not between long and longer. Creation ages and is changed; the one addressed does not change at all. And you are the same will return near the end of the book as a plain statement about Jesus Hebrews 13:8 — the letter's last argument about permanence is the same as its first.
Verse 13 returns to the question form that opened the paragraph: but which of the angels has he told at any time, "Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet?"
Sitting is the posture, again. The Son sat down Hebrews 1:3, and here the sitting is an invitation with a duration attached — until something is completed by someone else. The enemies are not yet a footstool, so the reign described is real and unfinished, and the book will admit as much: we don't yet see all things subjected to him Hebrews 2:8.
And verse 14 defines angels one last time, by their work and its beneficiaries: aren't they all serving spirits, sent out to do service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation?
The word for their office is service, twice over, and the people served are not angels. So the chapter that began by ranking the Son above them ends by placing them below the readers as well — sent out on behalf of the ones who inherit. That is the hinge into chapter 2, where the argument turns from how high the Son is to how far down he came.
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