Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Hebrews · About this commentary
We Do Not Yet See All Things
Hebrews 2:5-9
5 For he didn’t subject the world to come, of which we speak, to angels. · WEB
A psalm about humanity's dignity is quoted, the gap between it and observable fact is admitted, and one man is offered as the answer.
For he didn't subject the world to come, of which we speak, to angels. The negative continues the argument of chapter 1, and the phrase the world to come names what is at stake — not the present order.
The quotation that follows is introduced casually, one has somewhere testified, and it is about humanity rather than about the Son: what is man, that you think of him? Or the son of man, that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels. You crowned him with glory and honor. You have put all things in subjection under his feet.
That psalm describes the human commission — a rank just below the angels, a crown, and everything underfoot.
Then the writer presses the logic to its limit: in that he subjected all things to him, he left nothing that is not subject to him. If the text says all, it means all, with no exceptions retained.
And immediately he concedes that this is not what anybody sees: but now we don't yet see all things subjected to him.
The honesty of that clause is the turning point of the chapter. A writer arguing for the dignity of man to readers who had been publicly humiliated and stripped of their property Hebrews 10:34 does not pretend the psalm matches their experience. The crown is promised and the evidence is missing, and he says so.
What he offers instead is a single instance where it can be seen: but we see him who has been made a little lower than the angels, Jesus.
The verb is the same one just used in the negative. What cannot be seen in general can be seen in one case — and the name arrives here for the first time in the book, at the point where the argument moves from titles to a man.
The route by which he is crowned is stated as cause: because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor. Not despite it. The lowering and the crowning are one sequence.
And the purpose is put in terms that hold nobody out: that by the grace of God he should taste of death for everyone.
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