Every Knee Shall Bow
9 Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
The hymn turns on one word — therefore — and the acclamation it ends with was written about Yahweh.
Therefore God also highly exalted him. The connective carries the whole second half: the exaltation follows the descent rather than merely succeeding it, and the agent changes. Christ did the descending; God does the raising.
The verb is hyperypsoō G5251, found nowhere else in Scripture — exalted to the highest, beyond comparison.
And gave him the name which is above every name. The name is not stated outright, and verse 11 supplies it: Lord.
Then the acclamation, and its source settles what is being claimed. At that name every knee is to bow — in heaven, on earth, and under the earth — and every tongue is to confess him as Lord.
Those words are Isaiah's, spoken by God about himself: to me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear — in a passage that begins by insisting there is no other God Isaiah 45:22–23. The hymn takes an oracle in which Yahweh refuses to share his honor and applies it to Jesus.
And it closes without any sense of competition: to the glory of God the Father.
settled What this mark means