Hebrews 2:2

2. Word spoken by angels By word, here, must undoubtedly be centrally meant the Law as given at Sinai, yet so as to include the various angelic messages delivered by angels and recorded in the Old Testament, which were truly subordinate additions. That the Law is centrally meant, is clear from the fact that the entire comparison is between the giving the old Law and the giving the new Gospel, showing the superiority of the latter.

Spoken by angels But we are told very explicitly (Exodus 20:1; Exodus 20:19; Exodus 20:22, and Deuteronomy 5:4) that it was God himself who spoke at Sinai.

This difficulty, which affects the very foundations of the argument of this epistle, has been met in various ways. In our note on Acts 7:53, we have understood angels to be the real designation, idiomatically plural, for the one Angel of the covenant, by whom the word of the Sinaitic Law was truly spoken. The inferiority of the old dispensation would then consist in its transient Angel-form mediatorship instead of the permanent and personal form of the incarnate Son.

A full review of the mind of the Jewish Church, especially the Alexandrian, however, seems to reveal the fact that the audiences addressed by Stephen and by this epistle truly believed that, notwithstanding the very explicit words of Exodus 20:1, asserting that God himself was the speaker, yet God spoke through an angelic medium. Whitby on this passage quotes the remarkable words of Philo, that God spoke at Sinai, κελευσας ηχην αορατον εν αερι δημιουργηθηναι , by commanding an invisible sound to be formed in the air. Hence, while Philo and his contemporaries would still affirm that God spoke by himself alone, he would none the less affirm that the divine speech was shaped into vocal articulation and conveyed to man by angels. This, as Whitby well says, “supposes God the Father to be the supreme Author both of the Law and the Gospel; asserting only that his ambassadors and ministers in the one were much inferior to his Ambassador and great Prophet by whom the other was revealed.”

The mind of the Jewish Church underwent a great enlargement in regard to the nature of God during its residence in Babylon. From the vast plains and clear skies of that great East, where astronomy was born, new impressions were conceived of the greatness of immensity; and, consequently, grander conceptions of the omnipresence of God. The Jewish mind was thereby educated to read into the conception of Jehovah a more realized absolute Infinity. It realized more fully the vastness of the omnipresence truly expressed in the inspired words of their old revelation. It thereby never again inclined to relapse into its old idolatries. And, true to its old monotheism, it equally rejected the mythologies and idolatries of Babylon. Hence, when it was asked how so immense a Being could commune with man, it would be answered, through angels. But when it was asked how could the Infinite commune with even an angelic finite, there came the distinct conception of a God essential and a God manifest, yet both one. God manifestive was the Logos, the Word. St. John, in the commencement of his gospel, assumes to define the true conception of the Word. The author of this epistle still further elaborates the conception, maintaining that the Word or Son is superior to angels, and is divine; and that, therefore, the period inaugurated by his incarnation is a higher dispensation than that of its predecessor.

The following paragraph, by Delitzsch, shows how, under such experiences, the highest minds of the Jewish Church, in possession of the divine Oracles, were led towards the truths to be realized in the New Dispensation: “Though possibly disturbing to some minds, it must not be concealed that Philo also regards the Logos in some places as a Mediator, Paraclete, or Heavenly Intercessor. For example, in 2:155, 25, ( vit. mos., Hebrews 3:14,) in explaining the priest’s breastplate, ( λογιον ,) he says: ‘It was necessary that one who was to serve as priest to the Father of the world should have as this Paraclete, [Advocate or Intercessor,] the all perfected Son, [that is, the Logos symbolized in the λογιον ,] so as to obtain both forgiveness of sins and a supply ( in abundant measure) of all good.’ Again, 2:501, 44, [ Quis, rer. div. her., § 42,] speaking of the cloud which stood between Israel and the Egyptians, (Exodus 14:19,) he thus applies it to the Logos: ‘ The all producing Father vouchsafed to this Logos, as leader of the angelic host, and eldest of all existences, that He should stand as the boundary between created things and the Creator. And he (the Logos) is himself an intercessor for mortality in its longings after the incorruptible, and an ambassador from the Lord of all to that which is His subject.’

In this way the Logos exhibits Himself as [Mediator] μεσιτης , (so He is frequently styled by Philo,) or, as the personal covenant, (i, 960, 12, De Somn., 2: 36,) and interposer, συναγωγος , between God and man, (i, 144, 3, Lib. de Cherub, § 9.) Surely in all this we must recognise dawnings of New Testament light.”