Hebrews 2:5

5. For Illustration. All this danger of offending a divine dignity is true, for Christ is lord of our dispensation. The development of thought is this: Hebrews 2:5 declares that angels rule not this dispensation: Hebrews 2:6-8 quote the psalmist’s description of man, (as in his first paradisaic state,) made ideal ruler of the lower creation: Hebrews 2:8 declares how complete that supremacy was, nothing being excepted; but it adds that now, (since the fall,) that subjection is annulled: Hebrews 2:9 descries that supremacy potentially restored in one, namely, Jesus, who is divinely so exalted as that he may be a glorious atoning sufferer for every man. It is this glorious divine Sufferer who, identifying himself with man by being man, restores the primitive exaltation of man. Beautifully does our author meet those who would revolt from Christ on account of the suffering of the cross, by showing that it was a suffering glorified by the divinity of the Sufferer.

Unto the angels Not only was the Law given through angels, but the entire old dispensation was rife with angelic over-rulings, either of subordinate angels or transient phenomena of the Angel-Jehovah, who thus anticipated in shadow his incarnation. That angelic guidance led Israel from Egypt.

Moses declares, (Numbers 20:16:) “When we cried unto the Lord, he heard our voice, and sent an angel, and hath brought us forth out of Egypt.” And God says, (Exodus 23:20:) “Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.” And Exodus 23:23: “Mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites… and I will cut them off.” And so the last of the prophets, Malachi, (Malachi 3:1,) predicts the incarnate Lord himself under the title “Messenger (or Angel) of the Covenant.” It was not until the time of the Captivity that Israel came fully to form the conception, as we learn from Daniel, that even secular nations were overruled by angels. Daniel 10:13; Daniel 10:20; Daniel 12:1. Against Michael, the prince of the people of God, there stood a “prince of Persia” and “of Grecia.” The Jewish doctors then read the same idea into Deuteronomy 32:8, which the Seventy translates, “When the Almighty divided the nations, he set the borders of them according to the number of the angels of God.” This, Rabbi Menahem paraphrases, “He placed seventy angels over the seventy nations.” See our note preceding Luke 10:1. But under our present dispensation angels are in the background. Even popular imagination, when, at the present day, it sees supernatural phenomena, never sees them in an angelic form.

World Not aeon, the time- world, nor cosmos, the frame- world, but oikomene, the inhabited world, or territory; and so the world more or less completely of human population and territory. Matthew 24:14; Luke 2:1; Luke 4:5; Luke 21:26; Acts 11:28; Acts 17:6; Acts 17:31; Acts 19:27; Acts 24:5; Romans 10:18; Revelation 3:10; Revelation 12:9; Revelation 16:14.

World to come Buxtorf says: “By ‘world to come,’ some Jews understand the world which is to be after the destruction of this inferior world, and after the resurrection of dead men, when their souls will again be united with their bodies. Others, by ‘world to come,’ understand the days of the Messiah, in which, that is, the Messiah shall come, whom they still expect, and that he will reign temporally in this world.” In the New Testament, when speaking from a Christian standpoint, the world to come would signify the world beyond the judgment-day, as in Matthew 12:32: but speaking from the Jewish standpoint, as here, the phrase signifies the days of the Messiah, the incoming period between the first and second advent. So in the Septuagint of Isaiah 9:6, Christ is called ο πατηρ μελλοντος αιωνος , the Father of the age or time-world to come, (English translation, “the everlasting Father.”) See notes on 1 Corinthians 10:11; Ephesians 1:10.

Whereof we speak Which is the subject of Hebrews 2:1-4.