Two things we may observe in this periphrasis of the law:—1. That the apostle principally intends that part of the Mosaical dis- pensation which was given on mount Sinai; and which, as such, was the covenant between God and that people, as unto the privilege of the promised land. 2. That he fixes on this description of it rather than any other, or! merely to have expressed it by the law,—(1.) Because the ministry of angels, in the giving of the law by Moses, was that by which all the prodigious effects wherewith it was at- tended (which kept the people in such a durable reverence unto it) were wrought. This, therefore, he mentions, that he might appear not to undervalue it, but to speak of it with reference unto that excellency of its administration which the Hebrews even boasted in. (2.) Because having newly insisted on a comparison between Christ and the angels, his argument is much strengthened when it shall be considered that while the law was the word spoken by the angels, the gospel was delivered by the Son, so far exalted above them. But the manner how this was done must be a little further inquired into.
That the law was given by the ministry of angels the Jews always
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°O rsyos.
Aarnbsis.
Ae ayytiuy.
274 AN EXPOSITION OF THE [CHAP, 11,
confessed, yea, and boasted, So saith Josephus, one much ancienter than any of their rabbins extant: ’Apyaia, lib. v., “Mywaw re nddruore riv boypdruv, nol re bowrora roy bv roig vimog, OF dyyihow mapa ry 22% walvrov-—* We learned the most excellentand most holy con- stitutions of the law from God by angels.” 'The same was generally acknowledged by them of old. This Stephen, treating with them, takes for granted, Acts vii. 53, “Who received the law by the dispo- sition of angels.” And our apostle affirms the same, Gal, iii, 19, “Tt was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator,’ A word of the same original and sense is used in both places, though by ours variously rendered: daray4, diarwyels. ‘This, then, is certain, But the manner of it is yet to be considered,
1. First, then, nothing is more unquestionable than that the law was given from God himself. He was tho author of it, ‘This the whole Scripture declares and proclaims. And it was the impious abomination of the Valentinians and Marcionites of old to aseribe the original of it unto any other author,
2. He who spake in the name of God on mount Sinai was no other than God himself, the second person of the Trinity, Ps, Ixviii. 17-19. Him Stephen calls “the angel,” Acts vii, 80, 38; even the angel of the covenant, the Lord whom the people sought, Mal. iii. 1, 2. Some would have it to be a created angel, delegated unto that work, who thereon took on him the presence and name of God, as if he himself had spoken, But this is wholly contrary to the nature of all ministerial work, Never did ambassador speak in his own name, as if he were the king himself whose person he doth represent. ‘The apostle tells us that the preachers of the gospel were God’s ambassadors, and that God by them doth persuade men to be reconciled in Christ, 2 Cor, v, 20, But yet if any on that account should take on him to personate God, and to speak of him- self as God, he would be highly blasphemous. Nor ean this be imagined in this place, where not only he that speaks speaks in the name of God, (“Tam the Lorp thy God,”) but also elsewhere it is frequently affirmed that Jehovah himself did give that law; whieh is made unto the people an argument unto obedience. And the things done on Sinai are always ascribed unto God himself,
3. It remains, then, to consider how, notwithstanding this, the Jaw is said to be “the word spoken by angels.” It is nowhere affirmed that the law was given by angels, but that the people re- ceived it “by the disposition of angels,” and that it was “ordained by angels;” and here, “spoken by them.” Irom hence it is evident that not the original authoritative giving of tho law, but the ministerial ordering of things in its promulgation, is that which is aseribed to angels. They raised the fire and smoke; they shook and rent the rocks; they framed the sound of the trumpet; they effeeted the
VER. 2-4. ] EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 275
articulate voices which conveyed the words of the law to the cars of the people, and therein proclaimed and published the law; whereby it became “ the word spoken by angels,”
Grotius on this place contends that it was a created angel who represented the person of God on mount Sinai; and in the confir- mation of his conjecture, after he had made use of the imagination before rejected, he adds, “that if the law had been given out by God in his own person” (as he speaks), “ then, upon that account, it would have been preferred above the gospel.” But as the apostle grants, in the first words of this epistle, that the law no less than the gospel was primitively and originally from God, so we say not. that God gave the law immediately, without the ministry of angels; but the comparison which the apostle is pursuing respects not the Jirst author of law and gospel, but the principal ministerial publishers of them, who of the one were angels, of the other the Son himself,