Gs 261 5. 700 yap ἀγγέλοις ὑπέταξε τὴν οἰκουμένην τὴν μέλλουσαν, d i. 2 51
2 reter
περὶ ἧς λαλοῦμεν. 6. " διεμαρτύρατο δέ πού τις λέγων, “Τί ἐστιν iii. τα. e Ps. viii. 4, etcxliv. 3.
made κατὰ τὴν αὐτοῦ θέλησιν ““ accord- ing to His [God’s] will”. In τ Cor. xii. 11 the will is that of the Spirit. ‘‘Non omnibus omnia dabat Deus, sed quae et quantum et quibus vellet, Eph. iv. 7” (τοις). [θέλησις only here in N.T., but ten times in LXX. Pollux calls it a “‘vulgarism ”’ ἰδιωτικόν. On the substi- tution of nouns in -μα for nouns in -σις, see Jannaris’ Hist. Gram., p. 1024, and cf. κ. 7, ix. 36, xiii. 21, so that in the pre- sent passage the choice of the active form is deliberate.] The clause is added to enforce the writer’s contention that all the Charismata with which his readers were familiar were not mere fruits of excitement or in any way casual, but were the result of a Divine intention to bear witness to the truth of the gos- pel.
Vv. 5-18. Having sufficiently brought out the permanence and sovereignty of the Son by contrasting them with the fleeting personality and ministerial func- tion of angels, the author now proceeds to bring the supremacy of the Son into direct relation to the Messianic adminis- tration of ‘‘ the world to come,” the ideal condition of human affairs; and to explain why for the purposes of this ad- ministration it was needful and seemly that ‘‘the Lord” should for a season ap- pearin a form ‘‘a little lower than the angels”. The world of men as it was destined to be [ἡ οἰκουμένη ἡ μέλλουσα] was a condition of things in which man was to be supreme, not subject to any kind of slavery or oppression. And if the Jew asked why, in order to bring this about, the appearance of the Son in so apparently inglorious a form was neces- sary; if he asked why suffering and death on His part were necessary, the answer is, that it was God’s purpose to bring, not angels, but many human sons to glory and that as there is but one path, and that a path of suffering, by which men can reach their destiny, it was be- coming that their legder should act as pioneer in this path. iis path to glory must be a path in which men can follow Him; because it is from the human level and as man that He wins to glory.) More particularly His sufferings accomplish two objects:(they produce in Him the sympathy which qualifies Him as High Priest, while His death breaks the power which kept them enslaved and in fearJ [On this section Robertson Smith’s papers
in the Expositor, 1881-2, should be con- sulted. ]
Ver. 5. Οὐ yap ἀγγέλοις. . . . “' For not toangels”. With γὰρ the writer pro- ceeds to clinch the exhortation contained in vv. 1-4, by exhibiting the ground of it. Under the old Covenant angels had been God’s messengers, but this mode of mediation has passed away. The οἰκου- μένη μέλλουσα is not subject to them. It is the Son as man who now rules and to whom attention must be given. ὑπέταξεν. . . ‘*did He’’—that is God —subject the world to come of which we are speaking, ἡ οἰκουμένη, not κόσμος, but the inhabited world. So used in Diod. Sic., i. 8 καθ᾽ ἅπασαν τ. οἰκ- ουµένην, wherever there were men. From the Ο.Τ. point of view ‘the world to come” meant the world under Messianic rule, but in this Epistle the Messianic Kingdom is viewed as not yet fully realised. The world to come is therefore the eternal order of human affairs already introduced and rendering obsolete the temporary and symbolic dispensation. Calvin accurately defines it thus: ‘‘ Non vocari orbem futurum duntaxat, qualem e resurrectione spera- mus, sed qui coepit ab exordio regni Christi. Complementum vero suum habe- bit in ultima redemptione.” It is the present world of men regenerated, death and all that is inimical to human pro- gress abolished ; a condition in which all things are subjected to man. The re- pudiation of angels as lords of the world to come implies the admission that the obsolescent dispensation had been sub- ject to them. So in Deut. xxxii. 8: ἔστησεν ὅρια ἐθνῶν κατὰ ἀριθμὸν ayy- έλων θεοῦ, cf. Dan. x. 13-21 and Book of Fubilees,xv. 31. Cf. the pages in which Robertson Smith expands the remark that “το be subordinated” to the angelic dispensation is the same thing as to be ‘made under the law”’ (Expositor, 1881, p. 144 ff.). Hermas (Vis., ili. 4, I) repre- sents the Church as being built by six angels whom he describes as being the first created ots παρέδωκεν ὁ Κύριος πᾶσαν τὴν κτίσιν αὐτοῦ, αὔξειν καὶ οἰκοδομεῖν καὶ δεσπόζειν τῆς κτίσεως πάσης.