(1:1) In the Greek text, the order of the words is, "At sundry times and in divers manner God spake." The Greek places his words at the beginning of a sentence for emphasis. Therefore, the main idea in the writer's mind here is not that God spake, but that it was at sundry times and in divers manners that He spake. He is not combating the denial of revelation, but is preparing the reader for the truth that God has now, after the preliminary revelations, given a final word in the revelation of His Son.
The revelations of First Testament truth were given "at sundry times" (polumeros). The word is made up of polus "many," and meros "parts," the total meaning being "by many portions." It was given also "in divers manners" (polutropos). The word is made up of polus "many," and tropos "manner" or "fashion," thus, "different manners," or "many ways."
In the giving of the First Testament truth, God did not speak once for all, but in separate revelations, each of which set forth only a part of His will. One writer was given one, and another, another element of truth. God spoke in different ways. This does not refer to different ways in which He imparted His revelations to the writers, but to the difference of the various revelations in contents and form.|He spoke to Israel in one way
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through Moses, in another, through Isaiah, etc. At the beginning of the revelation, the presentation was elementary. Later it appealed according to the faithfulness or the unfaithfulness of Israel. Clement of Alexander associates this passage with Ephesians 3:10, "the many-tinted (polupoikilos) wisdom of God."
The First Testament revelation was progressive. All could not be revealed at once, and because all could not be understood at once. Thus the revelation was given in many parts. In addition to this, it was given in different modes. It was given in the form of law, prophecy, history, psalm, sign, type, parable. Exopositor's1 says that the people of Israel "were like men listening to a clock striking the hour, always getting nearer the truth but obliged to wait till the whole is heard."
The words "in times past" are the translation of palai. The Greek has two words meaning "old," archaios, meaning "old in point of time," and palaios meaning "old in point of use, worn out, ready to be displaced by something new." The close association of our word palai to palaios suggests that the writer had in mind by its use, the fact that while the First Testament revelation was not to be cast aside, yet it was time for a new one to be given, one that would be God's final word, one that would complete and round out the first one.
The translation so far reads "In many parts and in different ways of old." Now comes the word "God." It is preceded by the definite article which has several functions here. First of all, it serves notice on the reader, that the God of whom the writer speaks, is the some God whom the Hebrew addresses of the epistle profess to worship. Thus does the writer seek to place himself on common ground with his readers in the very beginning of a treatise which is highly argumentative in character. It is the debater's technique which concedes all it safely can to an opponent. The other function of the article|
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here is to indicate that particular Person of the Godhead spoken of, God the Father.
The next word "spake," is a participle in the Greek text, ans is associated with the word "spoken" of verse two, which is a finite verb. That is, "God, having spoken, spoke." Thus, we have the two revelations, that of the First Testament and that of the New, joined together.
He spoke to Israel "by the prophets." The preposition is en. Used here in the locative case, we would have the locative of sphere. That is, the writers of the First Testament constituted the sphere within which God spoke. He spoke exclusively through them and through no other men, so fa as the written revelation is concerned. This preposition is used also in the instrumental case. Then the writers would be looked upon as the instruments in God's hands by which the First Testament Scriptures were written down.
Archbishop Trench has this to say about the correct meaning of the word "prophet"; "It is almost needless at this day to warn against what was once a very common error, one in which many of the Fathers (Christian) shared, . . . . namely a taking of the pro in propheteuo (to prophesy), and prophetes (prophet) as temporal, which it is not any more than in prophasis (a pretext), and finding as the primary meaning of the word, he who declares things before they come to pass. This foretelling or foreannouncing may be, and often is, of the office of the prophet, but is not the essence of that office; and this is as little in sacred as in classical Greek. The prophetes (prophet) is the outspeaker; he who speaks out the counsel of God with the clearness, energy, and authority which spring from the consciousness of speaking in God's name and having received a direct message from Him to deliver." Thus, the prophets were the mouthpiece of God.
John the Baptist said, "I am a voice of One who is crying out in the wilderness" (John 1:23). John did not use the definite article before the word "voice." He was merely one among many voices which God used in the Old Testament dispensation. But note: the One crying out, giving the message, was God. John was His articulate voice, a mere instrument in His hands.
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Translation: In many parts and in different ways of old, God having spoken to the fathers by means of the prophets.
(1:2) The expression "in these last days" is in the Greek text, "in the last of these days." The word "last" is eschatos which means, "the outermost, the extreme, last in time or in place." The writer had just been speaking of the times in which God spoke through the prophets. Now, at the very termination of the times in which He is speaking to man, He speaks, not through the prophets, but IN SON.
The definite article appearing before "prophets," set these individuals off by themselves as a class. The fact that the article is absent before the word "Son," emphasizes character, nature. It speaks of the Son-relationship of the Messiah to God the Father. It speaks of the distinction that exists between the prophets as God's creatures used as instruments in His hands and the Son who by nature is Deity. The Son belongs to a different category. God spoke through One who is in character a son.
The revelation God gave in His Son, consisted not merely in what was said, as in the case of the prophets, but in what the Son was, not merely in what He (the Son) said. In other words, it was not primarily, nor finally, a revelation through words, but through Personality. It was a revelation made by One who in all that He is and all that He does and says, reveals the Father. He is the Logos, the total concept of Deity, Deity told out, the Word of God, not in the sense of a spoken or a written word, but in the sense of a Person who in Himself expresses all that God the Father is. He said on one occasion, "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father" (John 14:9). And so John could write, "In the beginning was the Logos (the Word), and the Word (Logos) was in fellowship with God (the Father), and the Logos was as to His nature Deity" (John 1:1). This is the Person in whom God gave His final revelation to the human race.
But now, after the exegesis of this wonderful portion of God's Word, we must pay attention to the argument of the writer. He wrote to prove just one proposition to be true: "The New Testament is superior to and takes the place of the First Testament." His first major argument (1:1-8:6) shows that the Founder of the |
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New Testament is superior to the founders of the First Testament, which makes the former Testament superior to the latter. The first class of individuals he selects among the founders of the First Testament are the prophets. He has now shown that the Founder of the New Testament is superior to the prophets in that the latter were merely created beings used as instruments by God, whereas the former is the Son, God the Son, thus very God of very God. But not only is the Son superior in His Being, but the mode of revealing God's Word to the human race is superior in His case. When the prophets spoke, it was merely as mouthpieces. When the Son spole, it was God Himself who spoke. thus, by two counts already, has the writer shown that the One who gave the truth of the New Testament to man is superior to those who gave the truth of the First Testament.
But not satisfied with that, the writer goes on to point out more of the superiorities of the Son over the prophets. He says that God appointed Him heir of all things. The dominion promised to Adam, the latter lost through his fall into sin. This dominion the Son of God regained as the Last Adam through His incarnation, vicarious death, and victorious, bodily resurrection. In the future Messianic Kingdom, the Lord Jesus as Messiah will reign over a perfect earth and a glorified humanity, heirs of all things. And this makes Him better than the prophets.
But the writer, not content with these superiorities, says, "by whom also he made the worlds."
The word "by" is dia in the Greek text, a preposition commonly expressing secondary agency, but sometimes used of God's direct agency. The Son of God is here seen as the mediate agency in creation, but is not here represented as a mere instrument, a passive tool, but as a cooperating agent. In Colossians 1:16, Paul says that all things were created in Him (en) and through Him (dia. The expression "in Him" enlarges and makes complete the expression "through Him." "Though Him" speaks of the Son as the mediate instrument. "In Him" indicates that "all the laws and purposes which guide the creation and government of the universe reside in Him, the Eternal Word, as their meeting-point" (Lightfoot).
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The word "worlds" is the translation of aianas. The word here included according to Alford, "God's revelation of Himself in a sphere whose conditions are Time and Space, and so all things existing under these conditions, plus these conditions themselves which exist not independently of the Creator, but are His work, His appointed conditions of all created existence, so that the universe, as well in its great primeval condition—the reaches of Space, and the ages of Time, as in all material objects and all successive events, which furnish out and people Space and Time, God made by Christ." The idea in the word aionas is not merely that of the vastness and magnificence of the physical universe, but the thought of the times and ages through which the purpose and plan of God are gradually unfolding. Thus, the Son is the Divine Agent not only in the original creation of the physical universe, but also in the operation and management of that universe and all its creatures all down the ages of time. And that makes Him better than the prophets.
Translation. In the last of these says spoke to us in One who in character is (His) Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made2 the ages.
Footnotes
1. The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll, M.A., LLD.
2. There is no single English word which will give the meaning of poieoo, "make, produce, build, bring about, operate, arrange in order."