but as to the Son, Thy throne, O God, [is] to the age of the age, and a sceptre of uprightness [is] the sceptre of thy kingdom.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Thou hast loved righteousness and hast hated lawlessness; therefore God, thy God, has anointed thee with oil of gladness above thy companions.
God's address to the Son continues, but the tone changes: the One just called God is now said to have a God, and to have companions. Two questions follow: why the anointing comes with a "therefore", and who these companions are.
Commentators are careful not to blur verse 8 into verse 9.
Do not confuse the language of verse 8 with that of verse 9. Verse 8 states the Lord's Divinity outright. It gives the sceptre of righteousness to the Son as something that belongs to Him from the first, as the Judge of all the world. In the other verse we see Him as the Perfect One. Jehovah bears witness to Him, and gives Him the rewards of righteousness as the Man of God's pure approval and delight.
The two are not in tension. They belong to one Person.
The past too is not forgotten, nor ever can be by God. "You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness." Such was Jesus as man here below; for in truth He is both in one person, neither more truly God than man, nor man than God.
The quotes below read "iniquity" or "lawlessness" where the ESV has "wickedness". Loving the one and hating the other is a single attitude, not two.
To love righteousness is to hate its opposite, iniquity. The more intense the love of righteousness, the more intense the hatred of iniquity.
This was not a preference held at no cost. One writer sets the price beside the statement:
"He loved righteousness, and hated lawlessness," though it cost Him His blood, and being forsaken and bruised by God.
The anointing follows what He was as Man on earth:
God addresses Him as God, since He is a divine Person. Yet He is still seen here as the perfect Man on earth, the One of whom it can be said, "Your God has anointed You." Because of His moral perfection — His love of righteousness and hatred of iniquity — God has raised Him above all those He associates with Himself in grace.
One writer explains how the One called God can also have a God:
Because of this His God — remember, here He is Man, and so the expression "His God" is fitting — has anointed Him with the oil of gladness above His fellows, or companions. Kings of old were anointed with oil, but the Lord was anointed with the Holy Spirit. These words also show that in His kingship He has companions.
The oil does not stop with Him:
Though the measure is greater, the character of the gladness is the same. It is the same excellent oil which anoints Him in glory that flows down to us here. The same Spirit that rests on Him has come to all those who belong to Him. We share in the same gladness with Him.
Commentators differ here. Some identify them with Israel's faithful few:
These companions are the believing remnant of Israel. By grace He has made them His fellows. Yet He stands above them all, for by His love of righteousness — and that, at all costs — He was perfectly pleasing to God.
Another writer marks off who cannot be His fellows, and who can:
A new and surprising comparison now comes in. It is not a contrast, as with the angels, but a difference of degree only. He is anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows. Angels are no fellows to the Son. They stand in complete contrast with Him, as we have seen. His fellows are none other than those for whom God has appointed this glory, by the exceeding riches of His grace: to be conformed to the image of His Son; for He is, and is to be, the Firstborn among many brothers.
The height of this verse does not shut others out.
How beautiful to see the largeness of grace and truth. After this lofty owning of Messiah as God by God comes the fullest acknowledgment of others. He Himself is no more ashamed to own us His companions or fellows than God is to own Him God.
- Cause. A life of loving righteousness and hating wickedness stands behind the "therefore". The anointing is God's answer to His moral perfection.
- Cost. That love was not cheap. It cost Him His blood, and being forsaken by God.
- Gift. The oil is the anointing of the Spirit, and the same oil that rests on Him flows down to those who belong to Him.
- Reach. Angels are never called His fellows; only those He associates with Himself are. Commentators differ on whether these are Israel's believing remnant or all who will be conformed to the image of God's Son.
- Result. He owns us as companions as freely as God owns Him as God — yet He is anointed above us all.
And, *Thou* in the beginning, Lord, hast founded the earth, and works of thy hands are the heavens.
Hebrews 1 builds its case for the Son from a chain of Old Testament quotations. This one comes from Psalm 102, where the Messiah pours out His grief and asks not to be cut off early. The startling thing is who is speaking to whom: the words about founding the earth are God's reply to that suffering One.
The verse opens with one small word: "and." It ties this quotation to the one before it.
Still more remarkable is the sixth quotation, from Psalm 102. Wonderful as His glory is in Psalm 45, Psalm 102 surpasses it. No human being would ever have known the real meaning of this psalm if it had not pleased the Spirit of God to give it in this chapter. The little word "and" shows that in verses 25-27 God addresses the Son of God as the Creator of all things.
Read the psalm on its own and you would naturally take these lines as the sufferer's words about God. Hebrews settles the question by telling us where the speaker changes.
It is certain from Hebrews 1:10 that there is a change of speakers at verse 25. For while the beginning of the psalm, in its full meaning, can only be the utterance of Christ suffering for His people, the apostle by his reasoning on and application of Psalm 45:5-6 and Psalm 102:25 shows that we have, in these last, God's answer to the divine sufferer.
This name carries a weight the title "God" does not.
The divine title differs. It is the name every Jew owns as supreme and belonging to God alone. The title "God" can be used in a lower sense of those who represent His authority as kings or judges. Compare Exodus 21, Exodus 22, Psalm 82. But Jehovah, translated "LORD" here, is only ever used of God in the highest sense. It is His name in His special covenant relationship with Israel, as the Everlasting and Unchanging One.
Notice what this name does to the question of who Jesus is.
In Hebrews chapter 1 the writer credits creation to the Son (verse 2). Lower down he quotes Psalm 102:25. The other passages referred to are quite clear. But this third reference would lead the simplest believer to conclude that Jesus is Jehovah.
The setting makes the words heavier. A Man in anguish asks that His days not be cut short — and heaven answers by naming Him the maker of the world.
God addresses the sighing One in Gethsemane, the blessed Son of God in His place of lowliness, as Creator and Maker of heaven and earth! When everything around us crumbles to nothing, He will remain in His eternal power and glory. Could two extremes seem further apart? On one side, utter need and helplessness — the complaint of One crying out in weakness to God. On the other, the answer comes from the very throne of God, addressing this pleading One as God over all, blessed forever.
That answer is also the hinge of everything God has promised.
Christ mournfully pleads, "O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days." Jehovah replies: "Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain." The crucified One was Himself also the Eternal. That is a blessed mystery, and the foundation of all God's counsels of grace and glory.
The next lines set Him against what He made.
Here we see His eternal glory in the visible creation, and also in contrast to it. The One called "God" is now called "Lord" — the first name pointing to His supremacy, the second to His authority. He has founded the earth and formed the heavens, and so they declare His glory. But "they will perish." He has decreed that they will not continue in their present form. Their very destruction underlines that He is the eternal One.
He sets the old aside, but He Himself does not change.
When these works of His hands have fulfilled their purpose, He will set them aside like a worn-out garment. Then He will establish a new creation in which righteousness will dwell. But in that new creation He will be the same. As He was and is, so He will always be. That is the pledge that His word will stand, and that every thought of God's heart expressed in blessing will last.
The verse calls the heavens "the work of your hands." The Gospels show those same hands at work.
What divine power we see in the touch of His hands as He went about as the meek and lowly Jesus of Nazareth. And all that divine power that made the heavens and the earth was still in His hands. He went about as Man doing good and healing all whom the devil oppressed. Now He used that power in love and grace to meet the needs of His creatures. Above all, what divine perfection His work on the cross shows, as He hung there in seeming weakness by the nails in His hands.
- The "and" — one small word keeps the same listener in view. God is still speaking to the Son, and He calls Him Maker of everything.
- The Name — "Lord" here is the name Israel held to be God's alone, never shared with kings or judges. Applied to Jesus, it settles who He is.
- The Answer — the words are God's reply to a Man begging not to be cut off in mid-life. Heaven's comfort to the sufferer is His own creatorial glory.
- The Contrast — earth and heavens are His handiwork, but they wear out. Their perishing is what proves He does not.
- The Hands — the hands that founded the earth touched the sick and took the nails. Power and grace belong to one Person.
They shall perish, but *thou* continuest still; and they all shall grow old as a garment,
The words here are not the writer's own. They come from Psalm 102, where God speaks to His Son. That raises the question the whole chapter drives at: who is this Person? Heaven and earth wear out, and He stays.
These words answer a cry of distress. The One crying out, His days cut short, is the same One who laid the earth's foundation.
The One crying out of all this distress laid the earth's foundation. The heavens that then darkened over Him were the work of His hands. But the material creation, in the form we know, will perish, while He stands and endures. Its days will be numbered. Heaven and earth will show the signs of decay and age. But He will be the same, and His years will have no end. Notice how He speaks in His humiliation of His "days" four times over (verses 3, 11, 23, 24). In Jehovah's reply to Him, He speaks of "Your years." They run through all generations, and they will have no end.
The chapter has already called the Son God. Someone could argue over that word, so a second psalm follows with a Name no one else can carry.
The Psalms are cited to show that the Son is addressed there as God (Ps. 45:6-7). A fault-finding Jew might object that the same book describes rulers and magistrates in the same way (Ps. 82:6). So another Scripture follows, one that gives Him the incommunicable Name: "You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning... they will perish, but you remain."
Two words carry the weight here: "you remain." What do they claim?
They speak of One who stands connected with creation at its widest — the heavens and the earth. Creation is temporary and perishable, and its removal leaves Him unaffected. He "continues still," and this is the meaning of the word "remain." This is not exactly about His essential and eternal existence. It means that while He is joined to what passes away, He abides.
The heavens and the earth show His glory. Their ending shows it too.
He has founded the earth and formed the heavens, and they therefore declare His glory (Ps. 19:1). But "they will perish." He has decreed that they will not continue in their present form. Their very destruction underlines that He is the eternal One: "You remain."
Wearing out is not the same as being written off. God is not finished with this creation.
When God calls a thing old He has finished with it... but God has not yet finished with the first birth or the first creation. We sometimes use the expression "old creation," but this term is not found in Scripture. The nearest approach to it is in Hebrews 1:11, "they will wear out"... So we are still connected with the first birth and can glorify God in it. And He will yet fill the first creation with His glory, as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14).
And His remaining is the reason to expect something better after the wreck:
He is no distant God, no uninterested onlooker at anything His hands have made. He rules it as truly as He created it. If He sees fit, for some good reason, to dissolve His handiwork, He has the perfect right to do so, and the power. Yet He Himself remains! And if so, will not His continuing guarantee something greater and better — a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells?
People we leaned on pass away. The letter answers that at its start and again at its end.
They have gone, but Christ remains, with perfect love in His heart and perfect power in His hand... There is no difficulty He cannot enable us to overcome. There is no danger He cannot keep us from. There is no question that can arise which He cannot settle. He is our stay and resource — our all. With this presentation of Christ as the unchanging One the letter opens, and with this it closes. In the first chapter He is hailed as the abiding and unchanging One — "You remain" and "You are the same." Others pass away, but He remains.
- Sufferer. God answers One whose days were running out — the glory shines at the lowest point.
- Creator. They name Him with the Name that belongs to God alone, settling who the Son is.
- Remains. "Remain" means He continues still — standing beside what passes away, untouched by its removal.
- Perishes. Creation wears out like clothing, and its very collapse is what proves His permanence.
- Resource. Because He remains, a new heaven and earth lie ahead. Nothing that fails around us leaves us without help.