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Tuesday 1 December 2009

Hebrews 1:5

The writer now quotes from a number of Old Testament passages, especially the Psalms to demonstrate the superiority of Jesus. The first is from Psalm 2:7. Now we need to remember that often when a writer quotes a single verse, they may have a larger passage in mind. So it is useful to look at the whole of Psalm 2. In this Psalm David speaks of God installing His King in Zion, and making the nations an inheritance for Him. The whole Psalm is full of the idea that the king is the source of salvation, he is the one to be worshipped. The Messiah is the Son of God. Sonship here involves relationship, but also unity of purpose.
The next bit of verse 5 quotes from 2 Samuel 7:14 and 1 Chronicles 17:13. In these verse God tells David that he is not the one to build the temple, but one of his descendants. The second part of 2 Samuel 7:14 says “when he does wrong I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men”. We find this difficult, for it seems to say that the son will sin. But that is to read too much into the quotation. It is also worth noting that Jesus was punished with the rod of iron, but for our transgressions, not His own.
In verse 6 the writer quotes from the Septuagint (Greek) version of the Old Testament, showing that God wants us to worship Jesus.

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