1:6
The superiority of Jesus, and His relationship to angels is brought out with a quote from Deut 32:43, part of the Song of Moses. Now the quote is actually from the Septuagint or Dead Seas Scrolls, which have the “and let his angels worship him”.
Firstborn is used in the sense of superiority. The firstborn had first place in terms of inheritance.
1:7
The writer’s argument is not that angels don’t matter or are of no importance. Ps 104:4 says God makes them his messengers. They are like flames of fires, they are indeed glorious in many ways, but they are His servants. This will now be contrasted with what God says about the Son. Now the Son was a servant, He said He came to serve (Matt 20:28), but He is much more than a servant.
1:8,9
We now have Psalm 45:6,7. This psalm was originally written for the king, but no king of Israel ever fulfilled the words of this psalm, so they are taken as looking ahead to the Messiah. The Messiah has an everlasting kingdom, and He rules it with a sceptre of righteousness. Because of the Messiah’s obedience, His righteousness and hatred of wickedness, the Lord has exalted Him above all others (Phil 2:9). We need to realise what the writer is doing here. He is contrasting what the Bible says about angels, and what it says about the Messiah, and the Messiah is infinitely superior to angels. The Messiah is the Son of God, He is chosen to rule the everlasting kingdom. God never said anything like this about angels. So people need to base their understanding of angels on what the Bible says. Even more so, we need to base our understanding of who Jesus is on what the Bible says about Him.
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