Hebrews 2:5-8 - What is man that you are mindful of him?

2:5

There is a natural tendency to worship angels, for they are more powerful than we are. It also seems that they are either perfectly angelic or perfectly demonic|! Unlike us where we are a mixture of good and bad. There are instances in the Bible, e.g. in Revelation, of people bowing down to angels, though the angels always told them not to. Here, the writer of Hebrews puts things in an eternal perspective. “It is not to angels that He has subjected the world to come”. Right back in Genesis God gave man the responsibility to look after the world. Sin messed things up, but God’s purposes have not changed. The world to come will be subject to us, not to angels.

2:6-8 - Part 1

The writer now quotes from Psalm 8:4-6, another quote from the Psalms to prove a theological point. NIV has “What is mankind that you are mindful of them”, ESV has “What is man, that you are mindful of him”. NIV has put expressed things in gender-neutral form, and at one level this is fine, for Genesis says that God created us male and female, and we are co-heirs with Christ. However, I think it is better to use the more literal translation, such as given by the ESV. For the original uses the singular, and this fits better with the later reference to Christ fulfilling this promise here. Now Christ is representative of the whole human race, so the point of difference between the ESV approach and NIV approach (of course, there are many other translations that follow one or the other) is not that great. But hopefully this wee discussion here helps us to understand the issues at stake if we use, or overuse, gender neutral translation, there can sometimes be a cost involved.