Hebrews 2:5-9: Lower than the Angels

I’m finally getting back to my series on Hebrews. I apologize for the delay. I will also be posting new entries soon in the series on Isaiah 24-27 and Genesis, where we will be going to chapter 6. In the meantime . . .

I’m taking a very short piece of a passage for this entry to try to keep things at a workable length. I will tie this into the larger message of chapter 2, which deals with Jesus as an appropriate savior because he is like us as humans. We’ve already looked at part of this in discussing the human and divine aspects of the priesthood of Jesus.

⁵Now it was not to angels that he {God} subjected the world to come, which we are discussing. ⁶Rather, somewhere it is affirmed:

“What is man that you remember him,
or the son of man that you are concerned with him?
⁷You made him lower than the angels for a little while;
You crowned him with glory and honor.
⁸You placed everything in subjection under his feet.”
[Psalm 8:5-7 LXX]

Now in subjecting everything to him, he leaves nothing that is not subject. Yet now we do not yet see everything subject to him. ⁹But in the phrase “a little while less than the angels” we see Jesus, through the suffering of death, “crowned with glory and honor,” in order that by the grace of God he might taste death on behalf of everyone. — Hebrews 2:5-9 (TFBV)

Let me outline the message first, and then discuss a couple of interesting problems. Having established in chapter 1 that Jesus is greater than the angels, our author is about to tell us that Jesus is (or was) lower than the angels. You could do worse than to take as your outline Philippians 2:5-11. Jesus is first greater than the angels, then God made him lower “for a little while” and then after that he is crowned with glory and honor. While the sequence is not established here, in both cases “crowned with glory and honor” is inextricably linked with being temporarily made lower than the angels, i.e. a human in all ways.

Our author gets the words for this from Psalm 8. Now if you have a couple of different translations, or if you know both Greek and Hebrew, you may encounter an interesting problem. The NASB, for example, reads “a little lower than God” in Psalm 8:5. Obviously this wording is not in agreement with our author’s use of the passage. While the NIV uses “heavenly beings,” which will work with “angels” as quoted in our passage, but they still translate “a little lower.”

In order to make his point, our author needs the reading of the LXX, which is the Bible he’s using. There the Greek word bracu, which can mean “for a little while.” Only in the particular translation that he is using is does this passage mean what he needs it to mean. Indeed, though there may be an alternate reading in some undiscovered Hebrew manuscript, this is not a probable translation of the Hebrew text as we have it.

There are two elements of difference. First, does the verse mean “a little” or “for a little while.” Does this speak of someone who, for a period of time, became lower than the angels, or does it speak of someone who is, by nature, a little bit lower. Second, is it “angels” or “God”?

The Hebrew word here is “elohim” which is plural in form, but may be singular of plural in meaning. I think that it is rarely correct to translate this as “divine beings” or angels. It refers to the gods of various nations in many cases, and one could use “divine beings” in that case, but that is to conceal the normal intent of the authors which is to specify that they were thought of as gods by their worshippers, but were not so regarded by the Israelites. Thus I prefer the NASB and NRSV translation of this passage.

As for “a little while” as opposed to “a little bit” the only evidence in favor of this reading for the Hebrew passage is the translation from the LXX. This does not mean that it is impossible, simply that we seem to have no good evidence for it. In addition, in the context of Psalm 8, time does not seem to be in view. The subject is humanity and its place in creation. God made human beings a little bit lower than himself, and crowned them with glory and honor, subjecting all of creation (on earth) to them.

For translators, this presents a problem. Do you harmonize the passages? Do you present a footnote informing people in the two places? Some people do call for harmonization, but most translators would not consider that ethical. It would be a lie–concealing the actual statements of scripture in order to protect people from knowledge of a scriptural difficulty.

Personally, I don’t regard the author of Hebrews as presenting us with an exegesis of Psalm 8, but is rather using the wording and epanding it into his own point. It’s a different look at the words. If the passage depends on an exegesis of the Psalm, then we would truly be in trouble, but the wording itself works wonderfully with his subject.

But is there a further theological connection? I think that there is. Human beings were originally created a little lower than God, and in becoming our redeemer Jesus became our representative. This is one of the aspects of our extended discussion of the priesthood. As such we see a tie here between the creation and the incarnation. God emptied himself into his own creation, making himself in some sense subject to the laws of the physical universe, and even to the choices made by the creatures he created. As I go back to Genesis 6, we will see that God can be grieved by his creation.

In the same way that he created humanity in the first place, God placed himself in the same state as humanity, with the final result that both Jesus, our priest, and all of humanity might be crowned with glory and honor.