Post 8 of Study: Hebrews 1:5 and following

If Hebrews 1:1-4 is a masterpiece, a hymn, 5-14 becomes a rhetorical exercise and a bit of a quandary. We might not see all of these verses, on the surface, as testifying to the superority of Jesus--and to His deity--over the angels. The writer has some hits but, from our perspective, some misses, in his choice of the First Testament passages he uses to support the argument. 

But that is just our perspective. I speak of 5b. This is a promise to David that would seem to be about his near "sons," but the Jews took it as the Messiah, a double prophecy. Also, 10-12 does not appear to be Messianic., referring to Psalm 102-25-27. So we modern English speaking may not get al the significance here.

We're back to the main point. Jesus Christ is better than the angels. If anyone is tempted to put angels, who are "mnistering spirits" above Jesus, they do ill. And we're back to verse 4. This placement above the angels is at least partially due to the gospel story, what Christ did, but also by inheritance of who He was in the first place. 

Christian theology is not tidy and delivered in an outlined textbook. It requires us to take journeys, loop back, dig, imagine, examine a complicated text from a complicated time, to see double meanings in texts, think contextually. It's not for the intellectually lazy. It's also not for the black-and-white thinker.