A Survey of Hebrews 1:1
A detailed look at numerous commentaries, translation notes, and other texts to make sense of an overlooked verse.
The Book of Hebrews begins with a very interesting statement, which, in the NET Bible, reads: “After God spoke long ago in various portions and in various ways to our ancestors through the prophets…” What exactly does this mean? Many commentators/scholars (as shown below) believe that this alludes to a fragmentary nature of revelation, what does that signify? What is the proper way to understand this verse? In order to demonstrate this I have compiled a long list of quotes from as many commentaries on Hebrews, or works on theology that comment on Heb. 1:1, as I could to demonstrate as comprehensive an understanding of this teaching as possible. A conclusion will be given at the end.
NET Bible, translation note on Heb. 1:1: “The idea is that God’s previous revelation came in many parts and was therefore fragmentary or partial (L&N 63.19), in comparison with the final and complete revelation contained in God’s Son.”
Asahel Kendrick, Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, ed. Alvah Hovey, ACNT, p. 17: “The two terms together denote the whole variety of promises, predictions, and symbols by which the divine plan was gradually unfolded under the Old Covenant, as against the one complete revelation made through the Son under the New.”
Harold Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews, ed. Helmut Koester, p. 37—“Although the use of the two initial adverbs is designed for rhetorical effect, they are not simply synonyms. The first (πολυμερῶς) suggest that God’s speech of old was disjointed, coming in multiple segments or portions. The second (πολυτρόπως) suggests the formal diversity of God’s word. … However the multiplicity of God’s speech of old is to be conceived, Hebrews’ basic affirmation is that such diversity contrasts with the singularity and finality of God’s eschatological speech in the Son.”
Hugh Montefiore, A Commentary on the Epistles to the Hebrews, pp. 33-34: “This revelation, however, was only ‘partial and piecemeal’ (F. F. Bruce). Nevertheless it was real, and the writer immediately follows his doctrinal introduction with a series of testimonies taken from the writings of the old dispensation. Yet it was incomplete because it contained promise, not fulfillment. The brevity of these testimonies, taken from various sources, shows the fragmentary nature of the revelation, and the later argument of the Epistle shows insufficiency of the old dispensation.”
Gareth Cockerill, The Epistle to the Hebrews, NICNT , p. 87: “God’s self-disclosure in his Son is the climax and fulfillment of all previous revelation. ... Verses 1-2a describe God’s revelation in his Son as the fulfillment of – and thus in continuity with – his OT revelation. The verses climax in the declaration that God ‘has spoken to us in one who is Son.’ Verses 2b-3 underscore the ultimacy of this revelation by showing the Son's participation in the nature of God and by affirming his exaltation/session as the culmination of his saving work.”
Robert Jamieson, Andrew Fausset, and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 2 vols., 2:440: “All was not revealed to each one prophet; but one received one portion of revelation, and another another. … Each only knew in part; but when that which was perfect came in Messiah, that which was in part was done away. … In one way He was seen by Abraham, in another by Moses, in another by Elias, and in another by Micah; Isaiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel, beheld different forms. … The Old Testament revelations were fragmentary in substance, and manifold in form; the very multitude of prophets shows that they prophesied only in part. In Christ, the revelation of God is full, not in shifting hues of separated color, but Himself the pure light, uniting in His one person the whole spectrum.”
Greg Boyd, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, 2 vols., 1:407-8: “The author of Hebrews captures this point in a vitally important passage we looked at in chapter 2. He opens Hebrews by noting that OT prophets merely received ‘many different glimpses of the truth.’ Now, if you find yourself only catching ‘glimpses’ of sunlight on a particular day, it means the sky is mostly clouded. So too, if OT prophets were only catching ‘glimpses’ of the truth, does this not mean their vision was mostly cloudy...? And this, I submit, is precisely why the author goes on to say that in contrast to the ‘glimpses’ of truth that people had in the past, God has now given us the truth in the the [sic] Son, for the Son is the very ‘radiance of the glory of God’ and the one and only ‘flawless expression of the nature of God’...”
Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers: Hebrews: “To the fathers of the Jewish people (comp. Romans 9:5) God’s word was given part by part, and in divers manners. It came in the revelations of the patriarchal age, in the successive portions of Holy Writ: various truths were successively unveiled through the varying ministry of law, and of prophecy, and of promise ever growing clearer through the teaching of experience and history. At one time the word came in direct precept, at another in typical ordinance or act, at another in parable or psalm. The word thus dealt out in fragments and variously imparted was God's word, for the revealing Spirit of God was ‘in the prophets.’ … The manifold successive partial disclosures of God’s will have given place to one revelation, complete and final; for He who spake in the prophets hath now spoken ‘in a Son.’”
Paul Enns, The Moody Handbook of Theology (rev. & exp. ed.), pp. 24, 123: “God did not reveal all truth about Himself at one time but revealed HImself ‘piecemeal,’ portion by portion to different people throughout history… Biblical theology traces that progress of revelation, noting the revelation concerning HImself that God has given in a particular era or through a particular writer. Hence, God’s self-disclosure was not as advanced to Noah and Abrahm as it was to Isaiah. … The apex of God’s revelation was through His Son. In the Old testament God spoke piecemeal and in many different ways, but the climax of His revelation was in the Person of His Son. The statement suggests there is no need for any further revelation. What greater revelation about God can be given than that which has come through Christ?”
Meyer’s NT Commentary: Hebrews: “By the very choice of πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως our author indicates the imperfection of the O. T. revelations. No single one of them contained the full truth, for otherwise there would have been no need of a succession of many revelations, of which the one supplemented the other. And just so was the continual change in the modes of communicating these revelations a sign of imperfection, inasmuch as only a perfect form of communication corresponds to the perfect truth.”
William Lane, Hebrews 1-8, WBC, pp. 10-11: “The πολυ- compounds express in an emphatic way the writer’s conviction concerning the extent of the OT revelation. He surveys the revelation granted through the prophets in its variety and fullness but implies that until the coming of the Son the revelation of God remained incomplete. ... The fragmentary and varied character of God's self-disclosure under the old covenant awakened within the fathers an expectation that he would continue to speak to his people. ... The eternal, essential quality of Jesus’ sonship qualified him to be the one through whom God uttered his final word.”
James Freerkson, “Hebrews,” in The KJV Parallel Bible Commentary, eds. Edward Hindson and Woodrow Kroll, pp. 2533-34: “That revelation came bit by bit, as men were ready and able to receive it. … This fragmentary and varied method demonstrates God’s graciousness and versatility in matching His message to the capability of man to understand it.”
Frederic Farrar, Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges: The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews, ed. John Perowne, p. 52: “Into these opening verses he has compressed a world of meaning, and has also strongly brought out the conceptions of the contrast between the Old and New Dispensations—a contrast which involves the vast superiority of the latter. Literally, the sentence may be rendered, ‘In many portions and in many ways, God having of old spoken to the fathers in the prophets, at the end of these days spake to us in a Son.’ It was God who spoke in both dispensations; of old and in the present epoch: to the fathers and to us; to them in the Prophets, to us in a Son; to them ‘in many portions’ and therefore ‘fragmentarily,’ but—as the whole Epistle is meant to shew—to us with a full and complete revelation; to them ‘in many ways,’ ‘multifariously,’ but to us in one way—namely by revealing Himself in human nature, and becoming ‘a Man with men.’”
In all the foregoing passages from various commentaries and expositions of the biblical text the conclusion that we can best draw is given by the words of James Orr:
Revelation is not complete all at once. If the light with which it starts is dim, it grows clearer as the ages advance. ... Revelation has to take up man as it finds him, with his crude conceptions, his childlike modes of thought and expression, his defective moral ideas and social institutions, and has to make the best of him it can. Imperfect conditions have to be borne with for the time, while germs of truth and principles are implanted which, in their development, gradually throw off the defective forms, and evolve higher.1
That James Orr was one of the leading figures of Christian fundamentalism indicates that such an understanding is not at all controversial, but has historically been part of maximalist and conservative grasps of Scripture.
God revealed Himself in a kaleidoscopic and evolving way, more fully to others, more concealed to some, ebbing and flowing parallel to the covenantal faithfulness of Israel. We see much internal evidence of this. In Judges, for example, Israel repeatedly apostatizes from Yahweh, turning to foreign gods. Jephthah is one of the Judges during this apostasy, and he swears an oath to Yahweh that he will sacrifice whatever comes through the door of his house when he returns from battle. That should be whoever, because certainly Jephthah didn’t think a pig or ox would be in his own house, only humans would be, thus he was expecting to sacrifice a human from the beginning, he just didn’t expect that human to be his daughter. Human sacrifice was an infamous ritual associated with many of the Canaanite gods (like Baal and Moloch), gods that Jephthat’s culture had turned to. Thus, is it any wonder that Jephthah thought this was an appropriate way to worship God? Similarly, archaeological evidence of Yahweh’s “wife” (Ashtoreth) shouldn’t be surprising since we are told in Scripture that when the Israelites went astray they worshiped the Ashtoreth goddess (2 Kings 21:7; 1 Sam. 7:4; Deut. 16:21; cf. Jer. 7:18).
Possessing an incomplete understanding of God the Israelites, originally pagans, projected their ancient West Semitic (Near Eastern) preconceptions of deity onto Yahweh, which included notions of warrior gods, fertility gods, divine bloodshed, and other fragmentary notions of godhood.2 When Jesus came, however, He served as the Great Teacher to His disciples, and revealed to them the true Father, one Who was endlessly merciful and loving, abhorring all war and violence. Accordingly Hebrews 1:1 is followed up by verse 3: “The Son is the radiance of his glory and the representation of his essence, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.”
A great way to understand why things went this way, in a “progressive” or “pedagogical” manner, can be seen in how we teach the Bible to kids. When children are first sent to Sunday school their Bible consists of colorful, cartoonish images and very simple stories of God being nice and friendly. The heaps of bloodshed and evil are ignored or heavily minimized. Most kids watch The Prince of Egypt to learn about Moses and the Exodus, which ends with a majestic scene of Moses descending from Sinai with the Ten Commandments in hand, a rising Sun casting hopeful rays of light across the gathered Israelites. When they get older, however, they get to watch The Ten Commandments, and see the full story of Egyptian wickedness, human cruelty, and, of course, the depravity that faced Moses when he descended Sinai, rather than hope. The same applies to God’s revelation in a sense. Hard-hearted pagans couldn’t have understood loving those who did wrong to them, as they considered war a holy ritual and warmongering to be a divine trait. However, in time, God worked to shift this paradigm, revealing images of cosmic shalom and peace with the Gentiles, culminating in the Prince of Peace.
The Old Testament is a lengthy, fascinating chronicle of God’s evolving and shifting relationship with His people, His work to fully reveal Himself to them and to protect them from themselves, which culminates with the birth of an otherworldly infant in a Bethlehemite manger. In Jesus we see the face of the One True God, and we find the looking-glass through which to understand all that unfolded before Him.
James Orr, Revelation and Inspiration, p. 103.
Greg Boyd, Crucifixion of the Warrior God, 2 vols., pt. 4.