SUNDRY TIMES AND DIVERS MANNERS
Heb. 1:1
Morning Meditation 7/30/2014
Verse 1 says, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets.”
The Book of Hebrews starts with God. My Cambridge Bible and my Online Bible has a note at the end of the book that says, “Written to the Hebrews from Italy by Timothy.” The notes like this were put there by man and are not inspired.
Unger in his Bible dictionary states that the “style and vocabulary are not particularly Pauline.” He does not believe Paul wrote it. But he says, Eusebius, Origin, Athanasius, and others held that it was written by Paul.”
I have examined the internal evidence and there are good points to be made that Paul is not the author. Because of this for a long time I would say, “The human author said .. . .” But my last time through in writing a short commentary on this book, it began to sound so much like Paul that I began to say, “Paul said . . .” What I am sure of is that it is the inspired Word of God.. A former reader of these morning meditations asked me, “I would be interested to know just why you changed your mind and now believe that Paul wrote Hebrews?” My answer was “I changed because it sounds like Paul.” Now I know that that is not a healthy answer. But the reason I am even commenting on this is that we need to discipline our minds not to dwell on our disagreements with others over trivial things. The human author is not important. The inspiration of Hebrews by the Holy Spirit of God is. No matter how many arguments you make in favor of the person you think wrote Hebrews, you have NO AUTHORITY FOR YOUR ARGUMENT because we are not told in Hebrews who wrote it.
Whoever wrote Hebrews (Paul - Ha) started with the word “God.” The word God is mentioned in Hebrews 67 times. That is a lot of times for one small book. Just to mention a few:
1.The angels are called “angels of God in 1:6.
2.The Son of God is called God in 1:8. In this verse God calls Jesus God. That should settle belief in the deity of Christ for anyone.
3.God is said to have anointed the Son in 1:9.
4.God is said to bear witness with miracles, signs, and wonders with the ministry of the early church. In other words, God authenticated the preaching of the Apostles, and others who followed them, by working supernaturally in a demonstrative way to cause the hearers to recognize that the message they preached was from God. We have the BIBLE today.
5.Jesus is said to be the Manifestor of God’s grace through His incarnation, death, and resurrection in 2:9.
6.God is said to make reconciliation in 2:17.
7.God is the builder of all things in 3:4.
If you are interested, it would be good to study the 67 times where the name God is found in this book.
Then he says, “who at sundry times.” This whole phrase is the translation of one compound word “polumeros,” the first of which means, “much, large,” and the other meaning, “one of the constituent parts of a whole.” It means that God spoke “a lot in many “fragments.” God’s revelation was not complete until He spoke in Jesus Christ His Son. This verse deals with an accumulation of the different ways and places God revealed Himself to man in the Old Testament.
The words “divers manners” means that God did not have a set pattern. He may appear in a dream. Then again, He may appear to be a man as in Abraham’s case. It is called a Theophany. All these revelations where God spoke to man were revelations of His will and Person to man as God wanted at that particular time. One might think that these revelations of God were too limited for man to really know God. It was enough for Abraham to offer his Son Isaac believing that the God he served would raise him from the dead if the sacrifice was made. It was enough to solicit faith so that Abraham “believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). (Abraham was saved the same way we are today. God has never had but one plan of salvation and never will).
The word “spake” translates “laleo” and means, “to utter a voice or emit a sound, to utter articulate sounds.” It is an aorist active participle. The aorist tense is speaking of the point of time where divine utterance was made by the prophets.. The active voice means that God was the origin of what the prophets were saying. They were men whose messages was not opinions. These prophets were not philosophers. They were human voices of the invisible God. God gave His word to the father’s by them. It was “thus saith the LORD.” Let me say this in another way. God spoke to Abraham directly. He is one of the fathers. But this was not the normal. The normal was that God had someone called a prophet to whom He gave a message to deliver to the fathers.
When David sinned, God sent Nathan with a message of judgment and grace. When the leaders of Israel sinned and came under the chastening of God, God raised up men like Isaiah, Jeremiah and others too numerous to name. In Isaiah the words “Thus saith the LORD” are found 35 times. There are others phrases that mean the same thing. In Jeremiah this phrase is found 147 times. It is found 126 times in Ezekiel. God used the prophets to speak to the fathers.
There have always been men who walked with God to whom God could confide. The “fathers” in this verse is identifying leaders of the clans or tribes. Leaders should know God and be on speaking terms with Him (like Abraham) so that he could lead his family to believe in and know God. It was not true in most cases. But God always had someone though whom He could give His message.
While God has spoken in finality in the person of His Son (Heb. 1:2) which means that God is no longer speaking in that way, He still fellowships and reveals Himself through Christ to believers who choose to walk with Him. Let’s have as our goal a walk with God wherein it is evident to others. Not just be strict rules that we are willing to keep, but by the fruit of the Spirit manifest in our lives which is an evidence of God’s presence today.
May the Lord bless and encourage your hearts with these words.
In Christ
Bro. White
