Nielsen’s Nook

Commentary

[1] Πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως is an interesting pair, perhaps hinting at Semitic authorship of the book with its parallelism. Πολυμερῶς speaks of the many parts (μέρος), while πολυτρόπως expands the scope of the parallelism to the manner (τρόπος) in which God spoke. In other words, formerly God spoke by means of his prophets in many episodes, using a variety of media.

[2] ἔθηκεν (τίθημι) When used with a double accusative as is the case here, τίθημι conveys the idea of making something of someone (BAGD, 816). Consider Psalm 109:1 (LXX) Εἶπεν ὁ κύριος τῷ κυρίῳ μου Κάθου ἐκ δεξιῶν μου, ἕως ἂν θῶ τοὺς ἐχθρούς σου ὑποπόδιον τῶν ποδῶν σου. The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand while I make your enemies a footstool for your feet” (author’s translation).

[3] διʼ οὗ καὶ ἐποίησεν τοὺς αἰῶνας First, there is a word order variation from this phrase in the NA27 and διʼ οὗ καὶ τοὺςN αἰῶνας ἐποίησεν, appearing in the Byzantine text and Textus Receptus.

Second, αἰῶνας is one of those Greek words that does not translate well into English. The ESV has “world” as a sort of generic plural, where the KJV opts for the plural “worlds” as does the NRSV. The NIV attempts to be more concrete rendering “universe” for αἰῶνας. While I believe these are conceptually true and sound translations (Jesus is in fact the creator and sustainer of the world, worlds and universe), I think the context directs us to an even more specific understanding for τοὺς αἰῶνας.

I believe that what may be in view might be paraphrased like this. All the episodes and ways and times and situations in which God spoke to us through his prophets - all of that - was made by the One through Whom God now speaks to us, namely, His Son, Jesus the Christ. In other words, while it is true that Christ Jesus is Lord and Maker of the universe, this opening sentence is a statement about His lordship over revelation and the sitz im leben (historico-cultural situation) in which revelation came to us previous to the Incarnation.