Hebrews 1:9-14

The source for this text cantillated by Ezekiel Margoliouth is here. I've been buried with other work on Tanach and publishing as well as walking the dog and other chores in the wet of an atmospheric river, -- so no time to give to this passage. Here is the rest of the music and a few notes for chapter 1.

Hebrews 1:9 You have loved righteousness and hate wickedness, therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of joy above your companions.

Citing Psalm 45:8, compare with the Masoretic text:

Margoliouth does not use the te'amim of the poetry. He is reporting on the psalm in a work of prose, so the music is quite different. No genre of poetry is recognized in the NT as are the three books, Psalms, Proverbs, and the speeches of Job in the Tanach. Also the poetry uses different modes from the 21 books of prose, so comparison of the music is moot in any case. Notice that the psalmist has no internal rest point in this verse. The breath invited on the zaqef-qatan is not a cadence. 

The psalms are frequently quoted in Hebrews. They are used for most of the conversation between the Father and the Son. They are also our conversation and the record of the conversation of ancient Israel with the Most High.

Hebrews 1:10 And again, You, my Lord, long ago, you founded the earth, and the deeds of your hands, the heavens.

Hebrews 1:11 They will perish, but you, you will stand, and they all, like a garment, will wither.

Hebrews 1:12 Like raiment you will renew them and they will be renewed, and you are he, and your years will not be complete.

These three verses are from Psalm 102. The images are from my latest volume on the psalms.

Again the music is substantially different because the te'amim are the different set. There are connections from verse 10-11 in Hebrews and between the corresponding verses 26-27 of the psalm. But the verses themselves do not correspond in their content. I look upon prose that cites poetry as a 'report' rather than a poetic performance.

Hebrews 1:13 And to which from the messengers has he said ever, Sit at my right hand till I set your enemies as a stool for your feet.

This verse invokes Psalm 110, a vital part of the framework of the Psalter as a whole, being the second oracle of two in the Psalter -- matching Psalm 36 in Book 1 and drawing together the whole Psalter with Psalms 8 and 144 also being in correspondence to each other. The other psalms joining in this structural chiasm are 9-10, 145, 37, 111-112 -- all of them acrostics celebrating the psalm that just precedes them. See this post for the diagram.

Psalm 110, the most enigmatic of all the psalms

To end the chapter here is verse 14:

Hebrews 1:14 Are not they all ministering spirits, they, sent to minister on behalf of those eager for the new wine of salvation.

The complexity of this first chapter is overwhelming as it draws the First Testament into the foundation of the faith in Christ, the inheritor of all messianic titles whether of ruler or of suffering servant.

Here's a link to the pdf of my ancient diagram including Hebrews 1 based on the work of Vanhoye.  It is a full circle for me representing where I came from 20 years ago and inviting several more books! Can't go there. There's a reason I studied Hebrew. It was easier than taking on the New Testament and the massive hopes and fears of that first century so much of which the record is lost because of the destruction of Jerusalem by 'the empire'.

Hebrews 1:6-8

This is the third post sourced from the translation of the NT into Hebrew in the mid-19th century cantillated by Ezekiel Margoliouth. You can find his text here.

Hebrews 1:6

And further, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he himself says,
And let all the messengers of God worship him.

The music is not unexpected, the revia, telisha-gedola in bar 1 occurs 144 times within verses and 16 of those at or near the beginning of a verse. All the rest of Hebrews 1:6 is without ornament (accent above the text). You can see 7 notes of the scale here. The high C does not occur in this verse. 

You will note two short stroke accents on the last word הָֽאֱלֹהִֽים. Tradition would see the first as a meteg and it would be right. It is acceptable to extend the recitation on the f and delay the move to e until the last syllable. So you may read the score as: הָאֱלֹהִֽים. I know Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura did not follow this practice. She did not distinguish meteg from silluq. I found the move to the emphasized cadence that she uses awkward at first, but I got used to it, thinking it was an archaism in the idea of final cadence.

Having seen how many of these signs have been added over the years of copying, and having removed so many to agree to the earliest copty we have, I have come to think that the use of the tonic mid-verse, or prematurely at the end of a verse is rare. In the Tanach, I was able to compare with an earlier text. In the Hebrew NT, I have only this one copy from the mid 19th century, a time when copies of Tanach like Letteris show metegs in the text multiplying with every generation.

Firstborn is the first hint of resonance with the sacramental system of Tanach. God is bringing this firstborn to the world, in full view of the people and powers of this realm in which we live.

The Greek of the NT uses angels, Margoliouth uses כָּל־מַלְאֲכֵ֥י, which I could render as messengers or angels. The Psalm uses כָּל־אֱלֹהִֽים, all gods. The graven images, including the money worshipped so fully in our age, are commanded to worship.

Angels, like corporations, powers, principalities, and robots, have no feelings, no ability to sense. They are commanded to worship the human firstborn of God. All these things are to be subservient. And those who worship them will be ashamed. The systems that create inequity which we manage, are called into submission to the firstborn, and the oligarchs that fail to care for their fellow beings will be ashamed.

Psalm 97:7

This phrase -- worship him all gods, also occurs in the LXX reading of Deuteronomy 32:43. This is not something I would look for in my translation because I have not compared the Hebrew with the Greek of the Septuagint. They are substantially different versions of Scripture and both are considered authoritative.

I am recognizing that letter perfect, jot and tittle perfect, is not God's way with the word of God. It is vital to see that the letter can kill (in any language) -- because we think we have to be right and we fear we might be wrong. It is the Spirit that gives life, not the letter. The Spirit teaches both seeing and hearing. That is why we must not be senseless. What is authoritative is from the author of life, whatever its provenance.

In this section of Hebrews, we encounter God: in the Greek, in the variant readings of the Septuagint, in the Biblical Hebrew into which Margoliouth has translated the Greek of the NT, and in English too, and in the Music which accompanies the text. In short, don't be concerned about variations in the text and in the traditions. They are a fact of life. Do be concerned with what you read though. Many translations have an axe to grind. What can I say? Referee with kindness. Read the book of Job and think of the tensions already in the Scripture criticising itself. Job is a critique of a rigid view of Torah.

Hebrews 1:7

And faithfully, concerning the messengers, he himself says,

He makes his messengers spirits, and his ministers a blazing fire.

I was struck by the form of the first word וְאָמְנָ֕ם in this verse. The opening of Hebrews does not put down angels, but calls indeed, faithfully, all to worship the Firstborn nevertheless recognizing their glory, their origin from God, and their fiery function. I do see this adverbial form of amn in Tanach, but not with the preceding vav. My SimHebrew algorithm pronounces it with the /o/ vowel.

vaomnm yl-hmlacim hua aomr 

yowh mlaciv rukot umwrtiv aw lohT

וְאָמְנָ֕ם עַל־הַמַּלְאָכִ֖ים ה֣וּא אֹמֵ֑ר

עֹשֶׂ֤ה מַלְאָכָיו֨ רוּח֔וֹת וּמְשָֽׁרְתָ֖יו אֵ֥שׁ לֹהֵֽט

It is interesting to note that the music forms the e-major triad in its opening phrase. This musical motif ties the music to the creation, where it is used in the first verse of Genesis. It also ties it to several other verses that speak to the shaping of the creation of character within us, such as in Leviticus 26:29 noted this month here. When we are being corrected, God is walking with us through difficulties of our own creation. The angels / messengers are made and are active agents, wind (=spirit) and fire. The music rises to the high C in the second part of the verse (bar 5 above). This part is reporting the music of Psalm 104:4:

Psalm 104:4

This music in this verse of Psalm 104 is a proclamatory statement. It begins with the fundamental (tonic) moving to the first natural harmonic of the shofar (dominant) and ends with the same interval in reverse, dominant to tonic, a cadence unique to the poetry books in Tanach (Psalms, Proverbs, and the speeches of Job). I do not expect ever to see such a cadence in the Margoliouth text of the New Testament.

The whole psalm 104 is about creation in all its aspects from our human point of view. It reflects the language of Genesis 1. In the psalm, light is God's garment, clouds are chariots, lions seek their prey, humans labour until evening. 

Who knew that Psalm 104 was quite so suitable for the author of Hebrews to quote when one is introducing the creator to the world? I expect one verse would be sufficient to immediately recall the whole psalm to the first hearers.

Hebrews 1:8

And to the son, Your throne, O God is now and for ever,
the sceptre of equity is the sceptre of your reign.

The music in this section has only one accent above the text. All the rest below the text spell out the melody in successive recitation notes that a cantor can easily learn and read. These signs are very similar to some that have been found in ancient Greek manuscripts. If you are interested in the history of such signs in ancient texts, see this paper by David C. Mitchell from 2017.

There is no explicit vocative in this verse. It could be read as God is your throne. I found this striking but I didn't translate the Hebrew that way in Psalm 45:7. The king in the marriage celebration is never called God, so the Psalm reads without confusion as an implied vocative, O God.

Psalm 2 (see previous post) introduces God’s chosen king as my son in sharp contrast to the rebellious ''kings of the earth". Psalm 45 elevates the royal figure such that the king is addressed with divine titles. Hebrews draws on both psalms to argue that the Firstborn possesses a status and authority no angel shares. 

In these days when equity is questioned, the sceptre of equity should bring us all to our senses, and not to the adulation of the "kings of the earth". We may say there is no king, but our situation shows us that we have not paid attention. The worship of Mammon, the adulation of billionaires is our equivalent of 'boasting in the good for nothing'.

Hebrews 1:5

This is the second post sourced from the translation of the NT into Hebrew in the mid-19th century cantillated by Ezekiel Margoliouth. You can find it here.

Hebrews 1:5 

For to whom among the messengers did he ever say, My son you are. I today have given birth to you.
And further, I will be to him a father, and he will be to me a son.

The NT has no embedded music in the Greek. Many cantillations have been used of course for gospel readings, but it is uncommon in the churches. The Psalm that the text quotes here is expressed with music in the Hebrew of the Tanach. In the Tanach, it uses the poetic te'amim. Margoliouth of course uses the prose accents as he reports verse 7 of the poem. I expect that he never uses the poetic accents at all. Here is the tri-colon from the Psalter:

Psalm 2:7

The use of this verse raises a lot of questions. When it was written, the world worked the same way it works today - rich and poor, coercion of empires, excessive taxation, and so on. Whether the time of the exile or earlier, or the time of Jesus, or today, the human condition, for all the generosity of God, is a mess. The king of psalm 2 is part of the mess. His throne was not a cross. So: Hebrews quotes Psalm 2 not to import its old royal ideology into Christology, but to expose how that ideology collapses in the face of the incarnation, and what remains is the pure divine address to the Son who suffered as the world suffers under the turmoil of competing kingdoms. But that's to get ahead of the homily.

By the way, it seems to me that the whole question of pre-existence must be reframed, time being what it is, that fourth dimension of reality in which we are caught by the second law of thermodynamics. The eternal Son is clearly outside of time, present to our faces as creator, as much as present to any other era before or to come. Did they know, were they known, do we know, are we known? Of course. How else could they (the ancients who wrote Tanach) write of their love on our behalf who now inhabit the globe? 

In Proverbs 8 before the foundation of the world, Wisdom says: In the establishing of the heavens, there am I, when he engraved the ambit on the face of the abyss. And a few verses later, the same voice presents itself present לפניו (lpniv). This is a word whose root we have already encountered in the first few words of this epistle.

Proverbs 8:30-31 Wisdom gamboling with the children of humanity

God is present to us today, yesterday, and forever.

In this step I evoke Proverbs 8, a chapter I arranged to its music which you may be able to process more directly, though mechanically, in my oratorio, Unleashing Leviathan, here.

To repeat, 'before the foundation of the world' (this is not my translation -- discordant with respect to glossing, but not inaccurate as to intent or paraphrase), 

Proverbs 8:22

Wisdom says:

Proverbs 8:27

And a few verses later, the same voice presents itself as present לפניו (lpniv) a word whose root we have already encountered in the first few words of this epistle. Wisdom - face to face with God, without giving a timeline is gamboling in the world of his earth, reveling with the children of humanity.

This Christ who is our Wisdom -- according to Paul somewhere (1 Corinthians -- must read this someday) -- Yes, I identify Christ with the Wisdom of Proverbs 8. Christ and Wisdom share function and identity: creative agency, presence, delight, engagement with humanity, there they are before the ordering or foundation of the world.

You will note I write Christ and not Jesus. In these two words I separate the human lifetime, bound by entropy, from the divine unbound presence. Remember God is spirit, the One who is, who was, and who is to come. It's not a matter of counting three coins in a fountain. The same Spirit still broods over the turmoil of the waters. And we have this treasure in clay vessels.

Full circle

It is the same me from 20 years ago when this now octogenarian programmer attended a conference on Christian Theology and the Epistle to the Hebrews in St Andrews Scotland. I was full of structuralism seen by recurring words and their patterns of chiasm and so on. I had diagrammed Hebrews in multiple colours -- so proud, and a tad more or less ignorant than I am now. 

Oh I had diagrams!

My top level diagram of Hebrew from 2005 or so

Each part with a diagram symbol points to a subdiagram (not implemented in this static image). I used a proprietary diagramming tool for translation of the psalms one word at a time. Pretty, but slow self-teaching on many fronts.

I don't yet know what words I will use to express this homily today. It is probably wise for me to use slow consideration of the theology in the use of words to convey the creator and sustainer of our life.

M. C. Escher

I hope to get through the 19th century text of Hebrews as typed by the vine of David and available here.  Having already seen errors in the typing of qadma and pashta, I will have to check the photocopies of the original at times of doubt. The first four verses are in the previous post together with the music that has been composed with the text by Margoliouth using the prose te'amim of the Tanach. I had never heard of the music 20 years ago even though I remember a conversation about variable recitation notes in the '70s or '80s.

I still have to work to read these tongues that are so foreign to my ear. Have fun reading as we try to see how the 19th century Hebrew mind reads the Greek of the New Testament through my 21st century failing eyes.

Perhaps we are all an inside-outside Escher print made of one spinning electron everywhere and everywhen at once creating our own simulation of an imaginary reality in which we become flesh. (Is this an argument for letting children play video games? In the 19th century we were machines, in the 20th programmed machines, in the 21st, quantum decision makers composed of heavy wave-forms called particles, weighing down the universe together.)

I am having quite a time running my translations through first my own concordant data base (remembering how to bootstrap a new chapter) and then discussing the theological implications of translation with ChatGPT. It summarized my opinions and the difficulty for concordance quite accurately. Some words are unchanged over 3000 years, others not so simple. I have found all my notes and essays going back to the 1990s and leading up to the Hebrews conference in 2006. I wonder how I would read them today. Perhaps I will put the odd one on the blog.

And perhaps not. It was the beginning of the path and I don't discount it: In 2005 I worked directly from the Greek text using traditional commentaries like Vanhoye (above diagram) as my interpretive frame. Today I begin to read from a very different stance, having translated the Tanach and written books on the music and particularly the psalms. At the conference, I heard a voice saying -- how can you speak of me when you do not know my language? So today, a Hebrew philology underpins my considerations. I must now read Hebrews as a reader of the Hebrew Bible.

In 2006, I heard the theologians and Biblical Studies folks arguing tooth and nail in the classroom, voices raised but not in music, and I enjoyed the £1 Oban scotches in the University pub. What will be the bias in my approach today?

Hebrews 1:1-4 from the Hebrew of Ezekiel Margoliouth

You might not have been expecting this. In the mid-1800s, Ezekiel Margoliouth revised an earlier Hebrew New Testament and added cantillation (See here for the information on Hebrew translations of the New Testament).

In this post I have put the first four verses of the Epistle to the Hebrews into my database as an experiment in translating from the Hebrew into English. I have conformed the translation to the concordance rules I used for my translation of Tanach. I am curious as to how the Hebrew works for me, and how the cantillation patterns compare with those of Tanach.

(Please see earlier posts like this one if you are not aware of the deciphering key I am using. Basically, the accents under the text map consistently and unambiguously to a diatonic scale. Each one defines the recitation pitch until the next one is seen. The accents over the text define ornamentation relative to the current recitation pitch. The entire Hebrew Bible is a love song.)

         Hebrews 1:1 In diverse modes and in several ways, spoke God present to our ancestors through the prophets,

Cantillation: The music in the first verse has no atnah. There is a breath invited, but no mid-verse cadence on the subdominant, A. The composer immediately goes beyond pure announcement to a heightened emotion on the C. The remainder of the phrase leading to the tonic seems typical but it isn't. Only two verses in Tanach end with e c d e g# e (silluq-darga-tevir-silluq-tifha-silluq). 

If we eliminate the tonic (silluq), 361 verses end with c d g# e. The same additional metegs (a mark identical to the tonic silluq but applying to pronunciation and not to the music) interfere with the melodic line as I have pointed out before. There is of course no earlier or later version to compare with, so I suggest that the metegs be ignored (if you can tell the difference between silluq and meteg -- difficult since they are the same mark). Just continue on the preceding recitation note. So the tonic, e, in bar 4 is likely not needed and should continue on the B until the last syllable of elohim. 

Translation: Curious that pnh (bold words are in SimHebrew - a transcription that is reversible between square text and Roman characters) in the form lpnim (bar 5-6) glossed above as present is also the word for face, and the preposition before. Hebrew like English can use this word in both a spatial and a temporal sense. I'm told the Greek πάλαι is purely temporal. 

Theological-scientific-aside: The Hebrew language can sense the wholeness of space-time. Corner is also a gloss for pnh. Remember that song -- 'you in your small corner' -- a place in space-time where we face things.

Hebrews 1:2 and in these last days he has spoken to us through the son whom he set to possess the whole,
by means of whom he made also the aeons,

they look like qadma

C: The music is typical except for the typing of the accents in bar 3 which should, I think, be pashta rather than qadma, so slurred C-D-C-D rather than D-C-D-C as is written above. A double qadma occurs only twice in Tanach - Deuteronomy 12:30 and Esther 3:13. The closing contour, A, B, g#, f, e is used over 800 times in the prose sections of Tanach. The last three notes (g, f, e) are used over 8,000 times in the prose, only twice in the poetry. Margoliouth will not have used poetic te'amim at all in the NT.

T: This son is without an article in the Greek, so the word seems indefinite but the role of the son is clarified. In Greek the lack of an article says: pay attention, you do not know of whom you are hearing yet. In the Hebrew, the translator has included the article (בַּבֵּ֔ן). So the English from the Hebrew reads the son. You may capitalize son if you like. Jesus is our peer. Will we become his?

What is Hebrew teaching about the nature of that word aeon (הָעוֹלָמִים) that is derived from what is hidden or obscure, (one of several senses of עלם)? English aeon is directly derived from the Greek of this verse τοὺς αἰῶνας (tous aiōnas). I am reminded of Qohelet 3:11.

The whole he has made beautiful in its time, even the obscurity (עלם )he has given in their heart without which the human would not find out the doings that this God has done from beginning and to conclusion.

I find this verse from Qohelet positive, even foundational for science. The human is motivated to find out. And we can do it -- see the Webb telescope for instance. As a colleague in conversation put it: "The verse affirms a God-given impulse to investigate, to probe creation in reverence. The Webb telescope is, in that sense, a part of Qohelet’s fulfillment -- humanity gazing further into the aeons, haʿolamim (the hidden ages)."

Aside: So it is that we now can look back in time ourselves. This is a concept we could not have understood without special relativity.

Returning to the third and fourth verses of Hebrews 1. 

Hebrews 1:3 in that he is the brilliance of his glory and the image of his being, lifting up the whole by his prevailing word,
as he achieved in himself the acquittal from our sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Greatness of the heights; 

C: Tarsin (the shake in bar1) is followed by munach, high C (as in bar 2), 608 times in the Hebrew canon. Eighteen verses begin with telisha-gedola followed by tarsin with the tonic as reciting pitch followed by the dominant as reciting pitch (munach).

These are the first four verses I have looked at with cantillation in the NT, so I have no idea how often this particular composer uses this motif. Of course, he would not recognize the trope that I use. And I do not understand the thought process underpinning the music of the trope in ancient times. All I know is that the deciphering key that I use -- developed in the last century by Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura -- makes the trope much more transparent to me as a musician than any other rendition I have heard.

T: Brilliance (zhr) is a late word used rarely in Tanach, twice in Daniel and once in Ezekiel. In himself is the word for bones. This is another flexible Hebrew stem with several senses and uses. (The link is to the concordance where you can find all my translation choices, Hebrew roots and glosses.) Hebrew commonly uses עֶצֶם (yxm) metaphorically for essence or selfhood.

Hebrews 1:4 and thus he became a goodness beyond that of the messengers,
in proportion to how he came to possess a name surpassing above theirs.

C: The contour of the music of verse 4 to the atnah (bar 5) is shared by 811 verses. The contour is unique from the atnah to the final e. 14 verses (in Tanach) share the last 6 bars in shape. 75 verses share the last 5 bars. 284 verses share the shape of the last 4 bars. 

T: In Hebrews 1:4, I want to recall the good of Genesis 1. Genesis 1 never says the word better. I tend to follow the French Proverb: Le meilleure est l'ennemie du bon. The sentence in these four verses is a concise statement of how God in Christ bears the good of creation. 

Theological reflection: As the Son, Jesus speaks to us of the will of God to mercy and compassion towards others. Modern physics reminds us that we inhabit a reality marked by openness rather than mechanical certainty, a kind of cloud of unknowing in which choices matter. Yet this indeterminate world is upheld, lifted up, by the prevailing (gbr) word, the valiant child who gave himself for the life of the world (ylm). (cf. Job 3 -- Perish! day when I was born, and the night promising pregnancy of a valiant (gbr) child.) The phrase (hrh gbr) in Job is unique in Tanach.

If so, the question is whether we grow into the responsibility that belongs to the ages (ylmim) to come. Participation rather than domination seems to be the mode of this rule. And you will remember that 'only sign', Jonah. His story asks whether we are willing to share in that mercy, or whether we resist the generosity by which God keeps the world alive.