With what does the writer link the words "for the suffering of death"? Does he intend

us to understand that the Lord was made a little lower than the angels that He might

suffer death? or does He mean that Christ was crowned with glory and honour because

of the suffering of death? If we read it that Christ was crowned with glory as a result of

His death, we shall have a difficulty in the conclusion of verse 9, "that He by the grace of

God should taste death for every man"; He was not exalted to taste death, but was

humbled. The grammar of the apostle's phrase considered alone and without the context,

favours the following as the meaning:

With this agrees Heb. 10: 5:

But while this translation appears to conform to the requirement of grammar, we

cannot help feeling how fully the alternative rendering fits the theme of the epistle.

Phil. 2: 8, 9 links the death of the cross with the glorious exaltation, and with the

Name above every name, which immediately attracts attention to Heb. 1: 4.  Heb. 12: 2

also links the suffering and cross very definitely with the exaltation at the right hand of

the throne of God. The whole driving thought of the epistle is that endurance now is

necessary to obtain that aionian glory and that so great salvation. By transposing the

order of the words and placing the reference to the glory immediately after the reference

to Jesus, we may be more grammatical, but we have nevertheless taken a liberty with the

way in which the apostle by Divine guidance arranged his sentence, and have robbed

ourselves of the very ambiguity he intended.

The Lord did not take hold of angels, He took hold on the seed of Abraham. He was

made flesh and received a body that thereby He might suffer the death of the cross. By

that very act of humiliation, however, He inherited a more excellent Name than the

angels, beneath whose dignity and nature He had voluntarily stooped; and therefore by

reason of the suffering of death, we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour.