Hebrews 2:6 Commentary and Bible Study

‘What is man?’ He is speaking of the whole human race. The quotation comes from Psalm 8:4, where David looks up into the night sky and reflects upon man’s insignificance in the vastness of the created universe. With the increase in our knowledge of the scale of God’s workmanship, this question has become even more impactful. The earth occupies an advantaged position in the heavens but by no means a unique or central position. Man cannot possibly draw any conclusions about his significance in the plan of God from his place in the physical creation. He is dwarfed by the expanse of the heavens. If the Creator has chosen to make galaxy after galaxy, and clusters of galaxies, in a display which stretches beyond our imagination, why should he pick out one small planet and one creature on that planet, and make him the centre of his plans for the universe?The Hebrew in Psalm 8 says, ‘What is man that you remember him?’, and that is very appropriate. We have here in Hebrews chapter 2: ‘Thou art mindful’, but ‘you have remembered’ fits very well, because Adam and Eve fell and the whole human race fell in them. So from that moment, mankind is alienated from God, cut off from God. He will not deal with God, he will not study God, or obey him, or seek after him, and God is withdrawn from him, not entirely of course – God always governs according to his will – but he has withdrawn his presence and his blessing and any consciousness of his love from the human race. And so that manner of expression – ‘that you have remembered him’ – fits that scenario perfectly. ‘The son of man’, refers not here to Christ, but to the descendants of Adam, the following race, because everybody born since Adam has been born of a man and woman, apart from Christ of course. It is used collectively here of the whole human race. The verb ‘visitest’ is associated with visitation of the sick. If you are reading a modern translation the fashion now is to translate ‘or the son of man that you care for him’, as though the Psalmist was speaking only about God’s care of man. But no, ‘thou visitest him’ is strictly accurate. How has God visited man? Well in many ways down the centuries: through the prophets, through his instruments of revelation, but pre-eminently he's done it personally, visited personally. ‘That thou hast visited him’ in Christ the Son. Man has been visited in fulfilment of Psalm 8 by the Son of God. Psalm 8 places man at the centre of God’s purposes, a position which is confirmed by God’s declared intention to visit him – a reference to the incarnation. This central position of man in God’s plan would never have been discerned by looking at man’s place in the universe, but only by revelation. Christ has come and he has visited mankind, in order to carry out his atoning work. The assumption is that there is no other creature anywhere in the universe that has this central role. The Son of God has not become incarnate multiple times on multiple different planets, but once only in order to visit the one creature, man, who is destined to be elevated to glory.