A word suggests itself on a portion of this striking and familiar verse, “The brightness of his glory and the express image of his person.” So our Lord is described. Now in the first place it may be noted that the Revised Version rightly does not put the first “his” in italics, as does the Authorized Version, but in ordinary type, and for the very sufficient reason that though not actually in the original, it is virtually there. In this respect at any rate the Revisers' practice has been sounder than that of the most estimable men who gave us the admirable version we still use and reverently cherish. For it need not be said that what is virtually in the text should be preserved in its counterpart.
Next, we have the word rendered “brightness” in the Authorized Version, undoubtedly a just translation. Yet it falls short of the original, not only because of its extensive application to common life, but more particularly because it fails to give an important shade of meaning, a nuance may I say, that the Revised Version again, as also J.N.D., gives more adequately by the term “effulgence.” It is really a “shining off from” The force is of beams of light radiating from a luminous surface. Thus the word is most picturesque, full of active energy, if I may so call it. There is probably no single English word that renders the original Greek (ἀπαύγασμα) so well as “effulgence.” As one has said, it is “light from light.” How admirably the doctrine here accords with the Johannine statement, “the Word was with God,” may here be profitably recalled. “With God,” literally, “towards God.” It is like face answering to face in a perfect mirror. It is not too fanciful, I think, to speak of the original (apaugasma) as a word of delicate bloom.
But this is not all. We have the blessed Lord further declared to be “the express image of his (God's) person.” Now, first of all, it is interesting to note that in the Greek there is only one word for the twofold English term “express image.” And it is a most forcible one. It has been bodily transferred to English in the well-known word “character,” which is pure and unaltered Greek, and means (see Liddell and Scott), strictly, an instrument for graving, and then that which is cut in or stamped. To use a homely illustration, one may perhaps think of that which has taken the form of a mold in which it has been cast in liquid shape, and then solidifying. Thus the third stage of meaning is much the same as our word “character,” which is now so English, and yet, as already stated, is unchanged Greek.
The English reader, of course, would naturally suppose there were two words in the Greek as in the English, as seen both in the Authorized Version “express image,” or the more precise and literal rendering (“exact impress”) of the Speaker's Commentary. J.N.D.'s rendering, “exact expression,” is also more to the point perhaps than the Authorized Version. Thus we see that “image” is not in the original, through giving a very fair idea of its force. It is otherwise in Colossians 1:15, where our Lord is said to be the “image of the invisible God,” an all-important declaration, introduced, after the apostle's wont, apparently as if he were going off at a tangent, but really in vital connection with his previous statements. Here then, in Colossians, the word image (εἰκὼν) is emphatic, as it is not in Hebrews. For the point in the former epistle is to enforce the representative functions of the Lord Jesus. As Man He represents God on earth, and that in perfect moral beauty and holiness. “He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father,” as He Himself says. We carefully note that Christ is not said to be the “likeness” of God. Things are like that are not identical. But who shall divide between the Father and the Son? Nay, the renewed mind rejoices in the sacred mystery of the Son's inscrutable person. But this by way of digression. These brief remarks are rather intended, however imperfectly, to call attention to the striking characterization of the Savior in this wonderful verse in Hebrews 1.
Lastly, we may observe, what students of J.N.D's version, as well as others, well know, that “substance” is a more correct rendering of the Greek ὑπόστασις than the word “person,” which has such wide ramifications of meaning, though rightly enough employed in defining the truth as to the blessed Trinity. To say more would be foreign to one's purpose, and more suited to a philological treatise. Here direct spiritual profit is one's aim.
R. B.