Hebrews 2:3 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

How shall we escape, &c.!— The Jews had no reason to imagine that God would remit the punishments threatened in the law, if they resolved to adhere to it, and would not embrace the condition of faith in Christ which was offered to them: for the law had never been repealed, but continued in its original force; nor would disuse make it of no force, if the Lawmaker would put it into execution. By salvation here is understood, the doctrine of salvation;—the gospel, which of course includes experimental religion: and as this stands opposed to the word spoken by angels, it is necessary to understand it of the word or doctrine published by Christ: and all the expressions here used, of Christ's beginning to speak it,—of men's hearing it,—of its being confirmed; and that God attested it,—lead us to understand the place in the sense given. This doctrine of salvation, is said to be begun to be spoken by Christ, because there were some things which belonged to the gospel,—as the resurrection and ascension of Christ, and the pouring out of the Spirit,—which were to be more fully published by his apostles after his death. Confirmed to us, signifies properly, to our times; to the times in which the apostle lived: and the sense appears to be, "They who heard Christ himself preaching, have continued confirming the truth of what he preached to us Hebrews, even to this time; having the gifts of the Holy Ghost) various in their kinds, as God has been pleased to grant them to them." It would have been, not the term εις ημας, but ημιν, which the apostle would have used, if he had intended to say, That he himself learned the gospel from those who had heard Christ; nor would he have said, that the gospel was confirmed to him by them that heard Christ; since elsewhere he declares, that he had it not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ. Galatians 1:1. Supposing now St. Paul to have written this epistle in the year 67, he then says, that those who had heard Christ, continued uniformly and constantly to attest what he had said, from that time to this; that is, for upwards of thirty years. They who from this expression would argue, that St. Paul was not the author of this epistle, mistake the meaning of the phrase here used; which does not relate to the person writing, but to the time when he wrote. They who had heard Christ himself, had confirmed, even to this time, steadily and consistently, what they had heard from our Lord himself.