Hebrews 2:14

14. Forasmuch then This inference reverts back to close of Hebrews 2:11, in support of which 12 and 13 are citations. This verse reasserts the main thought, which beautifully interprets, to the dubious Christian Jew, the glory of the condescension of the eternal Son, the divine Logos, in assuming our nature that he might be capable of death.

Flesh and blood Note, 1 Corinthians 15:50. The true reading is, blood and flesh, in which the blood, as the more immediate residence of the life and soul, is mentioned first. Both blood and flesh mean the bodily nature as impregnated with sensitivity and susceptibility to impressions, shared by both man and lower animals, whereby it becomes the basis of soul and spirit in man. This assumption of a sensitive body was in order that he might be capable of human death, and might, through death, destroy the author of death.

Destroy The Greek word is used, as Alford says, twenty-five times by St. Paul. It often signifies, to put out of existence, (as Romans 6:6, 1 Corinthians 15:24,) and hence this might be a favourite text with those who believe in the annihilation of the devil. But it also signifies to ruin, to bring to naught, to despoil, as Luke 13:7, Rom 3:3 , 2 Thessalonians 2:8, where see note. The Apocryphal Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs uses the word in the phrase, “He shall destroy Belial and those serving him.”

Had the power of death Christ (Revelation 1:18) has the “keys of hell and of death,” that is, to deliver and bring forth to a resurrection; Satan has the power, through sin, of introducing death. Hence he was a murderer from the beginning. The rabbies carried this idea so far as to teach that Samael was the angel of death, inflicting it whenever a man dies. The antithesis, through death… destroy… death, strikingly expresses the work of the dying Redeemer. And not until this antithesis is completed are we brought in the sentence, with closing emphasis, to the name of the murderer the devil. See note on Hebrews 2:9.