And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, Behold I and the children which God has given me.
I will.
2 Samuel 22:3 The God of my rock; in him will I trust: he is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my high tower, and my refuge, my saviour; thou savest me from violence.
Psalm 16:1 Michtam of David. Preserve me, O God: for in thee do I put my trust.
Psalm 18:2 The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.
Behold.
Isaiah 8:18 Behold, I and the children whom the LORD hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the LORD of hosts, which dwelleth in mount Zion.
Isaiah 53:10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.
which.
Genesis 33:5 And he lifted up his eyes, and saw the women and the children; and said, Who are those with thee? And he said, The children which God hath graciously given thy servant.
Genesis 48:9 And Joseph said unto his father, They are my sons, whom God hath given me in this place. And he said, Bring them, I pray thee, unto me, and I will bless them.
Psalm 127:3 Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.
And once again: “Here am I, and the children God has given Me.”
This phrase draws from Isaiah 8:18, where Isaiah refers to himself and his children as signs and symbols in Israel from the Lord Almighty. In the context of Hebrews, it is applied to Jesus, who identifies with humanity and presents Himself alongside those who follow Him. The "children" symbolize believers who are given to Christ by God, reflecting the intimate relationship between Jesus and His followers. This connection is further explored in John 17:6, where Jesus speaks of those whom the Father has given Him. The phrase underscores the fulfillment of prophecy and the unity between Christ and the Church, portraying Jesus as the leader and protector of His spiritual family. It also highlights the concept of spiritual inheritance and the communal aspect of faith, where believers are seen as part of a divine family under Christ's headship.
The writer of Hebrews places this Isaiah 8:17 declaration on the lips of Jesus, underscoring His true humanity and perfect faith.
•In the incarnation Jesus lived exactly as we must live—by trusting the Father moment by moment (Hebrews 2:14; 4:15).
•His life of trust fulfilled the prophetic pattern of Psalm 22:9-10 and climaxed at the cross: “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit” (Luke 23:46).
•This trust was not theoretical; it sustained Him through temptation, rejection, and death, guaranteeing our salvation (Isaiah 12:2; 2 Samuel 22:3).
•Because the Son trusted the Father in our place, believers now have a flawless example and an unfailing Savior who sympathizes with every weakness (Hebrews 4:16).
Quoting Isaiah 8:18, the author shows Jesus proudly standing with His redeemed family.
•The same Messiah who trusts the Father also gathers us under His care: “Both the One who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are of the same family” (Hebrews 2:11-12).
•We are the Father’s gift to the Son (John 6:37-39; 17:6, 12), and He never loses a single child.
•By presenting Himself with us—“Here am I”—He pledges personal responsibility for our eternal welfare (Hebrews 2:17-18).
•Like Isaiah’s prophetic children who served as “signs,” believers now testify to God’s saving power in a hostile world (Philippians 2:15; Matthew 5:14-16).
•This family relationship disarms fear: if Jesus owns us before the throne today, He will certainly bring us to glory tomorrow (Hebrews 2:10; Romans 8:29-30).
Hebrews 2:13 pairs two voices of Jesus. First, He models perfect dependence—“I will put My trust in Him.” Second, He embraces us as family—“Here am I, and the children God has given Me.” Together the sayings reveal a Savior who (1) entered real humanity to trust His Father for us, and (2) now stands with us to present us safely to that same Father. Our call is simple: share His trust, rest in His guardianship, and shine as living proof that we belong to Him.
(13) I will put my trust in him . . . Behold I and the children . . .--Of the two passages cited in this verse, the latter is certainly from Isaiah 8:18; and though the former might be derived from 2Samuel 22:3 or Isaiah 12:2, yet, as the words are also found in the same chapter of Isaiah (Isaiah 8:17), we may with certainty consider this the source of the quotation. That the section of Isaiah's prophecies to which Hebrews 8 belongs is directly Messianic, is a fact that must be kept in mind; but the stress of the quotation cannot be laid on this. The prophet, as the representative of God to the people, has given utterance to the divine message: in these words, however, "I will put my trust" (better, "I will have my trust," for continuous confidence is what the words denote) "in Him," he retires into the same position with the people whom he has addressed; their relation towards God's word and the hope it inspires must be his also. This two-fold position of the prophet symbolised the two-fold nature of Him of whom every prophet was a type. (In Isaiah 8:17, the Authorised version, "I will look for Him," is nearer to the strict meaning of the original; but the difference is of little moment.)The second passage is free from difficulty up to a certain point. In Isaiah 7, 8 we not only read of the word of God sent by Isaiah, but also find his sons associated with him in his message to the people. The warning of judgment and the promise are, so to speak, held up before the people inscribed in the symbolic names borne by the sons, Maher-shalal-hash-baz ("Speed the spoil, hastens the prey") and Shear-jashub ("A remnant shall return;" see Isaiah 7:3; Isaiah 10:21), and by Isaiah himself ("Salvation of Jehovah"). "Behold I," he says, "and the children whom the Lord hath given me, are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts." By God's own appointment, the children whom God gave him, though themselves no prophets, were joined with himself in the relation of prophets to the people, and were representatives of those whom God, who "hideth His face from the house of Jacob" (Isaiah 8:17), will save. As in the former passage Isaiah is taken as representing Christ, so here those who, being of the same blood, are joined with him in his work and in the promise of salvation, represent those whom the Son calls "brethren." The difficulty is that, whereas the original passage speaks of "the children" of the prophet, the meaning here must be children of God, given by Him to the Son. But no type can answer in every respect to that which it represents. The association of Jesus with His, people contains three elements of thought--His essential superiority, His sharing the same nature with His people, His brotherhood with them. The first two thoughts are truly represented in this Old Testament figure; the last no figure could at the same time set forth. And though Hebrews 2:12-13 are directly connected with the word "brethren," yet, as the next verse shows, the most important constituent of the thought is community of nature. It should be observed that in these two verses the citations are not so distinctly adduced by way of proof as are those of the first chapter. . . .
Verse 13. - And again, I will put my trust in him. There are two passages of the Old Testament from which this may be a citation 2 Samuel 22:3 and Isaiah 8:17. In either case the original is slightly altered in the citation, probably with a purpose; the emphatic ἐγὼ being prefixed, and ἔσομαι being (suitably after this addition) placed before instead of after πεποιθὼς. The purpose of this change may be to bring into prominence the thought that the Messiah himself, in his humanity, puts his trust in God as well as the "brethren" with whom he associates himself. The passage in 2 Samuel 22:3 is from the psalm of David, written "in the day when the Loan had delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul." It is given also in the Book of Psalms as Psalm 18, where the LXX. reads ἐλπιῶ ἐπ αὐτόν instead of πεποίθως ἔσομαι ἐπ αὐτῷ: so that, if the quotation is from the psalm, it is taken from the historical book. But is the quotation from the psalm or from Isaiah? If from the former, it serves (if Psalm 22. is also David's) to complete the type of the same royal sufferer, showing him reliant on God along with his brethren in the day of success, as well as during previous trial. Most commentators, however, suppose the quotation to be from Isaiah, inasmuch as the following one is from him, not only coming immediately after the first in the original, but also dependent on it for its meaning. Nor is the introduction of the second quotation by καὶ πάλιν conclusive against its being the continuation of the same original passage, since it introduces a new idea, to which attention may be thus drawn. Possibly the writer, familiar as he was with the Old Testament, had both passages in his view, the phrase common to both serving as a connecting link between David and Isaiah. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me. The applicability of the whole passage in Isaiah (Isaiah 8:17, 18) to the writer's argument is not at first sight obvious. It occurs in connection with the memorable message to Ahaz, on the occasion of the confederacy of Rezin and Pekah against Judah, in the course of which the prophet foretells (Isaiah 7:14) the birth of Immanuel. In Hebrews 8. and Hebrews 9. he expands this message, rising into a vein of undoubted Messianic prophecy (see especially Isaiah 9:1-8). In the midst of general dismay and disbelief the prophet stands firm and undaunted, presenting himself as a sign as well as a messenger of the salvation which he foretells: "Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts." The "children" thus associated with himself as signs appear to have been his two sons, with their symbolical names, Shear-jashub and Maher-shalal-hash-baz, the first of whom he had been commanded to take with him (Isaiah 7:3) on his first visit to Ahaz, and the second of whom (Isaiah 8:3) had been borne to him by the "prophetess," and named under a Divine command. His own name also may be regarded in the "sign" as symbolical, meaning "Jehovah's salvation." If then, the words of vers. 17, 18 are quoted as those of the prophet himself (and they are certainly his own in our Hebrew text), he is viewed as himself a sign, in the sense of type, of the Immanuel to come. And the point of the quotation is that, to complete such typical sign, it was required that "the children God had given him" should be combined with him in the representation. They represent the ἀδελφοί, the ἀγιαζομένοι, as Isaiah does the υἱὸς, the ἀγιάζων, all being together ἐξ ἑνός. If it be objected that the children given to Isaiah were his own offspring, and not "brethren," as in the antitype, it may be replied that it is net the human paternity of the "children," but their having been given by God to the prophet to be "signs" along with him, that is the prominent; idea in the original passage, and that, thus viewed, the words of Isaiah have their close counterpart in those of our Lord; "The men which thou gavest me out of the world; thine they were, and thou gavest them me" (John 17:6, 9, 11, 12). Such, then, may be the ground for assigning the utterance to Christ, justified by the Messianic character of Old Testament prophecy in general, according to which "the historic sense of the utterance does not exclude the purpose of prophecy; but leaves typical references open which declare themselves historically by some corresponding Messianic fact, and hence are recognized afterwards from the point of view of historic fulfillment" (Meyer). But when we refer to the LXX. (which in the passage before us varies greatly from the Hebrew) we find a further reason. The LXX. has (Isaiah 8:16, 17, 18) "Then shall be manifest these that seal the Law that one should not learn it. And he will say (καὶ ἐρεῖ), I will wait upon God, who has turned away his hoe from the house of Israel, and I will put my trust in him. Lo I and the children which God hath given me." Here, in the absence of any preceding nominative in the singular to be the subject of ἐρεῖ, the writer of the Epistle may have understood the Messiah to be the speaker; and the Seventy also may have so intended the expression. The general drift of the passage, as interpreted in the Epistle, remains the same, though the LXX. more distinctly suggests and justifies its application to Christ. The only difference is that, according to the Hebrew, the prophet speaks and is regarded as a type; according to the LXX., the Antitype himself is introduced as speaking, and declaring the type of Isaiah to be fulfilled in himself.