Abstract
At the heart of Hebrews’ exordium (1.3ab), Jesus is said to be ‘the radiance of God’s
glory, the express image of his being, and upholding all things by his powerful
word’. These three predications have not as yet been meaningfully connected to
the rest of the epistle. This article emphasizes the nuanced shifts from
passive to active imagery in 1.3ab and argues that they forecast the reciprocal
pronouncements of family relatedness that the Father and the Son exchange in
the author’s dramatization of Jesus’ exaltation (1.5; 2.12-13). Furthermore,
they locate within the very being of the Son an orientation towards family
identification that will be paradigmatic for the author’s hortatory agenda, as
the recipients are called to respond to the Son’s conferral of family
membership (2.12-13) with reciprocative confessions of Jesus’ sonship (4.14-16;
10.19-23).
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