Catholic Commentary
The Crucified and Glorified Jesus: Psalm 8 Fulfilled
9But we see him who has been made a little lower than the angels, Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by the grace of God he should taste of death for everyone.
Hebrews 2:9 presents Jesus as the one temporarily humbled below the angels through suffering and death, who is then crowned with glory and honor precisely because of that sacrificial death. By God's grace, Jesus experienced death fully and personally for every person, establishing the causal connection between his passion and his exaltation.
Jesus was crowned with glory precisely because he suffered and died—not despite it, but through it, for everyone.
"That by the grace of God he should taste of death for everyone":
The phrase hyper pantos ("for everyone" or "for every person") is strikingly universal. It anticipates the more developed discussion of universal atonement in Hebrews 2:14–17. The verb geusetai ("taste") is not merely metaphorical weakness — in Semitic idiom, "to taste death" means to experience it fully and personally. Jesus did not die at a remote distance or symbolically; he entered death from within, tasted its bitterness to the dregs. The source is identified as "the grace of God" (chariti theou) — the death was not a tragic accident or a political execution that God merely permitted. It was a gracious divine initiative, an act of sovereign love. Some early manuscripts read chōris theou ("apart from God"), which the Nestorian tradition preferred to protect divine impassibility — but the overwhelming manuscript tradition and Catholic exegesis follow chariti theou, affirming that the Father's grace, not his absence, underlies Calvary.
Catholic tradition finds in Hebrews 2:9 a scriptural linchpin for several interlocking doctrines.
On the Incarnation as salvific in itself: St. Athanasius (De Incarnatione, §54) famously taught that "the Son of God became man so that we might become God." Hebrews 2:9 provides the scriptural grounding: the descent below the angels was not incidental but purposive — it was the prerequisite for the crown that humanity was always destined to wear. The humiliation was not a detour from glory; it was the road.
On redemptive suffering: The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§623) draws directly on the "tasting of death" language: "By his death, Christ liberates us from sin; by his Resurrection, he opens for us the way to a new life." More specifically, CCC §615 affirms that Christ's obedience unto death is the "one sacrifice of the New Covenant," a voluntary gift rooted in divine charity. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae III, q. 46, a. 3) argued that Christ's suffering was the "most fitting" (convenientissimus) mode of redemption because it expressed simultaneously the fullness of divine love and the full measure of human penitence.
On the universality of redemption: The phrase hyper pantos is foundational for Catholic soteriology's rejection of limited atonement. The Council of Trent (Session VI, Chapter 3) affirmed that Christ died for all humanity, and Gaudium et Spes §22 extends this: "by his Incarnation the Son of God has in a certain way united himself with each man." No human person is beyond the scope of the grace of God expressed on Calvary.
On glory through suffering: Pope John Paul II's apostolic letter Salvifici Doloris (1984) §18 draws on the Hebrews tradition directly, arguing that suffering "in" Christ takes on a redemptive and transformative character, because Christ has already worn its crown.
Hebrews 2:9 speaks with startling directness to a culture that treats suffering as pure dysfunction — something to be medicated, litigated, or scrolled away from. The verse insists that the crowned one got his crown through suffering, not around it. For the Catholic today, this is not an invitation to seek pain for its own sake, but a radical reorientation of how we interpret the sufferings we cannot avoid: illness, grief, failed relationships, professional humiliation, the loneliness of fidelity in an unfaithful age.
When life hands the Catholic reader a moment of genuine diminishment — when they feel, in the author's language, "lower than the angels" — Hebrews 2:9 offers not a pious platitude but a precise theological claim: this is the terrain where Christ has already walked, tasted, and conquered. The name "Jesus" inserted mid-verse is the author's way of anchoring salvation in a person, not a principle. Practically, this means bringing the specific, named sufferings of daily life into contact with the specific, named Person — in the Eucharist, in Confession, in the Liturgy of the Hours — trusting that the grace of God that sent Christ to taste death for everyone has not been exhausted by history.
Commentary
Verse 9 in its immediate literary context:
Hebrews 2:5–9 forms a tight exegetical unit in which the author quotes Psalm 8:4–6 and then immediately confronts the obvious pastoral problem the text creates: if God has put "all things" under the feet of the Son of Man, why does daily experience show everything decidedly not subject to him? The author's answer begins with "But we see…" (Greek: blepomen de), a striking pivot that shifts from unseen promise to visible reality. The word blepomen is emphatic — it is what can be observed, what is already historically accomplished. The tension between "not yet" (all things subjected) and "already" (Jesus crowned) is central to the entire letter's theology of a priesthood inaugurated but not yet fully consummated.
"Him who has been made a little lower than the angels":
The author applies Psalm 8's elattōthenta brachy ti par' angelous ("made a little lower than the angels") directly to Jesus. In the Psalm, the phrase describes the general humility of human nature in contrast to the heavenly beings. The Letter to the Hebrews performs a bold typological re-reading: the Psalm describes not humanity in the abstract, but the one perfect human being who fulfilled humanity's destiny. The perfect passive participle elattōmenon ("having been made lower") signals a deliberate, historical act of divine condescension — not a permanent state, but a temporary one, anchored in the Incarnation. The author is not embarrassed by Christ's subordination to the angels; he is exploiting it. The very lowness of the Incarnation is the mechanism of redemption.
"Jesus" — the name inserted:
The insertion of the personal name "Jesus" here is theologically charged. Throughout Hebrews, this name is used at moments of particular emphasis on the humanity and historical passion of the Son (cf. Heb 12:2, 13:12). The author wants the reader to feel the full weight of a name that means "YHWH saves" — it is the Word made flesh, with a mother's name, a native city, a face that bled. This is not a mythological drama but a particular historical death.
"Because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor":
The Greek dia to pathēma tou thanatou ("because of/through the suffering of death") is causally decisive: the crown is because of the suffering, not despite it. This is the heart of the author's inversion of worldly logic. The path downward — through flesh, through pain, through the abandonment of the cross — is the path that leads to the crown. The word (suffering) in the New Testament often carries the connotation of a passion endured for others. The "glory and honor" () echo both Psalm 8 and the language of Psalm 110, which frames the entire Christological argument of Hebrews. Jesus' Resurrection and Ascension are the visible enthronement the Psalmist foresaw.