Hebrews 1:3
Hebrews 1:33The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His nature, upholding all things by His powerful word. After He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
JWs read the verse as Jesus reflecting God's glory the way a mirror reflects light or the way a perfect representative reflects the will and character of his sender. The "exact representation" language is treated as a metaphor for accurate moral and missional resemblance — Jesus perfectly represents God to humanity, but he is the highest creature, not God himself. The Watchtower bracketed the Greek apaugasma into the safer category of "reflection" rather than "radiance" in earlier publications.
The Greek is uncompromising. Apaugasma tēs doxēs autou — "the radiance of his glory" — denotes the light streaming out of the source, not a mirror reflecting an external beam. Charaktēr tēs hypostaseōs autou — "the exact imprint of his very being" — uses the metaphor of a signet pressed into wax, where the impression bears the exact form of the seal. Hypostasis is not "character" or "will" but substance, essential being, actual nature. Then read alongside in the NWT itself: "Who in the skies can compare to Jehovah? Who among the sons of God is like Jehovah?" — answer, nobody. And : "you alone are God." If no creature can even resemble Jehovah, and Jesus is the exact imprint of Jehovah's very being, then Jesus is not a creature. The verse also opens with the upholding of "all things by the word of his power" — sustained creation is a divine prerogative that no creature can perform.