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The Word, the Name, and the Angel
In the last chapter we learned about the cosmic geography of the Bible.
In response to human rebellion at the Tower of Babel, God forsook the nations.
He assigned them to members of his heavenly council, the sons of God (Deut.
32:8–9).
To replace the now-forsaken nations, he would create a new people, a nation of his own.
They would be his agents to renew his kingdom on earth.
But that task would prove to be an awful struggle, as the other gods and the people of their domains would become fierce enemies of Israel and God.
God’s new people would begin with a man named Abram, whose name he would later change to Abraham.
Soon after the judgment at Babel, God paid him a visit.
Abraham Meets the Word
Most Christians are familiar with God’s visit to Abraham in Genesis 12. God tells Abraham to leave his home and go to a place he’s never seen.
God promises to guide him.
He tells Abraham he will be his God and gives him special covenant promises.
He’ll enable Abraham and Sarah to have a son, though they are both elderly.
From that son will come multitudes of people—people who will form the new earthly family of God.
Through them the nations will be blessed.
We tend to think Abraham’s encounters with God were a voice from heaven or in Abraham’s head.
Or perhaps God came in a dream.
The Bible is clear that God did that sort of thing with the prophets and other people.
But that isn’t what happened with Abraham.
God did something more dramatic.
He came as a man.
He and Abraham talked face-to-face.
We get a hint of this in Genesis 12:6–7.
The Bible says God appeared to Abraham.
Three chapters later, God appears again (Gen.
15:1–6).
This time God comes to Abraham as “the word of the Lord” in a vision.
This wasn’t a voice in the head, since the “word” brought Abraham outside and showed him the stars to make the point that his offspring would be uncountable (Gen.
15:5).
God appeared to Abraham as a man on other occasions (Gen.
18).
He did the same to Isaac (Gen.
26:1–5), the son God had promised, and Jacob, the son of Isaac (Gen.
28:10–22; 31:11–12; 32:24–30).
“word”
The “word” or voice of God as a way of expressing God in human form shows up in unexpected places.
One of my favorite instances is found in 1 Samuel 3. The boy Samuel kept hearing a voice calling him at night while he was trying to sleep.
Eventually Eli, the priest with whom Samuel lived and for whom he worked, figured out it was God.
In verse 10, God came back to Samuel: “The Lord came and stood there, and called out as he had before, ‘Samuel!
Samuel!’ ” (gnt).
We know this was God in human form because the description has him standing, and because the end of the chapter (1 Sam.
3:19) says “the word of the Lord” made a habit of appearing to Samuel.
Another prophet to whom the “word of the Lord” came in physical human form was Jeremiah.
In Jeremiah 1, where he is called to be a prophet, Jeremiah says the “word” came to him.
Jeremiah identified the “word” as God himself.
The Lord touched him with his hand (Jer.
1:1–9).
God in Human Form
God appearing as a man is actually a pattern in the Old Testament, long before his arrival as Jesus of Nazareth.
When you think about it, it makes sense.
God is utterly unlike us.
The Bible hints that no human can see the true essence of God, the true glory-presence, and live.
When Bible characters physically encountered God they expected to die (Gen.
32:30; Deut.
5:24; Judg.
6:22–24).
They didn’t, because God filtered his presence through something the human mind could process—a fire, a cloud, and more often than many Christians realize, a man.
In many instances, God’s appearance in human form is described as an encounter with “the Angel of the Lord.”
This Angel is a familiar character.
For example, he appears to Moses in the burning bush (Ex.
3:1–3).
The God in the bush promised to use Moses to lead his people out of Egypt.
God had appeared to Jacob visibly in a dream at Bethel (Gen.
28:10–22), where he was identified as the Lord (Yahweh).
Later the Angel of God came to Jacob in another dream and told him point-blank that he was the same God who met him at Bethel earlier (Gen.
31:11–12).
Many Bible teachers hesitate to identify this Angel as God himself.
But there are several secure indications that he is.
Perhaps the most important happens shortly after God gives the Law to Moses.
As the Israelites prepare to journey on to the Promised Land, God tells Moses:
Behold, I send an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have prepared.
Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him.
But if you carefully obey his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.
(Ex.
23:20–22)
This is no normal angel.
This Angel can forgive sins (or not).
This Angel has the name of God in him.
That expression is odd but significant.
The “name” was an Old Testament way of referring to God himself, God’s very presence or essence.
For example, Isaiah 30:27–28 casts the name of the Lord as a person—as God himself:
Even today observant Jews refer to God by saying
ha-shem (“the name”)
Another way of knowing this Angel was God in human form is to compare Exodus 23:20–22 with other passages.
The Angel who had met Moses in the burning bush, the Angel with God’s name inside him, did indeed bring the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land (Judg.
2:1–3).
But so did the Lord (Josh.
24:17–18) and God’s own presence (Deut.
4:37–38).
The Lord, the presence, and the Angel of the Lord are different ways of pointing to the same figure: God.
But the Angel is human in form.
One of the passages in the Bible that makes this point most compellingly is also very obscure.
Few people ever notice it.
It’s a deathbed scene.
Before he dies, Jacob wants to bless Joseph’s children.
In his blessing he recollects episodes in his life—some of his encounters with God.
He begins his blessing this way (Gen.
48:15–16):
Then he blessed Joseph and said,
“May the God before whom my fathers
Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully,
the God who has been my shepherd
all my life to this day,
16 the Angel who has delivered me from all harm
—may he bless these boys.
May they be called by my name
and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
and may they increase greatly
on the earth.”
Then, incredibly, in verse 16 he prays, “May he bless these boys” (niv, emphasis added).
He doesn’t say, “May they bless these boys,” as though speaking of two different persons, God and the Angel.
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