this day, the angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads,” he places the angel of God on a perfect equality with God, not only regarding Him as the Being to whom he has been indebted for protection all his life long, but entreating from Him a blessing upon his descendants.
The question arises, therefore, whether the angel of Jehovah, or of God, was God Himself in one particular phase of His self-manifestation, or a created angel of whom God made use as the organ of His self-revelation.[1]
The former appears to us to be the only scriptural view. For the essential unity of the Angel of Jehovah with Jehovah Himself follows indisputably from the following facts. In the first place, the Angel of God identifies Himself with Jehovah and Elohim, by attributing to Himself divine attributes and performing divine works: e.g., Gen 22:12, “Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me” (i.e., hast been willing to offer him up as a burnt sacrifice to God); again (to Hagar) Gen 16:10, “ I will multiply thy seed exceedingly, that it shall not be numbered for multitude;” Gen 21, , “ I will make him a great nation,”-the very words used by Elohim in Gen 17:20 with reference to Ishmael, and by Jehovah in Gen 13:16; Gen 15:4-5, with regard to Isaac; also Exo 3:6., “ I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: I have surely seen the affliction of My people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry, and I am come down to deliver them” (cf. Jdg 2:1). In addition to this, He performs miracles, consuming with fire the offering placed before Him by Gideon, and the sacrifice prepared by Manoah, and ascending to haven in the flame of the burnt-offering (Jdg 6:21; Jdg 13:19-20). Secondly, the Angel of God was recognised as God by those to whom He appeared,
- ↑ Note: In the old Jewish synagogue the Angel of Jehovah was regarded as the Shechinah, the indwelling of God in the world, i.e., the only Mediator between God and the world, who bears in the Jewish theology the name Metatron. The early Church regarded Him as the Logos, the second person of the Deity; and only a few of the fathers, such as Augustine and Jerome, thought of a created angel (vid., Hengstenberg, Christol. vol. 3, app.). This view was adopted by many Romish theologians, by the Socinians, Arminians, and others, and has been defended recently by Hoffmann, whom Delitzsch, Kurtz, and others follow. But the opinion of the early Church has been vindicated most thoroughly by Hengstenberg in his Christology.
