The Angel of YHWH

This is the oldest Christian reading. Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with Trypho 56 to 60 and 127 to 128, writes of the one who appeared to Abraham, Jacob and Moses and is called God. He calls that one distinct from the Maker of all things in number and not in will.

Irenaeus, in Against Heresies 4.10.1, finds the Son of God speaking with Abraham throughout the writings of Moses. Tertullian, in Against Praxeas 14 to 16, holds that the Father is invisible and that the Son was visible before the days of his flesh.

Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible, reads the angel at Genesis 16:7, Genesis 22:11 and Genesis 32:24 as Jesus Christ appearing to the patriarchs. At Genesis 48:16 he renders the angel who redeemed Jacob as the goel, the kinsman whose right it is to buy back a lost inheritance.

James A. Borland, in Christ in the Old Testament (1978), and Vern S. Poythress, in Theophany (2018), defend the reading today, and its holders cite Genesis 19:24 and Psalm 110:1 beside the New Testament anchors.

Augustine objects that created angels worked the appearances, so that the Son is not made less invisible than the Father. The reading also became an ingredient of anti-Jewish polemics in the early church, and its holders answer that the argument stands or falls on the texts.

This reading frames the figure in the terms of the Hebrew Bible and of Second Temple Judaism. The rabbinic polemic against two powers in heaven presumes readers who saw a second divine agent bearing the Name, and that pattern of a chief agent fed the earliest worship of Christ.

Alan F. Segal, in Two Powers in Heaven (1977), Larry W. Hurtado, in One God, One Lord (1988), Charles A. Gieschen, in Angelomorphic Christology (1998), and Michael S. Heiser, in The Unseen Realm (2015), hold it. Heiser sets the angel within the divine council and above it, the assembly of the throne-room scenes of Psalm 82, 1 Kings 22 and Job 1. They are more cautious than the first reading about naming the figure the Son inside the Old Testament text.

The holders of the third reading answer that the rabbinic reports of two powers are polemic against heresy, and that the envoy principle explains the same texts without a second divine person.

The figure is God's fully authorized envoy, called God because a man's agent is as the man himself. Augustine, in On the Trinity 3.11 and The City of God 16.29, held that the appearances to the fathers were wrought by the ministry of angels.

Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae, part 1, question 51, writes that the angels who appeared to Abraham were seen by him and by his whole family in bodies they had assumed. Rashi, in his commentary on Genesis, reads the angel of Genesis 16 as a created messenger: a different angel was sent to Hagar for each of the sayings of Genesis 16:9 to 11.

Among Christian teachers Augustine and Aquinas held this reading against the first, and Rashi held it as a rabbinic commentator.

From the first reading comes the answer that the angel bears the Name and will not forgive rebellion (Exodus 23:21) and receives reverence (Joshua 5:14), which the envoy principle strains to carry. That answer adds that the oath of Genesis 22:16 is sworn by the speaker and not relayed.

God truly appeared, but the New Testament does not plainly name the angel of the LORD as the Son. On this reading the appearances are appearances of God, undifferentiated as to person, unless a New Testament text names the Son.

Andrew S. Malone holds that a Christophany must be argued case by case and never assumed, and his caution answers the first reading from within evangelical scholarship. He sets it out in his 2015 book Knowing Jesus in the Old Testament?

The holders of the first reading answer that John 8:56 to 58, 1 Corinthians 10:4, 1 Corinthians 10:9 and Jude 1:5 establish the pattern.

Later scribes, on this reading, inserted malʾak before the divine Name to soften texts in which God appeared directly, for a theology of stricter transcendence. The same holders weigh a related reading, which takes the angel as a hypostasis, a mode in which the presence of God is shown, and not as a person.

Samuel A. Meier holds a form of it in the article Angel of Yahweh, in the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (second edition, 1999). Gerhard von Rad holds another in volume 1 of his Old Testament Theology (English edition, 1962).

The holders of the first three readings answer that the identification and the distinction both stand in the earliest text that survives, and that the evidence for a systematic insertion is uneven. This reading answers the first from outside the confessional traditions.