Angels in the Pentateuch

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Angels in the Pentateuch     From the very beginning of the Bible, angels are present and active in carrying out the will of God among men. God’s angels help to work out God’s providential will among human beings. This is obvious throughout the whole narrative of the Pentateuch.     The first specific reference to angels who are serving God is Genesis 16:7 where "the angel of the Lord" found Hagar near a spring in the desert when she was fleeing from her mistress, Sarai. In some contexts, perhaps including this one, "the angel of the Lord" seems to refer to a person of the Godhead, probably the pre-incarnate Christ. One reason for this conclusion is that this angel speaks in the first person and commands Hagar and others. He says, "I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count," (Genesis 16:9). It was the angel of the Lord who appeared to Moses in the burning bush. The same text that says it was the angel of the Lord in the bush says that God called to Moses from the bush (Exodus 3:2-4; John 8:58). Another reason to see the "angel of the Lord" as the eternal Word is the description God gives of Him in Exodus 23. It was this "angel of the Lord" who would bring the people from Egypt to Canaan. This angel had the power to forgive sins or withhold forgiveness, and God says of this angel, "my Name is in him," (Exodus 23:20-21; John 17:6, 11-12). Paul makes it clear that the preexistent Christ was present with the Israelites in the wilderness (1 Corinthians 10:4,9). For all of these reasons and more, it seems that the angel of the Lord in many contexts is not referring to a created being, but to Christ himself. Because of this, we will restrict our discussion to contexts in which the angels who were created by God are involved.     Abraham saw "three men" one day when he was camped by the oaks of Mamre. Abraham asked these men to stay with him and accept his hospitality. He told Sarah to bake some bread and he went to the herd and selected a calf to be cooked for them. The "men" ate the food prepared for them while Abraham watched. One of these "men" turned out to be the Lord himself, who told Abraham about the coming birth of his long awaited son, Isaac. The other two turned out to be angels, who turned toward Sodom to deliver Lot from the impending destruction (Genesis 18:22; 19:1). Lot then met them and offered them his hospitality. As with Abraham, they ate again what was prepared for them (19:3). Then, the wicked men of Sodom, who had seen the angels walking through town, came to Lot’s house and said to him, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them," (Genesis 19:5). The heavenly guests proceeded to strike the mob with blindness and rendered them powerless (Genesis 19:10-11). They then warned Lot to come with them and bring their entire family also, "because we are going to destroy this place," (Genesis 19:13). The two angels finally had to take Lot, his wife, and their two daughters by the hand and almost drag them out of the city. The text summarizes by saying, "When God destroyed the cities of the plain, He remembered Abraham and brought Lot out of the catastrophe," (Genesis 19:29).     In this story, the angels of God were both deliverers and destroyers. They both carried out God’s vengeance on the rebellious and delivered those who were favored by God (2 Peter 2:7, 9). This is consistent with the behavior of angels in the rest of the Bible. They often function both as deliverers of the righteous and those who mete out judgment against the wicked. To say that God destroyed the city of Sodom is no different than saying the angels did it, because the angels were acting on God’s behalf. This story also makes it clear that the angels had physical characteristics when they appeared to people. They ate like people eat and were even sexually attractive to the perverted Sodomites. They also demonstrated their great power when they struck the wicked men with blindness and when they brought destruction upon the city. It seems that the admonition of Hebrews 13:1-2 is based on this passage in the Pentateuch. This implies that the writer of Hebrews sees the events of Genesis as directly parallel to events which might transpire in the lives of his readers in the New Testament era.     The patriarchs whose lives were wrapped up in God’s plan for the ages, were often blessed by angels. Abraham was blessed by God’s angels in securing a wife for his son, Isaac (Genesis 23:7, 40). Jacob had much interaction with the angels. When he fled for his life from his angry brother Esau, he had a dream about the ladder which rested on the earth and whose top reached into heaven. The angels of God were ascending and descending on it. Later, when Jacob was returning to meet Esau after his years with Laban, "the angel of God met him," and he called the name of that place Mahanaim, which means "two camps." Jacob seems to have understood that the angels of God were camped where he was camped, watching over him. As the aged Jacob blessed his grandsons, he said, "the angel who has delivered me from all harm—may he bless these boys," Genesis 48:16). It is difficult to tell in this passage whether he is speaking of the angels in general or specifically of the angel of the Lord.     Much of the mention of angels in the rest of the Pentateuch seems concerned with "the angel of the Lord" and not the beings we would normally speak of as "angels." It was the "angel of the Lord" who appeared to Moses in the bush (Exodus 3:2). It was the "angel of the Lord" who traveled in front of Israel’s army so that when he moved, the pillar of cloud also moved (Exodus14:19). It was this angel, in whom was the very NAME of God, who would guard the Israelites on their journey (Exodus 23:20,23; 32:34; 33:2; Numbers 20:16). It seems also to be this special angel or messenger of God who interacted with Balaam in Numbers 22 and 23. This "angel of the Lord," as was said previously, is most likely the pre-incarnate Christ, and not a regular created "angel."     Certainly, the Pentateuch teaches that angels are involved in carrying out the will of God in the lives of his people. They walk among people in the form of human beings, and they have great power to deliver and to destroy according to the will of God. It also seems to teach that the way angels interact with individuals is determined entirely by those individuals’ relationship with the God who commands the angels to do his bidding.