Genesis 16

1. Now Sarai Abram’s wife bare him no children : and she had an handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the LORD hath restrained me from bearing ; go in, I pray thee, unto my handmaid ; it may be that I shall obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai. And Sarai Abram’s wife took Hagar the Egyptian, her handmaid, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to Abram her husband to be his wife. And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived : and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes. And Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee : I gave my handmaid into thy bosom ; and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes : the LORD judge between me and thee. But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand ; do to her that which is good in thine eyes. And Sarai dealt hardly with her, and she fled from her face. And the angel of the LORD found her by a fountain of water in the wilderness, by the fountain in the way to Shur. And he said, Hagar, Sarai’s handmaid, whence camest thou ? and whither goest thou ? And she said, I flee from the face of my mistress Sarai. And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Return to thy mistress, and submit thyself under her hands. And the angel of the LORD said unto her, I will greatly multiply thy seed, that it shall not be numbered for multitude. And the angel of the LORD said unto her, Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son ; and thou shalt call his name Ishmael, because the LORD hath heard thy affliction. And he shall be as a wild-ass among men ; his hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against him ; and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. And she called the name of the LORD that spake unto her, Thou art a God that seeth : for she said, Have I even here looked after him that seeth me ? Wherefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi ; behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered. And Hagar bare Abram a son : and Abram called the name of his son, which Hagar bare, Ishmael. And Abram was fourscore and six years old, when Hagar bare Ishmael to Abram.

1-3. We have here the marriage of Abram to Hagar, who was his secondary wife ; herein, though some excuse may be made for him, he cannot be justified ; for from the beginning it was not so ; and when it was so, it seems to have proceeded from an irregular desire to build up their families. Christ has reduced this matter to the first institution, and makes the marriage union to be between one man and one woman only. H.—Hagar probably came into Abraham’s family during his sojourn in Egypt, and may have been one of the “maid-servants” presented by Pharaoh to the patriarch. Her name “Hagar,” flight, or a fugitive, was one that accrued to her in process of time from the leading event in her history here recorded. Multitudes of similar instances occur in the sacred narrative. Her descendants were called “Hagarites” or “Hagarenes” (1 Chron. 5 : 10), rendered by the Gr. strangers. From her, by Ishmael, the

Saracens and Arabs were descended, and the word “Hegira,” applied to the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina, comes from the same root, or “Mohajerin,” fellow-flyers, the name given by the false prophet to the companions of his flight.

2. The Lord hath restrained me from bearing. This acknowledgment is almost the only redeeming feature of Sarah’s conduct. She owns God’s providence in her childless condition, and yet well-nigh destroys the virtue of this confession by making the fact a plea for contriving some other means for the fulfilment of the promise! Bush.—“What a lively pattern do I see in Abraham and Sarah, of a strong faith and weak; of strong in Abraham, and weak in Sarah! She, to make God good of his word to Abraham, substitutes a Hagar; and, in an ambition of seed, persuades to polygamy. Abraham had never looked to obtain the promise by any other, if his own wife had not importuned him to take another. When our own apparent means fail, weak faith is put to the shifts, and projects strange devices of her own to attain her end.” Bp. II.—The father of mankind sinned by hearkening to his wife, and now the father of the faithful follows his example. How necessary for those who stand in the nearest relations, to take heed of being snares, instead of helps, to one another! Fuller.

2. Obtain children. Heb. “be builded by her.” A family is called a house, and so to beget children is to build. Gerl.—The possession of children, by which the house is built up, is looked on as a divine blessing from Gen. 1:28 onward. “From Jehovah” Eve obtains her first son; it is God who in Seth gave her another seed instead of the murdered Abel; it is always God who makes a mother fruitful or unfruitful (29:31; 30:2), and who will be entreated for the fruit of the body (25:21, etc.). Unfruitfulness is a heavy divine dispensation; childlessness is looked upon as the greatest misfortune to a house. Compare also such passages as Ps. 127:3; 128:3, where a fruitful wife and a group of happy and growing children are designated as the crown of earthly joy. Thus the natural forms of human society are sanctified from the beginning by the religious point of view under which they are placed. O.

3. The Hebrew word pilgash, here translated “wife,” is frequently in other places rendered “concubine.” It describes a wife of a second and inferior class. Such women were considered real wives, inasmuch as the connection was legal and customary; but the absence of certain solemnities and contracts of dowry marked the condition as inferior, though not in itself degrading. The children did not inherit the property of the father; who usually provided for them in his own lifetime, if he had sons by the principal wife or wives to claim the inheritance. We thus find Abraham providing for the sons of his concubines Hagar and Keturah. Things are still much the same in the East, where similar practices are legalized by the Mohammedan law. Pic. Bib.—In concubinage, these secondary wives were accounted lawful and true wives, and their issue was reputed legitimate; but they were inferior to the chief wife, having no authority in the family, nor any share in household government: so, if they had been servants in the family before they became concubines, they continued to be such afterward, and in the same subjection to their mistresses as before. Stackhouse.

With respect to the manifestly imperfect moral standard, which in some cases is displayed in the characters and actions of good men in the Old Testament, it is manifest that had not our Lord himself vouchsafed his help, one of two things must have happened—either that we must have followed the old heresy of rejecting the Old Testament altogether, or else that our respect for the Old Testament must have impeded the growth of the more perfect law of Christ. The true solution I do not think that we could have discovered, or ventured to admit on less authority than our Lord’s. But his express declaration, that some things in the law itself were permitted because nothing higher could then have been borne, and his stating in detail that in several points what was accounted good or allowable in the former dispensation was not so really, while at the same time he constantly refers to the Old Testament as divine, and confirms its language of blessing with respect to its most eminent characters, has completely cleared to us the whole question. T. Arnold.

The promise of offspring had been made to Abram, and he believed the promise. It had not, however, been distinctly assured to him that Sarai should be the mother of the promised seed. The expedient devised by Sarai was according to a custom still prevalent in the east. Laws concerning marriage had not been so expressly given to the patriarchs as they afterward were. Yet the compliance of Abram with Sarai’s suggestion may be considered as a proof of the imperfection of his faith; and it is justly observed, that this departure from the primeval principle of monogamy by Abraham has been an example followed by his descendants in the line of Ishmael, and has proved, morally and physically, a curse to their race. E. H. B.—God’s promises are for Himself to fulfil in His own way, not for us to expedite in ours. The unhasting hope of the husband was a nobler and wiser reply to divine grace than the generous impatience of the wife. Still, Sarai’s impulse, even if mistaken, was admirable for its unselfish abnegation of what is most precious to her sex. It was such a sacrifice as only a woman had it in her power to make. To seek by means of a female slave what Providence had denied to herself was regarded as neither immoral nor revolting. It was not even held to be any real departure from the law of monogamy, or any infraction of conjugal fidelity. But in most cases, as in the present instance, it could scarcely fail to turn out ill. Human nature will assert its instincts against whatever violence may be done to it by the artificial arrangements of society. Dykes.

4-6. We have here the immediate bad consequences of Abram’s unhappy marriage to Hagar; a deal of mischief it made quickly; when we do not well, both sin and trouble lie at the door; and we may thank ourselves for the guilt and grief that follow us, when we go out of the way of our duty. See it in this story. H.

4. The Egyptian Hagar may well have proved a compliant and obeisant maid so long as she was not lifted above her place. But all the woman rose up in her when she believed herself about to become the mother of the desired heir. From the handmaid, she at once aspired to be the rival, of her mistress. Dykes.

5,6. As one not willing to hear what Abram had to say for the rectifying of the mistake, and the clearing of himself, she rashly appeals to God in the case, The Lord judge between me and thee; as if Abram had refused to right her. Thus does Sarai, in her passion, speak as one of the foolish women speaketh. H.—Abram’s ill-judged compliance with the rash counsel of his wife has created an unpleasant state of feeling between him and her; it constrains him to connive at her cruel treatment of an unhappy woman, who is at least as much to be pitied as blamed; and renders the prospect of the promised seed a heavy affliction instead of a blessing. Sarah is betrayed by the eagerness of her spirit first into a culpable expedient; then into unkindness and undutifulness toward her lord; then into irreverence and impiety toward God; and finally, by an easy transition, into barbarity toward the hapless handmaid whom her own scheme had brought into a condition that claimed her utmost compassion and kindness. In what deep and accumulated woe, then, may one inconsiderate step involve the heedless: And if good and well-intentioned people suffer thus severely from one act of imprudence, who but must tremble to think of the fearful consequences of deliberate wickedness! A thousand volumes written against polygamy would not lead to a clearer, fuller conviction of the evils of that practice, than the story under review. Bush.

Sarai’s character showed itself under the provocation in a new and unpleasant light. Severe to her slave, she became unjust to her husband. A more magnanimous woman might have spared the sister whom she had herself thrust into a position of difficulty; but this Chaldean princess was not above showing unhandsome spite where her woman’s pride had been touched to the quick. She made the girl’s life so bitter, that at last Hagar fairly ran away from her master’s encampment, and fled toward her native land of Egypt. Dykes.—The custom of the times scarcely warranted such a treatment. But Abram saw and felt it was the only way to domestic peace, and he took it. By Hagar’s flight and the manner of her return, the mistress was softened—the maid for the time subdued. W. H.

7. The angel of Jehovah.** In many passages “the angel of God,” “the angel of Jehovah,” is a manifestation of God himself. Compare Gen. 22:11 with 12, and Ex. 3:2 with 6 and 14; where the “angel of Jehovah” is called “God” and “Jehovah,” and accepts the worship due to God alone. Side by side with these expressions, we read of God’s being manifested in the form of man; as to Abram at Mamre, to Jacob at Peniel, to Joshua at Gilgal. Apparently both sets of passages refer to the same kind of manifestation of the Divine Presence. Now, since “no man hath seen God” (the Father) “at any time,” and “the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath revealed Him,” the “Angel of the Lord” in such passages must be He, who is from the beginning the “Word,” i.e. the Manifestor or Revealer of God, and these appearances must be “foreshadowings of the Incarnation.” Barry.—[Read “The Theophanies,” etc. at the close of this Section. Also note Sect. 49, v. 17.]

8. Hagar, Sarai’s maid.** This mode of address is used to show her that she was known; and to remind her, that she was the property of another. A. C.—9. Submit thyself. Submission itself, though so hard, may be so accepted as to become useful in the mellowing and strengthening of character. The angel advised submission, and this is the first instance in which such advice is given in the Scriptures. It is a great Christian law, but it is early to find it in Genesis! “Submit yourselves one to another for the Lord’s sake,” is a lesson which Hagar heard “by a fountain of water in the wilderness” J. P.

10. Multiply thy seed.** We find in Gen. 25 a list of twelve princes, with their towns and castles. And in the 37th chapter we find the Ishmaelites already a great trading people. Afterward we find several multitudinous peoples mentioned among his descendants, as the Hagarenes, named from his mother Hagar; the Itureans, from his son Itur; the Nabatheans, from his son Nebaioth. And so onward in later times Strabo makes frequent mention of the Arabian phylarchs or rulers of tribes. And to this day they live and are ruled by tribes, and have continued as the Saracens and other Arabic peoples a great nation, almost as distinct as the Jews among the nations of the earth. Perhaps the Jews and the Arabs are the only peoples on earth who can trace back their pedigree for nearly 4000 years. S. R.

11. Ishmael signifies “God hears.”** The first of the seven persons whose names are announced before their birth. The others were—Isaac, Solomon, Josiah, Cyrus, John, and Jesus. C. G. B.—For, says the Angel, the Lord hath heard thy affliction. Thus the name of the child must ever keep the mother in remembrance of God’s merciful interposition in her behalf; and remind the child and the man that he was an object of God’s gracious and providential goodness. Afflictions and distresses have a voice in the ears of God, even when prayer is restrained—but how much more powerfully do they speak when endured in meekness of spirit, with confidence in, and supplication to the Lord! A. C.

12. It is in the original a wild ass-man; meaning as wild as a wild ass: so that that should be eminently true of him which is affirmed of mankind in general, “Man is born like a wild ass’s colt” (Job 11:12). The nature of the creature to which Ishmael is compared cannot be described better than in the same book (chap. 39:5, etc.), according to which Ishmael and his posterity were to be wild, fierce, savage, ranging the deserts, and not easily softened and tamed to society. And whoever hath read or known anything of this people, knoweth this to be their true and genuine character. His hand will be against every man. The one is the natural and almost necessary consequence of the other. Ishmael lived by prey and rapine in the wilderness; and his posterity have all along infested Arabia and the neighboring countries with their robberies and incursions. They live in a state of continual war with the rest of the world; and are both robbers by land and pirates by sea. Bp. Newton.

Every man’s hand against him. Many potentates among the Abyssinians, Persians, Egyptians, and Turks, have endeavored to subjugate the wandering or wild Arabs; but though they have had temporary triumphs, they have been ultimately unsuccessful. Sesostris, Cyrus, Pompey, and Trajan, all endeavored to conquer Arabia, but in vain. From the beginning, to the present day, they have maintained their independency; and God preserves them as a lasting monument of his providential care, and an incontestable argument of the truth of Divine Revelation. Had the Pentateuch no other argument to evince its divine origin, the account of Ishmael and the prophecy concerning his descendants, collated with their history and manner of life, during a period of nearly four thousand years, is an absolutely demonstrable argument. The country which these free descendants of Ishmael may be properly said to possess, stretches from Aleppo to the Arabian Sea; and from Egypt to the Persian gulf. A tract of land not less than 1800 miles in length by 900 in breadth. A. C.

And he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. Shall tabernacle; for many of the Arabs dwell in tents, and are, therefore, called Senites, from a Greek word, signifying a tent. They dwell in tents in the wilderness as long ago as Isaiah’s and Jeremiah’s time (Is. 13:20; Jer. 3:2), and they do the same at this day. This is very extraordinary, that “his hand should be against every man, and every man’s hand against him;” and yet that he should be able to “dwell in the presence of all his brethren;” but, extraordinary as it was, this also hath been accomplished both in the person of Ishmael and in his posterity. As for Ishmael himself, the sacred historian afterward relates (chap. 25:17, 18) that “the years of the life of Ishmael were an hundred and thirty and seven years, and he died in the presence of all his brethren.” As for his posterity, they dwell likewise in the presence of all their brethren; Abraham’s sons by Keturah; the Moabites and Ammonites, descendants of Lot; the Israelites, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; and the Edomites, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Esau. They still subsist a distinct people, and inhabit the country of their progenitors ; they have from first to last maintained their independency ; and, notwithstanding the most powerful efforts for their destruction, still dwell in the presence of all their brethren, and in the presence of all their enemies. Bp. Newton.

From Havilah to Shur you behold him to-day, as roving and untamed as the wild ass, and dwelling in the presence of his brethren. “Until to-day the Ishmaelites are in undisturbed, free possession of the great peninsula lying between the Euphrates, the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea, from whence they have spread over wide districts in Northern Africa and Southern Asia” (Delitzsch). Ishmael has also become, according to this prophetic utterance, a great nation, and more than “twelve princes” have sprung from his stock. “Every addition to our knowledge of Arabia and its inhabitants,” says Kalisch, “confirms more strongly the Biblical statements. While they have carried their arms beyond their native lands, and ascended more than one hundred thrones, they were never subjected to the Persian empire. The Assyrian and Babylonian kings had a transitory power over small portions of their tribes. Here the ambition of Alexander the Great and his successors received an insuperable check, and a Roman expedition in the time of Augustus totally failed. The Bedouins have remained essentially unaltered since the times of the Hebrews and the Greeks.” Is it not one hundred and twenty millions that speak the Arabic tongue to-day? S. C. B.—This prophecy has photographed a national character which, for more than three thousand years, has continued unchanged. In all ages, historians have described the Bedouin Arab as a “wild man,” or wild ass man ; as roving, predatory, engaged in ceaseless feuds with his neighbors, reckless of the milder restraints of civilization, and setting at defiance those international laws which regulate the intercourse of surrounding nations. The Ishmaelites or Arabians have ever held fast by the same country. Anchored in one land, they have swung over surrounding communities, only to settle, at last, in their own appointed territory, and to retain precisely the same characteristics. The “wildness,” which in other tribes and nations has been first softened, then effaced, has, in their features, never been even lessened by the lapse of ages. Not dispersed by conquest, nor wasted by migration, they dwell still “in the presence of all their brethren,” a strange national spectacle, utterly inexplicable by those laws which regulate other races. Comparatively fugitive and unstable as are the general characteristics of nations while the influences of centuries sweep over them as tidal waves on the shore, the Ishmaelites remain the same as when this strangely-expressed prophecy was first uttered by the angel of the Lord. The more powerful national influences, the attractions of fairer lands, and the luxury of indolent races, utterly failed to change in the least their characteristic features, during that splendid period when their empire extended from the borders of India to the Atlantic. Through all they stood forth a perpetual representation of the facts predicted in their history, and their present condition harmonizes with that of many ages ago. W. Fraser.

Again and again have they been hunted down by invading armies ; but neither the Macedonian, nor the Roman, nor the Turk has been able to establish a settled rule over their inaccessible and inhospitable wastes. Again and again have their predatory hordes swept over adjacent states ; but neither have they been willing to exchange the free air of the desert for the restraints of a settled community. Broken up forever into petty tribes at endless feud with one another, the words of prophecy have actually grown into a proverb of their own : “In the desert,” say the Bedouin, “every one is the enemy of every one else!” Most unchangeable of races, they dwell where they have always dwelt, “in the presence of all their brethren,” stable in their instability, while empire has succeeded empire, and civilization has grown upon the ruins of preceding civilizations. With characteristic fidelity have their own unwritten traditions handed down the memory of their boasted descent from the “father of multitudes,” through him whose birth was announced by the angel at the fountain. Dykes.

13. This Jehovah, Whom she knew as her master’s friend, was, as she now confessed, a “God of vision.” One Who could see, and could be seen. Not only had He seen her, a lonely fugitive by the desert well, far from the tents of men, but He permitted Himself to be seen of her in grace. Not only could He foresee the birth that was to be, with all its hidden issues in the long hereafter, but He could reveal to mortals what only the immortals know. Impressed by this discovery of God,—to her an unknown God till now—she conferred upon Jehovah a new name. “Thou art,” said she, “the God of seeing,” with the double sense underlying the words. For she said : “Here have

I also seen, even after seeing Him!” To have beheld the self-revealing God, and yet live—this made to her mind the marvel of that hour. In after days the fountain is said to have received its name in recollection of the woman’s words. Dykes.

14. Wherefore the well was called Beer-Inhal-roi.** That is, the well of the living that saw God. Medd.—“Well of the seeing to life;” i.e., a well, where man sees God and yet lives, and then at the same time is looked on by Him with grace, and blessed. Cf. ch. 32: 30: “P’ni el,” a place where one sees God’s countenance and the soul is preserved. Ged.—“She called the name of the Lord that spake unto her, that is, thus she made confession of his name, this she said to his praise, Thou God seest me: this should be with her his name forever, and this his memorial by which she will know him and remember him while she lives, Thou God seest me. The God with whom we have to do is a seeing God, an all-seeing God. God is (as the ancients expressed it) all eye. We ought to acknowledge this with application to ourselves. He that sees all, sees me. H.

The Christian does not think of God as a spy upon his actions, or resent the doctrine of His omnipresence as intrusive inquisitiveness, but he delights in the assurance that the Lord is by his side. The words, “Thou God seest me,” so often used as if they were a warning to the sinner, were first employed by Hagar as an expression of her gratitude for the appearance of God to her by the fountain on the way to Shur. They are not, therefore, expressive of alarm, but rather of delight; and every true believer can appropriate them in that sense. For the Lord is as near to those who love Him now as He was then to Hagar; and if we could only remember that, we should be delivered from despondency and encouraged to stand fast before all our spiritual adversaries. The child is not afraid to venture even in the darkest night when his father is by his side; and if we but realized that God is at our right hand, we should never be moved. For there is no help so available to us as His. With the speed of thought we may communicate with Him. With unspoken ejaculation we have but to lift our hearts to Him, and He will respond. To whom, then, are we so near as we are to Him? He is to those who love Him a constant companion, friend and protector, One with whom I can enjoy the sweetest fellowship, and from whom I may receive the richest blessings. W. M. T.

God knows the thoughts which are incessantly streaming through every intellect, the lights and shadows that chase each other over every heart. Every corroding care, every restless anxiety, every glad hope, every pleasant remembrance, every half-formed purpose to do a just or kindly act, or to leave an acknowledged duty undischarged, every scheme of selfishness, every malignant impulse, all are known to him. If there were no angels for him to think of, if some dreadful pestilence suddenly swept away the whole human race except yourself, and left you and God absolutely alone in the universe, he would not know you more perfectly, or think of you more constantly than he does now. If there is something terrible in this, there is something inspiring and animating in it, too. If it makes us tremble when we think of our secret faults and sins, since he knows and remembers them all, it should give courage and energy to the attempt to live a life that God can approve and honor. We may have little to show for efforts which cost us much, but God knows what the efforts are. We may be baffled and defeated again and again, but God sees the heroic uprising of the soul after every disappointment and failure. The best we can do may attract no attention, win no praise; but if it is our best, God knows it, and he asks for nothing more. Dule.

The Theophanies, or Manifestations of Jehovah

The sixteenth chapter of Genesis introduces to us One Who, there and in many other places of the Bible, is pre-eminently entitled The Angel of the LORD. The unique grandeur of this Personage is distinctly marked in every instance in the Sacred Text. Dr. Pusey, speaking on this point, says, “Whether it were God the Son Who so manifested Himself beforehand—as was the common belief of the earliest fathers—His God-head invisible, as in the days of His flesh, or no, yet there was one known as the Angel of the LORD, distinct from and above all the rest.” He stands everywhere alone and unapproachable. There is but one so called; just as there is also but one in the Holy Scriptures who is called the Devil, the Satan, the Adversary. Further, in every place where the Angel of the LORD is introduced His divine character and dignity are also most clearly intimated. Who can this be but the Son of God, the Word of the Father? Medd.

Throughout the whole of Old Testament there runs the distinction between the hidden God and the Revealer of God, Himself equal with God, who most frequently is called “the Messenger, the Angel of the Lord,” “Malachi-Jehovah,”—one with Him, and yet distinct from Him. This Messenger of the Lord is the Guide of the patriarchs; the Caller of Moses; the Leader of the people through the wilderness; the Champion of the Israelites in Canaan; and also, yet further, the Guide and Ruler of the people of the covenant; or, as He is called (Isa. 63 : 9), “the Angel of His Presence;” by Malachi, as the Messenger of the Covenant, greatly longed for by the people, whose return to His temple is promised. It nowhere occurs in the Old Testament, that an angel speaks as if he were God (since Gabriel (Dan. 10) and the angel who talks with Zechariah (1 : 2) clearly distinguish themselves from Jehovah); while this Angel of the Lord, in the passage under consideration, and often elsewhere in the Old Testament, speaks as Jehovah, and His appearing is regarded as that of the Most High God Himself. Nay, God says expressly of this Angel, “My name—i.e., My revealed Being—is in Him.” His name “Messenger,” or “Angel,” is to be taken in a general signification, and by no means as if it denoted a class of higher created beings. In the New Testament the expressions, “The Word,” “Son,” “Express Image,” “Brightness,” betoken the same, viz., the countenance turned to man, the Revealer of the invisible God. The future appearance on earth of the God-man is gradually prepared in the Old Testament in two ways: on the one hand, there is promised a mighty and glorious human Ruler over all (in later times called “Messiah,”—the Anointed of the Lord), to whom at the same time in His human nature, Divine names, attributes and works are ascribed; on the other hand, the personal distinction in the Godhead, the Revealer of the invisible God as a separate person, is more and more clearly made known. Gerl.

We read in the Patriarchal history of various appearances of Angels so remarkable that we can scarcely hesitate to suppose them to be gracious visions of the Eternal Son. For instance: it is said that “the Angel of the Lord appeared unto” Moses “in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush;” yet presently this supernatural Presence is called “the Lord,” and afterward reveals His name to Moses, as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” On the other hand, Stephen speaks of Him as “the Angel which appeared to Moses in the bush.” Again he says soon after that Moses was “in the Church in the Wilderness with the Angel which spake to him in the mount Sinai;” yet in the Book of Exodus we read, “Moses went up unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain;” “God spake all these words, saying,” and the like. Now, assuming, as we seem to have reason to assume, that the Son of God is herein revealed to us, as graciously ministering to the Patriarchs, Moses and others, in angelic form, the question arises, What was the nature of the appearance? We are not informed, nor may we venture to determine; still anyhow, the Angel was but the temporary outward form which the Eternal Word assumed. Newman.

There is no abstract common angelic nature. Each angel is, from his first creation, perfect in his own personality, from which it follows that the Son of God could not have taken the angelic nature without superseding, indeed annihilating, the personality of some one particular angel; and the sin of the evil angels, who might seem to satisfy the condition of necessity, is irremediable. Thomas Aquinas.

Nor is the office itself of an angel or announcer of the Father’s will unbecoming Him. In a word, God the Father could not have become an angel consistently with His prerogative as Father; for then He would have been sent by another, Who yet is indebted for His authority to no one. To the Son of God, however, both the name of God altogether belongs, as being most true God; and also the appellation of Angel, forasmuch as He is in such wise very God, as to be God of God, and was, therefore, capable of receiving and undertaking, consistently with the dignity of his person, the mission and dispensation committed to him by God, of whom he is. Bp. Bull.

The New Testament distinguishes between the hidden God and the revealed God—the Son or Logos—connected with the former by one of the other, who from everlasting, and even at the creation itself, filled up the immeasurable distance between the Creator and the creation.—Who has been the Mediator in all God’s relations to the world.—Who at all times, and even before he became man in Christ, has been the light of the world, and to whom, specially, was committed the direction of the economy of the old covenant. It is evident that this doctrine stands in the closest connection with the Christology,—that it forms indeed its theological foundation and groundwork. . . . The question then is, Whether any insight into this doctrine is to be found as early as in the Books of the Old Testament. Sound Christian Theology has discovered the outlines of such a distinction between the hidden and the revealed God, in many passages of the Old Testament, in which mention is made of an Angel or Messenger of God. Hengstenberg (Christology of the Old Testament).

Whatever line of interpretation be adopted with respect to the Theophanies, no sincere believer in the historical trustworthiness of Holy Scripture can mistake the importance of their relation to the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity. Do they not point in any case to a purpose in the Divine mind which would only be realized when man had been admitted to a nearer and more palpable contact with God than was possible under the Patriarchal or Jewish dispensations? Do they not suggest, as their natural climax and explanation, some personal self- unveiling of God before the eyes of his creatures? Would not God appear to have been training his people, by this long and mysterious series of communications, at length to recognize and to worship him when hidden under and indissolubly one with a created nature? Considering them as a series of phenomena, is there any other account of them so much in harmony with the general scope of Holy Scripture as that they were successive lessons addressed to the eye and to the ear of ancient piety, in anticipation of a coming Incarnation of God? H. P. L.

It remains, then, that the grand initial oracle of Revelation is the true key to this mysterious appellation, “the Angel of the Lord”—namely, the plurality of persons in the Divine Nature, the very unity of which not only admits but requires such distinctions as this appellation implies. Their essential relations as Triune give rise to an order of agency and outgoing strictly conformable to, and in effect, expository of them, since all things are designed to manifest God to His creatures, and to glorify Him as He is. Hence, we can understand how the term Angel as well as the term Word may distinguish a person truly God, though these cannot be applicable to each person of the Godhead indiscriminately. He whose Angel this divine Person is must be supreme on the ground of personal priority to Him who is His Angel; and this order, therefore, cannot be arbitrary and invertible. This fact becomes fully manifest when the New Testament statements on this point are applied to elucidate the more vague and general statements of the Old. In them, personal relations are brought out, not only as consistent with the Unity, but as of its very essence. This shows us why the term Angel is used to denote the Mediating Deity; it belongs to Him as “the head of all principality and power.” He is the Angel or Envoy, who is not only the head of a whole host of these “ministering spirits,” but in a very peculiar sense the Minister of God on behalf of the world. It is His ministry that gives rise to every other, and that ordains and sets all these in motion. It is the vinculum or bond between “Him whom no man hath seen, nor can see,” and the creatures made like Him, and to be restored to Him, by Him who is “become one of us.” Thus, we see that Angel implies the position of a Mediator and all the prerogatives and works proper to Him, while it has this advantage over the term Word, that it is more strongly personal. It cannot be resolved into personification. It is also worth notice, that the passage in which the first mention occurs of “the angel of the Lord” is in the chapter immediately following the one opening with the first mention of the “Word of the Lord” in a sense undoubtedly personal, as if this collation of the terms Word and Angel were meant to form together an outset in the career of mediatorial personality, which from this point onward acquires increasing variety and fulness of expression; while the evidence before adduced is in proof that the functions any more than the office of the Mediator did not take date from this point, but connected the manifestations now referred to with the earliest times. It is but distinct personal development that now occurs; a fact which supposes official pre-existence just as certainly as it does a personal one, and in entire keeping with the germinant principle inherent in all the divine counsels and works, of which the history of Creation itself supplies a great example. Steward (Mediatorial Sovereignty).

Thus we trace throughout the volume of the Old Testament the gracious intervention, from time to time, of the Son of God, the one Mediator, in the character of The Angel of the Lord, sent by the Father, and seen in human form by man, in waking life and in vision, in significant preparation for His permanent Incarnation. This great Presence, so clearly apprehended by the earlier Christian writers and Apologists, and, in later times, so largely admitted by the great majority of orthodox reformed, and especially English, biblical writers, lights up the whole previous Dispensation with a wonderful anticipation of the glorious future Gospel. It binds together, as nothing else does, the Old Testament in a compact unity with the New, giving a special strength and consistency to the great Revelation contained in the two. Read in the light of this bond of coherence, the great saying of Saint Augustine receives additional force and meaning, Novum Testamentum in vetere latet; Vetus Testamentum in novo paret; and, taking prophecy in its widest, truest sense, i.e. for the whole inspired utterance of the whole Bible as a historic Revelation, it is seen clearly that its spirit, its whole inner meaning and aim,

is the bearing witness to Jesus, the Same in the yesterday of the Old Covenant, as in the to-day of the New. Medd.