Old Testament Theophanies

The divinity of Christ does not appear suddenly in the New Testament, as though the apostles had invented a new doctrine and read it back into an unwilling Scripture. The Old Testament already carries a mysterious pattern: a figure called the Angel of the LORD appears as a messenger distinct from God, and yet speaks as God in the first person, receives the worship and fear due to God alone, reveals the divine Name, and is finally identified by the narrator with the LORD Himself. The ancient Church saw in these appearances not one of the created angelic hosts but pre-incarnate manifestations of the Word who would in the fulness of time become flesh — the visible self-disclosure of the invisible Father.

Distinct, Yet Divine#

In Genesis 16 the Angel of the LORD finds Hagar in the wilderness and speaks in the first person as the One who will multiply her descendants beyond number — a promise God alone can make — and Hagar answers by naming the LORD who spoke to her, “Thou God seest me” (Genesis 16:13). In Genesis 22 the Angel calls to Abraham from heaven and swears, “By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD” (Genesis 22:16), language the writer to the Hebrews says is proper to God, who can swear by none greater (Hebrews 6:13). And in Exodus 3 the Angel of the LORD appears in the flame of the bush, yet the text at once says that God called to Moses out of the bush, and Moses hid his face, “for he was afraid to look upon God” (Exodus 3:6). The messenger is no rival deity and no mere creature speaking on commission, but the divine Presence personally revealed.

Most striking is the word spoken of the Angel who went before Israel: “Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him” (Exodus 23:21). To bear the divine Name, to possess the authority to pardon or refuse to pardon transgression, is to stand on the Creator's side of the line that no angel may cross.

Manoah, and the Captain of the Host#

The parents of Samson meet the Angel of the LORD, who works wonders and ascends in the flame of their altar; Manoah then says in terror, “We shall surely die, because we have seen God” (Judges 13:22). His wife corrects the inference that they must die, but never the conviction that the encounter was with God Himself. So too Joshua, before Jericho, meets a man with a drawn sword who names Himself “captain of the host of the LORD,” and commands, “Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy” (Joshua 5:15) — the very words spoken from the burning bush, and a reverence a faithful angel would have refused, as the angel in Revelation refuses John's worship (Revelation 19:10).

He who is said to have appeared to Abraham, and to Jacob, and to Moses, and who is called God, is distinct from Him who made all things — numerically, I mean, not in will.

Isaiah Saw His Glory#

The pattern reaches its height in the prophets. Isaiah is granted a vision of the LORD “high and lifted up,” the seraphim crying Holy, holy, holy (Isaiah 6:1). Centuries later the evangelist John, having quoted that very chapter, adds an astonishing gloss: “These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of him” (John 12:41) — his glory being Christ's. The throne Isaiah beheld was the throne of the Son. Daniel completes the arc, seeing “one like the Son of man” brought before the Ancient of Days and given “dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him” (Daniel 7:14) — a universal, everlasting worship that Scripture everywhere reserves for God, here received by a human figure who comes with the clouds of heaven.