Introducing the Angel of Yahweh

By Gwen Frangs / Corrandulla / 20 August 2022

The Word of God

In John 1, the Apostle John says that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word is the person who appeared to Abraham in Genesis 15:

After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:

“Do not be afraid, Abram.
    I am your shield,[a]
    your very great reward.[b]”

2 But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit[c] my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

4 Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring[d] be.”

Genesis 15:1-5 NIV

We see that the Word of the Lord is a person because Genesis 15:5 says that ‘he‘ took Abram outside.

In Exodus 6:2-3 Yahweh speaks with Moses:

2 And God said to Moses, “I am Yahweh—‘the Lord.’ 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob in El-Shaddai—‘God Almighty’—but I did not reveal my name, Yahweh, to them.

Exodus 6:2-3

Although commonly translated as God telling Moses that He appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai, this is not what the verse actually says. The correct translation of the verse says that He appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in El Shaddai.

The preposition on the word ‘el’ is בְּ which is the preposition ‘in’ in ancient Hebrew.

Therefore, it follows that this Yahweh Who is speaking to Moses, is saying that He was in the person that appeared to Abraham.

The New Testament reveals that when the Word became flesh, the person Who was in the Word before He became flesh remained in the Word. The New Testament reveals that the person living within the Word is God the Father.

The New Testament teaches us that God the Father is an invisible spirit (Colossians 1:15 ; 1 Timothy 1:17 ; Hebrews 11:27).

The New Testament teaches us that the Father can live inside another being. In the New Testament Jesus tells us that He and the Father are One (John 10:30). He also tells us that He is in the Father and the Father is in Him (John 10:38). He tells Philip in John 14 that the Father is living in Him:

8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 

John 14: 8-10

In Colossians 2:9 we are told that the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Jesus in bodily form. In John 14:23 Jesus makes it clear that if we obey His commandments that the Father will come and live in us:

 Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.

John 14:23

Therefore, when God appeared to people in the Old Testament, a composite Being was appearing to them, which was made up of the Word of God and the Father inside the Word of God. The presence of God was made up of two components, the Word of God, Who is the image of God, and the Father, Who lives within the Word of God. The Word of God is the tabernacle of the Father.

This is why in Exodus 33:14 Yahweh says to Moses: ‘My presence they will go with you’. There is a plural verb ‘they will go’ in this verse in the Hebrew.

This is why:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Deuteronomy 6:4 NIV

This is why, although Aaron made only one golden calf in Exodus 32, when the Israelites saw the calf they said: ‘….these are your gods Israel that brought you out of the land of Egypt’ (Exodus 32:4). Although the Israelites only had one golden calf, they called the calf by the plural ‘gods‘ instead of by the singular ‘god’. They must have done this because they knew that their God was a composite Being.

This is why in Jeremiah 17:12, Yahweh the Word of God says:

A glorious high throne from the beginning

Is the place of our sanctuary.

Jeremiah 17:12 NKJV

The Word of God uses the pronoun ‘our’ to refer to Himself and the Father. It is clear that there is only one throne which is shared by both of them. A careful reading of Jeremiah 17:5-13 shows that it is Yahweh speaking in verse 12 and not Jeremiah. The biblehub.com Interlinear Bible tries to suggest that it is Jeremiah speaking by inserting the heading: ‘Jeremiah’s prayer for deliverance’ directly above verse 12 (Jeremiah 17 Interlinear). However, this heading does not appear in the original text and Jeremiah 17:5-13 is an unbroken passage of speech spoken by Yahweh. Notice that Yahweh the Word of God speaks to Yahweh the Father in verse 13.

El Shaddai

We learn from Exodus 6:2-3 that the Word of God is called El Shaddai.

In Genesis 48 we learn more about Who El Shaddai is.

In Genesis 48 Jacob speaks about El Shaddai, Who appeared to him at Luz (Genesis 48:3) and Who had helped him all of his life:

15 Then he blessed Joseph and said,

“May the God before whom my fathers
    Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully,
the God who has been my shepherd
    all my life to this day,
16 the Angel who has delivered me from all harm
    —may he bless these boys.
May they be called by my name
    and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
and may they increase greatly
    on the earth.”

Genesis 48:15-16

Therefore, we know that El Shaddai is an angel.

So, when the apostle John writes that the Word became flesh, he is writing that the Angel called El Shaddai became flesh and dwelt among us. He is telling us that the Angel in Whom Yahweh was present when He appeared to the Patriarchs, became flesh and dwelt among us. When El Shaddai appeared to people in the Old Testament, He was called the Angel of Yahweh because Yahweh was present within Him. Therefore, before Jesus was Jesus, He was the Angel in Whom Yahweh was present. The Father spoke of this Angel in Exodus 23:

20 “See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. 21 Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him. 22 If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you. 23 My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out.

Exodus 20:20-23 NIV

It is this Angel, Who, when things got totally messed up on the earth, put on flesh and came to the earth as Jesus Christ. It was this Angel, Who incarnate as Jesus Christ, died on the cross to save us from our sins and Who cried out on the cross in total agony: ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ This was because for the first time in His existence, He was separated from the God, for Whom He was created to be a tabernacle. When He was living on the earth, He made it known that He was El Shaddai incarnate. He said, “before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58). In John 14 and 15 He referred to Himself as the Holy Spirit (https://www.topicsinbiblicalstudies.com/jesus-speaks-of-himself-as-the-holy-spirit-in-john-14-and-15/) (John 15:5). He did this because in Isaiah 63, El Shaddai is clearly shown to be the Holy Spirit:

8 He said, “Surely they are my people,
    children who will be true to me”;
    and so he became their Savior.
9 In all their distress he too was distressed,
    and the angel of his presence saved them.[a]
In his love and mercy he redeemed them;
    he lifted them up and carried them
    all the days of old.
10 Yet they rebelled
    and grieved his Holy Spirit.
So he turned and became their enemy
    and he himself fought against them.

Isaiah 63:8-10 NIV

The Holy Spirit is called the angel of His presence because God the Father was present within the Holy Spirit. The Bible makes it clear that anywhere that God the Father is present is holy. God the Father is living in El Shaddai, therefore, El Shaddai is Holy.

Christians are called to be a holy priesthood. Therefore the Holy Spirit is not asking us to do something that He Himself does not do. He is asking us to be tabernacles for the Father, just as He has been the tabernacle for the Father from when He was created.

El Shaddai meets people’s needs

When we look at the character and actions of El Shaddai in the Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament we see that they are the same person. The Bible shows us that El Shaddai consistently loves and wants to help people with their needs.

In Genesis 48 Jacob speaks about the Angel who has helped him all of his life. However, Jacob was not the only person that the Angel helped. This angel met the needs of a lot of different people in the Old Testament. He met the needs of individuals such as Hagar in Genesis 16. He met the need of Manoah and his wife in Judges 13. He met the needs of the Israelites as a group, freeing them from slavery in Egypt in Exodus and from being attacked by other people, such as the time when He used Gideon to fight against the Midianites in Judges 6 and 7. We can see that He really cared about people and their problems and that He helped them by providing what they needed.

When the Angel of Yahweh came as Jesus Christ, He continued to meet people’s needs. Whether they needed food, healing, to be freed from demonic possession, He met the needs of everyone that He met, if they trusted Him to do this. However, because the Father was present in Him, He was not working alone to meet people’s needs because the Father was within Him. They were working together in unity to help people.

After seeing how the Angel with the Father living in Him met people’s differing needs, we can understand how the Apostle Paul was able to tell the Philippians in his letter to them:

And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:19

Paul knew this because, not only had God met his own personal needs, but he was aware of how the Angel of Yahweh and the Father had met people’s needs in the Old Testament.

Is El Shaddai God?

We notice that Jacob refers to this Angel as God in Genesis 48:15 (Genesis 48:15-16).

The Apostle Paul also refers to this Angel as God when he writes to the Philippians. In Philippians 2:5-8, Paul writes:

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,[a]6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,[b]7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,[c] being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Philippians 2:5-8 ESV

Many of the people Who the Angel of Yahweh helped, testified that He was God:

  • In Genesis 16:13 Hagar calls the Angel of Yahweh, God.
  • In Genesis 48:15-16 Jacob calls this same Angel, God.
  • In Judges 13:22, Manoah calls the Angel of Yahweh, God.
  • In Exodus 3, when the Angel of Yahweh appears as fire in a bush, He is referred to as God by the author, both in verses 4 and 6.
  • In Genesis 22:12 the Angel of Yahweh calls Himself God.
  • In Zechariah 12:8, God the Father calls the Angel, God.
  • Hosea calls the Angel, God in Hosea 12:4-5.

This is why we have the concept of the Trinity. Every Christian has heard of the Trinity. Every Christian knows that the Trinity is made up of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It should not surprise us that one of the members of the Trinity is an Angel because, after all, one of the members of the Trinity is a man. The Bible makes us aware that there is a world of angels, so it makes sense that God would have been representing Himself to these angels by means of an Angel long before the creation of man. This is because, if you are an invisible Spirit and you don’t have hands or a voice, you need to inhabit a Being Who does, and Who can act as Your voice, speaking Your words for you. The Bible teaches us that all three members of the Trinity are God. Therefore, the Trinity is the invisible Father, the Angel and the Man. All three are regarded as being equal. Therefore, according to the Bible the Angel of Yahweh is also God.

The Word of God and the Holy Spirit

The Bible makes it clear that the Angel of Yahweh, prior to becoming Jesus Christ, was not in any sense human. The Holy Spirit is able to take different forms. He appeared at Jesus’ baptism as a dove. He appeared as fire in the burning bush and on Mt. Sinai. The Holy Spirit is also able to appear as two or more different forms simultaneously. In Ezekiel 1:26-28 the Holy Spirit is present in two forms – in the form of a man that is on fire and in the form of a rainbow. A careful reading of the Hebrew text shows that the rainbow was also the Holy Spirit. On the day of Pentecost He appeared as tongues of fire on each believer. When one understands that the Holy Spirit is an Angel, Who can change His form, one begins to understand that in the Old Testament the Word of God was the form that was used by the Holy Spirit when He wanted to talk to a human being. It was this form of the Holy Spirit that became flesh as Jesus Christ.

Relating to the Angel of Yahweh

There is no personal pronoun that can accurately identify the Angel of Yahweh. The Angel of Yahweh is not an ‘it’ because the Angel of Yahweh has a personality. The Angel of Yahweh is also not a ‘he’ because in the Bible the angel of Yahweh is often associated with a feminine pronoun. However, the Angel of Yahweh is not female either and Biblical writers used this pronoun for lack of a better option because they used feminine pronouns to describe natural phenomena, such as the sun or the wind. The Angel of Yahweh is something so different that the human imagination cannot possibly envision what the Angel of Yahweh truly is. The true appearance of the Angel of Yahweh is beyond human comprehension. However, it is the Angel of Yahweh, the Holy Spirit, Who is living in every believer. He is able to do this because the Father is able to make angels into spirits:

 In speaking of the angels he says,

“He makes his angels spirits,
    and his servants flames of fire.

Hebrews 1:7 NIV

The Angel of Yahweh is also living in the words in the Bible. This is because the Angel of Yahweh is the breath of God (Psalm 33:6 ; John 1: 1-3 ; Job 26:13). We are told by Paul that:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,

2 Timothy 3:16

Therefore, the words of the Bible are made from the Holy Spirit. This is why the Bible, the written word of God, is living and powerful. When we read the Bible we are relating to the Holy Spirit in a written form. This is why every Christian is drawn to the Bible. As a young Christian I kept buying Bibles. I had a collection of them, even though I could not fully understand what was in them, because I was so powerfully drawn to the Holy Spirit in written form. The Holy Spirit, Who is living within me, was drawing me to Himself in written form. This is because, when we read the Bible, we are reading Him and we are absorbing Him into our soul, where He washes us clean.

I found an interesting picture which captures the connection between the Angel of Yahweh and the Bible:

In this picture we see the Angel of Yahweh, as He appeared as flames of fire in the burning bush, connected with the written words in the Bible. Therefore, when we relate to the Angel of Yahweh, we relate to Him through our spirits, as we are one spirit with Him (1 Corinthians 6:17) and we also relate to Him by reading the Bible. In Heaven and on the New Earth we will once again be able to relate to Him as Jesus Christ. I am truly grateful that He became Jesus Christ, so that we can talk to Him, without falling on our faces in fear because of His glory, and so that we can touch Him. He told the women, who saw Him after His resurrection, not to hold onto Him because He had not yet ascended to His Father. Clearly, they had been used to being able to hold onto Him while He was alive on the earth.

A privilege to be allowed to write about the Holy Spirit

It has been a tremendous privilege for me to be allowed by God to write about this amazing Being called El Shaddai, the Angel of Yahweh. As I continue to explore Who He is and to grow in my understanding of Who He is, my awe of Him increases. Human language is incapable of accurately describing what He is like, but I hope that what I have written may be of some assistance to the reader in understanding Him better.

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