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omnipotence and glory of God (Hengstenberg on Psa 24:10). For even though the expression צבאם (their host), in Gen 2:1, refers to the heavens only, since it is only to the heavens (vid., Isa 40:26), and never to the earth, that a “host” is ascribed, and in this particular passage it is probably only the stars that are to be thought of, the creation of which had already been mentioned in Gen 1:14.; yet we find the idea of an army of angels introduced in the history of Jacob (Gen 32:2-3), where Jacob calls the angels of God who appeared to him the “camp of God,” and also in the blessing of Moses (Deu 33:2), where the “ten thousands of saints” (Kodesh) are not stars, but angels, or heavenly spirits; whereas the fighting of the stars against Sisera in the song of Deborah probably refers to a natural phenomenon, by which God had thrown the enemy into confusion, and smitten them before the Israelites (see at Jdg 5:20). We must also bear in mind, that whilst on the one hand the tribes of Israel, as they came out of Egypt, are called Zebaoth Jehovah, “the hosts of Jehovah” (Exo 7:4; Exo 12:41), on the other hand the angel of the Lord, when appearing in front of Jericho in the form of a warrior, made himself known to Joshua as “the prince of the army of Jehovah,” i.e., of the angelic hosts. And it is in this appearance of the heavenly leader of the people of God to the earthly leader of the hosts of Israel, as the prince of the angelic hosts, not only promising him the conquest of Jericho, but through the miraculous overthrow of the walls of this strong bulwark of the Canaanitish power, actually giving him at the same time a practical proof that the prince of the angelic hosts was fighting for Israel, that we have the material basis upon which the divine epithet “Jehovah God of hosts” was founded, even though it was not introduced immediately, but only at a later period, when the Lord began to form His people Israel into a kingdom, by which all the kingdoms of the heathen were to be overcome. It is certainly not without significance that this title is given to God for the first time in these books, which contain an account of the founding of the kingdom, and (as Auberlen has observed) that it was by Samuel's mother, the pious Hannah, when dedicating her son to the Lord, and prophesying of the king and anointed of the Lord in her song of praise (1Sa 2:10), that this name was employed for the first time, and that God was addressed in prayer as “Jehovah of hosts” (1Sa 1:11).