Page:Keil and Delitzsch,Biblical commentary the old testament the pentateuch, trad James Martin, volume 1, 1885.djvu/193

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appearance of an angel,” is not in harmony with all the statements of the Bible. The form of the Angel of Jehovah, which was discernible by the senses, varied according to the purpose of the appearance; and, apart from Gen 21:17 and Gen 22:11, we have a sufficient proof that it was not a real angelic appearance, or the appearance of a created angel, in the fact that in two instances it was not really an angel at all, but a flame of fire and a shining cloud which formed the earthly substratum of the revelation of God in the Angel of Jehovah (Exo 3:2; Exo 14:19), unless indeed we are to regard natural phenomena as angels, without any scriptural warrant for doing so.^[1]
These earthly substrata of the manifestation of the “Angel of Jehovah” perfectly suffice to establish the conclusion, that the Angel of Jehovah was only a peculiar form in which Jehovah Himself appeared, and which differed from the manifestations of God described as appearances of Jehovah simply in this, that in “the Angel of Jehovah,” God or Jehovah revealed Himself in a mode which was more easily discernible by human senses, and exhibited in a guise of symbolical significance the design of each particular manifestation. In the appearances of Jehovah no reference is made to any form visible to the bodily eye, unless they were through the medium of a vision or a dream, excepting in one instance (Gen 18), ), where Jehovah and two angels come to Abraham in the form of three men, and are entertained

↑ Note: The only passage that could be adduced in support of this, viz., Psa 104:4, does not prove that God makes natural objects, winds and flaming fire, into forms in which heavenly spirits appear, or that He creates spirits out of them. Even if we render this passage, with Delitzsch, “making His messengers of winds, His servants of flaming fire,” the allusion, as Delitzsch himself observes, is not to the creation of angels; nor can the meaning be, that God gives wind and fire to His angels as the material of their appearance, and as it were of their self-incorporation. For עה, constructed with two accusatives, the second of which expresses the materia ex qua, is never met with in this sense, not even in 2Ch 4:18-22. For the greater part of the temple furniture summed up in this passage, of which it is stated that Solomon made them of gold, was composed of pure gold; and if some of the things were merely covered with gold, the writer might easily apply the same expression to this, because he had already given a more minute account of their construction (e.g., Gen 3:7). But we neither regard this rendering of the psalm as in harmony with the context, nor assent to the assertion that עשׂה with a double accusative, in the sense of making into anything, is ungrammatical.

[1] Note: The only passage that could be adduced in support of this, viz., Psa 104:4, does not prove that God makes natural objects, winds and flaming fire, into forms in which heavenly spirits appear, or that He creates spirits out of them. Even if we render this passage, with Delitzsch, “making His messengers of winds, His servants of flaming fire,” the allusion, as Delitzsch himself observes, is not to the creation of angels; nor can the meaning be, that God gives wind and fire to His angels as the material of their appearance, and as it were of their self-incorporation. For עה, constructed with two accusatives, the second of which expresses the materia ex qua, is never met with in this sense, not even in 2Ch 4:18-22. For the greater part of the temple furniture summed up in this passage, of which it is stated that Solomon made them of gold, was composed of pure gold; and if some of the things were merely covered with gold, the writer might easily apply the same expression to this, because he had already given a more minute account of their construction (e.g., Gen 3:7). But we neither regard this rendering of the psalm as in harmony with the context, nor assent to the assertion that עשׂה with a double accusative, in the sense of making into anything, is ungrammatical.

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