Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Exodus 23:20
Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.
20. an angel ] such as guided and protected the patriarchs (Gen 24:7; Gen 31:11; Gen 48:16); cf. Exo 14:19 (on Exo 32:34, Exo 33:2, see the notes), Num 20:16. It is true, the expression here used is ‘ an angel’ (so Num 20:16: contrast ch. Exo 3:2); but he appears in v. 21 as Jehovah’s full representative (see on Exo 3:2). Elsewhere in JE the pillar of cloud (see on Exo 13:21), Hobab (Num 10:31), and the ark (Num 10:33), are severally described as guiding Israel in the wilderness.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
20, 21. An angel is to guide Israel on its journey to Canaan: his instructions must be received with the same respect and fear as those of Jehovah Himself; for Jehovah will Himself be speaking in him.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
20 33. Hortatory epilogue. The laws which Israel is to observe have been defined: and now Jehovah declares what He will do for His people if it is obedient to His voice ( v. 22): He will give it prosperity, freedom from sickness and long life, success in its contests with the nations of Canaan, and extension of territory afterwards. Comp. the similar, but longer and more elaborated, hortatory discourses (including curses on disobedience), concluding the codes of H (Lev 26:3-45) and Dt. (Deuteronomy 28). It is remarkable that the commands which Israel is to obey are not those embodied in ch. Exo 20:22 to Exo 23:19, but ( v. 22) those to be given it in the future by the angel on the way to Canaan. Perhaps (B.) the passage was written originally for a different context: but even if that were the case, it must be intended, where it now stands, to suggest motives for the observance of the preceding laws.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
An Angel – See Exo 3:2, Exo 3:8; Jos 5:13; Isa 63:9.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Exo 23:20
To bring thee into the place which I have prepared.
Lifes pilgrimage
The angel, the way, the prepared place. It is the Divine key to the mystery of life. Life is emphatically a way. Not by the way of the sea–a prompt and easy path–but by the way of the wilderness, of old God led His pilgrims. The vision of the angel in the way lights up the wilderness. Consider the suggestion of the text as to–
I. The pilgrims condition. Gods children must be pilgrims, because this world is not good enough, not bright enough, not capable of being blessed enough, for the pilgrim in his home. For–
1. The instructed soul sees the touch of essential imperfection and the bounds of close limitation in everything here.
2. There is a constant aching of the heart through memory and hope.
3. Life is a pilgrimage because it is far away from the Friend whom we supremely love.
II. The pilgrims guide.
1. God has sent His angel before us in the person of His Son.
2. He sends His angel with us in the person of the Holy Ghost.
III. The pilgrims way to the pilgrims home.
1. It is a way of purposed toil and difficulty, of wilderness, peril, and night. Suffer we must in the wilderness; the one question is, Shall it be with or without the angel of the Lord?
2. It is a way of stern, uncompromising duty. God asks us now simply to do and to bear, and to wait to see the whole reason and reap the whole fruit on high. We must train ourselves to the habit of righteous action, and leave the results to God and eternity.
3. It is a way of death. God promises to none of us an immunity from death. The shadow hangs round life as a drear monitor to all of us. He only who can eye it steadily and fix its form will see that it is angelic and lustrous with the glory beyond. The grave is but the last step of the way by which the angel leads us to the place which He has prepared. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)
Divine guidance
I. There is a Divine way.
1. Through the wilderness.
2. Beset with enemies.
3. Many privations.
4. Contrary to mere human liking.
Gods way is not our way! Ours may be pleasant at first but bitter at last, but Gods way is the reverse; and yet not exactly, for sweets are graciously mingled with the bitters. There is hunger, but there is manna. There is thirst, but there is clear water from the smitten rock. There is perplexity, but there is an angel to guide and protect.
II. This way leads to Divinely-prepared places. Heaven is a specially prepared place. I go to prepare a place for you. A place in the best of all places. A home in the best of homes. A dwelling-place where all the abodes are mansions. A seat where all the seats are thrones. A city where all the citizens are kings. What matters it though the way be long and sometimes dreary, so long as the place is so attractive; and we cannot fail to reach it if we obey Divine directions.
III. The travellers on this way are favoured with a Divine guide. Jesus Christ, the Angel of the new covenant, is fully competent to direct and protect. He has trodden every inch of the way.
IV. Divine promises are contingent on the faithful pursuit of Divine methods (Exo 23:21). The Divine methods are–Caution, obedience, self-restraint, and the entire destruction of all that has the remotest tendency to damage the moral nature. (W. Burrows, B. A.)
The angel of the covenant
I. His nature was Divine.
1. Equal with God.
(1) Bearing the Divine name; My name is in Him. The incommunicable covenant name of Jehovah.
(2) Performing Divine actions; Mine angel shall go, etc., I will cut them off. So New Testament, I and My father are one.
2. Distinct from the personality of the speaker, I send, so New Testament, The Father which sent Me.
II. His office was to conduct the covenant people to the fulfilment of Gods covenant engagement.
1. Providence. To keep thee in the way. So Christ upholds all things by the word of His power. In Him all things consist. Generally and particularly He preserves those who trust in Him (Joh 10:28).
2. Redemption. To bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Israels redemption is only half accomplished as yet. So Christs eternal redemption is not complete till the last enemy is destroyed (Joh 14:2-3).
III. The proper attitude towards Him.
1. Fear. Carefulness not to displease Him. Christ is the Saviour of those only who believe in Him. To others He is a savour of death unto death.
2. Obedience. Obey His voice. So says the Father in the New Testament (Mat 17:5); and Himself (Mat 28:20). This implies
(1) Trust in His person.
(2) Subjection to His authority.
(3) The prosecution of His commands.
IV. The reward of obedience to Him (Exo 23:22-23).
1. Identification and sympathy with us in our cause. I will be an enemy, etc.
2. Victory over our foes (1Co 15:57), world, flesh, devil, death, etc.
3. Inheritance in the promised land.
Learn–
1. (2Ti 1:9), That Gods grace has been manifested in Jesus Christ from the beginning of the world.
2. That Gods grace has been, through Jesus Christ, with His people up to the present moment.
3. And will be till the end of the world. (J. W. Burn.)
Christ at the head of the column
It is said when the Duke of Wellington, on one occasion, rode up to his retreating army, a soldier happened to see him first and cried out: Yonder is the Duke of Wellington; God bless him! and the retreating army had courage to nerve itself afresh and went forward and drove the enemy away. One has said that the Duke of Wellington was worth more at any time than five thousand men. So it would be if we had the Captain of our salvation in front, we would go forward. How gloriously would this Church contend if Christ were visibly in front of them! But the army was sometimes without the Duke of Wellington. There was a place where he could not be. And if Christ were visibly present, He would be present at the same time, only at one church in one locality; it might be in Philadelphia, but what of the thousand other cities? But an unseen Saviour is at the head of the column everywhere. We know He is there. The Captain of our salvation is where two or three are gathered in His Name to inspire us; and to-day, in every city on the face of this globe, where the columns meet to march, His voice sounds Onward! in their ears. (M. Simpson, D. D.)
The angel in life
Laws without angels would turn life into weary drudgery. Life has never been left without some touch of the Divine presence and love. From the very first this has been characteristic of our history. The solemn–the grand, fact is, that in our life there is an angel, a spirit, a presence; a ministry without definite name and altogether without measurableness! a gracious ministry, a most tender and comforting service, always operating upon our lifes necessity and our hearts pain. Let us rest in that conviction for a moment or two until we see how we can establish it by references to facts, experiences, consciousness against which there can be no witness. See how our life is redeemed from baseness by the assumption that an angel is leading it. Who can believe that an angel has been appointed to conduct a life which must end in the grave? The anticlimax is shocking; the suggestion is charged with the very spirit of profanity. If an angel is leading, us, is he leading us to the grave? What is it within us that detests the grave, that turns away from it with aversion, that will not be sent into so low and mean a prison? It is the Divinity that stirs within us. Then again, who could ask an angel to be a guest in a heart given up to evil thoughts and purposes? Given the consciousness that an angel is leading us, and instantly a series of preparations must be set up corresponding with the quality and title of the leading angel of our pilgrimage. We prepare for some guests. According to the quality of the guest is the range and costliness of our preparation. Whom our love expects our love provides for. When we are longing for the coming one, saying, The presence will make the house the sweeter and the brighter, and the speech will fill our life with new poetry and new hope. Oh, why tarry the chariot wheels? then we make adequate–that is to say, proportionate–preparation. The touch of love is dainty, the invention of love is fertile, the expenditure of love is without a grudge or a murmur,–another touch must be given to the most delicate arrangement; some addition must be made to the most plentiful accommodation; love must run over the programme just once more to see that every line is worthily written. Then the front door must be opened widely, and the arms and the heart, and the whole being to receive the guest of love. And that is so in the higher regions. If an angel is going to lead me, the angel must have a chamber in my heart prepared worthy of myself. Chamber!–nay, the whole heart must be the guest-room; he must occupy every corner of it, and I must array it with robes of purity and brightness that he may feel himself at home, even though he may have come from heaven to do some service for my poor life. Any appeal that so works upon every kind of faculty, upon imagination, conscience, will, force, must be an appeal that will do the life good. It calls us to perfectness, to preparedness, to a nobility corresponding in some degree with the nobility of the guest whom we entertain. The Divine presence in life, by whatever name we may distinguish it, is pledged to two effects, supposing our spirit and our conduct to be right. God undertakes our cause as against our enemies. Would we could leave our enemies in His hands! I do not now speak altogether of merely human enemies–because where there is enmity between man and man, though it never can be justified, yet it admits of such modification in the system of words as to throw responsibility upon both sides–but I speak of other enemies,–the enmity expressed by evil desire, by the pressure of temptation, by all the array against the souls health and weal of the principalities of the power of the air, the princes of darkness, the spirits of evil. Send the angel to fight the angel; let the angel of light fight the angel of darkness. The second effect to which the Divine presence in our life is pledged is that we shall be blessed with the contentment which is riches. Thus we have mysteries amongst us which the common or carnal mind cannot understand. Men asking Gods blessing upon what appears to be unblest poverty–men saying it is enough when we can discover next to nothing in the hand uplifted in recognition of Divine goodness. Thus we hear voices coming from the bed of affliction that have in them the subdued tones of absolute triumph; thus the sick-chamber is turned into the church of the house, and if we would recover from dejection, and repining, and sorrow, we must go to the bedside of affliction and learn there how wondrous is the ministry of Gods angel, how perfecting and ennobling the influence of Gods grace. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 20. Behold, I send an Angel before thee] Some have thought that this was Moses, others Joshua, because the word malach signifies an angel or messenger; but as it is said, Ex 23:21, My name is in him, ( bekirbo, intimately, essentially in him,) it is more likely that the great Angel of the Covenant, the Lord Jesus Christ, is meant, in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. We have had already much reason to believe that this glorious personage often appeared in a human form to the patriarchs, c. and of him Joshua was a very expressive type, the names Joshua and Jesus, in Hebrew and Greek, being of exactly the same signification, because radically the same, from yasha, he saved, delivered, preserved, or kept safe. Nor does it appear that the description given of the Angel in the text can belong to any other person.
Calmet has referred to a very wonderful comment on these words given by Philo Judaeus De Agricultura, which I shall produce here at full length as it stands in Dr. Mangey’s edition, vol. 1., p. 308: , , , , . , , . “God, as the Shepherd and King, conducts all things according to law and righteousness, having established over them his right WORD, his ONLY-BEGOTTEN SON, who, as the Viceroy of the Great King, takes care of and ministers to this sacred flock. For it is somewhere said, (Ex 23:20), Behold, I AM, and I will send my ANGEL before thy face, to keep thee in the way.”
This is a testimony liable to no suspicion, coming from a person who cannot be supposed to be even friendly to Christianity, nor at all acquainted with that particular doctrine to which his words seem so pointedly to refer.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
To wit, Christ, the Angel of the covenant, as may be gathered both from the following words, because pardon of sin, which is Gods prerogative, Mar 2:7, is here ascribed to him, and Gods name is in him, and by comparing other scriptures, as Exo 32:34; Act 7:38,39; 1Co 10:9. See Exo 13:21; 14:19.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
20-25. Behold, I send an Angelbefore thee, to keep thee in the wayThe communication of theselaws, made to Moses and by him rehearsed to the people, was concludedby the addition of many animating promises, intermingled with severalsolemn warnings that lapses into sin and idolatry would not betolerated or passed with impunity.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Behold, I send an angel before thee,…. Not a created angel, but the uncreated one, the Angel of God’s presence, that was with the Israelites at Sinai, and in the wilderness; who saved, redeemed, bore, and carried them all the days of old, whom they rebelled against and tempted in the wilderness; as appears by all the characters after given of him, which by no means agree with a created angel: Aben Ezra observes, that some say this is the book of the law, because it is said, “my name is in him”, or “in the midst of it”; others say, the ark of the covenant; but he says this angel is Michael; and if indeed by Michael is intended the uncreated angel, as he always is in Scripture, he is right: Jarchi remarks, that their Rabbins say, this is Metatron, whose name is as the name of his master; Metatron, by gematry, is Shaddai, which signifies almighty or all-sufficient, and is an epithet of the divine Being; and Metatron seems to be a corruption of the word “mediator”: some of the ancient Jewish writers say k, this is the Angel that is the Redeemer of the world, and the keeper of the children of men: and Philo the Jew l applies the word unto the divine Logos, and says,
“he (God) uses the divine Word as the guide of the way; for the oracle is, “behold, I send my Angel”, c.”
which agrees with what follows:
to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared to preserve the Israelites in their journey through the wilderness, from all their enemies that should set upon them, and to bring them safe at last to the land of Canaan, which he had appointed for them, and promised to them, and had prepared both in his purpose and gift for them, and would make way for their settlement in it by driving out the nations before them.
k In Zohar in Gen. fol. 124. 4. l “De migratione” Abraham, p. 415.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Relation of Jehovah to Israel. – The declaration of the rights conferred by Jehovah upon His people is closed by promises, through which, on the one hand, God insured to the nation the gifts and benefits involved in their rights, and, on the other hand, sought to promote that willingness and love which were indispensable to the fulfilment of the duties incumbent upon every individual in consequence of the rights conferred upon them. These promises secured to the people not only the protection and help of God during their journey through the desert, and in the conquest of Canaan, but also preservation and prosperity when they had taken possession of the land.
Exo 23:20-27 Jehovah would send an angel before them, who should guard them on the way from injury and destruction, and bring them to the place prepared for them, i.e., to Canaan. The name of Jehovah was in this angel (Exo 23:21), that is to say, Jehovah revealed Himself in him; and hence he is called in Exo 33:15-16, the face of Jehovah, because the essential nature of Jehovah was manifested in him. This angel was not a created spirit, therefore, but the manifestation of Jehovah Himself, who went before them in the pillar of cloud and fire, to guide and to defend them (Exo 13:21). But because it was Jehovah who was guiding His people in the person of the angel, He demanded unconditional obedience (Exo 23:21), and if they provoked Him ( for , see Exo 13:18) by disobedience, He would not pardon their transgression; but if they followed Him and hearkened to His voice, He would be an enemy to their enemies, and an adversary to their adversaries (Exo 23:22). And when the angel of the Lord had brought them to the Canaanites and exterminated the latter, Israel was still to yield the same obedience, by not serving the gods of the Canaanites, or doing after their works, i.e., by not making any idolatrous images, but destroying them (these works), and smiting to pieces the pillars of their idolatrous worship ( does not mean statues erected as idols, but memorial stones or columns dedicated to idols: see my Comm. on 1Ki 14:23), and serving Jehovah alone. Then would He bless them in the land with bountiful provision, health, fruitfulness, and length of life (Exo 23:23-26). “Bread and water” are named, as being the provisions which are indispensable to the maintenance of life, as in Isa 3:1; Isa 30:20; Isa 33:16. The taking away of “sickness” (cf. Exo 15:26) implied the removal of everything that could endanger life. The absence of anything that miscarried, or was barren, insured the continuance and increase of the nation; and the promise that their days should be fulfilled, i.e., that they should not be liable to a premature death (cf. Isa 65:20), was a pledge of their well-being.
Exo 23:27 But the most important thing of all for Israel was the previous conquest of the promised land. And in this God gave it a special promise of His almighty aid. “ I will send My fear before thee.” This fear was to be the result of the terrible acts of God performed on behalf of Israel, the rumour of which would spread before them and fill their enemies with fear and trembling (cf. Exo 15:14.; Deu 2:26; and Jos 2:11, where the beginning of the fulfilment is described), throwing into confusion and putting to flight every people against whom ( – ) Israel came. to give the enemy to the neck, i.e., to cause him to turn his back, or flee (cf. Psa 18:41; Psa 21:13; Jos 7:8, Jos 7:12). : in the direction towards thee.
Exo 23:28 In addition to the fear of God, hornets ( construed as a generic word with the collective article), a very large species of wasp, that was greatly dreaded both by man and beast on account of the acuteness of its sting, should come and drive out the Canaanites, of whom three tribes are mentioned instar omnium , from before the Israelites. Although it is true that Aelian ( hist. anim. 11, 28) relates that the Phaselians, who dwelt near the Solymites, and therefore probably belonged to the Canaanites, were driven out of their country by wasps, and Bochart ( Hieroz. iii. pp. 409ff.) has collected together accounts of different tribes that have been frightened away from their possessions by frogs, mice, and other vermin, “the sending of hornets before the Israelites” is hardly to be taken literally, not only because there is not a word in the book of Joshua about the Canaanites being overcome and exterminated in any such way, but chiefly on account of Jos 24:12, where Joshua says that God sent the hornet before them, and drove out the two kings of the Amorites, referring thereby to their defeat and destruction by the Israelites through the miraculous interposition of God, and thus placing the figurative use of the term hornet beyond the possibility of doubt. These hornets, however, which are very aptly described in Wis. 12:8, on the basis of this passage, as , the pioneers of the army of Jehovah, do not denote merely varii generis mala , as Rosenmller supposes, but acerrimos timoris aculeos, quibus quodammodo volantibus rumoribus pungebantur, ut fugerent ( Augustine, quaest. 27 in Jos.). If the fear of God which fell upon the Canaanites threw them into such confusion and helpless despair, that they could not stand before Israel, but turned their backs towards them, the stings of alarm which followed this fear would completely drive them away. Nevertheless God would not drive them away at once, “in one year,” lest the land should become a desert for want of men to cultivate it, and the wild beasts should multiply against Israel; in other words, lest the beasts of prey should gain the upper hand and endanger the lives of man and beast (Lev 26:22; Eze 14:15, Eze 14:21), which actually was the case after the carrying away of the ten tribes (2Ki 17:25-26). He would drive them out by degrees ( , only used here and in Deu 7:22), until Israel was sufficiently increased to take possession of the land, i.e., to occupy the whole of the country. This promise was so far fulfilled, according to the books of Joshua and Judges, that after the subjugation of the Canaanites in the south and north of the land, when all the kings who fought against Israel had been smitten and slain and their cities captured, the entire land was divided among the tribes of Israel, in order that they might exterminate the remaining Canaanites, and take possession of those portions of the land that had not yet been conquered (Jos 13:1-7). But the different tribes soon became weary of the task of exterminating the Canaanites, and began to enter into alliance with them, and were led astray by them to the worship of idols; whereupon God punished them by withdrawing His assistance, and they were oppressed and humiliated by the Canaanites because of their apostasy from the Lord (Judg 1 and 2).
Exo 23:31-33 The divine promise closes with a general indication of the boundaries of the land, whose inhabitants Jehovah would give up to the Israelites to drive them out, and with a warning against forming alliances with them and their gods, lest they should lead Israel astray to sin, and thus become a snare to it. On the basis of the promise in Gen 15:18, certain grand and prominent points are mentioned, as constituting the boundaries towards both the east and west. On the west the boundary extended from the Red Sea (see Exo 13:18) to the sea of the Philistines, or Mediterranean Sea, the south-eastern shore of which was inhabited by the Philistines; and on the east from the desert, i.e., according to Deu 11:24, the desert of Arabia, to the river (Euphrates). The poetic suffix affixed to answers to the elevated oratorical style. Making a covenant with them and their gods would imply the recognition and toleration of them, and, with the sinful tendencies of Israel, would be inevitably followed by the worship of idols. The first in Exo 23:33 signifies if; the second, imo , verily, and serves as an energetic introduction to the apodosis. , a snare (vid., Exo 10:7); here a clause of destruction, inasmuch as apostasy from God is invariably followed by punishment (Jdg 2:3).
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Precepts and Promises. | B. C. 1491. |
20 Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. 21 Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him. 22 But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. 23 For mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites: and I will cut them off. 24 Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works: but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images. 25 And ye shall serve the LORD your God, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee. 26 There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfil. 27 I will send my fear before thee, and will destroy all the people to whom thou shalt come, and I will make all thine enemies turn their backs unto thee. 28 And I will send hornets before thee, which shall drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, from before thee. 29 I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee. 30 By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land. 31 And I will set thy bounds from the Red sea even unto the sea of the Philistines, and from the desert unto the river: for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand; and thou shalt drive them out before thee. 32 Thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. 33 They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against me: for if thou serve their gods, it will surely be a snare unto thee.
Three gracious promises are here made to Israel, to engage them to their duty and encourage them in it; and each of the promises has some needful precepts and cautions joined to it.
I. It is here promised that they should be guided and kept in their way through the wilderness to the land of promise: Behold, I send an angel before thee (v. 20), my angel (v. 23), a created angel, say some, a minister of God’s providence, employed in conducting and protecting the camp of Israel; that it might appear that God took a particular care of them, he appointed one of his chief servants to make it his business to attend them, and see that they wanted for nothing. Others suppose it to be the Son of God, the angel of the covenant; for the Israelites in the wilderness are said to tempt Christ; and we may as well suppose him God’s messenger, and the church’s Redeemer, before his incarnation, as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. And we may the rather think he was pleased to undertake the deliverance and guidance of Israel because they were typical of his great undertaking. It is promised that this blessed angel should keep them in the way, though it lay through a wilderness first, and afterwards through their enemies’ country; thus God’s spiritual Israel shall be kept through the wilderness of this earth, and from the insults of the gates of hell. It is also promised that he should bring them into the place which God had not only designed but prepared for them: and thus Christ has prepared a place for his followers, and will preserve them to it, for he is faithful to him that appointed him. The precept joined with this promise is that they be observant of, and obedient to, this angel whom God would send before them (v. 21): “Beware of him, and obey his voice in every thing; provoke him not in any thing, for it is at your peril if you do, he will visit your iniquity.” Note, 1. Christ is the author of salvation to those only that obey him. The word of command is Hear you him, Matt. xvii. 5. Observe what he hath commanded, Matt. xxviii. 20. 2. Our necessary dependence upon the divine power and goodness should awe us into obedience. We do well to take heed of provoking our protector and benefactor, because if our defence depart from us, and the streams of his goodness be cut off, we are undone. Therefore, “Beware of him, and carry it towards him with all possible reverence and caution. Fear the Lord, and his goodness.” 3. Christ will be faithful to those who are faithful to him, and will espouse their cause who adhere to his: I will be an adversary to thine adversaries, v. 22. The league shall be offensive and defensive, like that with Abraham, I will bless him that blesseth thee, and curse him that curseth thee. Thus is God pleased to twist his interests and friendships with his people’s.
II. It is promised that they should have a comfortable settlement in the land of Canaan, which they hoped now (though it proved otherwise) within a few months to be in the possession of, v. 24-26. Observe, 1. How reasonable the conditions of this promise are–only that they should serve their own God, who was indeed the only true God, and not the gods of the nations, which were no gods at all, and which they had no reason at all to have any respect for. They must not only not worship their gods, but they must utterly overthrow them, in token of their great abhorrence of idolatry, their resolution never to worship idols themselves, and their care to prevent any other from worshipping them; as the converted conjurors burnt their books, Acts xix. 19. 2. How rich the particulars of this promise are. (1.) The comfort of their food. He shall bless thy bread and thy water; and God’s blessing will make bread and water more refreshing and nourishing than a feast of fat things and wines on the lees without that blessing. (2.) The continuance of their health: “I will take sickness away, either prevent it or remove it. Thy land shall not be visited with epidemical diseases, which are very dreadful, and sometimes have laid countries waste.” (3.) The increase of their wealth. Their cattle should not be barren, nor cast their young, which is mentioned as an instance of prosperity, Job xxi. 10. (4.) The prolonging of their lives to old age: “The number of thy days I will fulfil, and they shall not be cut off in the midst by untimely deaths.” Thus hath godliness the promise of the life that now is.
III. It is promised that they should conquer and subdue their enemies, the present occupants of the land of Canaan, who must be driven out to make room for them. This God would do, 1. Effectually by his power (Exo 23:17; Exo 23:18); not so much by the sword and bow of Israel as by the terrors which he would strike into the Canaanites. Though they were so obstinate as not to be willing to submit to Israel, resign their country, and retire elsewhere, which they might have done, yet they were so dispirited that they were not able to stand before them. This completed their ruin; such power had the devil in them that they would resist, but such power had God over them that they could not. I will send my fear before thee; and those that fear will soon flee. Hosts of hornets made way for the hosts of Israel; such mean creatures can God make use of for the chastising of his people’s enemies, as in the plagues of Egypt. When God pleases, hornets can drive out Canaanites, as well as lions could, Josh. xxiv. 12. 2. He would do it gradually, in wisdom (Exo 23:29; Exo 23:30), not all at once, but by little and little. As the Canaanites had kept possession till Israel had grown into a people, so there should still be some remains of them till Israel should grow so numerous as to replenish the whole. Note, The wisdom of God is to be observed in the gradual advances of the church’s interests. It is in real kindness to the church that its enemies are subdued by little and little; for thus we are kept upon our guard, and in a continual dependence upon God. Corruptions are thus driven out of the hearts of God’s people; not all at once, but by little and little; the old man is crucified, and therefore dies slowly. God, in his providence, often delays mercies, because we are not ready for them. Canaan has room enough to receive Israel, but Israel is not numerous enough to occupy Canaan. We are not straitened in God; if we are straitened, it is in ourselves. The land of Canaan is promised them (v. 31) in its utmost extent, which yet they were not possessed of till the days of David; and by their sins they soon lost possession. The precept annexed to this promise is that they should not make any friendship, nor have any familiarity, with idolaters, Exo 23:32; Exo 23:33. Idolaters must not so much as sojourn in their land, unless they renounced their idolatry. Thus they must avoid the reproach of intimacy with the worshippers of false gods and the danger of being drawn to worship with them. By familiar converse with idolaters, their dread and detestation of the sin would wear off; they would think it no harm, in compliment to their friends, to pay some respect to their gods, and so by degrees would be drawn into the fatal snare. Note, Those that would be kept from bad courses must keep from bad company; it is dangerous living in a bad neighbourhood; others’ sins will be our snares, if we look not well to ourselves. We must always look upon our greatest danger to be from those that would cause us to sin against God. Whatever friendship is pretended, that is really our worst enemy that draws us from our duty.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Verses 20-25:
The Angel malak, “messenger, agent,” refers here not to a created, spirit-being, but to the “Angel (Messenger) of the Covenant,” the Second Person of the Triune Godhead, see Ge 16:7; 21:17; 48:16; Ex 3:2; 14:19, et. al. His promises:
1. To be Israel’s guide and helper;
2. To be the Enemy of their enemies;
3. To drive out their enemies from before them;
4. To give them the entire territory He had promised in the Land Grant originally made to Abraham, in their lifetime, see Ge 15.
5. To bless their substance, grant them health, multiply them, and prolong their days in the Land.
These promises were conditional, dependent upon their obedience to Jehovah’s laws. He would not “pardon (their) transgressions” or violations, in relationship to the conditional covenant and its provisions.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
20. Behold, I send an Angel before thee. God here reminds the Israelites that their wellbeing is so connected with the keeping of the Law, that, by neglecting it, they would sorely suffer. For He says that He will be their leader by the hand of an angel, which was a token of His fatherly love for them; but, on the other hand, He threatens that they would not be unpunished if they should despise such great mercy and follow their own lusts, because they will not escape the sight of the angel whom He had appointed to be their guardian. Almost all the Hebrew rabbins, (267) with whom many others agree, too hastily think that this is spoken of Joshua, but the statements, which we shall consider more fully just beyond, by no means are reconcilable with his person. But their mistake is more than sufficiently refuted by this, first of all, that if we understand it of Joshua, the people would have been without the angel as their leader as long as they wandered in the desert; and, besides, it was afterwards said to Moses, “Mine Angel shall go before thee,” ( Exo 32:34😉 and again, “And I will send an Angel before thee,” ( Exo 33:2.) Moses, too, elsewhere enlarges on this act of God’s goodness, that He should have led forth His people by the hand of an angel. ( Num 20:16.) But what need is there of a long discussion, since already mention has been so often made of the angel of their deliverance? This point ought now to be deemed established, that there is no reference here to a mortal man; and what we have already said should be remembered, that no common angel is designated, but the chief of all angels, who has always been also the Head of the Church. In which matter the authority of Paul should be sufficient for us, when he admonishes the Corinthians not to tempt Christ as their fathers tempted Him in the desert. ( 1Co 10:9.) We gather this, too, from the magnificent attribute which Moses immediately afterwards assigns to Him, that “the name of God should be in him.” I deem this to be of great importance, although it is generally passed over lightly. But let us consider it particularly. When God declares that He will send His angel “to keep them in the way,” He makes a demand upon them for their willing obedience, for it would be too base of them to set at nought, or to forget Him whose paternal care towards them they experience. But in the next verse, He seeks by terror to arouse them from their listlessness, where He commands them to beware of His presence, since He would take vengeance on their transgressions; (268) wherein, also, there is a delicate allusion to be observed in the ambiguous meaning of the word employed. For, since שמר, shamar, in Hebrew signifies “to guard,” after He has said that an angel shall be their guardian, He warns them, on the other hand, that they should guard themselves. Herein the Angel is exalted above the rank of a human being, since He is appointed to be their judge, if the Israelites should offend in any respect; not in the way that judgment is deputed to the Prophets with reference to their doctrine, the power of which is supreme, but because nothing shall be hidden from Him. For Scripture assigns to God alone as His peculiar attribute, that we should walk before His face. What follows is to the same effect, “provoke him not,” which is everywhere spoken of God. But, as I have just said, this seems to me to be of most importance, that the name of God was to be in Him, or in the midst of Him, which is equivalent to this, that in Him shall reside my majesty and glory; and, therefore, He shall possess both the knowledge of hearts, as well as dominion, and the power of judgment. Besides, we have already said that there is no absurdity in designating Christ by the name of the Angel, because He was not yet the Incarnate Mediator, but as often as He appeared to the ancient people He gave an indication of His future mission.
(267) For this opinion, Corn. a Lapide quotes Justin. contra Tryphon. fol. 58; and Eusebius, lib. 4, Demonstr. Evang. 28, and Raban.
(268) In the Fr. the following paragraphs are omitted.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Exo. 23:20-25
DIVINE GUIDANCE
I. There is a divine way. There is a divine way for individuals. Joseph, Abraham, Daniel, and David were led in the right way. The saints of the Old and New Testaments were guided in the divine way. And all those who seek divine guidance may hope to be led in the right divine way. There is a divine way for nations, and those nations that seek to walk in the way of national uprightness, and recognition of Gods supremacy, will attain a true national greatness and perpetuity. And there was such a way for the Israelites.
1. This way was through the wilderness. Such are the conditions of our present existence. Every way to greatness, to glory, and to divinely-prepared places is through the wilderness. This is the law of nature as well as of grace.
2. This way was beset with enemies. There are always seen and unseen forces and powers opposing the onward and upward course of those who are striving after nobility and the accomplishment of divine purposes. The march of the Israelites was opposed, and the nearer they came to the realisation of their hopes the more numerous did their foes appear. The greatest struggle takes place just before the final victory. The valley of decision is the valley of stern conflict. The fact that the powers of evil concentrate their skill and their strength may be taken as a sign that we are in the right way.
3. This divine way was one of many privations. Travellers must not expect the pleasures and comforts of home. The march of the Israelites was not a summers holiday. We must expect privations, and maintain a quiet faith and a spirit of patient and heroic endurance.
4. This divine way, then, was contrary to mere human liking. Notice the frequent complainings of the children of Israel. And oh, Gods way is not our way! Ours may be pleasant at first but bitter at last, but Gods way is the reverse; and yet not exactly, for sweets are graciously mingled with the bitters. There is hunger, but there is manna. There is thirst, but there is clear water from the smitten rock. There is perplexity, but there is an angel to guide and protect.
II. This way leads to divinely-prepared places. All is well that ends well, and this way is well, for it brings to a prepared place. Many are willing to endure if they are certain of securing rich results. Hopes are blasted in mere human pursuits; but if we faithfully fulfil divine conditions we shall come to divinely-prepared places. The Almighty has prepared all lands. His wisdom planned, and His power built up, the goodly frame of this terrestrial universe. He has made the green earth, and stretched above the blue sky in striking contrast. His Divine hand has shaped every form of loveliness. But the Almighty seemed to come forth in the greatness of His love, in the depth of His wisdom, and in the energy of His power, in order to make Palestine the most fruitful and beautiful of lands, the joy of all climes, the song of all countries, the goodly heritage of the host of nations. How eminently fitting that this lovely land should be selected to be the dwelling-place of His chosen people, and the magnificent stage on which should be enacted the most glorious transactions of all time. Palestine was a specially prepared place, and to it the wilderness way was the course for the Israelites. Heaven is a specially prepared place. I go to prepare a place for you. A place in the best of all places. A home in the best of homes. A dwelling-place where all the abodes are mansions. A seat where all the seats are thrones. A city where all the citizens are kings. What matters it though the way be long and sometimes dreary, so long as the place is so attractive; and we cannot fail to reach it if we obey divine directions.
III. The travellers on this way are favoured with a Divine Guide. We cannot tell whether this angel was a created angel, or the second person in the Trinitythe angel that was with the Church in the wilderness. But we learn his greatness. The divine name was in him. The divine name is indicative of the divine character We presume the name was in him as a reflection of the divine glory, as a granted prerogative, as a token of delegated authority, as investing with glorious attributes, and imparting unusual dignity and majesty. This name was in him as a power to inspire religious awe, and to restrain irreverent trifling. Provoke him not; for My name is in him. This angel was competent. Unerring wisdom never appoints the incompetent to important offices. And this angel was appointed by infinite wisdom. He knows all the way, understands all its dangers and difficulties, and is competent both to guide and to protect. Jesus Christ, the angel of the new covenant, is a perfect guide, fully competent to direct and protect. He has trodden every inch of the way. He has personally inspected the course. He gives ample directions to those who are to go before us to keep us in the way, and to bring us to the divinely-prepared place.
IV. Divine promises are contingent on the faithful pursuits of divine methods. God promises seed-time and harvest, but we only expect harvest as the result of prepared soil and planted seed. Many of those to whom the promises were given did not enter the promised land because they did not carry out the conditions. Ye shall serve the Lord your God, and He shall bless thy bread and thy wateris a law and a promise rightly read for all economies. We must obey the voice of the angel; and then God will be an enemy to our enemies, and afflict those who afflict us. Retribution must fall sooner or later upon the heads of all persecutors.
The divine methods may be thus summarisedCaution, obedience, self-restraint, and the entire destruction of all that has the remotest tendency to damage the moral nature. CautionBeware of him. Watch with intense interest as you would watch a guide in some difficult pass. Obey his voice. Listen attentively to the utterance. Interpret as to the spirit. Eagerly catch the solemn whisper of the infinite. Self-restraint. Provoke him not. Do not trifle with your guide. He is very merciful, but there is a period when even mercy seems to expire. He will not pardon your transgressions. The doom of triflers is sealed. The despisers have only a gloomy prospect. For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. Provoke him not. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry.
Thou shalt not only refrain from bowing down to the gods of the heathen; but thou shalt utterly overthrow them, and quite break down their images. The material and the moral are strangely interblended. The very presence of the suggestive material image will surely damage the moral nature. The spiritual requires to be carefully guarded. We cannot be too watchful.
Amid the din of human voices let us have an ear open to the Divine voice. Let us believe in angelic ministry. Amid many seductive ways that present themselves, let us cleave to the one divine way; and through divine grace, and through faith in the Redeemer, we shall come to the prepared place.
W. Burrows, B.A.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
THE ANGEL OF THE COVENANT.Exo. 23:20-23
The people had prayed for a mediator. (See on Exo. 20:19.) God now appoints a greater than Moses to act in that capacity. The present section reveals the nature and office of the mysterious person, the proper attitude towards, and the reward of obedience to Him.
I. His nature was divine.
1. Equal with God.
(1.) Bearing the divine name; My name is in Him. The incommunicable covenant name of Jehovah.
(2.) Performing divine actions; Mine angel shall go, &c., I will cut them off. So New Testament, I and My Father are one.
2. Distinct from the personality of the speaker, I send, so New Testament, The Father which sent Me.
For an able resume of this argument for the Divinity of Christ, see Liddons Bampton Lectures, pp. 5256. (See also Genesis 32; Hos. 12:3-4; Jos. 5:14; Jdg. 2:12; Mal. 3:1, &c.)
II. His office was to conduct the covenant people to the fulfilment of Gods covenant engagement.
1. Providence. To keep thee in the way. So Christ upholds all things by the word of His power. In Him all things consist. Generally and particularly He preserves those who trust in Him (Joh. 10:28).
2. Redemption. To bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Israels redemption is only half accomplished as yet. So Christs eternal redemption is not complete till the last enemy is destroyed (Joh. 14:2-3).
III. The proper attitude towards Him.
1. Fear. Carefulness not to displease Him. Christ is the Saviour of those only who believe in Him. To others He is a savour of death unto death.
2. Obedience. Obey His voice. So says the Father in the New Testament (Mat. 17:5); and Himself (Mat. 28:20). This implies
(1.) Trust in His person.
(2.) Subjection to His authority.
(3.) The prosecution of His commands.
IV. The reward of obedience to Him, Exo. 23:22-23.
(1.) Identification and sympathy with us in our cause. I will be an enemy, &c.
(2.) Victory over our foes (1Co. 15:57), world, flesh, devil, death, &c.
(3.) Inheritance in the promised land.
Learn
i. (2Ti. 1:9), That Gods grace has been manifested in Jesus Christ from the beginning of the world. ii. That Gods grace has been, through Jesus Christ, with His people up to the present moment. iii. And will be till the end of the world.J. W. Burn.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
REV. WILLIAM ADAMSON
Covenant Angel! Exo. 23:20. When the Israelites were delivered from Egypt, how were they guided on their way to Canaan through the trackless desert? The Lord went before them. In chapter 14 this glorious One is called The Angel of GodIsaiah speaks of him as the Angel of His Presence. This verse shows that the only-begotten Son is referred to for four reasons.
(1) My name is in Him; whereas we are told that Jehovah is the Lord, and that His glory He will not give to another.
(2) Obey His voice; which counsel answers to that on the Mount of Transfiguration, Hear ye Him.
(3) Provoke Him not; an expression gathering deep and awful meaning when we read the warning of the Apostle, Let us not tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted.
(4) He will not pardon your transgressions; a monition singularly harmonised by the inquiry, Who can forgive sin but God only? Christ was the Angel who was with the Church in the wilderness. This was that Christ of God, who, in all the Churchs wanderings and dangers, has evermore been her Leader and Defender.
Anywhere with Jesus, says the Christian heart;
Let Him take me where He will, so we do not part.
Obedience and Observance! Exo. 23:21.
(1) Nothing, says Robertson, can be love to God which does not shape itself into obedience. We remember the anecdote of the Roman commander who forbade an engagement with the enemy, and the first transgressor was his own son. He accepted a challenge from the leader of the other host, slew and spoiled him. He then, in triumphant feeling, carried the spoils to his fathers tent; but the Roman father refused to recognise the instinct which prompted this as deserving of the name of love. Disobedience contradicted it.
(2) Whereas love is the fulfilling of the Law. The other graces shine like the precious stones of nature, with their own peculiar lustre and varied hues; but the diamond is white. In white all the other colours are united; and in love all the other graces and virtues are centred. Love is the only source of true obedience to the commands of God. If Israel only learned to love God with all their heart, they would necessarily love His Law, which is the transcript of His Divine Mind.
Nay, mans chief wisdoms lovethe love of God.
The new religionfinal, perfect, pure
Was that of Christ and love. His great command
His all-sufficing preceptwas it not love!
Bailey.
Pilgrim Path! Exo. 23:23. Goethe, the worlds favourite, confessed, when he was 80 years old, that he could not remember being in a really happy state of mind even for a few weeks together; and that, when he wished to feel comfortable, he had to veil his self-consciousness. The following is the closing sentence of his autobiography: Child! child! no more. The coursers of time, lashed, as it were, by invisible spirits, hurry on the light car of our destiny; and all that we can do is, in cool self-possession, to hold the reins with a firm hand, and to guide the wheels, now to the left, now to the right, a stone here, a precipice there. Whither it is hurrying, who can tell? And who indeed can remember the point from which it started? What a contrast to Israels position! Mine Angel shall go before thee. Happy Christian Israelite, he knows he traverses his pilgrim path under Divine guidance, and that there is no uncertainty as to the whither.
Though in the paths of death I tread,
With gloomy horrors overspread,
My steadfast heart shall fear no ill,
For Thou, O Lord, art with me still.
Addison.
Worldliness. Exo. 23:24-25. Pope gives us an affecting account of the death of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. After having been master of 50,000 per annum, he was reduced to the deepest distress by his vice and extravagance, and breathed his last moments in the mean apartment of an inn. Such is often the end of worldliness. It is said that the Duke of Alva starved his prisoners, after he had given them quarter, saying, Though I promised your lives, I promised not to find you food. In the same manner does the world deceive its votaries. The Persians, writes Buck, when they obtained a victory, selected the noblest slave, and made him a king for three days. They clothed him with royal robes, and ministered to him all the pleasures he could choose; but at the end of all he was to die as a sacrifice to mirth and folly. So worldliness is shortlived; and when its feast is ended, the guests are only like those who have partaken of poisoned food, or who have fed on ashes.
Ay, beauteous is the world, and many a joy
Floats through its wide dominion. But, alas!
When we would seize the winged good, it flies,
And step by step, along the path of life,
Allures our yearning spirits to the grave.
Goethe.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(20) I send an Angel before thee.Kalisch considers Moses to have been the angel or messenger; others understand one of the created angelic host. But most commentators see in the promise the first mention of the Angel of the Covenant, who is reasonably identified with the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Eternal Son and Word of God. When the promise is retracted on account of the sin of the golden calf, it is in the words, I will not go up with thee (Exo. 33:3).
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
THE PROMISES OF GOD TO ISRAEL, IF THE COVENANT IS KEPT.
(20-33) The Book of the Covenant terminates, very appropriately, with a series of promises. God is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him. He chooses to reward men after their works, and to set before them the recompense of the reward. He knows whereof we are made, and by what motives we are influenced. Self-interest, the desire of our own good, is one of the strongest of them. If Israel will keep His covenant, they will enjoy the following blessings :(1) The guidance and protection of His angel till Canaan is reached; (2) Gods help against their adversaries, who will, little by little, be driven out; (3) the ultimate possession of the entire country between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea on the one hand, the Desert and the Euphrates on the other; (4) a blessing upon their flocks and herds, which shall neither be barren nor cast their young; and (5) a blessing upon themselves, whereby they will escape sickness and enjoy a long term of life. All these advantages, however, are conditional upon obedience, and may be forfeited.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
20-22. I send an Angel before thee On the nature of this Angel see note at Gen 16:7. An angel who had in him Jehovah’s name, and could pardon transgressions; who was not to be provoked, but observed with reverence and obeyed; who was to go before Israel, keep them in the way, and bring them into the blessed land of promise He must assuredly be a personal manifestation of Jehovah himself . The same divine Being was symbolized in the pillar of cloud and fire, (Exo 13:21-22.)
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Yahweh’s Promise That He will Send His Angel With Them ( Exo 23:20-28 ).
Yahweh now confirms that He will go with His people into Canaan.
This section may be analysed as follows:
a Yahweh will send His Angel before them (Exo 23:20).
b If they hear His voice then Yahweh will act for them against their enemies (Exo 23:21-22).
c The Angel will cut off the Canaanite nations (Exo 23:23).
d They are not to bow down to their gods, but to serve Yahweh Eloheyca (Exo 23:24-25 a).
d Then He will bless their bread and water and take away sickness from among them (Exo 23:25 b).
c None will cast their young or be barren among the Israelites (their seed will not be cut off) (Exo 23:26).
b He will send His terror before them and make their enemies turn their backs on them (Exo 23:27).
a He will send forth His hornet who will drive out the Canaanite nations (Exo 23:28)
The chiasmus brings out in ‘a’ and its parallel and ‘b’ and its parallel what Yahweh will do for them, in ‘a’ by sending His presence before them, in ‘b’ by dealing with their enemies. In ‘c’ there is the contrast between the death coming on the Canaanites and the abundance of life coming to the Israelites. The one will be cut off, the other will not be cut off. In ‘d’ the call is to worship Yahweh only which will result in plenteousness and good health
Exo 23:20
“Behold I am sending an Angel before you to keep you by the way, and to bring you to the place which I have prepared. Take heed to him and listen to his voice. Do not provoke him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him.”
Once again we are introduced to the Angel of Yahweh (see on Exo 3:2. Also Gen 16:7-13; Gen 20:17; Gen 22:11-14), that mysterious figure who personally represented Yahweh and yet was somehow different. The Angel brings Yahweh more physically into a situation. He is Yahweh, for Yahweh can say, ‘My name is in Him’. And He can then add ‘My Angel will go before you — and I will cut them off’, demonstrating that the Angel and Yahweh act as One (see also Exo 32:34; Exo 33:2 with Exo 33:14).
The Angel who goes before them was surely represented by the pillar of cloud and fire (Exo 13:21-22; Deu 1:33), which itself manifested the presence of God (Exo 13:21). God will be with them in the way.
“The place which I have prepared”. Compare Exo 15:17. He will keep them in the way and bring them to the prepared place in which they will enjoy the harvests of which He has spoken.
“Take heed to him.” Obedience was necessary if they were to inherit the promises. If they broke His laws His Angel would not forgive it. For He was a representation of the holy Yahweh, God of the covenant. Yet such was His mercy that when they did provoke Him He partly overlooked their transgression for Moses’ sake, although warning that their sin would eventually be visited on them, and He continued to go before them (Exo 32:31-34; Exo 33:14).
“My name is in him.” What Yahweh is, He is. The Old Testament reveals Yahweh in three ways, under His Own name, as the Angel of Yahweh (Yahweh in personal, close revelation) and as the Spirit of Yahweh, (the invisible Yahweh seen in powerful and visible action). But each is Yahweh and reveals His nature and being.
Exo 23:22
“But if you will indeed listen to his voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.”
Obedience will bring the Overlord’s support against their coming enemies. One of the great advantages of a Suzerainty Treaty was that the great overlord would come to the support of the treaty people. Their enemies would be his enemies, because they were his people and he was their overlord. But if they were not obedient to the treaty he would come and punish them (Exo 23:21). This illustrates that we are still in the atmosphere of the great Suzerainty treaty in Exodus 20.
Note the change in personal pronouns. ‘His voice — all that I speak’. Yahweh and the Angel speak as One.
Exo 23:23
“For my Angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorite and the Hittite, and the Perizzite and the Canaanite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, and I will cut them off.”
The general treaty is now applied to the particular situation. As they enter the land they will meet up with the multiplicity of its inhabitants. And the Angel of Yahweh will go before them and Yahweh will cut off their enemies. The use of six may indicate three (the number of completeness) intensified and thus signify that the six nations are to be seen as all the inhabitants in the land (compare Exo 3:8; Exo 3:17 and contrast Exo 13:5. In Exo 23:28 three are cited confirming this connection).
For the names of the enemies compare especially on Exo 3:8; also Exo 13:5.
Exo 23:24
“You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works. But you shall utterly overthrow them and break in pieces their pillars.”
Rivals to the Overlord must be rejected and their symbols destroyed. They are not to be tolerated. There is One Overlord and He is Yahweh. Peoples entering a land would often begin to include the gods of the land within their worship (see on 2Ki 17:24-34) to ensure their protection. But this was not to be so here. They too must be cut off and cast out. The land is Yahweh’s.
“Nor do after their works.” Canaanite religion was debased and sexually perverted.
“Break in pieces their pillars.” This refers to the standing stones which were often a feature of Canaanite shrines. Pillars were often set up as memorials (Gen 18:18-22; Gen 35:13-15; Exo 24:4; Jos 4:1-9) but these were different, they were identified with a god and venerated, and offerings were placed before them. They represented Canaanite religion and its gods. Many examples have been found in and around Palestine (for example at Gezer, Hazor, Lejjun, Byblos and Ugarit), some with offerings still before them. They are constantly condemned throughout the Old Testament.
Exo 23:25-26
“And you shall serve Yahweh your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. None will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will fulfil the number of your days.”
Yahweh Himself will provide for all their needs of food, water, fertility and long life. The gods of rain and storm and the fertility gods were a regular feature of Canaanite life and religion. But they will be irrelevant. For what Yahweh will do will be far better than anything that the Canaanites claim for their gods. He can ensure that they have food and water in abundance (compare Deu 11:14-15; Deu 28:12), that all their women are fertile and that they live long lives. This was a picture of a new Eden but it would fail in its fulfilment because of the disobedience of the people.
Note again the change of pronoun from He to I which occurs often when Yahweh speaks, as God makes a statement and then personalises it.
“You shall serve Yahweh your God.” Compare Exo 20:2. This is a reference back to the giving of the covenant. He alone is to be served and all rivals are to be rejected. Service includes both being faithful to the ordinances laid down for worship, and obedience to His covenant stipulations.
Exo 23:27-28
“I will send my terror before you and will discomfit all the people to whom you will come, and I will make all your enemies turn their backs to you. And I will send the hornet before you which will drive out the Hivite, the Canaanite and the Hittite from before you.”
Yahweh will prepare the way before them by bringing a great fear on their future foes. Thus they will be beaten before the battle begins, and will flee in terror from them (‘turn their backs to you’). Compare for this Exo 15:14-16; Deu 2:25, and its part fulfilment in Jos 2:9; Jos 10:10; Jdg 4:15. See also Gen 35:5. He will also use physical terrors to aid in the discomfiting.
“I will send the hornet before you.” Compare Deu 7:20. This may mean that Yahweh will also support them by using natural terrors to discomfit their foes. The hornet is a larger version of the wasp with a vicious sting, which can sometimes cause death, and a fearsome reputation. All would know of the terror the appearance of a swarm of hornets could cause, and it would seem that a literal plague of hornets did at one notable stage throw the forces of the two kings of the Amorites into disarray (Jos 24:12). The fact that the Amorites are not mentioned in Exo 23:28 (compare Exo 23:23) demonstrates that this was written before that event. We could translate ‘hornets’ seeing it as a collective noun. Here it probably represents all the physical terrors of nature.
“Hornet” (tsi‘rah). The word only occurs in Exo 23:28; Deu 7:20 and Jos 24:12. Some would translate as ‘depression, discouragement’ but a more positive foe appears to be in mind. It comes from the root word which means being ‘struck with a skin disease’. Hornets attack the skin. This promise may have been in mind in Rev 9:1-11.
But the context may suggest that the description has the Angel of Yahweh in mind, pictured in terms of the fearsome hornet, swarming down on the enemy and causing them to flee in terror. The Israelite attacks in all quarters may well have seemed like to their enemy like swarms of hornets, coming from nowhere and buzzing round their cities and towns.
The threefold description of the Canaanites again stresses completeness. This mention of only three Canaanite nations is unusual (usually there are five, six or seven) and is a most interesting and careful use of a number. In Exo 23:23 six nations were mentioned representing the whole. Had six been used here that would have made twelve. But twelve represented Israel (the twelve tribes). Thus here three are used, making nine in the passage in all, which is simply three intensified indicating the whole.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Concerning the Continuation of the Journey
v. 20. Behold, I send an Angel before thee to keep thee in the way and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. v. 21. Beware of Him, and obey His voice, provoke Him not, v. 22. But if thou shalt indeed obey His voice, and do all that I speak, v. 23. For Mine Angel shall go before thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off, v. 24. Thou shalt not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do after their works, v. 25. And ye shall serve the Lord, your God, and He shall bless thy bread and thy water; and I will take sickness away from the midst of thee. v. 26. There shall nothing cast their young nor be barren in thy land; v. 27. I will send My fear before thee, v. 28. And I will send hornets before thee, v. 29. I will not drive them out from before thee in one year, v. 30. By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased and inherit the land; v. 31. And I will set thy bounds from the Red Sea, v. 32. Thou shalt make no covenant with them, v. 33. They shall not dwell in thy land, lest they make thee sin against Me;
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Exo 23:20. Behold, I send an Angel This might as well be rendered, the Angel or Messenger. Houbigant, after the Samaritan, the LXX, and the Vulgate, reads my Angel, as in Exo 23:23. Who he was, appears from the whole subsequent history; namely, that same Divine Person who appeared to Moses in the bush, and who has been already so often spoken of. The phrase, Exo 23:21 for my Name is in him, signifies, he is invested with my power and authority; or rather, my power and authority is inherent in him: for the Hebrew is emphatical: because my Name, bekirbo, in interiori ejus, is in the inmost part of him: a phrase, which could be applied to no created angel; as all which is here said of him, clearly proves. See Joh 10:38. None could pardon sins (Exo 23:21.) but God alone: see Mar 2:7.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
DISCOURSE: 94
THE DANGER OF WILFUL AND OBSTINATE DISOBEDIENCE
Exo 23:20-22. Behold, I send an angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not: for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him. But, if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries.
IT is but too common for men to cast the blame of their own negligence on God. But they who labour so much to exculpate themselves now, will one day be silent; and God will finally be justified in every sentence that he shall pass. His kindness to the church of old may shew us what his conduct is towards us. And they who are thus guided, warned, and encouraged, must, if they perish, ascribe their condemnation to themselves alone. The words before us contain,
I.
The work and office of Christ
Christ is here called an angel or messenger
[He is often called by this name in the Holy Scriptures [Note: He is the angel that was in the pillar and the cloud, Exo 14:19. That angel was Jehovah, Exo 13:21. That Jehovah was Christ, 1Co 10:9. See also Mal 3:1.]. Nor does he disdain to assume it himself [Note: Joh 12:49.]. In his essential nature indeed he is equal with the Father. But in his mediatorial capacity he sustains the office of a servant.]
As the angel of the covenant, he leads and keeps his people
[He is represented as a leader and commander, like Joshua, his type [Note: Isa 55:4.]. He went before them in the wilderness in the pillar and the cloud. And still, though invisibly, guides them in their way to heaven [Note: Psa 25:9; Psa 32:8.].]
Nor does he leave them till he brings them safely to glory
[He did not forsake the Israelites, till he had accomplished all his promises [Note: Jos 23:14.]. Having prepared the land for them, he preserved them for it. Thus has he prepared mansions for us also [Note: Joh 14:2.] ; and will surely bring us to the full possession of them [Note: 1Pe 1:4-5.].]
But as this office of Christ implies a correspondent duty in us, God suggests,
II.
A caution against neglecting him
We are much in danger of displeasing him
[As our guide, he expects implicit obedience. Nor can we rebel against him without provoking his indignation [Note: Isa 63:10.]. Hence we need continual circumspection [Note: 3.].]
The consequence of displeasing him will be very terrible
[Doubtless to penitents he is full of mercy and compassion. But to impenitent offenders he will manifest his wrath [Note: Psa 7:11-13.]. Nor will he suffer any to continue in their sins with impunity [Note: Eze 24:13-14.].]
His power and dignity are a certain pledge to us that he will avenge the insults that are offered him
[By the name of God we understand not his authority only, but his very nature [Note: Joh 14:10-11; Joh 10:30.]. And this union with the Father is a pledge to us, that he will act as becomes the divine character. Nor will any consideration of mercy ever tempt him again to sacrifice the honour of the Deity to the interests of man.]
It is not however by terror only that God would persuade us; for he adds,
III.
An encouragement to obey him
Obedience is in some sense the condition of Gods favour
[We know that there is nothing meritorious in mans obedience. Yet is there an inseparable connexion between that and the divine favour. Nor is it a partial obedience only that he requires at our hands. It must be earnest, unwearied, uniform, and unreserved.]
And to those who yield him this obedience he will shew himself an active friend, and an almighty protector
[His favour consists not in a mere inactive complacency. It will manifest itself in a constant and powerful interposition on their behalf [Note: 2Ch 32:8; Isa 49:25.]. He will not fail to secure them the victory over all their enemies.]
Address,
1.
Those who disregard the voice of this divine Messenger
[From what is spoken of his mercy you are ready to think him destitute of justice. And from the depth of his condescension you conclude he will not vindicate his own honour. But where God most fully proclaims his mercy he declares his justice also [Note: Exo 34:7.]. Make not him then your enemy who came from heaven to save you. Consider what means he has used to guide you to the promised land. Consider what great things he would do for you, if you would obey his voice. Consider what certain and terrible destruction your rejection of his mercy will bring upon you [Note: Heb 12:25.]. And instantly surrender up yourselves to his direction and government.]
2.
Those who, though they submit to his government, are doubtful of success
[The Israelites, notwithstanding all the miracles they had seen, were afraid they should not finally attain the object of their desires. Thus amongst ourselves, many tremble lest their expectations should never be realized. But is not God able to beat down your enemies before you? Or will he forget the promise he has so often renewed? If he be incensed against you, it is not owing to unfaithfulness in him, but to instability in you [Note: Jer 2:17.]. Only be vigilant to obey his will, and to follow him fully: and you need not doubt but that he will preserve you unto his heavenly kingdom [Note: 2Ti 4:18.].]
3.
Those who are following him with cheerfulness to the heavenly land
[Blessed be God, there are some of you like-minded with Joshua and Caleb [Note: Num 14:24; Num 32:12.]. And are not you living monuments of the power and grace of God? Have you not on many occasions proved his readiness to pardon sin? And do you not daily experience his paternal care and protection? Go on then with increasing vigilance and an assured hope. Know that all the power and perfections of God are engaged for you: and that having guided you by his counsel, he will finally bring you to glory.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
Reader! call to mind at the reading of this verse, what Jesus said, Moses wrote of me; an d then determine for yourself, whether this were not he of whom Moses and the Prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth! See Mal 3:1 ; Isa 63:9 ; 1Co 10:4 , etc.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The Angel In Life
Exo 23:20-33
Laws without angels would turn life into weary drudgery. Life has never been left without some touch of the Divine presence and love. From the very first this has been characteristic of our history. When our first parents were cast out of the garden, the Lord said, “The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent.” That was a prophecy, bright as an angel, comforting as a gospel, spoken from heaven. The difficulty is that we will interfere with the personality of the Angel; we will concern ourselves about his figure and name. Instead of accepting the ministry, and answering a great and solemn appeal addressed to our noblest faculties, we ask the little questions of prying and often profane curiosity. It would seem to be our nature to spoil everything. We take the instrument to pieces to find the music, instead of yielding ourselves to the call of its blast, to the elevation of its inspiring gladness, and to the infinite tenderness of its benediction. We are cursed with the spirit of vain curiosity. We expend ourselves in the asking of little questions, instead of plunging into God’s great sea of grace, and love, and comfort, and waiting patiently for revelations which may address themselves to the curiosity which is premature, and to the prying which now can get no great answers. The solemn the grand, fact is, that in our life there is an Angel, a spirit, a presence; a ministry without definite name and altogether without measurableness; a gracious ministry, a most tender and comforting service, always operating upon our life’s necessity and our heart’s pain. Let us rest in that conviction for a moment or two until we see how we can establish it by references to facts, experiences, consciousness against which there can be no witness. We prove some assumptions by the facts which flow from them. We can only establish the existence of some substances by grouping together the phenomena which they present. Into the substances themselves philosophy cannot penetrate; but philosophy can gather together the appearances, sometimes all the elements and effects which are grouped under the name of phenomena, and can reason from these groupings that there must be underneath some unknown, some unknowable substance which expresses itself in these superficial and visible appearances. So our assumption that there is an Angel ahead of us, a radiant light in advance, a heavenly presence in our whole life, may be established by references which appeal not to imagination only but to experience; and if we can establish such events we shall have also to establish the sublime doctrine that in the midst of humanity there is a light of Divinity, and at the head of all the truly upward advancing host of men goes the Angel appointed of God.
See how our life is redeemed from baseness by the assumption that an Angel is leading it. Who can believe that an Angel has been appointed to conduct a life which must end in the grave? The anticlimax is shocking; the suggestion is charged with the very spirit of profanity. We could not allow it in poetry; we should resent it in history; we should despise it in all dramatic compilations and representations. You must not yoke a steed of any blood in too small and mean a chariot; you degrade some horses of repute by sending them to do certain base and unworthy service. Is it not so with men also? Are there not men whose names are so lofty, so illustrious, that we could never consent to their doing certain actions too vulgar and low to be worthy of their brilliant repute? Does not the law admit of the highest and widest application? If an Angel is leading us, is he leading us to the grave? Surely it would not need an Angel to conduct us to that poor destiny! We could wander thither ourselves; the blind could lead us, and they that have no intelligence could plunge us into that dark pit. And we feel that we are not being led to the grave. It is possible that some of us may have so lived that the grave would be too good a destiny for us; but I speak of those who have tasted of the sweetness of true life, who have risen above the dreary round of mere existence, and who have tasted in ever so small a degree of the wine of immortality, men who have felt throbs of infinite life, hearts that have been conscious of pulsings never started by human ingenuity, and such men shrink from the suggestion that all this life, so full of sacred possibility and gracious experience, should terminate in the gloom of the grave. Who says that life was not meant for the grave? The Angel. Whose ministry is a daily pledge against annihilation? The Angel’s. What is it within us that detests the grave, that turns away from it with aversion, that will not be sent into so lone and mean a prison? It is “the Divinity that stirs within us.”
Then again, who could ask an Angel to be a guest in a heart given up to evil thoughts and purposes? Given the consciousness that an Angel is leading us, and instantly a series of preparations must be set up corresponding with the quality and title of the leading Angel of our pilgrimage. We prepare for some guests. According to the quality of the guest is the range and costliness of our preparation. Whom our love expects our love provides for. When we are longing for the coming one, saying, “The presence will make the house the sweeter and the brighter, and the speech will fill our life with new poetry and new hope. Oh, why tarry the chariot wheels?” then we make adequate that is to say, proportionate preparation. The touch of love is dainty, the invention of love is fertile, the expenditure of love is without a grudge or a murmur, another touch must be given to the most delicate arrangement; some addition must be made to the most plentiful accommodation; love must run over the programme just once more to see that every line is worthily written. Then the front door must be opened widely, and the arms, and the heart, and the whole being to receive the guest of love. And that is so in the higher regions. If an Angel is going to lead me, the Angel must have a chamber in my heart prepared worthy of myself. Chamber! nay, the whole heart must be the guest-room; he must occupy every corner of it, and I must array it with robes of purity and brightness that he may feel himself at home, even though he may have come from heaven to do some service for my poor life. Any appeal that so works upon every kind of faculty, upon imagination, conscience, will, force, must be an appeal that will do the life good. It calls us to perfectness, to preparedness, to a nobility corresponding in some degree with the nobility of the guest whom we entertain. If you please, you can fill your heart-house with mean occupants. There are evil visitants that will sit down in unprepared hearts and eat up your life a mouthful at a time. It lies within your power not within your right to make your heart-chamber the gathering place of evil things, evil thoughts, evil presences; but any conviction that would lead in that direction proves its own baseness, lies beyond the circle of argument, and is not to be treated seriously by earnest men. Now it is the distinguishing characteristic of Bible-teaching that it wants clean hearts, large hearts, ample entertainment, noble thoughts, sweet patience, complete sacrifice, having in it the pledge of final and eternal resurrection. Any book offering such suggestions of Angel presences, radiant leaderships, Divine associations, proves its own goodness, and its own inexpressible value.
Suppose, however, that in our obstinacy and narrowness of mind we hesitate to accept the suggestion of a living Angel, we lose nothing of all the gracious meaning of the text by substituting other terms. We have to grow up to the apprehension of Angelhood; but the stages of growth can be marked by common terms, and so the growth can be proved to be possible. Many a life has in it a memory playing the part of an Angel, a recollection full of tenderness, a reminiscence that lures the life forward little by little up steep places and through lone and dark valleys. Some might call such a memory an Angel. Why not? It discharges the offices of a blessed minister, it redeems life from despair, it fills life with gracious encouragement, it nourishes life in times of destitution and dejection. Now whilst some minds may be unable to accept the transcendental suggestion of Angel ministry, it is a poor mind hardly to be reasoned with that cannot conceive the idea that a memory, a recollection, a vow, an oath, may play an inspiring part in human education, and may save men from evil deeds in the time of tremendous temptation. We all have memories of that blessed kind. We know the vow we spoke, the oath we took, the pledge we gave, the word that passed from us and became solemn by sanctions that could not be remitted except at the expense of the soul’s integrity. Yet we have killed many an Angel. What slaughter we have left behind us! Stains redder than blood show the awful track our lives have made. Mark Antony pointed put the various rents in the robe of the murdered Caesar, and identified each rent with the name of the cruel smiter. So we could do with the robe of our own lives. See where the dewy pureness of young prayer lies mangled; see where the holiest oath of obedience lies with a gashed throat which can never be healed; see where purposes chaste as mountain snow lie murdered and forgotten; see where words of honour plighted at last interviews in whispers softened by tears lie crushed, contemned and mocked, gather up all the images, the facts, and the proofs, which memory will accumulate, and, as you look upon the hideous heap, regard it as God’s Angel, unheeded, degraded, murdered! Thus we do not escape the pressure of the argument by refusing to accept the supernatural term angel; we do not elude the critical judgment by endeavouring to run away from appearances which are charged with such high titles as Spirit, Angel, Divine minister. We have to answer appeals formed in terms of our own creation. Our common speech itself gathers up into an expression of judgment, and if we imagine that we have never seen an Angel or resented his ministry, we have to account for it that our memory, our vow, our plighted word, our testimonies spoken to the dying, have been forgotten, neglected, abandoned, disavowed; and when we have answered a lower appeal we may be prepared to reply to the challenge which sounds upon us with a more terrific thunder from higher places.
The Divine presence in life, by whatever name we may distinguish it, is pledged to two effects, supposing our spirit and our conduct to be right. God undertakes our cause as against our enemies. Would we could leave our enemies in his hands! I do not now speak altogether of merely human enemies because where there is enmity between man and man, though it never can be justified, yet it admits of such modification in the system of words as to throw responsibility upon both sides but I speak of other enemies, the enmity expressed by evil desire, by the pressure of temptation, by all the array against the soul’s health and weal of the principalities of the power of the air, the princes of darkness, the spirits of evil. Send the Angel to fight the Angel; let the Angel of Light fight the Angel of Darkness. We have no weapon of our own invention and manufacture fine enough to strike the subtle presence; but God is our Guardian. Are not his angels “ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be the heirs of salvation”? Sometimes we in our own human personality have not to fight, we have to stand still and see the salvation of God, to stand back in God’s eternity and say, “The battle is not mine, but thine; I cannot fight these dark ones; I cannot strike these presences, for they elude all weapons at my disposal: undertake for me and I will stand hands down waiting to see the outworking of thy redemption.” If we had more faith we should have fewer enemies; if we had more trust in God we should have less anxiety about our foes. We must not encounter the serpent alone; we must not attempt to find answers in the ingenuity of our own minds to the plaguing challenges and temptations of the evil one. The enemies arrayed against us are not those of flesh and blood, or we might in some degree meet them, elude them, disappoint them, we fight “not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world,” what have we to oppose to these? The Angel God’s Angel, the white-robed one, and he by his holiness shall overthrow all evil, for it lies with the Lord to chase the darkness and with holiness to put down all iniquity.
The second effect to which the Divine presence in our life is pledged is that we shall be blessed with the contentment which is riches. God said he would take sickness away from the midst of his people: “There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfil.” We must not be too literal, or here we shall miss the meaning. As we have been in danger of misinterpreting the term angel, we are equally in danger of misinterpreting the term sickness, or poverty, or the general word circumstances. We know nothing about these terms in the fulness of their meaning. We do but live an approximate life; we see hints and beginnings, not fruitions and completions. What will God do for us then? He will give us a contented spirit. What does a contented spirit do for a man? It turns his poverty into wealth, his sickness into energy, his loss into gain; it gives him to feel that a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth, but is a life hidden in the mystery of God’s own being. Thus we have mysteries amongst us which the common or carnal mind cannot understand. Man asking God’s blessing upon what appears to be unblest poverty, men saying it is enough when we can discover next to nothing in the hand uplifted in recognition of Divine goodness. Thus we hear voices coming from the bed of affliction that have in them the subdued tones of absolute triumph; thus the sick-chamber is turned into the church of the house, and if we would recover from dejection, and repining, and sorrow, we must go to the bedside of affliction and learn there how wondrous is the ministry of God’s Angel, how perfecting and ennobling the influence of God’s grace.
The “hornets,” spoken of in Exo 23:28 , must be taken figuratively. The Egyptian made as a symbol of princely quality and princely power the wasp and the bee. These were Egyptian symbols. Remembering the history of his people, going back to the period of their Egyptian bondage, seeing upon Egyptian banner, and fresco, and all manner of things royal, the image of the wasp and the bee, God said, I will send hornets before thee that can do more than these painted things can possibly do: I will destroy by a power that cannot be controlled: I will kill armies by hornets, I will dissolve hosts by winds that are charged with elements that life cannot withstand; I will be thy friend. God does not fight with one weapon; God’s method cannot be predicted. The wind is his, and the pestilence, and the tempest, and many things that we cannot name or control, and they are all pledged to work in favour of the cause of righteousness and the white banner of truth. Thus our hearts may claim a great and solid comfort. We are not going through the wilderness alone. As Christians we believe in the guardianship of Christ. Our prayer is “Jesus, still lead on.” Angel of the Covenant, let us feel assured of thy continued presence. Guide us with thine eye. The road is long, hard, and often inhospitable, but it is measured every inch, and no man could lengthen it. It is good for us to be sometimes in the wilderness; there we long for rest, there we sigh for companionship, there we mourn for one sight of flowers and one trill of birds carolling in the sunny air. The wilderness tames our passion, chastens our ambition, modifies our vanity: we can do nothing in sand; we cannot cool the fierce air; we cannot melt the rocks into streams of water. In the city man becomes boastful, there men outrun one another and get richer than their brethren; they spread themselves like green bay-trees; and fester in the noisomeness of unblest success; but in the waste of the wilderness, in the dead flats of affliction, in the monotony of sorrow, they learn how frail they are, how helpless, how dependent upon Angel ministries. Bless God for the wilderness; thank God for the long nights; be thankful that you have been in the school of poverty and have undergone the searching and testing of much discipline. Take the right view of your trials. You are nearer heaven for the graves you have dug if you have accepted bereavements in the right spirit; you are wiser for the losses you have bravely borne, you are nobler for all the sacrifices you have willingly completed. Sanctified affliction is an Angel that never misses the gate of heaven.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Exo 23:20 Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.
Ver. 20. Behold, I send an Angel, ] i.e., Christ. Immediately after God had given the law, – by the rule and threats whereof God the Father in his government was to proceed, saith a divine, – and a after they had transgressed it, Exo 33:2-4 he could not go along with them, for he should destroy them: but his Angel, that is, his Son, he would send with them; who also would destroy them, if they turned not, nor repented according to the rules of his law, the gospel.
a Mr Thomas Goodwin.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Behold. Figure of speech Asterismos (App-6) for emphasis. an angel. It is Elohim speaking, therefore, who can it be but Micha-el? Compare Dan 10:13, Dan 10:21; Dan 12:1. Jud 1:9; and see Mal 3:1; Isa 63:9.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Angel
(See Scofield “Heb 1:4”).
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
Angel: Exo 3:2-6, Exo 14:19, Exo 32:34, Exo 33:2, Exo 33:14, Gen 48:16, Num 20:16, Jos 5:13, Jos 6:2, Psa 91:11, Isa 63:9, Mal 3:1, 1Co 10:9, 1Co 10:10
prepared: Gen 15:18, Mat 25:34, Joh 14:3
Reciprocal: Gen 24:7 – angel Gen 24:40 – will Exo 4:13 – send Exo 23:23 – mine Angel Jos 5:14 – but as captain Jdg 2:1 – And an angel Zec 1:12 – the angel Zec 3:1 – the angel Zec 3:6 – the Zec 12:8 – as the Act 7:35 – by
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Exo 23:20-21. Behold, I send an Angel before thee The Angel of the covenant: accordingly, the Israelites, in the wilderness, are said to tempt Christ. It is promised that this blessed Angel should keep them in the way, though it lay through a wilderness first, and afterward through their enemies country; and thus Christ has prepared a place for his followers. Beware of him, and obey his voice; provoke him not It is at your peril if you do; for my name My nature, my authority; is in him.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Exo 23:20-33 E. Closing Discourse (Exo 23:23-25 a, Exo 23:27, and Exo 23:31 b Exo 23:33 Rd).This passage is highly complex. The verses just noted bear marks of the school of D; they condemn pillare, which E approves (Exo 24:4 and elsewhere); their warning tone is inconsistent with the dominant tone of promise; and they reflect the view of the Conquest as a clean sweep, which Rd expresses throughout Jos. Es Covenant Book has its epilogue (cf. Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28) presenting God as the Guide and Guardian of His faithful people. While J regards the pillar of cloud (Exo 13:21) and the Ark (Num 10:23), if not Hobab (Num 10:31), as the instrument of the Divine guidance, E here promises the companionship of an angel, who is, however, equivalent to God, whose name is in Him (Exo 23:21, cf. Gen 24:7, etc.). The conception of God as manifested under the guise of an angel may be viewed as a preparation for the revelation of the Incarnate Son and the Indwelling Spirit. Abundance, health, fertility, long life, and national stability should follow loyalty to His leading (Exo 23:25 d Exo 23:26). A plague of hornets should help in the conquest (Exo 23:28), which should, however (Exo 23:29 f.), be gradual (cf. Jdg 1:19, etc.), till it reached the Euphrates (Exo 23:31), as once happened under David and Solomon. In Exo 23:31 b Exo 23:33 Rd, Israel, not God, is to drive out the Canaanites. Perhaps originally in E this epilogue followed the ratification of the covenant (Exo 24:3-8) and the construction of the Tent of Meeting (Exo 33:7-11).
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
Yahweh’s relation to Israel 23:20-33
In this final part of the Book of the Covenant (Exo 20:22 to Exo 23:33), God gave the Israelites promises and precepts relating to their conquest of the Promised Land. Suzerainty treaties normally concluded with an explanation of the benefits that would come to the vassals if they obeyed the king’s commands and the difficulties they would experience if they disobeyed. That is characteristic of this section of the covenant, though the emphasis is positive.
"Similar opening [Exo 20:22-26] and closing remarks are also found in the codes of Hammurabi and Lipit-Istar." [Note: Cassuto, p. 305.]
"Following the text of the covenant code Yahweh assures His people of His ongoing commitment. He had not brought them out of Egypt and made covenant with them only to forget them in the wilderness. He had promised to give them land, so now He speaks of the process by which they would enter the land and the circumstances they would face there (Exo 23:20-33)." [Note: Merrill, "A Theology . . .," p. 47.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
God stressed the importance of obedience in these verses. The angel referred to was undoubtedly the Angel of the Lord (cf. Jos 5:13-15).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
PART V.–ITS SANCTIONS.
Exo 23:20-33.
This summary of Judaism being now complete, the people have to learn what mighty issues are at stake upon their obedience. And the transition is very striking from the simplest duty to the loftiest privilege: “Thou shalt not seethe a kid in his mother’s milk. Behold, I send an Angel before thee…. Beware of him: for My Name is in him” (Exo 23:19-21).
We have now to ask how much this mysterious phrase involves; who was the Angel of whom it speaks?
The question is not, How much did Israel at that moment comprehend? For we are distinctly told that prophets were conscious of speaking more than they understood, and searched diligently but in vain what the spirit that was in them did signify (1Pe 1:11).
It would, in fact, be absurd to seek the New Testament doctrine of the Logos full-blown in the Pentateuch. But it is mere prejudice, unphilosophical and presumptuous, to shut one’s eyes against any evidence which may be forthcoming that the earliest books of Scripture were tending towards the last conclusions of theology; that the slender overture to the Divine oratorio indicates already the same theme which thunders from all the chorus at the close.
It is scarcely necessary to refute the position that a mere “messenger” is intended, because angels have not yet “appeared as personal agents separate from God.” Kalisch himself has amply refuted his own theory. For, he says, “we are compelled … to refer it to Moses and his successor Joshua” (in loco). So then He Who will not forgive their transgressions is he who prayed that if God would not pardon them, his own name might be blotted from the book of life. He, to whom afterwards God said “I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee” (Exo 33:19), is the same of Whom God said “My name is in Him.” This position needs no examination; but the perplexities of those who reject the deeper interpretation is a strong confirmation of its soundness. We have still to choose between the promise of a created angel, and some manifestation and interposition of God, distinguished from Jehovah and yet one with Him. This latter view is an evident preparation for clearer knowledge yet to come. It is enough to stamp the dispensation which puts it forth as but provisional, and therefore bears witness to that other dispensation which has the key to it. And it is exactly what a Christian would expect to find somewhere in this summary of the law.
What, then, do we read elsewhere about the Angel of Jehovah? What do we find, especially, in these early books?
A difficulty has to be met at the very outset. The issue would be decided offhand, if it could be shown that the Angel of this verse is the same who is offered, as a poor substitute for their Divine protector, in the thirty-third chapter. But no contrast can be clearer than between the encouraging promise before us, and the sharp menace which then plunged Israel into mourning. Here is an Angel who must not be provoked, who will not pardon you, because “My Name is in Him.” There is an angel who will be sent because God will not go up, … lest He consume them (Exo 23:2-3). He is not the Angel of God’s presence, but of His absence. When the intercession of Moses won from God a reversal of the sentence, He then said “My Presence (My Face) shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest,”[38] but Moses answers, not yet reassured, “If Thy Presence (Thy Face) go not up with us, carry us not up hence. For wherein shall it be known that I have found grace in Thy sight?… Is it not that Thou goest with us? And the Lord said, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken” (Exo 23:14-17).
Moreover, Isaiah, speaking of this time, says that “In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the Angel of His Presence (His Face) saved them” (Isa 63:9).
Thus we find that some angel is to be sent because God will not go up: that thereupon the nation mourns, although in this twenty-third chapter they had received as a gladdening promise, the assurance of an Angel escort in Whom is the name of God; that in response to prayer God promises that His Face shall accompany them, so that it may be known that He Himself goes with them; and finally that His Face in Exodus is the Angel of His Face in Isaiah. The prophet at least had no doubt whether the gracious promise in the twenty-third chapter answered, in the thirty-third chapter, to the third verse or the fourteenth–to the menace, or to the restored favour.
This difficulty being now converted into an evidence, we turn back to examine other passages.
When the Angel of the Lord spoke to Hagar, “she called the name of Jehovah that spake unto her El Roi” (Gen 16:11, Gen 16:13). When God tempted Abraham, “the Angel of Jehovah called unto him out of heaven, and said, … I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son … from Me” (Gen 22:11-12). When a man wrestled with Jacob, he thereupon claimed to have seen God face to face, and called the place Peniel, the Face (Presence) of God (Gen 32:4, Gen 32:30). But Hosea tells us that “He had power with God: yea, he had power over the Angel, … and there He spake with us, even Jehovah, the God of hosts” (Hos 12:3, Hos 12:5). Even earlier, in his exile, the Angel of the Lord had appeared unto him and said, “I am the God of Bethel … where thou vowedst a vow unto Me.” But the vow was distinctly made to God Himself: “I will surely give the tenth to Thee” (Gen 31:1-55 : Gen 31:11, Gen 31:13; Gen 28:20, Gen 28:22). Is it any wonder that when this patriarch blessed Joseph, he said, “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which hath fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which hath redeemed me from all evil, (may He) bless the lads” (Gen 48:15-16)?
In Exo 3:2 the Angel of the Lord appeared out of the bush. But presently He changes into Jehovah Himself, and announces Himself to be Jehovah the God of their fathers (Exo 3:2, Exo 3:4, Exo 3:15). In Exo 13:21 Jehovah went before Israel, but the next chapter tells how “the Angel of the Lord which went before Israel removed and went behind” (Exo 14:19); while Numbers (Num 20:16) says expressly that “He sent an Angel and brought us out of Egypt.”
By the comparison of these and many later passages (which is nothing but the scientific process of induction, leaning not on the weight of any single verse, but on the drift and tendency of all the phenomena) we learn that God was already revealing Himself through a Medium, a distinct personality whom He could send, yet not so distinct but that His name was in Him, and He Himself was the Author of what He did.
If Israel obeyed Him, He would bring them into the promised land (Exo 23:23); and if there they continued unseduced by false worships, He would bless their provisions, their bodily frame, their children; He would bring terror and a hornet against their foes; He would clear the land before them as fast as their population could enjoy it; He would extend their boundaries yet farther, from the Red Sea, where Solomon held Ezion Geber (1Ki 9:26), to the Mediterranean, and from the desert where they stood to the Euphrates, where Solomon actually possessed Palmyra and Thiphsah (2Ch 8:4; 1Ki 4:24).
FOOTNOTES:
[38] Even if the rendering were accepted, “Must My Presence (My Face) go with thee?” (Can I not be trusted without a direct Presence?) the argument would not be affected, because Moses presses for the favour and obtains it.