Hebrews Chapter Two, The Angel Of The Covenant

 

Hebrews 2:2 For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just reward, [3] how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, [4] God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will?

 

The deacon and martyr Stephen, when addressing the Sanhedrin in his greatest and final sermon, accused them of this at the last: “[you] have received the law by the direction of angels and have not kept it,” Acts 7:53.  So the “word” of Hebrews 2:2 is the “law” of Acts 7:53. This, of course, relates to the Mosaic Law given at Sinai.

Numerous times in Israel’s history and before, angels have spoken to mankind. They are, as we have been learning, God’s messengers and their interest lies in the saints. Beyond the ministry of God’s angelic order we find a particular angel that is the source of much controversy in scholastic circles. Malachi writes of this angel, “And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger (Hebrew malak, translated messenger or angel) of the covenant, in whom you delight. Behold, He is coming,” Malachi 3:1. If Christ was in the beginning the Word of God (John 1:1) then it makes sense that He is the messenger, or voice of the Father to the people of Israel.

 

In the OT God appeared to Abraham before Sodom’s destruction, Genesis 18:1. It was clear that God had taken a human appearance because Abraham saw Him (Genesis 18:2), offered Him a meal (Genesis 18:8), and walked with God, as God determined to relate to the patriarch Sodom’s impending doom, Genesis 18:17, Amos 3:7. Yet God appeared to physically occupy two places simultaneously when, “the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven,” Genesis 19:24, NASB. Later, in Exodus, we read, “The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush,” Exodus 3:2, NASB. This angel commanded Moses to remove his sandals because he was standing on holy ground before revealing Himself. “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God,” Exodus 3:6, NASB.

 

The angel of this passage, like the man Abraham saw, appears to be a theophany. Jesus explains: “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except He who is from God; He has seen the Father,” John 6:46. That is because, “God is Spirit,” John 4:24. The apostle John adds, “No man hath seen God at any time,” 1 John 4:12, KJV. Extrapolating, the apostle writes in the beginning of the gospel bearing his name, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him,” John 1:18. The Greek term “declared” can literally be translated, “led forth or expounded.” To expound means to illustrate, or further explain, to clarify. Oxford defines expound, “present or explain a theory or idea systematically.”

 

In Joshua we find the captain of the Lord’s host, appearing again as a man with a drawn sword, Joshua 5:13. When the man explained who he was Joshua bowed to the ground, inquiring what message Heaven’s captain had for him. Again, the first thing the angel said to Joshua, like Moses, was to remove his sandals because he tread upon holy ground, Joshua 5:15. In Judges we read, “Then the Angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, “I led you up from Egypt and brought you to the land of which I swore to your fathers; and I said, ‘I will never break My covenant with you,’” Judges 2:1. Later in Judges when Manaoh asks the name of this angel, so that he might honor him when Samson was born the angel answers, “Why do you ask My name, seeing it is wonderful?” Judges 13:18.

 

When it became evident that Manaoh and his wife stood in the Angel of the Lord’s presence, he was terrified and shouted, “We shall surely die, because we have seen God!” Judges 13:22. Manaoh reacted in the same manner Moses did when he perceived that he had just glimpsed the divine. But if no man has seen God, which Jesus firmly declared to be true, then who is this angel Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Manaoh and so many others in the Old Testament saw and spoke with? Is he in fact the angel of the covenant in whom Israel delights, as Malachi infers?

 

So much more may be said about the pre-incarnate appearance of our Lord, but we’ll set this issue aside for the time being, not being the point of this passage. Regardless of one’s position concerning the Angel of the Lord from the Old Testament, it is doubtless that angels tended to the things of God throughout the dispensation of the Law under Moses. Angels were God’s messengers on many an occasion as we have already observed in chapter one. Their words and actions only under girded God’s revealed truth as it concerned Israel and the elect. Verse 2 reinforces the notion that everything spoken by angels was steadfast, immovable, and transgressing the commandment received punishment. This concept under the Old Testament was succinctly described in Ezekiel.

 

“But when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity and does according to all the abominations that the wicked man does, shall he live? All the righteousness he has done shall not be remembered; because of the unfaithfulness of which he is guilty and the sin which he has committed, because of them he shall die,” Ezekiel 18:24.