able," says Bleek, "in the application of the term ȧTóσToλos to Christ." It is the more striking, from the fact that, when the author wrote, the word apostle had already acquired the force of a proper name. The most natural course, therefore, would have been to avoid the appearance of placing Christ upon a par with the apostles. There can be no doubt, however, that the expression is used for the purpose of pointing out the identity of Christ with the angel of Jehovah under the Old Testament (Bengel: "legatum dei patris"), and is thus a kind of proper noun. is only on this supposition that it has any bearing upon the exalted dignity which the context necessarily requires. 'AπóσΑπόσ τολον is followed by ἀρχιερέα. And so also there are passages of the Old Testament (Ezek. ix. and Zech. i. 12'), in which the angel of the Lord is represented as "High Priest."

It

This passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews is closely connected with other passages in the New Testament, in which Christ is spoken of as sent by God (anоoréλλw is the word commonly employed, and on some occasions Téμπw). These pas

sages are too numerous to be regarded as accidental. There is the less room for such a supposition, from the fact that the frequent use of the expression is apparent solely in the discourses of Christ and in the writings of John, who has moulded his style, far more than the others, after the model of his Master, and in whose writings the independent use of these terms goes hand in hand with the fact, that he inserts them more frequently than the other Evangelists in the sayings of Christ. The explanation of the latter circumstance is, that he paid peculiar attention to the deeper significance of these terms; and the same reason necessarily led to his own frequent use of them. As the expression "Son of man,” which the Saviour applied to himself, always points to Daniel, so do these expressions invariably contain an allusion to the personal identity of Christ and the Old Testament angel or messenger (Gesandte, one sent) of the Lord. This is all the more obvious, from the fact that it is a customary thing with John to introduce nice and obscure allusions to the Old Testament, and that in this respect he differs widely from Matthew, who prefers what is obvious and lies upon the surface. Compare Matt. x. 40, "he that receiveth me receiveth him that

1 See the remarks on these passages.

sent me” (Tóv ȧπoσтeínavтá μe): i.e., "he that receiveth you, my apostles, receiveth me, and he that receiveth me, the

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, receiveth the Lord himself." Again, chap. xv. 24, oùê άжεστáλην, “I am not sent ;" and chap. xxi. 37. Also, Luke iv. 43, "I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also, for therefore am I sent” (ảπéσтaλμai). And in addition to the passages already quoted from John in vol. i. p. 42, compare chap. iii. 17, " for God sent not (où yàp ảπéoteiλev) his Son into the world to condemn the world;" ver. 34, "for he whom God hath sent (aπéσтeiλev) speaketh the words of God;" chap. v. 36, 37, "the works that I do bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent mе (аπéσтаλ×е), and the Father himself, which hath sent me (ó méμas μe) hath borne witness of me;" ver. 38, "and ye have not his word abiding in you, for whom he hath sent (améσTelev), him ye believe not ;" chap. vi. 29, 57, and vii. 28, "he that sent me (ó πéμyas ue) is true, whom ye know not;" ver. 29, "I know him, for I am from him, and he hath sent me" (ȧTéσTEλe); chap. viii. 42, "if God were your father ye would love me, for I proceeded forth and came from God, neither came I of myself, but he sent me” (àπéσTeiλe); chap. x. 36, xi. 42, xvii. 3, 8, 18, 21, 23, 25, xx. 21: "then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you, as my Father hath sent me (ȧπéσтаλкe), even so send (πÉμжш) I you;" 1 John. iv. 9, 10, " in this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent (ȧπéσтaλkev) his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent (ȧπéσTEλe) his Son to be the propitiation for our sins;" ver. 14, "the Father (àπéστаλке) hath sent the son to be the Saviour of the world."

In John xii. 41, again, we read, "these things said Esaias, when he saw his (Christ's) glory, and spake of him." According to Is. vi. Isaiah saw the glory of Jehovah. But if it be maintained that the angel of Jehovah is an ordinary angel, and is not in any way connected with Christ, the link between Jehovah and Christ is broken. It is perfectly obvious, however, that John does not assert the identity of Jehovah and Christ on his own authority, but stands upon such firm and clear scriptural ground that he is under no necessity of entering into discussions. Delitzsch objects (p. 355), that Isaiah did not see the glory of the

angel of Jehovah, but the glory of Jehovah himself, and that, notwithstanding this, John speaks of him as seeing the glory of Jesus. But we have already observed (vol. i., p. 111, 114), that the passages in which the angel of Jehovah is mentioned prove, that in every case, in which appearances of Jehovah are referred to, these appearances are to be understood as occurring through the medium of his angel, even where this is not expressly stated. John speaks of himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved (chap. xiii. 23; xix. 26; xx. 2; xxi. 7, 20). That this expression takes the place of a proper name is evident, not only from the frequency with which it is employed, but also from the fact that it is used in cases, in which there is no immediate reference to the love of Jesus to the apostle. It is obviously a paraphrase of the name John. The actual meaning of this name is "whom Jehovah loves;" and in the love of Jesus, John beheld a fulfilment of the pious wish, which dictated the name.

In chap. i. 11 John sets out with the view, that Christ was the angel of the Lord who had come in the flesh. He says Christ came eis Tà idia, and the idiot did not receive him. If we suppose the angel of the Lord to have been an ordinary angel, there is no foundation for this expression. The Israelites are described in the Old Testament as the people and inheritance of Jehovah (Ex. iv. 22, 23, and 2 Sam. vii. 24, "and thou preparedst for thyself thine Israel as a people for ever, and thou didst become their God"), and of his angel, through whom all his intercourse with his people was carried on. Compare Ex. iii. 2 (“and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire"), and ver. 7 ("and the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt"). In Mal. iii. 1, again, the temple is spoken of as belonging to the Lord and his covenant angel.

Not John alone, but the other "pillars" in the apostolic office start with the assumption, that Christ is the self-revealing Jehovah of the Old Testament, and thus confirm the view that has been maintained by the Church respecting the angel of the Lord. According to 1 Pet. i. 11, "the prophets searched what, or what manner of time the spirit of Christ which was in them did signify." But the prophets ascribe their revelations to the spirit of Jehovah. How, then, came Peter to substitute Christ so directly for Jehovah, unless he found a warrant for this in

the Old Testament doctrine of the angel of the Lord? That the latter is always implied when the prophets speak of Jehovah, is apparent from Judges v. 23, where Deborah expressly refers to the angel of Jehovah a prophetic revelation, which she had received in a purely internal manner. In 1 Cor. x. 4, Paul says : "and did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of the spiritual rock that followed them; and the rock was Christ." Here, then, we have what Delitzsch felt to be wanting in John xii. 41. The preservation of the people during their march through the wilderness, and their admission into Canaan, is expressly ascribed in the Old Testament to the angel of the Lord. Compare Ex. xxiii. 20, 21, "behold I send an angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Take heed to him, and obey his voice, rebel not against him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him," (vol. i. p. 118); also Is. lxiii. 8, 9, "the angel of his presence saved them." According to 1 Cor. x. 9("neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents"),-Christ was the leader of Israel through the desert, and was tempted by them. In Num. xxi. 5-7 they are said to have tempted Jehovah, who is represented in Exodus as leading them in the person of his angel. reading Kúpov, which Lachmann has adopted, is evidently traceable to short-sightedness. According to Heb. xi. 26, Moses esteemed the reproach which he endured for Christ's sake (Tov ὀνειδισμὸν τοῦ Χριστοῦ) greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. But according to the Mosaic account, he made all his sacrifices in the service of Jehovah and his angel.

The

In John v. 37, when Christ is telling the Jews that they will lose God if they reject him, he says, "ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape." It is inconceivable that Christ should have spoken in this manner with the giving of the law at Sinai before him, as well as Is. vi. and other passages in which Jehovah appears and speaks, except on the assumption that whenever manifestations of Jehovah are mentioned in the Old Testament, they always take place through the medium of his angel, who is connected with him by unity of nature, and who came in the flesh in Christ. That the remarks of Ode are correct, to the effect that "it was he himself who had formerly

spoken to the patriarchs, and had appeared in the form of the angel," cannot for a moment be doubted, especially as there is an allusion both before and afterwards to the personal identity of Christ and the angel of the Lord in the manner already indicated, viz., ver. 36, "the Father hath sent me," ver. 38, "for, whom He hath sent, him ye believe not." The same may also be said of the expression in John i. 18, "no man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." That no one has ever seen God must be an assertion entirely without foundation, and altogether at variance with history, unless we recognise a divine mediator in the angel of the Lord. For, otherwise, such passages as speak of appearances and utterances on the part of Jehovah, have no connexion whatever with those which mention the angel of the Lord. And so, again, when Christ tells the Jews in John vii. 28, that from not knowing Him, they do not know God, and by rejecting him they cut themselves off from any participation in God, light is thrown upon his words by the distinction, already made in the Old Testament, between the unseen God and his revealer, who is the medium of all approach to Him.

That the words of Christ in John viii. 56 assume the identity of Christ and the angel of the Lord, has already been pointed out in vol. i., p. 40.

In Col. i. 15, Christ is described as "the image of the invisible God,” and in Heb. i. 3, as απαύγασμα τῆς δόξης καὶ χαρακτηρ τῆς ὑποστάσεως τοῦ θεοῦ (“the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person"). Further investigation will show, that in these passages, expressions which were current among the Jews in connexion with the Metatron or angel of the Lord, are transferred to Christ. There is something strange in the passages themselves. One cannot but feel throughout that they do not enunciate the doctrine in question for the first time, but point to something already in existence, and ultimately to the Old Testament, which alone could possibly afford a pledge of certainty. It is only so far as the expressions themselves are concerned, that they are in any way connected with the Jewish theology of the time. Bähr has correctly remarked, that "the idea of a revealer of the deity was to them one of the primary truths of religion, which they expressed in language current at the time."