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Judges 2 · a question people ask

The LORD's angel says, "I brought you out of Egypt". Who is he?

Interpretation

The chapter calls him "The LORD’s angel" (2:1, 2:4) (tap came up). He speaks in the first person as the one who made the covenant: "I brought you out of Egypt, and have brought you to the land which I swore to give your fathers" (2:1), "I will never break my covenant with you" (2:1), and "you have not listened to my voice" (2:2). No other name is given, and no New Testament verse tells of Bochim. Christians read who he is in two main ways, as they do "the LORD’s angel" at the bush (Exodus 3:2) and before Balaam (Numbers 22:22), and the commander of the LORD's army who met Joshua (Joshua 5:14). Both views agree on what the text says: the words are the LORD's, and the people answered them with weeping and with sacrifice "to the LORD" (2:4-5).

How Christians read it

Where Christians differ, Favor sets out the main views side by side and doesn't pick one.

The LORD himself, appearing

Those who hold this view point out that he doesn't begin, as a prophet does, with the LORD says. He speaks as the one who acted: "I brought you out of Egypt", "I swore", "my covenant" (2:1). When the LORD sends a prophet in Judges 6, the prophet begins, "The LORD, the God of Israel, says" (6:8). Later in Judges, when the LORD's angel had gone, "Manoah knew that he was the LORD’s angel" (13:21), and said, "We shall surely die, because we have seen God" (13:22). Some who hold this view take him to be the Son before he was born, since "No one has seen God at any time. The only born Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has declared him" (John 1:18).

Judges 2:1 · Judges 6:8 · Judges 13:21-22 · John 1:18

An angel sent by the LORD

Those who hold this view read him as a messenger who speaks the words of the one who sent him, in the first person. The prophet of Judges 6 does the same: "I brought you up from Egypt" (6:8), and in Hebrew brought you up there is the verb of 2:1's brought you out. The Hebrew word for angel is the ordinary word for a messenger, and it is used of a man speaking for the LORD: "Haggai, the LORD’s messenger, spoke the LORD’s message" (Haggai 1:13), where the LORD’s messenger is the same two Hebrew words as the LORD’s angel here. And of the angel he sends before Israel, the LORD says, "listen to his voice" and "my name is in him" (Exodus 23:21): on this view, a messenger the LORD sends can speak with the LORD's own authority.

Judges 6:8 · Haggai 1:13 · Exodus 23:20-21

The verses

“The LORD’s angel appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the middle of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.”
Exodus 3:2 · World English Bible
“God’s anger burned because he went; and the LORD’s angel placed himself in the way as an adversary against him. Now he was riding on his donkey, and his two servants were with him.”
Numbers 22:22 · World English Bible
“He said, “No; but I have come now as commander of the LORD’s army.” Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and worshiped, and asked him, “What does my lord say to his servant?””
Joshua 5:14 · World English Bible

From Favor's study of Judges 2

Judges 2: Another generation

Judges 2 sets out the pattern the book's stories follow: evil in the LORD's sight, enemies, judges, and then back again, "more corruptly than their fathers" (2:19). No cry comes in it; the LORD raised up judges because "it grieved the LORD because of their groaning" (2:18). And it begins with a generation "who didn’t know the LORD, nor the work which he had done for Israel" (2:10).

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Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible, which is in the public domain. Every answer cites the verses it rests on. What we believe · All Bible questions