Reading Time: 11 minutesQuestion 8010. The Angel of the LORD is the most intriguing figure in the Old Testament, and working out who He is has been one of the most rewarding studies I have ever undertaken. He steps into the story unannounced, speaks as God in the first person, accepts worship that no created angel would dare…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2114. The figure who wrestled with Jacob at Peniel is introduced with deliberate mystery: “And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day” (Genesis 32:24). A man – that is all the narrator will say at first. Yet by sunrise Jacob is limping away from the…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 2111. The burning bush is one of the most famous scenes in the whole Bible, yet ask who actually spoke to Moses from it and you will get a surprising variety of answers. Was it an angel? Was it God the Father? Was it, as I am persuaded, the pre-incarnate Son of God? The…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2109. A Christophany is an appearance of the Son of God before His incarnation – the eternal Christ showing Himself to people in the Old Testament, centuries before Bethlehem. The word is built like its cousin “theophany”: Christos, “Christ”, plus phaino, “to appear”. Where a theophany is any visible appearing of God, a Christophany…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 2108. A theophany is a visible appearance of God to human beings, and once you know the word you will start spotting them all over your Old Testament. The term comes from two Greek words: theos, “God”, and phaino, “to appear” or “to show”. Put them together and you have “an appearing of God”…