In the Old Testament, when it talks about the Angel of the LORD… could it be talking about Jesus?
Look at the burning bush, or the encounter with Hagar. This being speaks as if He is God, accepts worship, makes promises only God could make. Not some created angel. My grandmother used to say, “Jesus didn’t start working when He was born in that manger, He’s been showing up for His people since the very beginning”.
After Jesus came in the flesh, this specific figure just… stops appearing.
Your Prayer Delivered to the Holy Land
You don’t have to pray alone. Have your prayer submitted to the Holy Land as well as churches, monasteries, and prayer groups worldwide who will lift your intentions to God and pray on your behalf.
From the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem to sacred sites across the globe, your prayer will be shared and remembered.
Sounds to me like your grandmother nailed it (they usually do).
In Genesis 48:15-16. Jacob blesses Joseph’s sons, saying: “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, the angel who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the boys.”
He parallels “the God” and “the angel” right there. No ordinary angel redeems or blesses like that. Not that I can remember in scripture at least (I could be wrong, of course). Then Genesis 31:11-13: The Angel tells Jacob, “I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed the pillar and made a vow to me.”
Hagar called Him ‘the God who sees me,’ Manoah said ‘we shall surely die because we have seen God.’ Sounds different than “just” a created angel.
In the old testament it does sound like it but if you take the whole Bible into account then… maybe not.
But then you get a passage like Luke 1:11 where it’s clearly just Gabriel, ‘an angel of the Lord,’ and the whole framing feels more ordinary, even though an angelic visitation isn’t ordinary. The definite article versus indefinite article distinction someone brought up really does matter here.
In Old Testament encounters, the eternal Son of God was already there, long before Bethlehem. When you see the Angel of the Lord speaking as God, accepting worship, making divine promises, that’s Christ in His pre-incarnate form.
The Manoah story in Judges 13 might have your answer. The Angel of the Lord appears to Manoah’s wife, promising a son (Samson). Manoah offers Him food, but the Angel refuses and says, “If you offer a burnt offering, offer it to the Lord” redirecting worship, yet identifying Himself with God.
Manoah asks His name, and He replies, “Why do you ask? It is wonderful”. Then He ascends in the altar flame, and Manoah tells his wife, “We’ve seen God. We’re gonna die!”
This figure accepts sacrifice to the Lord, claims a messianic title. He gets treated as God Himself.
John Walvoord argued that these are Christophanies: Jesus is the visible God of the NT; this Angel stops appearing after the incarnation; both are sent by the Father; and it can’t be the Father or the Spirit (who are invisible). These were temporary theophanies. He’d appear, then vanish. The incarnation is permanent. Flesh forever, like your grandma said.
We have to be careful not to swing too broadly with this, because the enemy loves when we oversimplify Scripture. Not every “angel of the Lord” reference is a Christophany. Luke 1 mentions actual created angels too.
The real work is in rightly dividing the Word and examining each context carefully rather than assuming every appearance fits the same mold. When the Angel speaks as God, accepts worship, or makes divine promises, that’s our Lord fighting for His people before Bethlehem. When a messenger is just delivering news, that’s the angelic host doing their duty.
Joshua 5 sticks out to me. The commander of the Lord’s army shows up with his sword drawn, tells Joshua to remove his sandals because the ground is holy, and Joshua falls face down in worship. No rebuke. Not like with other angels. Then the walls of Jericho fall after his instructions, which… that’s not a small detail.
The angel bears God’s authority so fully that the line between messenger and presence basically disappears. And after the cross, these visits fade (pointing to the Word made flesh dwelling among us).
My kid asked me this once on the way back from Church.
A lot depends on how “angel” actually works in Hebrew thought, a messenger can speak with the sender’s full authority, the agency concept, so the messenger’s words are the sender’s words. Some of these passages could just be God’s presence mediated through a messenger. Doesn’t have to be the Son every time.
But it also makes me slow down with each specific text and ask whether the passage actually distinguishes between the Lord and the Angel in that scene, or if they collapse into one voice.
That boundary matters, speaking for God versus speaking as God. I’ve started just naming the pattern when I see it in the text.
In Exodus 23. God says He’ll send an angel ahead of Israel, with His own name in him. Obey him, because he won’t pardon rebellion. Only God does that. There’s something about this figure carrying divine weight. No mere messenger could bear that kind of authority.
Lately in prayer (and I don’t say this lightly), I’ve sensed that presence bridging old and new covenants, drawing me closer to the Father through the Son who was always there.
In Isaiah 63:9 is the one that really ties it together for me. ‘The Angel of His Presence saved them.’ The Angel of His Presence, that word choice feels purposeful, like Isaiah is pointing to someone who carries the very presence of God within Himself.
And when you line that up with Colossians 1:15 calling Christ the image of the invisible God… it starts to paint a pretty clear picture. The Son has always been the one making the Father known, from the wilderness with Israel and the theophanies to finally in the flesh.
A few years ago I was reading through Joshua, almost skimmed right past chapter 5, and then verses 13-15 but Joshua meets this figure called the Commander of the Lord’s army, falls facedown, and the Commander tells him to take off his sandals because the ground is holy. That’s almost word-for-word the burning bush.
I sat there in my kitchen with my coffee going cold, just staring at the page like… this is the same Person. Nobody in my church growing up ever connected those two passages for me, which still kind of baffles me, given how obvious it seems now. Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. I started looking for Him everywhere, and He kept showing up in places I had read a hundred times before.
The Angel of the Lord is Jesus Christ.
What we’re seeing in those Old Testament appearances is the pre-incarnate eternal Son of God, same person just before Bethlehem. Your grandmother had it exactly right.
The demons openly proclaimed His divinity when He cast them out. That says a lot.
The names matter. Yeshua means “God saves.” Immanuel, Son of Man, Son of God all point to the same person across Scripture. Hard to just wave that away.
Context shows if “Angel of the Lord” is a created being or God Himself. Only God accepts worship.
Exodus 3:2-4. The Angel of the Lord appears in the fire, but then it says the Lord saw Moses turn aside and God called to him from the bush. The titles just shift from Angel to Lord to God, like they’re one and the same (which I think is exactly the point). I used to read this passage as more ambiguous, but once you look closer at how those names move between each other, hard to unsee it.
It’s really Him. The preincarnate Jesus shows up throughout the Old Testament (Christophany is the term), and when you see ‘LORD’ written in all caps in those passages, that’s your clue we’re looking at something far more significant than a created angel.
He was showing up for His people long before Bethlehem ever happened.
I love noticing the pre-incarnate Christ showing up throughout the Old Testament. This is the mainstream Christian understanding: ‘THE Angel of the Lord’ is God the Son before Bethlehem.
Makes it hit different when you think about how long he was at work before the manger.