Angels in the Old Testament

The Old Testament is full of angels, and three of its angelophanies are load-bearing for later theology: the three visitors who came to Abraham at the oak of Mamre, read by the tradition as a revelation that would flower in the icon of the Holy Trinity; Jacob’s ladder, with the angels ascending and descending; and the “Angel of the LORD,” whose identity the Fathers read in two ways — as the pre-incarnate Word, or as a created angel through whom God spoke. This file sets out each, reporting the christological question precisely and keeping the treatment of Mamre consistent with the iconographic tradition.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Three Visitors at Mamre

At the oak of Mamre, “the LORD appeared unto [Abraham]… and he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him”; Abraham runs to meet them, bows to the ground, and addresses them — now as one (“My Lord”), now as three — while they eat the meal he sets before them and promise that Sarah shall bear a son (Genesis 18:1–15). The narrative slides deliberately between the three and the one: “the LORD” appears, yet three men stand; Abraham speaks to “my Lord,” yet serves all three. When they rise, two go on toward Sodom — where they are called “two angels” (Genesis 19:1) — while “the LORD” remains and speaks with Abraham (Genesis 18:22).

The Fathers read this astonishing passage along more than one line, and both belong to the tradition. [Disputed: the identity of the three at Mamre. (a) One patristic reading takes the scene as the appearance of the Lord (the Word, or God) accompanied by two angels — the "LORD" who remains with Abraham and the "two angels" who go on to Sodom (Genesis 19:1); this reading fits the text's own distinction and is followed by several Fathers. (b) A second, more contemplative reading sees in the three equal visitors a veiled foreshadowing of the Holy Trinity — three, equal, mysteriously one — received by Abraham; this reading, developed in the Byzantine tradition, became the theological basis of the icon of the Trinity. Both readings are patristic and are not mutually exclusive: the Trinitarian reading is offered as a *prefiguration* disclosed in retrospect by the fuller revelation, not as a claim that Abraham saw the three Persons as such (surveyed in Daniélou, *The Angels and Their Mission*, 1957; Bunge, *The Rublev Trinity*, SVS Press, 2007, on the exegetical history behind the icon).]

The point where care is most needed is the icon. The celebrated icon of St. Andrei Rublev (early 15th c.), titled The Hospitality of Abraham or simply The Holy Trinity, depicts the three angelic visitors of Mamre seated at Abraham’s table — and it is precisely because it depicts the three angels, and not the divine essence directly, that the image is theologically admissible: the Father is never circumscribed or portrayed, and the icon prefigures the Trinity through the three created messengers of the Genesis scene, not by painting the Godhead (Bunge, The Rublev Trinity, 2007; and consistent with the treatment in Holy Icons). The full iconographic reading is deferred to the icons section (see How Angels Are Depicted) and to the dedicated Holy Icons collection; here it is enough to mark the exegetical fact — that the Trinitarian reading of Mamre is a prefiguration mediated by the angels of the story, held together with the older reading of “the Lord and two angels.”

Jacob’s Ladder

Fleeing to Haran, Jacob “lighted upon a certain place… and he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the LORD stood above it” (Genesis 28:12–13). The angels’ two-way traffic on the ladder — up to God and down to earth — became for the Fathers a favorite image of the whole angelic ministry: the bodiless powers forever going up in contemplation and coming down in service, the living link between heaven and earth (Daniélou, The Angels and Their Mission, 1957, on the ladder as the image of angelic mediation).

The ladder was read typologically in two directions that the liturgy loves. The Lord Himself gives one: to Nathanael He says, “ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man” (John 1:51) — Christ is the true ladder, the joining of heaven and earth in His own person. The Byzantine hymnographers give the other: the Theotokos is hailed as “the ladder that Jacob saw,” because through her God descended to earth and by her humanity ascends to God (a standing Marian image of the hymnography; see the Akathist tradition, and St. the Theotokos). Both readings honor the angels of the vision as the retinue of a mystery larger than themselves — the union of the divine and the human.

The Angel of the LORD

The most theologically freighted angelic figure of the Old Testament is “the Angel of the LORD” (Hebrew mal’akh YHWH). This figure appears at the great turning-points — to Hagar in the wilderness (Genesis 16:7–13), to Abraham at the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22:11–18), to Moses “in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush” (Exodus 3:2), to Israel in the pillar (Exodus 14:19) — and the texts do something strange: the “angel” speaks as God, in the first person, receives worship, and is addressed as the LORD. Hagar, after the angel speaks, “called the name of the LORD that spake unto her, Thou God seest me” (Genesis 16:13); at the bush, “the angel of the LORD appeared,” and then “God called unto him out of the midst of the bush” (Exodus 3:2–4).

This identification of the messenger with the One who sends drove the Fathers to a christological reading, and it is the dominant Orthodox one. [Disputed: the identity of the Old Testament "Angel of the LORD." (a) The dominant patristic and liturgical reading — running from Justin Martyr and Irenaeus through much of the Greek tradition — identifies the Angel of the LORD in the theophanies with the **pre-incarnate Word**, the Son, who is the one that makes the invisible Father known; the Septuagint's title for the Messiah, "**Angel [Messenger] of Great Counsel**" (Isaiah 9:6 LXX), and its use as a name of Christ in the liturgy, express this reading (Justin, *Dialogue with Trypho* 56–60; Irenaeus, *Against Heresies* IV.7; surveyed in Daniélou, 1957; and in [Christology](../../orthodoxy/01-foundations/christology.md)). On this view the theophanies are appearances of the Logos before His Incarnation. (b) A second reading, more prominent in the Latin tradition (notably Augustine, *On the Trinity* II–III) and among some later Greek writers, holds that the theophanic "angel" is a genuinely **created angel** through whom God speaks and acts in His own name — God's presence mediated, not the Son Himself appearing — a reading motivated partly by concern to guard the Son's full divinity against any subordinationist misreading of His being "sent" as an angel. Both readings are patristic and are reported here in their own terms; the Orthodox liturgical tradition, with its "Angel of Great Counsel," leans decidedly toward the christological reading, without the Church having bound the question by conciliar definition.]

The stakes are worth naming, because they are not merely exegetical. The christological reading undergirds a great theme of Orthodox theology: that the Old Testament theophanies are already appearances of the Word, so that the God of Abraham, Moses, and the prophets is known in and through the Son — the same Word who would take flesh of the Virgin. This is why the burning bush unconsumed became an image of the Theotokos (the fire of divinity dwelling in her without consuming her nature), and why the liturgy can sing of Christ as the “Angel of Great Counsel” who spoke to the fathers (Daniélou, 1957; the Marian typology of the bush is standard in the hymnography). The created-angel reading, held soberly, guards against reading the Son’s mission back into a subordination; the tradition holds the christological sense as primary while honoring the caution the second reading expresses.

The Angels as God’s Armies and Ministers

Beyond these three focal texts, the Old Testament shows the angels as the “host of heaven” — the armies of the LORD of hosts (YHWH Sabaoth). Joshua meets “the captain of the host of the LORD” with drawn sword before Jericho and is told, as Moses was, to remove his shoes, for the ground is holy (Joshua 5:13–15); Elisha’s servant, his eyes opened, sees “the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire” guarding the prophet (2 Kings 6:17); Daniel sees the Ancient of Days served by “thousand thousands” (Daniel 7:10) and is helped by Michael, “one of the chief princes” (Daniel 10:13). Isaiah sees the Seraphim about the throne (Isaiah 6), Ezekiel the Cherubim of the chariot (Ezekiel 1; 10) — the visions from which the tradition drew the names of the highest ranks (see The Names and Their Scripture). Across the whole Old Testament the angels are God’s armies, His messengers, and His worshippers — the invisible court of the invisible King, breaking into the visible world at the moments of His self-disclosure.

See Also

References

  • Scripture: Genesis 16:7–13; 18:1–15; 19:1; 22:11–18; 28:12–13; Exodus 3:2–4; 14:19; Joshua 5:13–15; 2 Kings 6:17; Isaiah 6; 9:6 (LXX); Ezekiel 1; 10; Daniel 7:10; 10:13; John 1:51.
  • Justin Martyr. Dialogue with Trypho 56–60. Trans. ANF 1. (The Angel of the LORD as the pre-incarnate Word.)
  • Irenaeus. Against Heresies IV.7. Trans. ANF 1. (The Word in the theophanies.)
  • Augustine. On the Trinity II–III. (The theophanic angel as a created messenger; the Latin reading.)
  • Daniélou, Jean. The Angels and Their Mission According to the Fathers of the Church. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1957. (The christological reading of the theophanies; the ladder as the image of angelic mediation; the exegesis of Mamre.)
  • Bunge, Gabriel. The Rublev Trinity. Trans. Andrew Louth. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2007. (The exegetical history of Mamre behind the icon of the Trinity.)