By Gwen Frangs / Corrandulla / 18 July 2022
Exodus 33:9 describes how the pillar of cloud descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle and talked with Moses. The Angel of Yahweh was inside the pillar of cloud. Verse 11 says that they spoke to each other face to face.
We are told in Numbers 12:7-8 that Moses saw the form of God:
Not so with My servant Moses. He is faithful in all My house. I speak with him face to face and even plainly and not in dark sayings and he sees the form of Yahweh….
Numbers 12:7-8 Interlinear
Therefore, we see that the Angel of Yahweh can contract into a ‘form,’ however the Bible makes it clear that it is possible for the Angel of Yahweh to have no form at all. It is possible for Him to appear as fire and it is possible for Him to be present as a Spirit. It becomes clear that the Angel of Yahweh, prior to becoming Jesus Christ, was not in any physical sense human. There is no personal pronoun that can accurately identify the Angel of Yahweh. The Angel of Yahweh is not an ‘it’ because the Angel of Yahweh has a personality. The Angel of Yahweh is also not a ‘he’ because in the Bible the angel of Yahweh is often associated with a feminine pronoun. However, the Angel of Yahweh is not female either and Biblical writers used this pronoun for lack of a better option because they used feminine pronouns to describe natural phenomena, such as the sun or the wind. The Angel of Yahweh is something so different that the human imagination cannot possibly envision what the Angel of Yahweh truly is. The true appearance of the Angel of Yahweh is beyond human comprehension. However, while it is entirely impossible for the human brain to comprehend what the Angel of Yahweh is, it is entirely possible for the human heart or spirit to grasp Who He is. This is because the human spirit has been created in His image and eternity has been placed within our hearts. Our spirits can communicate with Him, spirit to Spirit.
Is there a contradiction between the Exodus 33:11 and Exodus 33:23?
In Exodus 33:11 we read that Moses spoke to Yahweh face to face as a man speaks to his friend. Then a few verses later in Exodus 33:18-23 there is an account which seems to entirely contradict the statement in Exodus 33:11 that Moses spoke to Yahweh face to face:
18 Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.”
19 And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 20 But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”
21 Then the Lord said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. 22 When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.”
Exodus 33:18-23 NIV
If one understands the nature of the Angel of Yahweh, one recognizes that no contradiction occurs between these verses. We know from other portions of scripture that angels can appear to people looking like men. This is why in Hebrews 13:2 the church is advised to show hospitality to strangers, because by showing hospitality to strangers, some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. In Genesis 18 Abraham is visited by three men, who it emerges are angels. It becomes clear that one of these men is the Angel of Yahweh. Therefore, it is most likely that the Angel of Yahweh was appearing to Moses as a man, when Moses met with Him face to face, in the same way that He appeared to Abraham. This was of course not His true appearance. Moses was keen to see His true appearance, asking Him to show him His glory in Exodus 33:18. However, it emerges that it is not possible for Moses to be able to see the face of the Angel of Yahweh in His true state. Even the other angels do not seem to be able to look at the actual face of the Angel of Yahweh, which is why they cover their faces with a pair of wings when they are in His presence. In Isaiah 6 the prophet Isaiah says:
In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. 3 And they were calling to one another:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty;
Isaiah 6:1-3 NIV
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
It is highly unlikely that Isaiah was able to see the actual face of the Angel of Yahweh as He sat on the throne. It has become clear to me that when people saw the Angel of Yahweh in a heavenly setting, that He either took a form in which they could handle seeing Him in, rather than appearing as He really is or that He altered their sight so that they saw Him in a way that they could handle seeing Him. The seraphim in verse 2 were seeing Him as He really is and they had to cover their faces with wings in order to cope with the glory that emanated from Him.The most extraordinary thing was that when the Angel of Yahweh appeared on the earth in the flesh as Jesus Christ, that all of that glory had to be put into a human body. When Jesus was transfigured some of that glory became apparent and Moses was again present during this transfiguration, to see His glory. When Jesus was walking on the earth, He was the Angel of Yahweh walking on the earth clothed in human flesh. People who have seen Jesus have commented on His eyes and no wonder, because to look into His eyes must be to see a glimpse of the glory that is within. God wants us to want to see His glory. I don’t believe that God was unhappy with Moses for wanting to see Him. I believe that He actually longs for us to want to see Him. He went to a whole lot of trouble to grant Moses his wish to see Him. He wants us to press in and desire to see more of Who He is and what He looks like. It makes Him happy if we want to do this.
The Angel of Yahweh appeared to a number of people in the Old Testament and we know that it was Him and not just any angel from Yahweh because the people who saw Him confirmed that they had seen God when they saw Him. They were confirming that they had seen the Angel Who is the tabernacle of the Father. The appearance of the Angel of Yahweh changed everything for people. Their lives were never the same after having encountered Him. When the Angel of Yahweh appeared on the earth as Jesus Christ He made the phenomenal statement:
I and the Father are one.”
John 10:30 NIV
I believe that the Angel of Yahweh, when inspiring the apostle John to write what is now John 10, deliberately kept this verse short so that the full impact of His meaning is not lost. The Angel of Yahweh, Who if you have read my previous articles, you will know is the Holy Spirit, is stating that He and the Father are one. He is stating that He is the tabernacle of the Father. This is why in the next verse the Jews picked up stones to stone Jesus to death. They grasped the full impact of what had been said. It was not lost on them that in Exodus 6:2-3 God the Father says that He appeared to the Patriarchs in El Shaddai. They knew that the pronoun attached to the word ‘el’ was the pronoun ‘in’ and not the pronoun ‘as’. They knew that Jesus was saying that He was the Being who the prophet Ezekiel saw and described as being in the form of a man, but burning with flames of fire:
26 Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. 27 I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. 28 Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.
This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When I saw it, I fell facedown, and I heard the voice of one speaking.
Ezekiel 1:26-28 NIV
The Jews saw this Being standing before them in a human body and instead of falling onto their knees before Him and worshipping Him, they decided to try and stone Him to death. He may have looked different as a man, but He spoke with the same voice and with the same authority that He had spoken with throughout the Old Testament and they should have recognized His voice. There is no excuse for failing to recognize the voice of God. However, there can be no doubt that the spirit of Satan within them rose up with anger when confronted with the Angel of Yahweh, incarnate as Jesus Christ, and he wanted to destroy Him because he is filled with hatred for this Angel Who is seated on the throne of Heaven as the tabernacle of the Father.