The Angel of His Presence

By Gwen Frangs / Templemore, Ireland / 25 June 2023

The Bible teaches that there is one Angel Who is God and Who is deserving of our worship. This article will explore Who this Angel is and the role that this Angel plays in the Old and New Testaments.

The Angel of His Presence in the Old Testament

In Isaiah 63:8-13 we read the following about Yahweh and the Angel of His Presence:

7 I will tell of the kindnesses of the Lord,
    the deeds for which he is to be praised,
    according to all the Lord has done for us—
yes, the many good things
    he has done for Israel,
    according to his compassion and many kindnesses.
8 He said, “Surely they are my people,
    children who will be true to me”;
    and so he became their Savior.
9 In all their distress he too was distressed,
    and the angel of his presence saved them.[a]
In his love and mercy he redeemed them;
    he lifted them up and carried them
    all the days of old.
10 Yet they rebelled
    and grieved his Holy Spirit.
So he turned and became their enemy
    and he himself fought against them.

11 Then his people recalled[b] the days of old,
    the days of Moses and his people—
where is he who brought them through the sea,
    with the shepherd of his flock?
Where is he who set
    his Holy Spirit among them,
12 who sent his glorious arm of power
    to be at Moses’ right hand,
who divided the waters before them,
    to gain for himself everlasting renown,
13 who led them through the depths?
Like a horse in open country,
    they did not stumble;
14 like cattle that go down to the plain,
    they were given rest by the Spirit of the Lord.
This is how you guided your people
    to make for yourself a glorious name.

15 Look down from heaven and see,
    from your lofty throne, holy and glorious.
Where are your zeal and your might?
    Your tenderness and compassion are withheld from us.
16 But you are our Father,
    though Abraham does not know us
    or Israel acknowledge us;
you, Lord, are our Father,
    our Redeemer from of old is your name.
17 Why, Lord, do you make us wander from your ways
    and harden our hearts so we do not revere you?
Return for the sake of your servants,
    the tribes that are your inheritance.
18 For a little while your people possessed your holy place,
    but now our enemies have trampled down your sanctuary.
19 We are yours from of old;
    but you have not ruled over them,
    they have not been called[c] by your name.

Isaiah 63:7-19 NIV

We see in the above verses that God the Father is being addressed by Isaiah. In the course of this address Isaiah refers to:

  • His Holy Spirit;
  • The shepherd of his flock;
  • His glorious arm of power;
  • The spirit of the Lord

Careful study of the Bible reveals that these titles and descriptions are all references to the Angel of his Presence.

In Hebrews 1:14 we read:

14 Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?

Hebrews 1:13 NIV

Therefore, the Bible teaches that angels are spirits.

According to the Bible angels can be changed into winds and fire:

In Hebrews 1:7 we read:

7 Of the angels he says,

“He makes his angels winds,
    and his ministers a flame of fire.”

Hebrews 1:7 ESV

In this verse there is a parallelism which means that the angels and the ministers are one and the same. We see that the Father is able to make angels into winds and into a flame of fire. When the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost He came as a mighty wind and tongues of fire. Therefore, the Holy Spirit has the ability of angels to become wind and flames of fire. This indicates that the Holy Spirit is very likely an angel.

Jesus, speaking to Nicodemus in John chapter three, compared the Holy Spirit to the wind:

5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit[b] gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You[c] must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

John 3:5-8 NIV

In 1 Kings we read about how Yahweh meets with spirits and that one of them offers to be a lying spirit in the mouths of Ahab’s prophets:

19 Micaiah continued, “Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the multitudes of heaven standing around him on his right and on his left. 20 And the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?’

“One suggested this, and another that. 21 Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the Lord and said, ‘I will entice him.’

22 “‘By what means?’ the Lord asked.

“‘I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,’ he said.

“‘You will succeed in enticing him,’ said the Lord. ‘Go and do it.’

23 “So now the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. The Lord has decreed disaster for you.”

1 Kings 22:19-23 NIV

We know that Heaven is the home of angels, therefore, the spirit who stands before Yahweh and speaks to Yahweh most likely must be an angel. If the spirit is an angel then we see from this account in 1 Kings 22 that it is possible for an angel to enter a human being and to work within a human being to achieve a purpose, because this spirit was going to be within the mouths of the prophets causing them to lie to Ahab.

Also, we know that Satan, who is an angel, was able to enter Judas Iscariot, so that Judas betrayed Jesus:

27 As soon as Judas took the bread, Satan entered into him.

So Jesus told him, “What you are about to do, do quickly.”

John 13:27 NIV

Therefore, entering a person and working within a person is something that angels are able to do. The Holy Spirit is able to enter and live within the Christian believer and influence the believer with the purpose of enabling a believer to live a righteous life.

Therefore, from a Biblical perspective it is most likely that when Isaiah refers to the Holy Spirit in verses 10 and 11 of Isaiah 63 he is referring to the Angel of his Presence.

At this point it is worth considering whether the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of God are one and the same Being. A careful reading of the Bible proves that the Spirit of God is the Holy Spirit because the New Testament clarifies this for us. God refers to His spirit in Joel 2:28 and says that in the last days He will pour out His spirit on all people and that your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams. When this event happens on the day of Pentecost, it is made clear to us in the account in Acts that it is the Holy Spirit that is poured out onto the disciples (see Acts 2:14-21).

Furthermore, the apostle Paul says:

‘But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.’

(Romans 8:9, 10 NRSV)

The apostle Paul says that the Spirit of God dwells in the believer. We know that it is the Holy Spirit Who dwells in the believer. Therefore, the Spirit of God and the Holy Spirit must be one and the same Spirit.

If the Angel of His Presence is the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God this means that the first time that this Angel is mentioned in the Bible is in Genesis 1:2 where He is described as hovering over the face of the deep:

2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

Genesis 1:2

This means that an Angel was involved in the creation. It means that the commands which led to the creation of the universe were spoken by God the Father through this Angel.

In Isaiah 63:12 the Angel of His Presence is called ‘his glorious arm of power’. This means that God the Father used this Angel as the instrument of power through which He created everything.

In various passages of the Old Testament the Angel of His Presence is also called the Angel of Yahweh. We know that the Angel of His Presence is the Angel of Yahweh and not a different angel because we see from Isaiah 63 that the Angel of His Presence led the Israelites out of Egypt. In Judges 2:1 it says:

2 The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, “I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land I swore to give to your ancestors. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you.

Judges 2:1

The phrase ‘the angel of the Lord’ is what the English Bible translators have used to translate the phrase ‘the angel of Yahweh’ which appears in the Hebrew text: https://biblehub.com/interlinear/judges/2-1.htm

Furthermore, in Exodus 23 God the Father tells Moses that He is sending an angel to lead them and that His name, ‘Yahweh,’ is in the angel:

20 “See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. 21 Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him. 22 If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you. 23 My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out.

Exodus 20:20-23 NIV

Jacob calls this Angel El Shaddai in Genesis 48:3. In Genesis 48 Jacob speaks about the Angel, El Shaddai, Who has been his shepherd:

15 Then he blessed Joseph and said,

“May the God before whom my fathers
    Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully,
the God who has been my shepherd
    all my life to this day,
16 the Angel who has delivered me from all harm
    —may he bless these boys.
May they be called by my name
    and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac,
and may they increase greatly
    on the earth.”

Genesis 48:15-16

In Exodus 6:2-3 God the Father tells Moses that He lives in El Shaddai and that He appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in El Shaddai:

….I am Yahweh and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob in El Shaddai…

Exodus 6:2-3

This means that the Father is literally living within El Shaddai. In Exodus 6:2-3 the preposition on the word בְּאֵ֣ל means either ‘in’, ‘at’ or ‘with’ in the ancient Hebrew (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%91%D6%BE). It does not mean ‘as’ because כְּ is the prefix which means ‘as’ (8af3842462324e4d5443b28852f9368b3e9aa672.html). If you look at the blue parts of speech under the original Hebrew text the preposition is listed as Prep-b. Prep-b, according to the Hebrew parsing, means ‘in’ (https://biblehub.com/hebrewparse.htm). Therefore, the verse does not read:

….. I am Yahweh and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as El Shaddai…

Rather, the verse reads as:

….I am Yahweh and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob in El Shaddai…

Therefore, El Shaddai is the Angel of His Presence. The Bible translators who have translated this preposition as ‘as’ instead of as ‘in’ are making out that God the Father appeared to the Patriarchs in the guise of an angel. However, Genesis 48:16 makes it clear that El Shaddai is a real angel. This is because Jacob calls El Shaddai, the angel, who had cared for him all of his life. El Shaddai cannot be God the Father because Jesus made it very clear that no one had ever seen the Father, so it is not possible that God the Father is El Shaddai because El Shaddai appeared to a number of people in the Old Testament.

There can be no doubt that the Angel of His Presence and the Angel of Yahweh are One and the same angel. In the Old Testament the people with Whom this Angel interacted all called Him God:

We know that this angel is not the Father because Jesus told us that the Father has never been seen. We know that the angel is not Jesus because Jesus, the Son of Man, was only begotten at the beginning of the New Testament. If we look at the meaning of the word ‘begotten’ in  https://biblehub.com/hebrew/3205.htm. You will see that the word is derived from the word meaning ‘to bear, bring forth, beget’. The word translated ‘begotten’ in Psalm 2:7 means that the Son of Man was begotten. Psalm 2 also makes it clear that the Son of Man was only begotten after there were already nations on the earth:

7 I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
    today I have begotten you.
8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
    and the ends of the earth your possession.

Psalm 2:7-8 ESV

There were no nations present at the creation, because they had not been created yet, therefore the Son of Man could not have been begotten before the creation. In Zechariah 3, the second last book of the Old Testament, the Father is speaking through the Holy Spirit about the Branch. In verse 8 Yahweh says: ‘I Am bringing forth My Servant the Branch….’ Zechariah 3:8. He is describing a future event. He is not describing something that had happened in the past prior to creation. The Son was begotten only at the beginning of the New Testament when Mary became pregnant with Him, as a result of the Holy Spirit overshadowing her. Therefore, this means that the Angel of His Presence has to be the Holy Spirit because there are only three members of the Godhead, the Trinity. Therefore, a further reason why we can know that the Angel of his Presence is the Holy Spirit is because they are both called God.

The reason why the Angel is called the Holy Spirit should now be clear. The word holy means ‘set apart’. The angel is set apart from all the other angels because the Father is present within Him.

This Angel is called the Glory of God. In Ezekiel 8 the prophet Ezekiel describes how he sees the Glory of God.

The Angel of His Presence in the New Testament

As we have seen the Angel of His Presence is very important in the Old Testament. The Angel of His Presence plays such a significant role in the Old Testament that one would expect to find some mention of Him in the New Testament. It doesn’t make sense that He would just disappear. However, a careful reading of the New Testament reveals that this Angel did not disappear, rather He incarnated as Jesus Christ. How do we know this? Firstly, in the New Testament Jesus Christ made a number of statements about the Father being present within Himself:

38 But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.”

John 10:38

6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you really know me, you will know[a] my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.”

8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.

John 14:6-11

In John 17:22 He says:

22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

John 17:22-23

Since Jesus knew the Old Testament really well, we can be sure that He knew that the Angel played an extremely significant role in the Old Testament and that this Angel was called God in the Old Testament, just as Jesus Himself is called God in the New Testament. So, if Jesus didn’t want people to mistake Him for this Angel, surely He would have been qualifying His statements about the Father being in Him, by telling them that He wasn’t this Angel? However, He doesn’t do that. It seems that by telling people that the Father was present within Him, He was identifying Himself as the Angel of His Presence.

Secondly, both Jesus and His disciples identified Jesus as the incarnate Holy Spirit. We have seen that the Holy Spirit is the Angel of His Presence. Jesus identified Himself as the Holy Spirit in a number of scriptures:

In John 14:18-20 He says:

18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.

John 14:18-20

In John 17:22-26 He says:

22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

25 “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26 I have made you[a] known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

John 17:22-26

In John 14:23 Jesus makes it clear that if we obey His commandments that both Himself and the Father will come and live in us:

 Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.

John 14:23

The only way that Jesus can live within the believer is in the form of a spirit. In verse 18  Jesus is telling the disciples that He will come to them. This happened on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came down and filled the disciples. He tells them that He will come to them in a way that the world cannot see Him. The world cannot see Jesus living in a Christian as the Holy Spirit.

The apostle Paul seems to be the person who fully understood that the Holy Spirit is Jesus Himself. He described it as a mystery:

24 Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. 25 I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— 26 the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. 27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Colossians 1:24-27

The apostle Paul called Jesus the Holy Spirit:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

2 Corinthians 3:17

In Romans, Paul says:

‘But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.’

(Romans 8:9, 10 NRSV)

Paul refers to ‘the spirit of Christ’ as ‘the Spirit of God’. We know that ‘the Spirit of God’ is the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it follows that the spirit of Christ is the Holy Spirit.

Did the apostle Paul believe that Jesus was the Angel of His Presence spoken of in Isaiah 63:9? It seems that he did because in his letter to the Philippians he writes:

5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,[a]6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,[b]7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,[c] being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Philippians 2:5-8 ESV

The verses that Paul seems to have in mind as he is writing this is Numbers 12:7-8 which say that Moses saw the ‘form’ of Yahweh:

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

This form of Yahweh was the Angel of His Presence Who led the Israelites out of Egypt:

2 The angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said, “I brought you up out of Egypt and led you into the land I swore to give to your ancestors. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you.

Judges 2:1

The apostle Paul expresses this in a different way in Colossians 1:15 where he identifies Jesus as the image of God. We know that he is identifying Jesus as the Holy Spirit, the Angel of Yahweh, because he says that all things were created through Him. The Old Testament makes it clear that the Father created everything through the Holy Spirit.

The apostle Luke recognized Jesus as the incarnate Holy Spirit. In Acts 16 we are told:

Paul and his companions travelled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to .

Acts 16:6-7

We see here that the apostle Luke calls the Holy Spirit the Spirit of Jesus.

In 1 Peter 1:10-11 the apostle Peter refers to the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Christ:

10 Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, 11 trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of the Messiah and the glories that would follow.

1 Peter 1:10-11 NIV

The apostle John identifies Jesus as the Angel of His Presence in John 1. In John 1 he calls Jesus the Word. As he must have known the Old Testament well, he must have been identifying Jesus as the Word of God Who appeared to Abraham in Genesis 15:

15 After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision:

“Do not be afraid, Abram.
    I am your shield,[a]
    your very great reward.[b]”

2 But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and the one who will inherit[c] my estate is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.”

4 Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” 5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring[d] be.”

6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.

Genesis 15:1-6 NIV

In Exodus 6:1-2 it is revealed that the name of the Word of God Who appeared to Abraham in Genesis 15 is El Shaddai. In Exodus 6:2-3 God the Father tells Moses that He lives in El Shaddai and that He appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in El Shaddai:

….I am Yahweh and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob in El Shaddai…

Exodus 6:2-3

Therefore, El Shaddai is the Word of God. In John 1 the apostle John is telling us that the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us is El Shaddai. This is the Angel Who spoke the commands of God which created the universe. This is who the apostle Paul is referring to in Colossians 1:15.

Jesus called Himself the good shepherd:

11 “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. 13 The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd. 17 The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”

John 10:11-18 NIV

He definitely must have had Ezekiel 34 in mind when He called Himself the good shepherd:

34 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? 3 You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. 4 You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. 5 So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. 6 My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them.

7 “‘Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: 8 As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, because my flock lacks a shepherd and so has been plundered and has become food for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not search for my flock but cared for themselves rather than for my flock, 9 therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord: 10 This is what the Sovereign Lord says: I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them.

11 “‘For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. 12 As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so will I look after my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness. 13 I will bring them out from the nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them into their own land. I will pasture them on the mountains of Israel, in the ravines and in all the settlements in the land. 14 I will tend them in a good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel will be their grazing land. There they will lie down in good grazing land, and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. 15 I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord. 16 I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.

17 “‘As for you, my flock, this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I will judge between one sheep and another, and between rams and goats. 18 Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? 19 Must my flock feed on what you have trampled and drink what you have muddied with your feet?

20 “‘Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says to them: See, I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. 21 Because you shove with flank and shoulder, butting all the weak sheep with your horns until you have driven them away, 22 I will save my flock, and they will no longer be plundered. I will judge between one sheep and another. 23 I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd. 24 I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David will be prince among them. I the Lord have spoken.

25 “‘I will make a covenant of peace with them and rid the land of savage beasts so that they may live in the wilderness and sleep in the forests in safety. 26 I will make them and the places surrounding my hill a blessing.[a] I will send down showers in season; there will be showers of blessing. 27 The trees will yield their fruit and the ground will yield its crops; the people will be secure in their land. They will know that I am the Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke and rescue them from the hands of those who enslaved them. 28 They will no longer be plundered by the nations, nor will wild animals devour them. They will live in safety, and no one will make them afraid. 29 I will provide for them a land renowned for its crops, and they will no longer be victims of famine in the land or bear the scorn of the nations. 30 Then they will know that I, the Lord their God, am with them and that they, the Israelites, are my people, declares the Sovereign Lord. 31 You are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, declares the Sovereign Lord.’”

Ezekiel 34

We know that Jesus is the Davidic prince spoken of by God the Father in verses 23 and 24. However, I would like to suggest that the reason that Jesus is the shepherd is because He is the incarnate Holy Spirit, the Angel of His Presence.

In Isaiah 63:11 the Angel of His Presence is called ‘the shepherd of His flock’:

11 Then his people recalled[a] the days of old,
    the days of Moses and his people—
where is he who brought them through the sea,
    with the shepherd of his flock?
Where is he who set
    his Holy Spirit among them,
12 who sent his glorious arm of power
    to be at Moses’ right hand,
who divided the waters before them,
    to gain for himself everlasting renown,
13 who led them through the depths?
Like a horse in open country,
    they did not stumble;

Isaiah 63:11-13 NIV

Jacob calls this angel his shepherd. It makes sense that when the Angel of His Presence became incarnate as Jesus Christ that He would continue in the role that He had occupied in the Old Testament as the good shepherd of Israel. It makes sense that when God the Father wanted to save us that He sent the good shepherd from the Old Testament to do this. In John 10 Jesus described Himself as the set apart one. He is the set apart one sent into the world to find lost sheep.

The early church recognized that Jesus was the Angel of His Presence incarnate. This word ‘incarnate’ is very important because it means that Jesus was a real man. Therefore, the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is fully man, but that He is also fully God because His Spirit is the Holy Spirit. He is the incarnate Holy Spirit. As Jesus Christ He is fully a man. He has human flesh and a human soul, but His spirit is the Angel of His Presence, the Holy Spirit.

The Father is the ‘His’ in the phrase the Angel of His Presence. Jesus the incarnate Angel of His Presence told us that God is Spirit. He told us that no one had ever seen the Father, but that He had made the Father known. The Father is invisible. That is why the Father had to make the Angel as the image of the Father. The only way, it would seem, that we can experience the Father visually is through the Angel.

It is inconceivable what the Father actually is. The Father created the Angel to give His creation an image of Himself and to speak His words on His behalf. The Angel is completely devoted to representing the Father both visually, audially and through the written word. The Angel always points us to the Father. The Angel’s entire existence centres around the Father, portraying the Father to angels and to men. He teaches us to worship the Father, to pray to the Father for our needs, to trust in the Father. Because the Father lives within the Angel, the Angel brings the Father’s presence with Him wherever the Angel goes. The Father is present wherever the Angel is present.

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