Introduction
According to CompellingTruth.org, "A close look at the Bible reveals that God is spirit and therefore is not confined to a physical body. However, the Bible also notes that God has revealed Himself in human form, both in the Old Testament and in Jesus Christ."It goes on to state that, "The Bible also shares several times when God revealed Himself physically. Some of these occasions include His physical presence with the Israelites in the wilderness or God being represented in a human form (called theophanies) as in Genesis 12:7 and Genesis 18."
An Appearance of Angels: Proof 1
Let us examine these verses to see if this understanding of the text is correct.
Genesis 12:7-8:
And Abram passed through the land, until the place of Shechem, until the plain of Moreh, and the Canaanites were then in the land. And the Lord appeared to Abram, and He said, "To your seed I will give this land," and there he built an altar to the Lord, Who had appeared to him.
Genesis 18:1-2:
Now the Lord appeared to him in the plains of Mamre, and he was sitting at the entrance of the tent when the day was hot. And he lifted his eyes and saw, and behold, three men were standing beside him, and he saw and he ran toward them from the entrance of the tent, and he prostrated himself to the ground.
What must be understood here is that the Torah often refers to a vision of an angel or a prophetic experience as "seeing God" or as an "appearance of God." For example, Judges 13:3 says:
"And an angel of the Lord appeared to the woman, and said to her, "Behold now, you are barren, and have not borne; and you shall conceive and bear a son."
Later in verse 8, the Torah says:
"And Manoah (the woman's husband) entreated the Lord, and said, 'Please, O Lord, the man of God whom You sent, let him come now again to us, and teach us what we shall do to the lad that will be born.'"
Manoah is speaking to God about "the man," which is an angel. This is a clear textual proof that "the man of God" was not God.
Verse 9 is even more explicit, saying:
"And God hearkened to the voice of Manoah; and the angel of God came again to the woman, and she was sitting in the field, and Manoah her husband was not with her."
In one sentence we see that God and the angel of God are not the same being. Equally explicit is verse 21, which says:
"And the angel of the Lord did not continue to appear to Manoah and to his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was an angel of the Lord."
This is followed by Manoah's statement:
"And Manoah said to his wife, "'We shall surely die, because we have seen God.'"
This last statement makes it completely clear that the Torah refers to seeing an angel of God as seeing God, although this is clearly not literal. We can now apply what we have learned from the above demonstration to what is said in Genesis 12:8, that "and there he (Abraham) built an altar to the Lord, Who had appeared to him." An appearance of God is an angelic visitation and not a physical manifestation of God.
What you may have noticed, however, is that Genesis 12:8 does not mention any angel; it simply says that God "had appeared to him." We know that a vision of an angel is referred to as seeing God, but how do we know that "seeing God" without an angel is not to be taken as a literal, physical manifestation of God?
Recall that the CompellingTruth site mentioned two verses: Genesis 12:8 and Genesis 18:1-2 as proofs of theophanies. Ironically, Genesis 18:1-2 demonstrate our hypothesis, which is that "seeing God" is not a physical manifestation of God. Let us look at the verse again:
Now the Lord appeared to him in the plains of Mamre, and he was sitting at the entrance of the tent when the day was hot. And he lifted his eyes and saw, and behold, three men were standing beside him, and he saw and he ran toward them from the entrance of the tent, and he prostrated himself to the ground.
The first verse says that God "appeared to" Abraham. The text is not explicitly clear as to what Abraham saw; it just says that God appeared to him. What is important to understand here is that many Christians interpret these verses to mean that one of the three angels that Abraham saw was a theophany, i.e., that God took the form of a man and literally stood before Abraham.
However, when we realize that the verses are written in sequential order we understand that whoever Abraham saw in verse 8 was someone different than who he saw in verse 7. The word "and" in these verses is used to indicate the next step in a sequence of events, as it is used in many places in the Torah (See the order of Creation - Genesis 3:1). In other words, in verse 7 God appeared to Abraham, and then in verse 8 Abraham lifted his eyes and saw three men. The events in verses 7 and 8 are separate, sequential events, indicating clearly that whoever Abraham was looking at in verse 8 was not God. This proves what we sought to demonstrate, that "seeing God" does not connote a physical appearance of God, but rather a prophetic vision.
We can be rest assured that we have now proven two things from the text: that the Torah refers to both a) angelic visions and b) prophetic experiences as "appearances of God," or "seeing God," even though the text in no way connotes the appearance of anything or anybody physical or tangible. We can now also refer back to our original verse in Genesis 12:7-8. When the Torah said that God appeared to Abraham, we can be sure it meant that Abraham was experiencing a prophetic vision of God.
According to the Christian View
There is another proof, however, from the Christian perspective, that this appearance was not a theophany. In the Christian mindset, a theophany is a code word for the Second Person in the Trinity, i.e., to Jesus. Neither the Father nor the Spirit are ever considered to assume physical bodies, which is limited only to the Son. According to the Crosswalk site, each of the Persons as well has a separate, unique, and exclusive role:
While there's only one God, the Godhead consists of three distinct persons—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All are equally omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, eternal, and unchanging, but each one has unique functions.
Scripture shows how each member of the Trinity fulfills His specific role, and it also reveals how those three roles interrelate. Let me express this idea in simple terms: The Father creates a plan, Jesus Christ implements the plan, and the Holy Spirit administers the plan.
The Father designed and organized how mankind would be redeemed (Galatians 4:4-5). He set into motion a complex set of events, actions, and prophecies which culminated in the life and death of a Savior. The Son carried out the plan (John 6:37-38). He followed the Father's instructions to come to earth, even though that meant He would have to die. The Holy Spirit sees to it that every person feels a call toward God's saving grace (John 14:26; 16:8; Romans 1:19-20). Furthermore, He transforms the lives and hearts of those who receive salvation through Jesus Christ.
According to Genesis 12:8 the theophany said to Abraham, "To your seed I will give this land..." Because Christians posit that the only role of the Second Person (the Son) was to take on human flesh and die for sins, this being cannot be the Second Person. It is not within the Son's jurisdiction to make or fulfill the promise that Abraham would inherit the Land of Israel, which is solely the duty of the Father. Therefore, this appearance was not a theophany, but an intangible prophetic vision as we have shown above.
An Appearance of Angels: Proof 2
Both Rashi and the Ramban consider all three beings to be angels. Rashi understands Abraham to be addressing the chief one among them, while the Ramban says that Abraham bowed to all three. According to Rashi, the greater one will comply with Abraham's request and the lesser ones will follow suit.
However, if only one of them was a theophany, Abraham would have bowed only to him. The fact that he bowed to all three, and no Christians say that all three were theophanies, means that he was simply bowing to them because they were messengers of God. Note that the verse only says that Abraham "prostrated himself to the ground" (verse 2) without indicating to which angel(s) he was prostrating.
Also according to the Ramban, when Abraham says, "please do not pass on from beside your servant," he is addressing all three of them. The Torah uses this type of address in other places, such as, "You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father or the nakedness of your mother." While this is written in the second person singular, it is addressed to every member of the nation Israel.
But how can we be sure, from a textual perspective, that all three are angels? The first evidence is to consider that angels sent on a mission each have one specific task. If we can identify three unique tasks then we can be confident that they were angels. According to Rashi, Michael was sent to give Sarah the good news, Gavriel to destroy Sodom, and Rephael to heal Abraham. This is demonstrated by the fact that after giving the good news about Isaac, only two of the angels left toward the direction of Sodom; Michael had completed its task and left.
However, this begs the question: why did Rephael accompany Gavriel to Sodom? If Rephael had completed its task, Gavriel should have gone there on its own. Rashi explains that Rephael's task of healing Abraham included rescuing Lot.
An Appearance of Angels: Proof 3
Another proof emerges from a careful analysis of the text. We established earlier that a visitation from an angel is almost always referred to as "seeing God." This concept is also applied to when God sends an angel to complete a task; such a task is said to have been done by God because the messenger is just sent to inform, while God Himself performs the task. The angel speaks in the Name of God.
Therefore, when the angel tells Sarah that she will give birth in one year, it says, "I will surely return to you at this time next year, and behold, your wife Sarah will have a son." (Genesis 18:10) The following year when Sarah gives birth to Isaac, the text says, "And Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him." (Genesis 21:2) Even though the angel said, "I will surely return to you," we do not see that he actually returned. This is so because the angel was speaking in the Name of God, which means that God said that He would return the following year. In this case, "return" means the fulfillment of His promise to her, as it says in Genesis 21:2, "And the Lord remembered Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as He had spoken."
Note: Why did both angels say, "For we are destroying this place" when Rashi explains that each angel only has one task? The answer seems to be that the city could not be destroyed until Lot was removed from it. Because Raphael was sent to rescue Lot, he inadvertently contributed to the destruction of the city by removing him.
The same thing occurs with the angel sent to destroy Sodom. God expresses His intent to destroy Sodom in Genesis 18:17, "And the Lord said, 'Shall I conceal from Abraham what I am doing?'" Once in Sodom, the angels say to Lot, "For we are destroying this place, because their cry has become great before the Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it." (Genesis 19:13) However, we saw that God Himself destroyed the cities, "And the Lord caused to rain down upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire, from the Lord, from heaven." (Genesis 19:24)
Note: Some Christians maintain that verses which say the word "Lord" twice are references to two separate Persons of the Trinity. For example, the verse above says "Lord" twice: the first "Lord" is "the Father," and the second "Lord" is "the Son." What this overlooks is that God often speaks of Himself in the third person. The Torah starts with the statement, "In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth," not "In the beginning I created the Heavens and the Earth."
Other examples of this usage are found wherever the Torah says, "And God spoke to Moses," (Leviticus 19:8), "He shall bring his guilt offering to the Lord," (Leviticus 19:21), or "But you who cleave to the Lord your God are alive, all of you, this day." (Deuteronomy 4).
Examining Genesis - Conclusion
To conclude, in both cases each of the angels speaks in the Name of God in the first person, but God Himself executes the action on His own. If the angel sent with the good news is a theophany, then the angel sent to destroy Sodom was also a theophany, which is an assertion that no Christian makes.
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