Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Exodus · About this commentary
An Angel Before You
Exodus 23:20-33
20 “Behold, I send an angel before you, to keep you by the way, and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. · WEB
A messenger is promised who carries God's own name, and the conquest is described as slow on purpose.
Behold, I send an angel before you, to keep you by the way, and to bring you into the place which I have prepared Exodus 23:20.
The covenant document closes with promises, and the first of them is an escort. What follows is the strangest description of a messenger in the Old Testament.
Pay attention to him, and listen to his voice. Don't provoke him, for he will not pardon your disobedience, for my name is in him Exodus 23:21.
Three things are said of this figure that are not said of created messengers anywhere in Scripture. He is to be obeyed as a matter of course. He does not pardon rebellion — a prerogative that belongs to God alone, and the withholding of it here implies the possession of it. And God's name is in him, which in this book means his disclosed character and authority, not a label attached to a servant.
The same alternation seen at the burning bush is at work, where the one who speaks is called Yahweh's angel in one verse and God in the next Exodus 3:2–4. The passage does not identify him further and neither should a reader, but it is not possible to read it as describing an ordinary angel, and the New Testament's account of one who is sent, bears the divine name, and forgives sins is the natural completion of the pattern.
If you indeed listen to his voice, and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies Exodus 23:22.
The promises that follow are extensive — health, fertility, long life, and terror before the advancing nation Exodus 23:25–27 — and they are conditional throughout. Nothing here is owed to Israel by right of descent.
I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land become desolate, and the animals of the field multiply against you. Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and inherit the land Exodus 23:29–30.
The slowness is explained, and the explanation is practical. A land emptied faster than it can be occupied reverts to wilderness, and the incoming population is not yet large enough to hold it. What looks from inside like delay is a schedule matched to capacity, and the principle has wider application than the conquest: the gap between promise and possession is often the time required to grow into what has been promised.
You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me, for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you Exodus 23:32–33.
The reason given for the separation is stated plainly and is not ethnic. It is stated in terms of a danger to Israel's loyalty, and the whole of the book of Judges is the record of what happened when the instruction was ignored. The word chosen is snare — something that catches an animal that walked into it without noticing, which is exactly how the next chapters describe the failure at the foot of the mountain.
held with reason What this mark means