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Joshua 5:13–15
“Joshua fell on his face to the earth and worshiped and said to him, ‘What does my lord say to his servant?’ And the commander of the Lord’s army said to Joshua, ‘Take off your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.’ And Joshua did so” (vv. 14–15).
In our study of the Lord’s presence, we have focused first on the divine attribute of God’s omnipresence. By this attribute we mean that our Creator is present in the fullness of His essence everywhere in creation (Ps. 139:7–12). One consequence of divine omnipresence is that the Lord is immanent or close at hand to all creation even while remaining distinct from creation. Relatedly, although God is present in the fullness of His essence everywhere, He can and does make His presence and blessing more fully known to us in certain places than in others (Ezek. 48:35). Ultimately, God’s presence is made most manifest in the incarnate Christ (John 1:14).
The presence of God in Christ encourages us to consider what theologians have called Christophanies. In a theophany such as the burning bush (Ex. 3), God makes Himself visible in some form (though not His essence), so a Christophany is the Son of God, Jesus Christ, making Himself visible to God’s people in some form. Here we are not talking about the coming of Christ in the incarnation but a preincarnate manifestation of the Son of God. Some more recent theologians have debated whether such Christophanies ever occurred, but there is a long Christian tradition of believing that they did happen, particularly in the Old Testament figure of the “angel of the Lord.”
Not every appearance of the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament necessarily constitutes a Christophany, but one of the plainest appearances of the angel of the Lord as a Christophany can be found in Joshua 5:13–15. Right before the Israelites conquered the city of Jericho, Joshua met a man, understood to be the angel of the Lord, with a drawn sword. Joshua asked if the man was on the side of Israel or Jericho, and the man replied that He was on neither side but was the commander of the army of the Lord (vv. 13–14a). The implication is that it was more important for Joshua to be on the commander’s side than for the commander to be on Joshua’s.
The key clue that the angel of the Lord here is actually a preincarnate appearance of Christ is that Joshua was not rebuked for worshiping the commander of the Lord’s army. God is most fully known in the person and work of His incarnate Son, but our Creator did not wait to show forth Christ until the incarnation. Before then, He gave His people fleeting glimpses in the form of the angel of the Lord.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
God is so gracious that He did not wait until the incarnation to show us His Son but gave His old covenant people glimpses of the Son’s majesty. In a similar way, God is not waiting until the whole of His church sees Him face-to-face but is even now, through the Scriptures, giving us true knowledge of Himself. This knowledge creates in us a longing to know Him even more fully in the consummated new heavens and earth.
For further study
- Genesis 32:22–31
- 1 Chronicles 21
- Psalm 34:7
- John 8:56
The bible in a year
- Judges 6–7
- Luke 8:1–21