When God Makes Himself Seen

The God of Israel is invisible. He told Moses, “man (adam אָדָם aw-dawm') shall not see me and live” (Exodus 33:20). Yet the Old Testament is full of moments when people saw something, heard something, or, in Jacob’s case, took hold of something, and knew that they had met God. How can both be true?

The answer can be given with a few terms, each defined from the verses on which it rests. They are not meant to replace the words of Scripture. They are tools for saying clearly what the verses already show.

Theophany

The first word is theophany. It is made from two Greek words, theos, “God,” and phainein, “to appear.” A theophany is the transcendent God making His presence and glory perceptible in a form that human senses, sight and hearing, can take in.

In the Old Testament, God did not appear only in the form of a person. He also made Himself known through things that are not persons at all: flame, cloud, wind, and rock. These are impersonal means through which His presence was perceived. The burning bush, the pillar of cloud, and the rock in the wilderness are the best known.

The burning bush is the clearest example.

Exodus 3:2 And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of the bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed.

What Moses saw was a bush that burned and was not consumed, but the one who speaks from that bush is named differently.

Exodus 3:4-6 And the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, and God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, "Moses, Moses." And he said, "Here am I." And He said, "Do not draw near here; remove your sandals from upon your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground (adamah אֲדָמָה ad-aw-maw')." And He said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look toward God.

In verse 2 it is “the angel of the LORD” who appears in the flame; in verse 4 it is God who calls from the midst of the bush, and in verse 6 He says, “I am the God of your father.” The One who appeared as the angel of the LORD speaks as God, in the first person, just as the messenger of God did in Jacob’s dream: “I am the God of Bethel.” The pattern we found in Genesis appears again at the beginning of Exodus.

The pillar of cloud is another such means. “The LORD was going before them by day in a pillar of cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire” (Exodus 13:21). Israel saw cloud and fire, and the text says that the LORD was going before them in it.

And then there is the rock. At Horeb, when the people had no water, the LORD told Moses, “I will stand before you there upon the rock” (Exodus 17:6), and water came out of the rock when Moses struck it. Paul, writing to the believers in Corinth, looks back on Israel in the wilderness and says this.

1 Corinthians 10:4 and all drank the same pneumatikon(spiritual) drink; for they were drinking from a pneumatikon(spiritual) rock that followed them; and the rock was Messiah.

Paul does not say the rock was like Messiah or reminded him of Messiah. He says the One from whom Israel drank in the wilderness was Messiah. Here the New Testament itself names who was present through one of these impersonal means.

So theophany is the wide category. Whenever the invisible God made Himself perceptible, through fire, cloud, rock, voice, or human form, that was a theophany.

Christophany

The second word is narrower. Christophany is made from the Greek Christos, the word for Messiah, the Anointed One, and the same verb phainein, “to appear.” It names a personal appearing of God in the Old Testament, in the form of a man or of a messenger, understood as the Son appearing for a time, before He became flesh. Christians have read these appearings this way since the second century. The word itself is not in Scripture, and no single verse says, “the messenger was the Son.” But the verses point strongly in that direction.

These personal appearings are one kind of theophany. What sets them apart is that the One who appears is not a flame or a cloud but someone who speaks, who receives worship, and who declares Himself to be God. Two titles are used of Him when He appears in this way: “the messenger of the LORD” and “the prince of the host of the LORD.”

The first example is Genesis 31:11–13, where the messenger of God speaks to Jacob in a dream, and in His own person He says, “I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar, where you vowed a vow to me.” That is a personal appearing that declares itself to be God.

The second example comes just after Israel crossed the Jordan. Joshua was near Jericho when he saw a man standing opposite him with his sword drawn, and he asked whose side he was on.

Joshua 5:14-15 And he said: No, but I am the prince of the host of the LORD; now I have come. And Joshua fell on his face to the ground and bowed down, and said to him: What does my lord speak to his servant? And the prince of the host of the LORD said to Joshua: Remove your sandal from upon your foot, for the place on which you stand, it is holy. And Joshua did so.

The man takes neither Israel’s side nor the enemy’s, and when Joshua falls on his face and bows down, the prince does not refuse the worship. Instead He gives Joshua the same command that God gave Moses at the bush: remove your sandal, for the place where you stand is holy (compare Exodus 3:5). He came in the form of a man, He received worship, and the place where He stood with Joshua was holy.

Where Jacob’s Meetings Belong

With these words in hand, we can say more exactly what Scripture records of Jacob.

At Bethel, in his dream, the LORD stood over him and spoke (Genesis 28:13). In Haran, the messenger of God spoke in the first person and said, “I am the God of Bethel.” At the Jabbok, a man wrestled with him through the night, and Jacob said he had seen God face to face. These are not appearings in a flame or a cloud. In Haran and at the Jabbok, above all, they are personal meetings with One who came as a messenger or as a man, and who spoke and acted as God.

John adds a sentence that bears on these meetings, though it does not name the Jabbok.

John 1:18 No one has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.

Scripture is plain about the first step. Jacob said, “I have seen God face to face.” Hosea calls the One he strove with God, and the messenger said, “I am the God of Bethel.” The One who appeared to Jacob was God. John then says that no one has seen God at any time, and that the only-begotten Son has explained Him. Paul says of the rock in the wilderness, “the rock was Messiah.” Set side by side, these verses make a strong case: the God who made Himself seen to Jacob is the Son, Yeshua, appearing before He became flesh. No verse states it in one sentence, so it is an interpretation. But it is a very persuasive one, and that much can be said with confidence.

A Form for a Time

One thing is true of every personal appearing in the Old Testament: it was for a time. The man at the Jabbok asked to be let go as the dawn came up. The messenger who appeared to Manoah went up in the flame of the altar, and “the messenger of the LORD did not appear again to Manoah and to his wife (ishah אִשָּׁה ish-shaw')” (Judges 13:21).

The form He took was real. Jacob’s hip proved that. But it was taken for a time, and then laid aside.

The New Testament speaks of something that did not happen for a night, or for a single conversation near a city. It speaks of the Word becoming flesh, and remaining so.