We've been talking about the identity of God in the Bible.

How God is not like anything we can know and understand.

He's transcendent above all, the Creator, totally other.

But at the same time, the story of the Bible is about how this God is involved in our

world.

He cares about it and has gotten his hands dirty in the storyline.

And so this seems to be at odds with each other.

How can we experience a God that we can't understand?

As it turns out, the Bible has a whole palette of paint colors to talk about how God is involved.

Sometimes through people, here we're going to see sometimes through other spiritual beings.

In this episode, we're going to look at how God interacts with humans through angels.

Now, we're not going to talk about angels in general.

We're actually going to talk about one particular angel that goes by a particular title,

in Hebrew it's the Malak Yahweh, the messenger of Yahweh, which can also be translated

the angel of the Lord.

And this character has confused Bible readers for thousands of years.

And one reason this character is so confusing is that he is so closely connected to God's

own identity.

In the narratives where this figure appears, it actually, it's hard to tell if it's

Yahweh or distinct from Yahweh.

And what does that mean?

How can you be something and also be distinct from that thing?

...