Vos finds the sacramental intent in the Angel being God, showing God’s desire “to approach closely to His people, to assure them in the most manifest way of His interest in and His presence with them.” The spiritualizing intent, Vos finds in the Angel speaking for God as if to guard against the wrong conclusion that God’s nature is bodily and limited like ours. In other words, the Angel is divine and walks among humanity, showing God’s desire to be with us. 

Who spoke to Moses from the burning bush? Who called to Abraham on Mount Moriah? Who withstood Balaam on his way to curse the Israelites? Who met Hagar and Ishmael when Sarah drove them into the wilderness? If you answered, “The Lord,” you would be right. And if you answered, “The Angel of the Lord,” you would also be correct. The Angel of the Lord is a figure that appears at these points in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, and elsewhere throughout the canon of Scripture.

The problem these appearances pose to the faithful reader of Scripture is that the Angel is at one and the same time identified with and distinguished from the Lord. Take, for example, Moses’ encounter at the burning bush:

And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. (Exo 3:2–6)

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