Week 8 Judges 13
At the beginning of the Samson story an angel of the Lord appeared to Samson’s mother.
When she got home she told her husband:
a) a man of God came to me
b) his appearance was like the appearance of the angel of God
c) he was very awesome.
I wonder what exactly she saw. Was he a fairly regular-looking material guy? Maybe. But if so it’s clear he was also more than a regular guy since he was also very awesome.
The reason I noticed this is because I’ve been wondering what angels look like. In January I tracked a few angelic appearances in Genesis:
• an angel guards the entry to Eden
• an angel appears to Hagar
• angels visit Lot in Sodom
• angels are in the “Jacob’s Ladder” vision
• angels meet Jacob at Mahanaim
• Jacob wrestles an angel.
None of those contacts spelled-out what angels actually looked like.
I have the feeling that an angel has more-or-less the features of a human being (if I saw an angel the human similarity might fool me). But there’d be something that would tip the scale. An instinctive sense & feeling of his being awesome. Maybe physically human-dimensional but having extra-human marvelosity. Fabulous. Stupendous. Sublime. Phenomenal. A manageably-seeming resemblance…but mostly an unmanageable difference that makes me automatically realize: this guy is my superior.
Note: quotes from Judges 13:3 6 (ESV). See Genesis stories in 3:24 (Eden) 16:7-14 & 21:17-21 (Hagar) 19 (Lot) 28:12 & 32:1 & 32:24-32 (Jacob)