And now, with the light of this peculiar usage to guide us, can We hesitate in regard to the genuine scope of the following passage from Isaiah, which we must assuredly recognise as a parallelism (Is.
8) ? For he said, surely they are my people, children that will not lie ; so he was their Saviour. In all their afflictions he was afflicted, and the angd of his presence saved them : in his love and in his pity he redeemed them ; and he bore them and carried them all the days of old.' The allusion is undoubtedly to the same grand symbolical object which we are now considering. After what has been said we can have no difficulty in understand ing why the title Angel of his presence,' is applied to the cloudy column of the wilderness. It was evidently so termed because it was the medium of manifestation to the divine presence. The invisible Deity, in some mysterious manner, dwelt in it, and was associated with it. It was called the Angel of the Divine Presence,' or more literally face (4.7t), because as the human face is the grand medium of expression to the human spirit, so the shekinah was the medium of manifestation or ex pression to the Divine Spirit. Indeed Moses, on one occasion, when apprehensive that the guiding glory of his people would be withdrawn on account of their transgressions, makes use of this language : If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence. And the Lord said, my presence shall go with thee.' So also in Deut. iv. 37 we find the word presence or face used with a personal import : And because he loved thy fathers, therefore he chose their seed after them, and brought thee out in his sight 04=1, with, by, or through, his pre sence—i.e. the angel of his presence), with his mighty power out of Egypt.' We see not, there fore, that anything is hazarded in the position that the angel of God's presence of whom Isaiah speaks is essentially the same with the angel of God's pillar of which Moses speaks, and which is in vested with personal attributes, because the Israel ites were taught to view it in a personal charactei as a visible representative of their covenant God.
But our conception of the subject is essentially incomplete without the exhibition of another aspect of the cloudy pillar. This is as the oracle of the chosen people. So long as that sublime symbol continued as the outward visible token of the divine presence, it performed the office of an oracle in issuing commands and delivering responses. They called upon the Lord,' says the Psalmist (Ps. xcix. 6, 7), 'and he answered them. He spake unto them in the cloudy pillar ;' that is, the cloudy pillar was the medium of his communications. This is indeed sufficiently express ; but still more unequivocal is the language of Exod. xxxiii. 9 : And it came to pass, as Moses entered into the tabernacle, the cloudy pillar descended and stood at the door of the tabernacle, and talked with Moses.' It is true indeed that in our established version we read that the Lord talked with Moses,' but the words the Lord ' are printed in italics to show that there is nothing in the original answering to them. We have given a literal translation ; still there is no special impropriety in supplying the words as above, if it be borne in mind that the mystic pillar was regarded as a visible embodiment of Jehovah, and, therefore, that in the diction of the sacred writer the two terms are equivalent and convertible. This is evident from what follows in the connection: And all the people saw the cloudy pillar stand at the tabernacle door, and the Lold 'spice unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh to his friend.' The Lord ' here must unequivo cally be applied to the symbol of the Lord, or the shekinah, which was the true organ of communica tion with the people. It would be easy to carry out this line of investigation to still further results ; but the considerations which have been offered will suffice to indicate the general bearings of this in teresting subject. ' See Lowman, On the Shekinah ; Taylor's Let ters of Ben Mordecai ; Skinner's Dissertation on the Shekinah ; Watt's Gloty of Christ ; Upham, Ott the Logos ; Bush's Notes on Exodus ; Tenison, la'olatry ; Fleming's Christology.—G. B.