to send away · verb, qal active participle, masculine singular absolute
Angel
מַלְאָךְ֙mal.'oKh
H4397
a messenger · noun, common masculine singular absolute
before
לְפָנֶ֔יךָle.fa.Nei.kha
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · preposition + noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
keep
לִשְׁמָרְךָ֖lish.ma.re.Kha
H8104
properly · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
way
בַּדָּ֑רֶךְba.Da.rekh
H1870
a road (as trodden) · preposition with the article + noun, common both genders singular absolute
bring
וְלַהֲבִ֣יאֲךָ֔ve.la.ha.Vi.'a.kha
H935
to go or come (in a wide variety of applications) · conjunction + preposition + verb, hiphil infinitive construct + pronominal suffix, 2nd person masculine singular
place
הַמָּק֖וֹםha.ma.Kom
H4725
properly · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
prepared
הֲכִנֹֽתִיha.khi.No.ti
H3559
properly · verb, hiphil perfect, 1st person common singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Exodus 33:14 And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.
Psalms 91:11 For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
Exodus 32:34 Therefore now go, lead the people unto the place of which I have spoken unto thee: behold, mine Angel shall go before thee: nevertheless in…
Exodus 14:19 And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their…
Exodus 33:2 And I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and t…
Isaiah 63:9 In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bar…
John 14:3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
Malachi 3:1 Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, eve…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Exodus 23:20–end
Three gracious promises are here made to Israel, to engage them to their duty and encourage them in it; and each of the promises has some needful precepts and cautions joined to it.
I. It is here promised that they should be guided and kept in their way through the wilderness to the land of promise: Behold, I send an angel before thee (Exo 23:20), my angel (Exo 23:23), a created angel, say some, a minister of God's providence, employed in conducting and protecting the camp of Israel; that it might appear that God took a particular care of them, he appointed one of his chief servants to make it his business to attend them, and see that they wanted for nothing. Others suppose it to be the Son…
Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way--The communication of these laws, made to Moses and by him rehearsed to the people, was concluded by the addition of many animating promises, intermingled with several solemn warnings that lapses into sin and idolatry would not be tolerated or passed with impunity.
Adam Clarke on Exodus 23:20
Behold, I send an Angel before thee - Some have thought that this was Moses, others Joshua, because the word מלאך malach signifies an angel or messenger; but as it is said, Exo 23:21, My name is in him, (בקרבו bekirbo, intimately, essentially in him), it is more likely that the great Angel of the Covenant, the Lord Jesus Christ, is meant, in whom dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. We have had already much reason to believe that this glorious personage often appeared in a human form to the patriarchs, etc.; and of him Joshua was a very expressive type, the names Joshua and Jesus, in Hebrew and Greek, being of exactly the same signification, because radically the same, from ישע yash…
Behold, I send an angel before thee,.... Not a created angel, but the uncreated one, the Angel of God's presence, that was with the Israelites at Sinai, and in the wilderness; who saved, redeemed, bore, and carried them all the days of old, whom they rebelled against and tempted in the wilderness; as appears by all the characters after given of him, which by no means agree with a created angel: Aben Ezra observes, that some say this is the book of the law, because it is said, "my name is in him", or "in the midst of it"; others say, the ark of the covenant; but he says this angel is Michael; and if indeed by Michael is intended the uncreated angel, as he always is in Scripture, he is right:…
The Church Fathers
He called him an angel indeed, because of the greatness of the powers which he was to exercise and because of his prophetic office, while announcing the will of God. He is called Joshua (also Jesus), because it was a type of his own future name.
For Joshua was to introduce the people into the land of promise, not Moses. Now he called him an angel on account of the magnitude of the mighty deeds which he was to achieve (which mighty deeds Joshua the son of Nun did, as you can yourselves read) and on account of his office of prophet announcing the divine will. Similarly the Spirit, speaking in the person of the Father, calls the forerunner of Christ, John, a future angel, through the prophet: "Behold, I send my angel before your"—that is, Christ's—"face, who shall prepare your way before you."
Consider these words. Let the Jew, not to speak of the Manichaean, say what other angel he can find in Scripture to whom these words apply, but this leader who was to bring the people into the land of promise. Then let him inquire who it was that succeeded Moses and brought in the people. He will find that it was Jesus and that this was not his name at first but after his name was changed. It follows that he who said, "My name is in him" is the true Jesus, the leader who brings his people into the inheritance of eternal life, according to the New Testament, of which the Old was a figure. No event or action could have a more distinctly prophetical character than this, where the very name is itself a prediction.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Angel — A word signifying, both in the Hebrew and Greek, a “messenger,” and hence employed to denote any agent God sends forth to execute his purposes. It is used of an ordinary messenger (Job 1:14: 1 Sam.…
Law of Moses — Is the whole body of the Mosaic legislation (1 Kings 2:3; 2 Kings 23:25; Ezra 3:2). It is called by way of eminence simply “the Law” (Heb. Torah, Deut. 1:5; 4:8, 44; 17:18, 19; 27:3, 8). As a written…
Desert, Journey Of Israel Through The · Under God’s protection — Under God’s protection
Protection · Is vouchsafed to saints in: Keeping them in the way — Is vouchsafed to saints in: Keeping them in the way
Rebellion Against God · Provokes Christ — Provokes Christ
Titles And Names Of Christ · Angel — Angel
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Exodus 23:20-23, 25-31
20. Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.
20. Ecce, ego mitre Angelum coram to, ut custodiat to in via, et introducat to in locum quem praeparavi.
21. Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him.
21. Cave a facie ejus, (ad verbum, custodias to; vel custoditus sis,) et obtempera voci ejus, ne exacerbes eum, neque enim parcet transgressioni vestrae: nomen meum intra ipsum.
22. But if thou shalt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak; then I will be an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine a…
Relation of Jehovah to Israel. - The declaration of the rights conferred by Jehovah upon His people is closed by promises, through which, on the one hand, God insured to the nation the gifts and benefits involved in their rights, and, on the other hand, sought to promote that willingness and love which were indispensable to the fulfilment of the duties incumbent upon every individual in consequence of the rights conferred upon them. These promises secured to the people not only the protection and help of God during their journey through the desert, and in the conquest of Canaan, but also preservation and prosperity when they had taken possession of the land.
Exo 23:20-27
Jehovah would send a…
If the people kept the covenant stipulations just listed, the Covenant Lord agreed to protect them from enemies (23:22-23) and from illness (23:25-26) and give them a land to possess (23:27-31). These covenant promises were contingent upon absolute loyalty to the Covenant Lord. In particular, it would be an act of rebellion (23:21) to worship the gods (23:24, 32-33) of the dispossessed peoples.
23:20-23 an angel: Probably the “angel of the Lord,” who was often a manifestation of the Lord himself (see 3:2).
Rashi on Exodus 23:20
הנה אנכי שלח מלאך BEHOLD, I SEND A MESSENGER [BEFORE THEE] — Here they were informed that they would once sin and that the Divine Majesty would have to tell them, (Exodus 33:3) “for ‘I’ will not go up among thee” (cf. Exodus Rabbah 32:3).
אשר הכנתי means, WHICH I HAVE PREPARED in order to give unto you. This is the literal meaning of the verse. The Midrash (taking the word as connected in meaning with the term כִּוֵן “to put a thing in a line with” or “to make it correspond with” another thing) explains אל המקום אשר הכנתי to signify “to the place opposite to which I have long since established the seat of my Glory” (“the place” therefore denotes the Temple; cf. Rashi on Exodus 15:17). This…
