a fuller statement is made. For the present
it is enough to note, that this is one pre-eminent angel, indicated by
the definite article; that he is clearly the medium of a true divine
appearance, because neither the voice nor form of any lesser being is
supposed to be employed, the appearance being that of fire, and the
words being said to be the direct utterance of the Lord, not of any one
who says, Thus saith the Lord. We shall see hereafter that the story of
the Exodus is unique in this respect, that in training a people tainted
with Egyptian superstitions, no 'similitude' is seen, as when there
wrestled a man with Jacob, or when Ezekiel saw a human form upon the
sapphire pavement.

Man is the true image of God, and His perfect revelation was in flesh.
But now that expression of Himself was perilous, and perhaps unsuitable
besides; for He was to be known as the Avenger, and presently as the
Giver of Law, with its inflexible conditions and its menaces. Therefore
He appeared as fire, which is intense and terrible, even when "the flame
of the grace of God does not consume, but illuminates."

There is a notion that religion is languid, repressive, and unmanly. But
such is not the scriptural idea. In His presence is the fulness of joy.
Christ has come that we might have life, and might have it more
abundantly. They who are shut out from His blessedness are said to be
asleep and dead. And so Origen quotes this passage among others, with
the comment that "As God is a fire, and His angels a flame of fire, and
all the saints fervent in spirit, so they who have fallen away from God
are said to have cooled, or to have become cold" (_De Princip._, ii. 8).
A revelation by fire involves intensity.

There is indeed another explanation of the burning bush, which makes the
flame express only the afflictions that did not consume the people. But
this would be a strange adjunct to a divine appearance for their
deliverance, speaking rather of the continuance of suffering than of its
termination, for which the extinction of such fire would be a more
appropriate symbol.

Yet there is an element of truth even in this view, since fire is
connected with affliction. In His holiness God is light (with which, in
the Hebrew, the very word for holiness seems to be connected); in His
judgments He is fire. "The Light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his
Holy One for a flame, and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his
briers in one day" (