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I am with you always, is the highest fulfilment to us Christians of that ancient confidence: 'The Angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him. Whatever view we adopt of the significance of the first part of the text, the force and beauty of the metaphor in the second remain the same.
Morals are the health and strength of a community: While they remain no enemy can prevail against it. "The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them" But when a community degenerates, and become corrupt and vicious, their guardian angel quits his charge, and their guardian God becomes the avenger of their crimes.
There were they in great fear, where no fear was: for God hath scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee: thou hast put them to shame, because God hath despised them. Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion! When God bringeth back the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice, and Israel shall be glad. Save me, O God, by thy name, and judge me by thy strength.
Wherefore Manoah said, 'We have seen God. Long after these early visions, a psalmist knows himself safe because 'the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him. Hosea, looking back on the story of Jacob's wrestling at Peniel, says, first, that 'he had power with God, yea, he had power over the angel, and then goes on to say that 'there He spake with us, even Jehovah. And Malachi, on the last verge of Old Testament prophecy, goes furthest of all in seeming to run together the conceptions of Jehovah and the Angel of Jehovah, for he says, 'The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His temple; and the angel of the covenant ... behold, he cometh. From this imperfect resume, we see that there appears in the earliest as in the latest books of the Old Testament, a person distinguished from the hosts of angels, identified in a very remarkable manner with Jehovah, by alternation of names, in attributes and offices, and in receiving worship, and being the organ of His revelation.
Then I awoke with this scripture sounding in my ears: "The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him and delivereth them." Without a doubt, the angels were around me. The strength and comfort I received in my soul that night were like Elijah's meal, in the strength of which he went forty days.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord"? And in Psa. 34:7 is this blessed assurance: "The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them." Hallelujah! "In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust: let me never be put to confusion." Psa. 71:1. Before I left B , that town had a well-organized law and order league.
This poor man cried, and the LORD heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them. O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. O fear the LORD, ye his saints: for there is no want to them that fear him.
It is infinitely more blessed that 'the Angel of the Lord' the One who is more than the many 'encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them. The postscript of the last letter which Gordon sent from Khartoum closed with the words, 'The hosts are with me Mahanaim. Were they not, even though death was near? Was that sublime faith a mistake the vision an optical delusion?
On the other hand, we are told that 'He giveth His angels charge concerning thee to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. And again: The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them.
"The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them"; that is, lest the enemy should set upon them on any side; but let him come where he will, behind or before, on this side or that, the angel of the Lord is there to defend them. "The angel." It may be spoken in the singular number, perhaps, to show that every one that feareth God hath his angel to attend on him, and serve him.
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