I'll have a go at giving you an answer, then
I'm not one of the people who will tend to argue for appearances by Jesus in the OT, because I don't think it's clear either way. But I don't think the language of second coming stops Jesus potentially having appeared in the OT. The incarnation and the second coming in bodily form is very different to appearing in a heavenly sense, in the same way that Moses 'saw' God, but no one has truly 'seen' God. We can take a hyper literalist reading of the text and fight phantoms of our own devising, or we can appreciate that the literary culture of the OT is very different to our own, and we should be careful to make the text say things it's not really trying to say.
I don't think this verse inherently excludes the possibility of the angel being the Lord in some sense. Jesus speaks rhetorically in this way a number of times - for instance, consider later in the same chapter from vv35-37. Here he speaks rhetorically in the third person about the Christ (in the context of the son of David). It is clear from elsewhere in Mark that Jesus is the Christ, so it is also clear from these verses that simply talking about himself in an abstracted third person doesn't mean he isn't the person to whom he is referring. This is how Jesus spoke, and is actually quite a common rhetorical technique of antiquity, particular in the Near Eastern-Mediterranean cultures.
Sorry, what connection do these verses have to discussing the angel of the Lord?
First of all, it seems clear to me that 'an' angel in v 15 is meant to be identified with "the angel of the Lord," also in v15. Secondly, again, there is no reason to have a problem with an angel being the Lord. All angel implied in the Hebrew was one who comes with a message. The appearance was as one with a message - on hearing the voice, though, it was plainly the very words of the Lord, as if he himself were manifested there, whether he actually was or not (I'm not really in a position to argue the metaphysics of an appearance by God in time and space
). The same with the 'man' who wrestled with Jacob in Genesis 32 - it is not always clearcut, and there is always a sense of mystery (as one would expect on seeing some sort of manifestation of God), but it is always clear when it is the very words of the Lord being spoken.
I personally come down on it all in this way - the biblical writers tend to want to emphasise God speaking verbally and in a plenary way to the prophets, etc, but also shy away from making God 'appear' personally (because God is not bound to mortal time and space), so they use proxies - appearance as a man in Genesis 32, an angel of the Lord in Chronicles and in Exodus 3, one like a son of man receiving divine authority in Daniel. this would be quite in keeping with ancient Near Eastern religious practice and culture.
I suggest you read about Moses and the burning bush in Exodus 3 - note particularly how Moses sees the angel of the Lord in the bush at first, and then the whole passages proceeds as if God was actually there, and Moses spoke directly to him, with no further mention of 'the angel'.
No, I have heard this many times. This has been a discussion since ancient times - anyone who has read any OT theology would probably have come across this before. Unluckily for Wayne, there's nothing truly new here, except for maybe peeing on seeds.
Seems pretty clear to me that the angel is or represents God in some meaningful and direct sense.
What's the evidence for it being Satan? 1 Chron 21 and 2 Sam 24 doesn't cut it, I feel, because there's no connection there with the angel of the Lord in the text.
It sounds nice in theory, but it has several problems. If we take this argument, we must also conclude it was Satan that got Moses to lead God's people out of Egypt. We must conclude it was Satan, not God, who stopped Abraham sacrificing Isaac. It simply doesn't make a lot of sense.
The second, and in my mind bigger problem, is that, as far as I can see, there is no mention of the angel in the context of Joshua 5. You can't assume the angel of the Lord, not the Lord, is responsible in Joshua 5 without basically ignoring the actual text, at which point you might as well just swap 'Satan' for 'God' everytime you don't like something in the Bible.
So, Wayne's argument fails at this point. In terms of the problem of Joshua 6, a couple of quick thoughts:
1. Even if we are forced to read the text as suggesting all non-combatants, including children, were killed, that actually doesn't make God evil. God is God, and if he is indeed God, he is justified in all he does. This is the baseline argument.
2. Even then, there are arguments against the traditional reading. I haven't got the space to go into this in detail. but we know from other Middle Eastern accounts of around that time that this kind of language was a kind of military hyperbole - it wasn't meant to be read as literal truth, but as a kind of military PR exercise indicating total victory. It is also unclear whether there were even civilians at Jericho, and whether it was anything more than a military fort. There's nothing explicitly in Joshua indicating a civilian population, and what we know of contemporary Caananite history would suggest Jericho did not have such a population.
Hope this is a good starter.
