And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
All Commentaries on Exodus 3:2 Go To Exodus 3
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
And here he is first called the angel of the Lord and then God. Is the angel then the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob? Therefore he may be rightly understood to be the Savior himself of whom the apostle says, “Whose are the fathers, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed forever.” Hence even here he, who is the God blessed over all things forever, is not unreasonably understood to be himself the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. But why was he previously called the angel of the Lord when he appeared in the flame of fire from the bush? Was it because he was one of many angels but by a dispensation represented the person of his Lord? Or was something belonging to a creature assumed which might appear visibly for the task at hand and from which words might be uttered in an audible way, whereby the presence of the Lord would also become known to the bodily senses of man, as circumstances required, by means of a creature made subject to him? For if he was one of the angels, who can readily affirm whether the person given him to announce was that of the Son, or of the Holy Spirit, or of God the Father or of the Trinity itself altogether, who is the one and only God, in order that he might say, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob”? For we cannot say that the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob is the Son of God and not the Father. Nor will anyone dare to deny that either the Holy Spirit or the Trinity itself, which we believe and understand to be the one God, is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. For he who is not God is not the God of those fathers. Moreover … not only the Father is God, as all, even the heretics, admit, but the Son also, which willingly or not they are forced to confess, for the apostle says, “who is, over all things, God blessed forever,” and the Holy Spirit as well. The same apostle declares, “Therefore glorify God in your body,” when he had previously stated, “Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit in you, whom you have from God?” And these three are one God, as the sound Catholic faith believes. It is not sufficiently clear which person in the Trinity that angel represented, assuming that he was one of the rest of the angels, and whether it was any person and not that of the Trinity itself. .
