Behold, I send an Angel before you, to keep you in the way, and to bring you into the place which I have prepared.
Read Chapter 23
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
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. Against Faustus, a Manichaean
Angel; my only son. (Philo)
St. Paul says, they tempted Jesus Christ, (1 Corinthians x. 9,) who is styled, the angel of the covenant, Malachi as iii. 1. Some apply this to Josue, others to St. Michael, who, from the cloud, conducted the army of Israel. (Calmet)
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.”
