And she called the name of the LORD that spoke unto her, You God, see me: for she said, Have I also here seen him that sees me?
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Didymus the Blind
AD 398
It is well too that the vision of the instructing Word was seen “between Kadesh and Bered.” Kadesh in fact is interpreted to mean “holy,” and Bered, “lightning.” It is between these two things that divine education takes place: the holy, on the one hand, to which it belongs (to see the divine things) and the lightning, on the other, which is a luminous state. For “your lightnings lighted up the world.”
In the verses read before, it was an “angel of God” who was speaking with Hagar. Here she names him “Lord” and “God.” It is not too much of a stretch to say that the angel was not in the service of his own words but of God’s, as are also the prophets. For, in a certain sense, when angels exercise their ministry and when they foretell the future, they do the work of prophets. The name angel indicates an activity, not a substance; the same is true of the name prophet. [Since] the angel was speaking the words of God, Hagar called him God because of the One who lived in him. Similarly, when Isaiah prophesies, he sometimes speaks in his own person, as a man who has within himself the prophetic spirit, and he sometimes, as it were, makes God the character who speaks, without adding “says the Lord.” For example, he writes, “I made the earth and created man upon it,” but (it is he himself speaking) as one sent by the Lord he proclaims, “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the Lord has...
Thou the God. She had imagined before that she was talking to some man; but perceiving, at parting, that it was some superior being, she invoked him thus.
The hinder parts, as Moses did afterwards, Exodus 33, to let us know, that we cannot fully comprehend the nature of an angel, much less of God. Hebrew may be: "what! have I seen (do I live) after He has seen me." The Hebrews generally supposed, that death would presently overtake the person who had seen the Lord or his angel. (Judges vi. 22; Exodus 32. 20.) (Calmet)
