Abraham’s Lunch Guest: Jesus in Genesis 18

This article is part of a series on Old Testament Christophanies.  For important background information, see An Introduction to Old Testament Christophanies–with Justin Martyr.

Genesis 18 indisputably records Yahweh visiting with Abraham in person.  The account is so vivid and descriptive of a real-world event that it can leave no doubt as to what happened.  In other places, those who wish to dismiss a theophany as something else may appeal to all kinds of vague arguments or special pleas.  Those sorts of objections won’t find any traction here.  There isn’t an honest way to interpret the chapter as a dream, vision, a visit from an angel, exalted emissary, or any other created being speaking on the Lord’s behalf.  This was a visitation by Yahweh Himself, the great I AM, appearing as a man.  Genesis 18 is the Old Testament’s Cornerstone theophany.  And therefore, based on our understanding of the Son’s role to visit mankind, it is the Old Testament’s cornerstone Christophany.

The Lord by the Oaks

It wasn’t long after the Lord’s last visit that He appeared to Abraham again, this time by the oaks[1] of Mamre as he was sitting at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day (v. 1).  The Son of God didn’t suddenly appear before him in a blinding light, in a mystical spiritual form, or as anything else that would come off as miraculous.  Instead, He simply walked up to Abraham in the form of a man, accompanied by two angels, also appearing as men.  Upon seeing the Lord, the patriarch ran up to the three and bowed before them (v. 2).  Abraham implored his Lord to stay and visit with His servant (v. 3).  The specifics of his request and the response of the three is just phenomenal:

Please let a little water be brought and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree; and I will bring a piece of bread, that you may refresh yourselves; after that you may go on, since you have visited your servant.” And they said, “So do, as you have said.”  So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah, and said, “Quickly, prepare three measures of fine flour, knead it and make bread cakes.”  Abraham also ran to the herd, and took a tender and choice calf and gave it to the servant, and he hurried to prepare it.  He took curds and milk and the calf which he had prepared, and placed it before them; and he was standing by them under the tree as they ate.  (Gen 18:4–8)

Abraham treated the three “men” as he would important human guests.  He offered to bring water to wash their dirty feet and bread to satisfy their hunger.  Dirty feet?!  Hunger?!  This would be more than enough reason to think that the Lord and His attendants visibly appeared to Abraham as regular people would.  But then, they even ate the food.  The Lord and His angels had physical, tangible bodies—capable of ingestion.  The simple fact is that the Lord ate lunch with Abraham.  Fruchtenbaum found that the purpose of the meal was twofold: “Eating a meal together was often in conjunction with the making of a covenant or the ratifying of a treaty.  Therefore, these are the implications of a covenantal meal, as those made in [Genesis] 26:28–31 and Exodus 24:1–11.  The eating together was also a symbol of fellowship (Rev. 3:20).”^[2]

This isn’t even the only Old Testament example of the Son of God attending a meal with His people.  We’ll come across another exciting one in Exodus 24.  In the Gospels, Jesus regularly ate with others, always taking the opportunity to teach (e.g., Matt 9:10–11; 26:17–30; Luke 11:37–52; 14:1–24; 24:28–35; John 6).  After His resurrection, Jesus ate a piece of broiled fish and some honeycomb^[3] to prove that He didn’t merely return as a disembodied spirit (Luke 24:36–43).  During the Last Supper, Jesus promised to drink wine with His disciples once again when He comes in His Father’s kingdom (Matt 26:29).  At that time, He will celebrate with the saints by hosting a lavish, coronation banquet—a first supper to inaugurate the Messiah’s reign upon the earth (Isa 25:6–9; cf. 65:13; Matt 8:11).  The Son of God has, and always will enjoy the fellowship and community that comes with breaking bread with His people.

As the three conversed with Abraham, Sarah was eavesdropping just inside the tent behind them.  The three asked where she was, fully aware that she could hear them.  After Abraham answered that she was in the tent, the Lord said, “I will surely return to you at this time next year; and behold, Sarah your wife will have a son.”  Abraham and Sarah were both advanced in age, and the idea of giving birth made Sarah laugh to herself  (vv. 9–12).  But because the Lord knows all, Sarah may as well have laughed out loud.  He rebuked Sarah’s disbelief, asking “Is anything too difficult for the Lord?”  Once again the Lord proclaimed that in a year’s time He would return and Sarah would have a son .  Out of fear, Sarah denied her laughter before the omniscient God of the universes.  In response, He simply stated, “No, but you did laugh.”  (vv. 13–15).

The Lord didn’t criticize Abraham for laughing out of spirit of wonderment (Gen 17:17), while He did chastise Sarah for laughing out of a spirit of unbelief.  When Jesus was in Jerusalem for Passover, many witnessed the miracles He performed and believed in His name.  But at that time Jesus didn’t entrust Himself to any of them, because He knew their thoughts and motivations (John 2:23–25).  The Lord knows what is in the heart of every person.  Women today can become pregnant decades after they would naturally have been able to.  Medical advancements, including various hormone treatments and in vitro fertilization, have made what once seemed impossible to become commonplace.  These advancements were made by mere men.  And even if it couldn’t be done by man, nothing is too hard for the Son of God.

Yahweh on Earth

The remainder of the chapter makes a greater distinction between the Lord and His two angels:

Then the men rose up from there, and looked down toward Sodom; and Abraham was walking with them to send them off. The LORD said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham will surely become a great and mighty nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed? For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.” And the LORD said, “The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave. I will go down now, and see if they have done entirely according to its outcry, which has come to Me; and if not, I will know.”

Then the men turned away from there and went toward Sodom, while Abraham was still standing before the LORD.  (Gen 18:16–22)

The 16^th century Protestant scholars behind the groundbreaking Geneva Bible understood that one of these angels was the Son of God.  The commentary for verse 17 simply states, “Jehovah the Hebrew word we call Lord, shows that this angel was Christ: for this word is only applied to God.”^[4]  Two of the three men continued on their way toward Sodom, while one stayed behind to have a private conversation with Abraham.  He who stayed and stood before the patriarch is explicitly named Yahweh.  Scripture doesn’t say this was an angel in the place of Yahweh, it says this was Yahweh.  As much as some may try, there is no way around this simple fact.  It is understandable that some Christians interpret the three men as the members of the Trinity.  But not only does verse 22 make it clear that only one of the men was actually called Yahweh, God the Father is never seen, nor does the Holy Spirit ever appear as a person.  The good news is that by the same reasoning we can know that this was Yahweh the Son, the preincarnate Lord Jesus!

Abraham came near to the Lord to intercede on behalf of the saints living in Sodom.  This is the first time in Scripture that a man started an in-person conversation with God.  He first asked if the Lord would spare the city for the sake of fifty righteous inhabitants.  The Lord answered that He would spare the city for the sake of the fifty righteous. Abraham then asked the same question five more times—except the number of righteous people steadily declined—from forty-five, to forty, to thirty, to twenty, and finally to ten.  Every time the Lord answered that He would not destroy the city for the sake of the righteous (vv. 23–33).  Abraham’s pleading is a powerful example of the kind of persistence that Jesus taught should be used when the saint speaks to God in prayer (e.g., Luke 11:5–10; 18:1–8).

The two men are explicitly referred to as angels when they arrived at Sodom (Gen 19:1, 15).  After they helped Lot and some of his family escape, the Lord poured out His wrath upon the cities:

Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven,  (Gen 19:24)

There was one Yahweh on earth while another Yahweh was in Heaven!  This extraordinary verse becomes easy to understand when we realize that it was Yahweh the Son who visited with Abraham the chapter before.  The Targumim specify that the Yahweh on earth was “the Word of the Lord.”^[5]  They handle His presence in Genesis 18 by equating Him with the Shekinah, going so far as to replace the Lord’s holy name with “glory of the Lord.”^[6]  We who believe that the Word became a man and demonstrated His glory as the only begotten of the Father, can certainly appreciate these interpretations.

The general Jewish understanding, however, is that all three of the men were angels.  The Talmud identifies them as Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.  Michael’s role was to announce to Sarah that she would give birth to a son; Raphael came to heal Abraham after his recent circumcision; and Gabriel went to overthrow Sodom (Bava Metzia 86b).  Many rabbis, including the medieval sage Rashi, have largely upheld this tradition.  Of course the text makes no mention of any angel’s name, nor does this explanation meaningfully address one of the men unambiguously being named Yahweh.  The rabbis just couldn’t wrap their minds around what Scripture actually said, so they had to come up with something more acceptable.  When the text is allowed to speak for itself we discover a beautiful truth: Yahweh did indeed come to earth to visit with mankind.

Justin Martyr looked to the Genesis 18 Christophany as a compelling example of God the Son being distinct from God in Heaven:

Moses, then, the blessed and faithful servant of God, declares that He who appeared to Abraham under the oak in Mamre is God, sent with the two angels in His company to judge Sodom by Another who remains ever in the supercelestial places, invisible to all men, holding personal intercourse with none, whom we believe to be Maker and Father of all things . . .^[7]

Justin’s point that God the Father remains in His heavenly realm lends to our understanding that so many of the appearances of God before man must be the Son.  It is simply the Son’s role to represent the Godhead before man, whether it be in the New Testament or in the Old.

Brown recognized the Genesis 18 Christophany as a key precedent for the incarnation:

“The fact is Genesis 18 clearly and indisputably teaches that God can come to earth in human form for a period of time if he so desires.  And if he could do this for a few hours, in temporary human form, he could do this for a few years, in permanent human form.  This is what theologians call the incarnation, God coming down to earth as a man in the person of his Son.  And it is only when we recognize the Son—the exact representation of God, and yet God himself—that we can explain how God remained the Lord in heaven while also appearing as the Lord on earth in Genesis 18.”^[8]

If the God on earth in Genesis 18 was the Son, then similar appearances of God on earth elsewhere are likely to be the Son.  In this regard, Genesis 18 is a cornerstone that both supports and helps us to better understand other Old Testament Christophanies.

[1] Or terebinths.

[2] Fruchtenbaum, Genesis, 311.

[3] Not all manuscripts include and some honeycomb in Luke 24:42.

[4] Study note on Genesis 18:17, in The Geneva Bible.

[5] As found in Pseudo-Jonathan and in the Jerusalem Targum.

[6] Refer to Onkelos and Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 18:1, 3, 33.

[7] Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, LVI.

[8] Brown, Answering Jewish Objections Volume 2, 34–35.