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[
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] the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that
are therein?” (Gen. 18:24). It may be in the midst of people: “Then Samuel took the horn
of oil, and anointed him in the midst [
%
] of his brethren: and the Spirit of the Lord
came upon David from that day forward” (1 Sam. 16:13).
God is said to be in the midst of the land (Exod. 8:22), the city of God (Ps. 46:4), and
Israel (Num. 11:20). Even when He is close to His people, God is nevertheless holy: “Cry
out and shout, thou inhabitant of Zion: for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst
[
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] of thee” (Isa. 12:6; cf. Hos. 11:9).
The idiomatic use of
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in Psalm 103:— “Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that
is within me, bless his holy name”—is more difficult to discern because the noun is in the
plural. It seems best to take “all that is within me” as a reference to the Psalmist’s whole
being, rather than to a distinct part of the body that is within him.
The Septuagint gives the following Greek translations of
% &
“heart [as
seat of physical, spiritual, and mental life]” or “heart [figurative in the sense of being
interior or central]”;
“body cavity, belly”; and
“middle” or “in the midst.”
The
KJV
gives these senses: “midst” and “inwards.”
ANGEL
(
, 4397), “messenger; angel.” In Ugaritic, Arabic, and Ethiopic, the
verb
means “to send.” Even though
does not exist in the Hebrew Old
Testament, it is possible to recognize its etymological relationship to
. In addition,
the Old Testament uses the word “message” in Hag. 1:13; this word incorporates the
meaning of the root
“to send.” Another noun form of the root is
“work,”
which appears 167 times. The name
"
—literally, “my messenger”—is based on
the noun
.
The noun
appears 213 times in the Hebrew Old Testament. Its frequency is
especially great in the historical books, where it usually means “messenger”: Judges (31
times), 2 Kings (20 times), 1 Samuel (19 times), and 2 Samuel (18 times). The
prophetical works are very moderate in their usage of
with the outstanding
exception of the Book of Zechariah, where the angel of the Lord communicates God’s
message to Zechariah. For example: “Then I answered and said unto the angel that talked
to me, ‘What are these, my lord?’ And the angel answered and said unto me, ‘These are
the four spirits [pl. of
] of the heavens, which go forth from standing before the
Lord of all the earth’” (Zech. 6:4-5).
The word
denotes someone sent over a great distance by an individual (Gen.
32:3) or by a community (Num. 21:21), in order to communicate a message. Often
several messengers are sent together: “And Ahaziah fell down through a lattice in his
upper chamber that was in Samaria, and was sick: and he sent messengers [pl. of
]
and said unto them, Go, inquire of Baal-zebub the god of Ekron whether I shall recover
of this disease” (2 Kings 1:2). The introductory formula of the message borne by the