Joshua and the ‘שר צבא ה (Joshua 5 13-15)

Here is another story in תנ”ך where an unnamed איש appears to a man or woman, and turns out to be an angel or messenger of הקב”ה.

I prefer “messenger” to “angel”.  Although the Greek Ἄγγελος (Angelos) is a literal translation of מלאך and means “messenger”, I think that to the modern American mind “angel” conjures images of winged creatures, for which we have other evidence in תנ”ך, but which do not fit with an unnamed איש who is (mistaken for) a man.

Incidentally, the Yiddish name אנטשל is derived from the Latin “angel”, and is unusual in its being one of the relatively few Yiddish words that derive from Latin rather than German.  (I thought I had read this in Uriel Weinreich “Sabesdiker Losn in Yiddish: A Problem of Linguistic Affinity” Word 8, 360-377 (1952) – but I cannot find it right now in that article, so perhaps I came across it somewhere else.  At any rate, this article is well worth reading.

The איש has חרבו שלופה בידו.  The other characters in תנ”ך with a חרב שלופה are the מלאך who appears to the donkey of בלעם and the messenger of destruction whom הקב”ה sends to punish David for counting the people in I Chronicles 21:16.

The איש says to Joshua “כי אני שר צבא ה’ עתה באתי”.  The implication is that this is a messenger of הקב”ה for whom Joshua and the Israelites have been waiting, and it brings to mind Exodus 33:2 where הקב”ה tells Moses after the sin of the Golden Calf that His messenger will lead the Israelites into the Land of Israel, but He will not lead them Himself.

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