The Three Men at Mamre

Moses, then, the blessed and faithful servant of God, shows that the one who appeared to Abraham by the oak at Mamre is God — sent, along with the two angels who were sent with him for the judgment of Sodom, by Another: the one who always remains in the places above the heavens, who has never been seen by anyone and has never himself spoken with anyone, and whom we take to be the Maker of all things and the Father. For this is what he says: “God appeared to him by the oak at Mamre as he sat at the door of his tent at noon. He looked up with his eyes and saw, and there were three men standing over him; and when he saw them he ran from the door of his tent to meet them, and he bowed himself to the ground and said —” and so on, down to: “Abraham got up early in the morning and went to the place where he had stood before the Lord. He looked out toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward the surrounding country, and he saw, and there was a flame going up from the ground like the steam of a furnace.” When I had finished quoting, I asked them whether they had understood what I had read. They said they had understood it, but that the passages I had brought forward gave no proof that there is any other God or Lord besides the Maker of all things, or that the Holy Spirit says there is. [a]

Then I answered, “Now that you have taken in the Scriptures, I will try to persuade you of what I am saying: that there is, and is spoken of as, another God and Lord under the Maker of all things. He is also called an angel, because he announces to people whatever the Maker of all things — above whom there is no other God — wants announced to them.” And going back over the passage I had already quoted, I asked Trypho, “Do you think that God appeared to Abraham under the oak at Mamre, as the Scripture says?” “Certainly.” “And was he one of those three,” I said, “whom the holy prophetic Spirit says Abraham saw as men?” “No. God appeared to him before the vision of the three. Then those three, whom the Scripture calls men, were angels — two of them sent for the destruction of Sodom, and one to bring Sarah the good news that she would have a child. That was what he had been sent for, and when he had finished it he went away.”

“Then how is it,” I said, “that the one of the three who was in the tent — the one who said, ‘At this time next year I will come back to you, and Sarah will have a son’ — turns out to have come back once Sarah had borne a son, and to be marked out there too by the prophetic word as God? So that you can see plainly what I mean, listen to the words Moses uses, in so many terms. They are these: “Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian slave woman, the son she had borne to Abraham, playing with Isaac her son, and she said to Abraham, ‘Cast out this slave woman and her son; the son of this slave woman is not to inherit along with my son Isaac.’ And the matter seemed very hard to Abraham, because of his son. But God said to Abraham, ‘Do not let it be hard in your sight because of the boy and because of the slave woman. In everything Sarah says to you, listen to her voice; for in Isaac your offspring will be named.’” “Have you understood, then, that the one who said under the oak that he would come back — knowing beforehand that Abraham would have to be advised to do what Sarah wanted of him — did come back, as it is written, and that he is God, as the words show when they run like this: ‘God said to Abraham, Do not let it be hard in your sight because of the boy and because of the slave woman’?” That was my question. “Certainly,” Trypho said. “But you have not proved from this that God is other than the one who appeared to Abraham, and who appeared to the other patriarchs and prophets as well. What you have proved is that we were wrong to think the three who were in the tent with Abraham were all angels.”

I answered again, “Even if I could not prove to you from the Scriptures that one of those three is God and is called an angel — called that, as I said before, because he brings word of whatever the God who made all things wants brought to those he wants it brought to — even then it would have been reasonable for you to think of him as your whole nation thinks of him: the one who appeared to Abraham on earth in the form of a man, like the two angels who came with him, and who was God even before the world was made.” “Just so,” he said. “That is what we have held right up to now.”

Then I answered, “Let me go back to the Scriptures and try to persuade you that this one — the one who is said to have appeared to Abraham and to Jacob and to Moses, and who is written of as God — is other than the God who made all things. Other in number, I mean, not in purpose. For I say that he has never at any time done or said anything except what the Maker of the world, above whom there is no other God, wished him both to do and to say.” “Show us now that this is so,” said Trypho, “and we will agree with you about it. We do not take you to be saying that he has done or spoken anything contrary to the purpose of the Maker of all things.” “The passage I quoted a moment ago will make it plain to you,” I said. “It is this: “The sun had risen on the earth, and Lot went into Zoar. And the Lord rained sulfur and fire on Sodom from the Lord out of heaven, and he overthrew those cities and the whole country around them.”

Then the fourth of the men who had stayed with Trypho said, “Then, of the two angels who went down to Sodom, there is one whom the Scripture through Moses named Lord; and besides him we are bound to speak of God himself, the one who appeared to Abraham.”

“That is not the only ground,” I said, “on which it has to be granted, and granted absolutely, that someone besides the one taken to be the Maker of all things is spoken of as Lord by the Holy Spirit. It is not only what is said through Moses; it is what is said through David as well. For this was written by him: “The Lord says to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet,” as I have already quoted. And again, in other words: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; a scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, your God, anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” “So if you say the Holy Spirit speaks of anyone else as God and as Lord besides the Father of all things and his Christ, answer me. For I undertake to prove to you from the Scriptures themselves that the one the Scripture called Lord is not one of the two angels who went down to Sodom, but the one who was with them, who is called God, and who appeared to Abraham.”

“Prove it,” said Trypho. “As you can see, the day is getting on, and we are not ready for answers as dangerous as these; we have never yet heard anyone examining these things, or looking into them, or proving them. We would not have put up with your talking at all if you were not tracing everything back to the Scriptures. You are in earnest about making your proofs from them, and you declare that there is no God above the Maker of all things.”

Then I said, “You know, then, that the Scripture says: “And the Lord said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I really bear a child? I am old. Is any word impossible with God? At this season I will come back to you, at this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.’” And a little after that: “The men got up from there and looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham went along with them, seeing them on their way. And the Lord said, ‘I will not hide from Abraham my servant what I am doing.’” And a little further on it says this: “The Lord said, ‘The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah has multiplied, and their sins are very great. So I will go down and see whether they are doing altogether according to the outcry against them that comes to me; and if not, I will know.’ And the men turned away from there and went to Sodom. But Abraham was still standing before the Lord, and Abraham came near and said, ‘Will you destroy the righteous along with the ungodly?’”

— and so on. Since I have written all of it out before, I do not think it right to write the same words over again; but I do have to give the ones by which I made my case to Trypho and his companions. So I went on to what follows, where these words are recorded:

“The Lord went away as soon as he had finished speaking with Abraham, and he went back to his own place. And the two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting by the gate of Sodom,” and so on in the same way, down to: “But the men reached out their hands and pulled Lot in to themselves, into the house, and shut the door of the house,” and what follows, down to: “And the angels took hold of his hand and his wife’s hand and the hands of his daughters, because the Lord spared him. And when they had brought them outside, they said, ‘Save yourself — save your own life. Do not look around behind you, and do not stop anywhere in the country around; escape to the mountain, or you may be swept away with them.’ And Lot said to them, ‘I beg you, Lord: your servant has found mercy before you, and you have magnified the righteousness you are showing me in keeping my life alive. But I cannot escape to the mountain; the disaster may overtake me and I will die. Look, this city is near enough to run to, and it is small. There I will be safe, since it is small, and I will live.’ And he said to him, ‘Look, I have accepted you in this matter too, and I will not overthrow the city you have spoken about. Hurry and get to safety there; I will not be able to do anything until you have gone in.’ That is why the name of the city was called Zoar. The sun had risen on the earth, and Lot went into Zoar. And the Lord rained sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of heaven, and he overthrew those cities and the whole country around them.”

And after another pause I added: “And now have you still not understood, my friends, that one of the three — the one who is both God and Lord, and who serves the one in the heavens — is Lord of the two angels? When they went on to Sodom, he stayed behind and talked with Abraham in the words Moses wrote down; and when he too had gone away after that conversation, Abraham went back to his own place. And when he came to Sodom, it was no longer the two angels who spoke with Lot but he himself, as the Scripture makes clear; and he is the Lord who received from the Lord in heaven — that is, from the Maker of all things — the commission to bring on Sodom and Gomorrah what the Scripture lists in these words: ‘The Lord rained sulfur and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of heaven.’”

When I fell silent, Trypho said, “That the Scripture forces us to admit this is plain. But there is one thing we may fairly be at a loss over: what is said about his eating the food Abraham prepared and set before him. You would admit that yourself.” [s]

I answered, “It is written that they ate. Now if we understand the Scripture to say that all three ate, and not the two alone — who really were angels and are fed in the heavens, as is plain to us, even though they are not fed on the same food we human beings use (for about the food of the manna that fed your fathers in the desert, the Scripture says this: that they ate the bread of angels) — then I would say that the passage which says they ate speaks the way we ourselves would speak of a fire, saying that it devoured everything — and not at all that they ate by chewing with teeth and jaws. So here too we need not be at a loss over anything, if we have even a little experience of figures of speech.”

“It is possible to deal with this in that way,” said Trypho, “the question of the manner of eating, in which it is written that they used up what Abraham had prepared and ate it. So come now and give us your account of it: how this God who appeared to Abraham, being a servant of the God who made all things, was born through the virgin and became a man, subject to the same feelings as everyone else, as you said earlier.” “Allow me first, Trypho,” I said, “to gather some other proofs on this head, and at length, so that you too may be convinced about it; and after that I will give you the account you are asking for.” “Do as you think best,” he said. “You will be doing exactly what I want.”