In today’s readings we have a passage from Genesis 18 in which Abraham and Sarah are visited by three men who tell the married but childless couple that they will have a son within a year. Is there a special significance to the three men? Maybe a model of the Trinity? Are they angels?
I’m sure there is a lot of thought on this but I’m not exactly sure where to go to find it.
I just check a bunch of study bibles and do further searches if I’m not yet sure. Sometimes you can’t be positively sure as there are various possibilities possible. I agree with ‘many of the Fathers’ that ‘saw a foreshadowing of the doctrine of the Trinity’ and your ‘Maybe a model of the Trinity?’.
The Dominican Biblical School in Jerusalem (aka the JB footnote guys) (whom I trust) provide this information:
18a. In its definitive form this ‘Yahwistic’ narrative recounts an apparition of Yahweh (vv. 1,3,10f,13:22) accompanied by two ‘men’ who, according to 19:1, are angels.
As the variants of the Greek and Sam. prove, the text is frequently uncertain in its choice of singular or plural. It would seem that the primitive tradition spoke only of three ‘men’ and was content to leave their identity mysterious.
In these three, to whom Abraham addressed a single act of homage, many of the Fathers saw a foreshadowing of the doctrine of the Trinity, a doctrine that was revealed only in the N.T.
18b. Not a religious act of adoration but simply a mark of respect. At first, Abraham sees his guests as mere human beings and welcomes them warmly; their superhuman character is only gradually revealed, vv. 2,9,13,14.
This is from the New Oxford Annotated Bible With The Apocrypha (RSV):
2-8: A fine description of oriental courtesy and hospitality. When the visitors appeared at the noontime siesta, Abraham did not recognize them as divine beings (Heb.13.2).
The relation of the three men to the LORD (v. 1) is difficult.
All three angels (19.1) may represent the LORD (see 16.7 n.); thus the plurality becomes a single person in vv. 10,13. On the other hand, v. 22 and 19.1 suggest that the LORD is one of the three, the other two being his attendants.
And this is from the Haydock:
Ver. 2. Men in outward appearance, but angels indeed. Heb. xiii. 2. S. Aug. de C. D. xvi. c. 29.
Some have supposed, that one of them was the Son of God, whom Abraham adored, and who bears throughout the chief authority. Tres vidit et unum adoravit. He saw three and adored one, as we read in the Church office. In the former supposition, which is generally adopted, this adoration was only a civil ceremony, if Abraham considered them as mere men; or it might be mixed with a degree of religious, though inferior veneration, if he imagined they were angels; or in fine, he adored God in his representatives. H.
