The Context of Exodus 23.20 and Malachi 3.1
The background to Exod. 23.20 is God’s instruction to Moses that he was sending an angel of protection before Israel and that Israel must obey this angel. This angel was perhaps the angel ‘in whom my name dwells.’ In the context, ‘you’ singular refers perhaps to the nation of Israel as a whole rather than Moses (see v. 23). Thus, if the evangelist is thinking of that context, ‘you’ is the new Israel or its representative. If Malachi is the proper background ‘you’ (changed from ‘me’) is the Lord who will come to his temple (Mal. 3.1).
The combination of Exod. 23.20/Mal. 3.1 and Isa. 40.3 in Mark suggests an implicit midrash. The text implies a certain amount of underlying exegesis has taken place prior to Mark’s incorporation of this text into his Gospel. The implied midrashist, be it Mark or his predecessor, may have taken the verbal similarities of the two texts to interpret each other on the principle of Geza Shawa. On this interpretation, the implied midrashist identified the ‘you’ of Exod. 23.20 or the ‘you’ changed from ‘me’ of Mal. 3.1 with the ‘Lord’ of Isa. 40.3. The implied midrashist could have noticed that Exod. 23.20 and Isa. 40.3 both have to do with an exodus. He may have then used the idea of the angel of the LORD implied in Exod. 23.20 to interpret Mal. 3.1 which says ‘before me’. In Mal. 3.1, the context deals with a theophany, yet the language strangely shifts from second person to third, as if God who was coming could speak of himself with a certain detachment. The implied midrashist may have interpreted this second figure as the angel in whom God’s name dwells in Exod. 23.20. The difficulty with this view is ‘the messenger’ in Exod. 23.20 and Mal. 3.1 are different. One is ‘the angel of the LORD’ while the second is the coming Levite (Mal. 2.7). (Carl Judson Davis, The Name and Way of the Lord: Old Testament Themes, New Testament Christology [Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 129; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996], 96-7)
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