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MESSENGER
One who carries a message, a herald. The word “messenger” is used in the Bible in four ways.
1. The word is used of messengers carrying messages from one person to another. Such messengers might bring news (2 Sm 11:22), requests or demands (1 Sm 11:3; 16:19), or act as envoys of one nation to another (Is 37:9). In the NT we read of messengers of the churches (2 Cor 8:23; Phil 2:25). The blessing of a good messenger is spoken of in Proverbs 25:13: “Faithful messengers are as refreshing as snow in the heat of summer. They revive the spirit of their employer” (NLT).
2. The word is used of messengers bringing messages from God. Israel was intended to be God’s messenger but often showed herself blind and deaf (Is 42:19). Prophets (Hg 1:13) and priests (Mal 2:7) were God’s messengers. God sent many such messengers to his people, even though they were often unheeded (2 Chr 36:15-16). In Malachi 3:1 we have the prophecy of a special messenger, “Look! I am sending my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. Then the Lord you are seeking will suddenly come to his Temple. The messenger of the covenant, whom you look for so eagerly, is surely coming” (NLT). This verse is quoted in the NT in Matthew 11:10, Mark 1:2, and Luke 7:27 as fulfilled in John the Baptist.
3. In both the OT and NT the most common word for “messenger” is also that for “angel.” God’s angels are distinctively his messengers. See Angel.
4. The word is used in a metaphorical sense, as in Proverbs 16:14, “The wrath of a king is as messengers of death” (KJB), and in 2 Corinthians 12:7, where Paul’s constant physical ailment is called “a messenger from Satan to torment” him.