13. When God caused me to wander (430) Because the verb is here put in the plural number, I freely expound the passage as referring to the angels, who led Abraham through his various wanderings. Some, with too much subtlety, infer from it a Trinity of Persons: as if it had been written: The gods caused me to wander. I grant, indeed, that the noun אלהים ( Elohim,) is frequently taken for God in the Scripture: but then the verb with which it is connected is always singular. Wherever a plural verb is added then it signifies angels or princes. (431) There are those who think that Abraham, because he was speaking with one who was not rightly instructed, spoke thus in conformity with the common custom of the heathen; but, in my opinion, most erroneously. For to what purpose did he, by erecting altars, make it manifest that he was devoted to the service of the only true God, if it were lawful for him afterwards to deny, in words, the very God whom he had worshipped? On which subject we have before spoken, as the case required. Abraham, however, does not complain respecting, the angels, that he had been led astray by their fallacious guidance: but he points out what his own condition formerly was; namely, that having left his own country, he had not only migrated into a distant land, but had been constantly compelled to change his abode. Wherefore there is no wonder, that necessity drove him into new designs. Should any one inquire, why he makes angels the guides of his pilgrimage? the answer is ready; Although Abraham knew that he was wandering by the will and providence of God alone, he yet refers to angels, who, as he elsewhere acknowledges, were given him to be the guides of his journey. The sum of the address is of this tendency; to teach Abimelech, that Abraham was alike free from malicious cunning, and from falsehood: and then, that because he was passing a wandering and unquiet life; Sarah, by agreement, had always said the same thing which she had done in Gerar. This wretched anxiety of the holy man might so move Abimelech to compassion as to cause his anger to cease.
(430) “ Quando circumduxerunt me angeli.” — “When the angels led me about.”
(431) The reasoning of Calvin is not conclusive. There are cases, though but few, in which Elohim, as here, when joined to a verb plural, signifies, not angels nor princes, but the true God. See Genesis 35:7. Calvin, however, in this passage also, translates the word, “angels.” Still there seems no sufficient reason for departing from our own received version. Dathe agrees with it. “ Deinde cum Deus me ex patria mea migrare juberet.” It is also confirmed by the Septuagint version. — See the Commentary of Professor Bush, in loco. — Ed.