Please let a little water be brought and wash your feet, and make yourselves comfortable under the tree; and I will bring a piece of bread, so that you may refresh yourselves; after that you may go on, since you have visited your servant.” And they said, “So do as you have said.”
Genesis 18:4-5 (NASB)
When Abraham first meets the three men (or angels!) in Genesis 18, the Rabbis note every word he speaks and wonder if there is prophetic meaning in them.
We know that the offering of water and bread is hospitality, but note the passive and active verbs used for each.
He says “let water be brought” and he says “I’ll bring bread.”
The rabbis say this is clear: the water is to be brought by way of some unnamed servant or messenger, whereas Abraham is offering to bring the bread himself.
And then they point to the Exodus.
In the Exodus, we read that when God provided water for Israel, He did it through Moses, first at Marah in Genesis 15, and later when Moses strikes the rock. God provides the water through… a messenger.
And the people complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet.
Exodus 15:24-25a (NKJV)
But of bread, God does it directly in the next chapter. It’s set up exactly like Abraham’s hospitality to the three men: A messenger will get the water, but I’ll get the bread for you.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you. And the people shall go out and gather a certain quota every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in My law or not.
Exodus 16:4 (NKJV)
Now, notice back in Genesis 18:4, Abraham used the phrase “a little water.”
We just read past this and don’t pay much attention to it, but oddly, this word “little” first appears three times in Genesis in exactly this same way: “A little water.”
Each time, a messenger is involved:
Please let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree.
Genesis 18:4 (NKJV)And the servant ran to meet her and said, “Please let me drink a little water from your pitcher.”
Genesis 24:17 (NKJV)Behold, I stand by the well of water; and it shall come to pass that when the virgin comes out to draw water, and I say to her, “Please give me a little water from your pitcher to drink,”
Genesis 18:4 (NKJV)
In the second two instances, this same messenger’s name is Eliazar, who has the task of seeking out and inviting the future bride of Isaac.
This hebrew word מְעַט (meh-aht) means little. Small. Fewness.
Water. Messenger. Smallness.
For the believer who sees a messenger in the wilderness, standing in the water and baptizing the Messiah, the words “he must increase, but I must DECREASE” suddenly ring.
And for the Christian who sees the Holy Spirit like a messenger of God, speaking precisely the words of God and revealing precisely the heart of God, the connection to this messenger and water gets clearer.
For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.
1 Corinthians 12:13 (NKJV)
And of the bread? The Christian will see the breaking of bread at communion as a symbol of the broken body of the Messiah, made available for us for salvation. Given freely, not through a messenger, but by God himself.
If the Christian is looking for a Trinune God, perhaps it’s not the three angels in Genesis 18 themselves that give it to us, but perhaps they function as three sign posts to tell us that it is near.