When the article is prefixed to the word Elohim, it often and perhaps always is meant expressly to distinguish the True God from the false; as when the people, seeing the triumph of Elijah over the prophets of Baal, exclaimed, "Jehovah, he is _the_ Elohim:" he, and not the pretended Elohim of idolaters, is the true God. The import of the formula, Jehovah Elohim, is Jehovah _the true_ Elohim, and is not clearly or fully expressed by the translation _Lord God_, any more than it would be by a repetition of one or the other of those words. The meaning is, _Jehovah who is the true God_. So _Melach Jehovah_, the respective terms referring indisputably to the same person, means, _the Messenger who is Jehovah_. But our translators render Melach Jehovah, the angel _of_ the Lord, as though the angel was a created agent; or, as though Jehovah in this connection was the Father. McCaul, in his observations on Kimchi's translation of Zechariah, defends this rendering: First, on the ground, that if the words _Melach Jehovah_ are in apposition, the translation should be, not, the Angel Jehovah, but _an_ angel, or _a_ Messenger Jehovah. But, since the word Jehovah never admits the article, and since in the formula in question the word Melach never admits it, no reason can be assigned why the rendering should not be _the_ Angel, or _the_ Messenger Jehovah; it being admitted that one and the same Person is uniformly designated by this formula. On the contrary, if this objection were well founded, then in rendering the word _Jehovah_, where it occurs alone, it should read in English, _a_ Lord, instead of _the_ Lord. Moreover, if his criticisms were well founded, such a passage as 2 Chron. xxxii. 21, where the order of the designations is _Jehovah Melach_, would require to be rendered, Lord of the angel, instead of Jehovah the Messenger, or the Jehovah Messenger. The statement in the text just quoted from 2 Chronicles is repeated in Isaiah xxxvii. 36, where the order of the words in question is _Melach Jehovah_. Again, the formula, (_the_) _Elohim Melach_, occurs in 1 Chron. xxi. 15, and also in that and the next verse, _Melach Jehovah_, referring to the same Person.