Considering the Polemic: In a translation and interpretation of the Old Testament—the Tanakh—that Rev. Dr. A. Cohen edited, the following interpretations are offered:
Commenting of Genesis 18:1, “The LORD here means the three angels.”
Genesis 18:2, “three men. One to bring the tidings that Sarah would give birth to a son, the second to overthrow Sodom, and the third to heal Abraham; the last also went on from there to save Lot.”
Genesis 18:3, “my lord. He addressed the chief of them; consequently the word does not signify God. Another interpretation: He spoke to God, praying Him to wait until he had attended to his guests. He recognized that they were angels, and therefore called them by their Master’s, Lord.”
Genesis 18:20, “and the LORD said. To Abraham. The angel of the Lord said to Abraham.”
Genesis 18:22, “but Abraham stood yet before the LORD…Abraham still stood before the angel.”
These sorts of runarounds, if you will, appear to come from a need on the part of the Jewish theologian to deny that God could appear and be seen even when the text of the Bible labors to make this very claim. In fact, when I brought this text up to a Jewish man with whom I was dialoguing he said that we had to see what Rashi had to say about it. Rashi is a well-known and respected 12th century commentator; but is he the infallible interpreter of the Old Testament? The point being that it was hard for the gentleman to accept what the text said—not because the text is difficult to understand but because it would go against the beliefs of Rabbinic Judaism to hold to what the text clearly says and because this is a point of contention with Christianity.
Moreover, Rashi applies Isaiah 53 to national Israel while the Talmud and various Rabbinic writings apply it to the Messiah and so I, for one, am not willing to place him in the position of supreme authority.
Note also the following statement made by The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia,
“LOGOS (Greek for ‘word’), a theological concept found in the Judaism of the period of the Second Temple and in Christianity…
In the Targums the word Memra is introduced in every instance in the Bible in which God is represented as talking to man, thus explaining away all the anthropomorphisms found in the text.”
For more on the Logos and the concept of the Memra see the essay Does Christianity Corrupt the Old Testament? And: On the Memra.
Due to polemics and dogma we are told that The LORD, which is the name of the one and only God, now means three angels. The interpretation applies three tasks to the three men yet, the text says no such thing.
The LORD said is bluntly changed to the angel of the Lord said. And just as bluntly Abraham stood yet before the LORD is changed to Abraham still stood before the angel. We might point out, as a side note, that if Christian theologians did such things as these they would immediately be charged with corruption, mistranslation, misinterpretation and misapplication of Scripture.
Here are a few other commentaries on the Genesis 18:
Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (aka Maimonides or the Rambam),
“The prophet sees a man that speaks to him in a prophetic vision; e.g., Abraham in the plain of Mamre ([Gen.] xviii, I), and Joshua in Jerico (Josh. V. 13).” [emphasis added]
Jewish Scholars Claude Joseph Goldsmith Montefiore and Herbert Martin James Loewe,
“If man should be humble, there is a sense in which God is strangely humble too: If a pupil is ill, and the teacher goes to visit him, the other pupils go before to announce the coming of the teacher. But when God went to visit Abraham in his illness, He went first, before the angels (Gen. XVIII, 1, 2). Is there anyone more humble than He? (Tanh., Wayera, 2, f. 31b.)” [emphasis added]