7 The angel of Yahweh came again the second time, and touched him, and said, "Arise and eat, because the journey is too great for you."
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
Arise and eat - i. e., "Eat a second time, for otherwise the journey will be beyond thy powers." "The journey" was not simply a pilgrimage to Horeb, which was less than 200 miles distant, and might have been reached in six or seven days. It was to be a wandering in the wilderness, not unlike that of the Israelites when they came out of Egypt; only it was to last forty days instead of forty years.
The journey is too great for thee - From Beer-sheba to Horeb was about one hundred and fifty miles.
And the angel of the LORD came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise [and] eat; because (d) the journey [is] too great for thee.
(d) He declares that unless God had nourished him miraculously it would have been impossible for him to have gone on this journey.
And the angel of the Lord came again the second time, and touched him,.... In order to awake him out of sleep:
and said unto him, arise, and eat, because the journey is too great for thee; which he had to go to Horeb, without eating more than he had; and there were no provisions to be had in a common way and manner in his road thither.
But the angel wakened him a second time, and called upon him to eat with these words: "for the way is too far for thee" (רב ממּך הדּרך, iter est majus quam pro viribus tuis - Vat.).
Angel of the Lord, &c. - He needed not to complain of the unkindness of men, when it was thus made up by the ministration of angels. Wherever God's children are, they are still under their father's eye.
*More commentary available at chapter level.