On the question of who Yahweh was you may wish to supplement your reading with Hebrew scholar James L Kugel’s book ** you do not have permission to see this link ** , especially the first third of the book which focuses on the image of the “Angel of the Lord” in the Hebrew Bible.  Kugel believes the image of the Angel of the Lord allowed later editors and redactors of the texts who were uncomfortable with the older views of an anthropomorphic deity to place a necessary distance between themselves and a deity who had been exalted in later traditions. Of course the redacting was not seamless and we can detect interesting survivals in the texts of the old views.  A great book.