This language reminds us of Judges 1, where God's people often went up
during their campaigns against the Canaanites. This is the language of war. Going up was connected with battle because fortified cities that needed to be conquered were always on hills. The angel was coming up for war.
1
His going up
was in many ways a divine verdict on Israel's goings up.
' Thus, before any judge shows up in the narrative, "the status of God’s people before him is starkly diagnosed: they have been disobedient!"2
1 Now the angel of the LORD went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you,