Unit 14 · Angels Up Close

Open Genesis 32. In verse 1, Jacob is traveling, and "the angels of God" meet him. Two verses later, Jacob sends "messengers" ahead to his brother Esau. English uses two different words. The Hebrew uses one word both times: mal'ak, plural mal’akim. Jacob’s messengers were ordinary men. The beings who met him were from God. The word is the same because both groups do the same task. They carry a message.

Greek works the same way. The New Testament word is angelos, and it too means messenger. Mark 1:2 uses it for John the Baptist, a human being. The last book of the Old Testament is called Malachi, which means "my messenger" in Hebrew. So when readers see "angel" in an English Bible, the older languages are usually saying "one who is sent." Translators decide from the context whether the messenger is human or heavenly.

Ancient readers noticed this too. Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish writer of the first century CE, wrote that the beings other philosophers called daemons, Moses called angels. He pictured them as souls living in the air (On the Giants, C. D. Yonge’s translation). In his book Angels (2018), Michael Heiser built on the language point. He argued that some biblical terms describe a being’s role, while others describe its status or its home. Angel, in his reading, is a role word. It tells you what a being is doing, not what kind of being it is. Other scholars make the same language point, even when they read particular passages differently.

Psalm 82:1 reads, in the King James Version, "God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods." In Hebrew, both "God" and "gods" are the same word: elohim. The God of Israel is called elohim. So are the members of his council. So, once, is the spirit of the dead Samuel in 1 Samuel 28:13. Heiser argued that elohim is not a name for one particular being. It is a word for any being whose natural home is the spirit world.

Another phrase is sons of God. In Job 1:6 and 2:1 the sons of God come to present themselves before the LORD. In Job 38:7 they shout for joy when the earth’s foundations are laid. Clay tablets from ancient Ugarit, in Syria, speak of a council of the gods around the high god El. E. Theodore Mullen compared that council with Israel’s in The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature (1980). Many readers agree the sons of God in Job are heavenly beings. Genesis 6, where the phrase also appears, is more debated.

A third term is holy ones, in Hebrew qedoshim. Psalm 89:5 to 7 speaks of an assembly of the holy ones in the heavens. It asks who among the heavenly beings can compare to the LORD. Holy means set apart. All three terms describe status: where a being belongs and how it stands near God. They say little about what job it is doing at a given moment. That is what role words like messenger do.

In 1 Kings 22:19 the prophet Micaiah says he saw the LORD on his throne with "all the host of heaven" standing on his right and his left. The word host translates the Hebrew tsaba, a word for an army. The title "LORD of hosts" appears hundreds of times in the Hebrew Bible. Isaiah’s seraphim use it. In Luke 2:13 a "multitude of the heavenly host" praises God over the shepherds. The picture is of a great, ordered company around a king.

Psalm 103:20 to 21 calls on the angels and hosts to bless the LORD. It calls them "ministers of his, that do his pleasure." The word ministers here means servants who attend a king. Psalm 104:4 says God makes his ministers a flaming fire, and Hebrews 1:7 quotes that verse. These words describe what the heavenly beings do. They serve and carry out orders. In that sense they are role words, like messenger.

Daniel 4 adds an unusual term. King Nebuchadnezzar dreams of "a watcher and an holy one" coming down from heaven (4:13). A decision is said to come "by the decree of the watchers" (4:17). This part of Daniel is in Aramaic, and the word is ’ir, plural ’irin, meaning one who is awake. The watchers in Daniel are God’s faithful servants. In 1976 J. T. Milik published the Aramaic fragments of 1 Enoch found in Qumran Cave 4. They use the same word for the Watchers who sinned. So the word by itself does not mean good or bad. The story around it does.

The first cherubim in the Bible stand at the east of Eden in Genesis 3:24. They guard the way to the tree of life with a flaming sword. In Exodus 25:18 to 22, two golden cherubim are made for the cover of the ark of the covenant. Their wings stretch over it. God says he will meet Moses and speak with him from between them. In both places, cherubim guard the space where God is present.

Ezekiel 1 describes four living creatures beneath a throne-chariot. Each has four faces and four wings. In Ezekiel 10:20 the prophet says he knew these were cherubim. Many scholars compare them to the winged guardian figures of the ancient Near East. The Assyrian kings, for example, set huge winged creatures with human heads at their palace gates. Read in that setting, the biblical cherubim are throne guardians around a divine king. Philo of Alexandria read them another way. He took the two cherubim of Genesis 3 as symbols of God’s two chief powers, goodness and authority (On the Cherubim).

Later art changed the picture. Renaissance painters filled their works with winged baby figures, called putti, borrowed from the cupids of Greek and Roman art. Over time people began calling these babies cherubs. Many scholars point out that nothing in Genesis, Exodus or Ezekiel describes cherubim as babies. The texts describe powerful, many-faced beings who guard what is holy.

Isaiah 6 is the only place in the Bible where seraphim appear clearly as heavenly beings. They stand above the LORD’s throne. Each has six wings. They cover their faces and feet and call out, "Holy, holy, holy." One of them brings a coal from the altar to cleanse Isaiah’s lips. They are worshipers and also agents who act.

The Hebrew root saraph is linked to burning. So seraphim can be translated "burning ones." Many readers take this as a picture of fiery brightness around God. But the same word appears elsewhere for serpents. In Numbers 21:6 the LORD sends "fiery serpents" among the people, and the Hebrew there is seraphim. Isaiah 14:29 and 30:6 mention a flying saraph.

Heiser noted this link. He argued that the seraphim may have been pictured as shining, serpent-like throne guardians. Egyptian royal art often shows cobras, called uraeus serpents, guarding a king. Other scholars prefer to keep the image simpler, as glowing beings with human-like faces, feet and hands. The text of Isaiah 6 gives faces, feet and wings, and leaves the rest to the reader.

In Revelation 4:6 to 8, John sees four living creatures around God’s throne. One is like a lion, one like a calf, one has a face like a man, and one is like a flying eagle. Each has six wings and is full of eyes. Day and night they say, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come."

Readers who know the Hebrew Bible notice the echoes. The four faces of lion, ox, man and eagle come from Ezekiel 1:10, where each creature has all four. The six wings and the triple "holy" come from Isaiah 6. Revelation blends the two visions into one scene. This kind of borrowing is called allusion. A writer brings in older texts so that readers will recall them.

Many scholars read Revelation 4 as another picture of God’s throne room, with the council setting found in 1 Kings 22 and Daniel 7. Christian tradition from the late 100s onward also linked the four faces to the four Gospels. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, made one such pairing in Against Heresies, Book 3 (Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 1). Later writers, such as Jerome, paired them differently. These links are readings of the symbols, not something Revelation itself states.

The word archangel means chief angel. It appears only twice in the New Testament. 1 Thessalonians 4:16 says the Lord will come down "with the voice of the archangel." Jude 9 calls Michael "the archangel" and tells of his dispute with the devil over the body of Moses. In Daniel 10:13 Michael is "one of the chief princes," and in Daniel 12:1 he is "the great prince" who stands for Daniel’s people.

Only two angels are named in the Protestant Bible. Michael appears in Daniel, Jude and Revelation 12:7. Gabriel explains visions to Daniel in Daniel 8 and 9. In Luke 1 he announces the births of John and Jesus. The book of Tobit, which is in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, names Raphael. There he calls himself one of seven holy angels who stand before God (12:15).

Jewish writings from the Second Temple period name more. 1 Enoch 20, in R. H. Charles’s 1917 translation, lists holy angels who watch. They include Uriel, Raphael, Michael and Gabriel. 1 Enoch 40 names four angels who stand before God: Michael, Raphael, Gabriel and Phanuel. George Nickelsburg’s commentary, 1 Enoch 1 (2001), traces how such lists grew. Many readers see them as developing hints in the Bible, such as Daniel’s chief princes. A careful reader notices the difference between what the canonical texts say and what later writers added.

Colossians 1:16 says that all things were created through Christ, "whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers." Ephesians 1:21 lists principality, power, might and dominion. These are words for rulers and their territories. Paul does not arrange them into a ladder. Clinton Arnold, in Powers of Darkness (1992), read them as spiritual powers, as Jewish writings of the time did. Walter Wink, in Naming the Powers (1984), argued that the words cover both heavenly powers and earthly rulers and institutions.

About 500 CE a Christian writer produced a book called The Celestial Hierarchy. He wrote under the name of Dionysius, a man Paul met in Athens (Acts 17:34). Scholars call him Pseudo-Dionysius, since the real author lived centuries later. He arranged angels into nine orders, often called the nine choirs, in three groups of three. Seraphim, cherubim and thrones came first. Dominions, powers and authorities came next. Principalities, archangels and angels came last. Translations name the middle group in slightly different ways.

This system shaped later thought. Thomas Aquinas discussed it, and Dante’s Paradiso pictures the nine orders circling God. Catholic and Orthodox traditions still use it. Many Protestant readers see it as a thoughtful guess that goes beyond the text. Readers who start with the terms in the Bible mark the full ranking as a later hierarchy built on them.

In Matthew 18:10 Jesus says not to despise "these little ones," because "in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father." In Acts 12, Peter is freed from prison and knocks at the door of Mary’s house. A servant named Rhoda runs to tell the others. They answer, "It is his angel" (12:15). Psalm 91:11 says God will give his angels charge over the one who trusts him.

Many Christians read these verses as teaching that each believer has a guardian angel. An early Christian book, the Shepherd of Hermas, says each person has two angels, one of righteousness and one of wickedness (Mandate 6.2, Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 2). The Catholic Church teaches that each believer has an angel as protector and keeps a feast of the Guardian Angels on October 2. The Talmud (Shabbat 119b) tells of two ministering angels who walk a person home on the eve of the Sabbath.

Careful readers separate what these verses say from what later teaching builds on them. Matthew 18:10 says the little ones have angels who see God’s face. It does not say how many angels or what they do. Acts 12:15 tells what Peter’s friends believed. It is a report of their words, not a separate teaching. The Sabbath song Shalom Aleichem greets the angels of the Talmud’s story. Careful readers weigh each verse on its own before building a doctrine.

In the 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life, a man who died long ago returns as Clarence, "Angel, Second Class," trying to earn his wings. Many people today say that someone who has died has become an angel. Heiser pointed out that this is a popular idea, not a biblical one. In the Bible, angels and humans are different kinds of beings.

Several texts support his point. Job 38:7 has the sons of God shouting for joy when the earth was founded, before any humans existed. In Matthew 22:30 Jesus says the raised dead will be "as the angels" in not marrying. The word as makes a comparison. It does not say they become angels. Hebrews 12:22 to 23 lists "an innumerable company of angels" and, separately, "the spirits of just men made perfect." The two groups stand side by side.

Heiser also drew on 1 Corinthians 6:3, where Paul says believers will judge angels. In his reading, the New Testament pictures redeemed humans raised to share in God’s rule, as humans, even above the angels. Other Christian readers stress different parts of these texts, but most agree on the basic distinction between human and angel. The popular idea often grows from grief and love for someone who has died.

The letter to the Hebrews opens with an argument about angels. Hebrews 1:4 says the Son has become "so much better than the angels." Then the writer strings together quotations from the Hebrew Bible. Hebrews 1:5 asks to which angel God ever said, "Thou art my Son" (Psalm 2:7). Hebrews 1:14 calls angels "ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation."

Hebrews 1:6 says, "let all the angels of God worship him." This line is not in the standard Hebrew text of the Bible, the Masoretic Text. It matches Deuteronomy 32:43 in the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation, as Brenton’s 1844 English version shows. A Hebrew copy of Deuteronomy from Qumran Cave 4 has a similar line. Scholars of the text point to cases like this, where the New Testament follows an older form of the text.

Hebrews 2:7 quotes Psalm 8, where humans are made "a little lower than the angels." The Hebrew of Psalm 8:5 has elohim there, and the Septuagint rendered it angels. Hebrews 2:5 adds that the world to come is not put under angels. Most Christian readers take these chapters as showing the Son’s rank over the whole heavenly host. Scholars differ on why the writer needed to argue it so strongly.

Exodus 19 and 20 tell of God giving the law at Mount Sinai with thunder, fire and a thick cloud. Those chapters do not mention angels. But a later poem does. In Deuteronomy 33:2, Moses blesses the tribes and says that the LORD came from Sinai. In the King James Version, he came "with ten thousands of saints," and from his right hand went "a fiery law." The Hebrew for saints here is qedoshim, holy ones.

The Hebrew of this verse is hard. The words translated "fiery law" are unusual, and scholars still debate them. The Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation made in the centuries before Jesus, reads the end of the verse differently. It says that at God’s right hand there were angels with him. So in the Greek, the angels at Sinai are named outright. A difference like this between two forms of a text is called a variant.

Psalm 68:17 adds another picture. It says the chariots of God are twenty thousand, and the Lord is among them, as in Sinai. Heiser read these verses together. In his view, the Hebrew Bible pictures God at Sinai surrounded by his heavenly host, and the Septuagint made that picture plainer. Other scholars read the Hebrew holy ones as possibly Israel’s own people, or stress how uncertain the verse is.

In Acts 7, Stephen speaks before the council in Jerusalem. He ends by saying his hearers "received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it" (7:53). Paul writes in Galatians 3:19 that the law "was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator." Hebrews 2:2 calls the law "the word spoken by angels." Three different writers assume the same thing. Angels had a part in giving the law at Sinai.

This idea was not new with the New Testament. The book of Jubilees, written in Hebrew around the 100s BCE, retells Genesis and part of Exodus. In it, an angel of the presence writes out history for Moses on the mountain (Jubilees 1:27 to 2:1, in R. H. Charles’s 1917 translation). Jubilees is part of the Bible only in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Josephus, writing in the 90s CE, has King Herod tell his troops that the Jews learned the holiest part of their laws from God through angels (Antiquities 15.5.3, Whiston’s 1737 translation). Scholars debate whether Herod means heavenly angels or human messengers such as prophets.

Many scholars think the New Testament writers drew on this shared tradition, which grew from verses like Deuteronomy 33:2. Readers differ on why each writer mentions it. In Galatians, many scholars think Paul uses it to say the law came less directly than God’s promise to Abraham. In Hebrews, the point is that if the word spoken by angels was binding, the message spoken by the Son matters even more.

In Revelation 19:10 and again in 22:8 to 9, John falls down before an angel to worship him. Both times the angel stops him. He says he is John’s fellowservant. He is a servant like John, the prophets and all who keep the words of the book. Both times he ends with two words: worship God.

The angel’s answer rests on an old command. Exodus 20:3 says, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." The Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4 calls Israel to love the LORD alone. The angel is glorious and has just shown John great visions. Even so, the text puts him on John’s side of the line, among those who serve, and not among those who receive worship.

Heiser pointed to these scenes to show that the heavenly host serves God and does not share his place. He argued that the Bible can call heavenly beings elohim and still hold that only one elohim, the God of Israel, is to be worshiped. Jewish and Christian readers of every kind have read these scenes as a clear warning against giving worship to angels.

Paul’s letter to the Colossians warns its readers about teachers who were judging them. In the King James Version, Colossians 2:18 says, "Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen." The key phrase in Greek is thrēskeia tōn angelōn, "worship of the angels."

The phrase is ambiguous, meaning it can be read more than one way. In the first reading, it means worship given to angels. Some people in Colossae, on this view, were honoring angels in a way the letter rejects. In the second reading, it means the worship that angels offer. On this view, some teachers claimed to join the angels’ worship in heaven through visions, and looked down on those who did not.

Both readings have strong defenders. The second reading gained support after the Dead Sea Scrolls showed Jewish groups who hoped to join the worship of angels. Either way, the letter’s answer is the same. Colossians 2:19 says the readers should hold fast to the head, which in this letter is Christ. On both readings, the letter keeps angels in a serving role, never sharing God’s worship.

In caves near Qumran, by the Dead Sea, scholars found copies of a work now called the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice. More copies turned up at Masada, the desert fortress. The work has thirteen songs, one for each of the first thirteen Sabbaths of the year. The copies date from about the first century BCE to the first century CE.

The songs do not describe worship on earth. They call on heavenly beings to praise God in a heavenly sanctuary. The songs call these beings elohim, holy ones and chief princes. They describe them as priests who serve before God. Later songs picture the heavenly temple itself, its chariot-throne and its cherubim, joining in praise. The people who sang these songs seem to have hoped their worship on earth matched the worship above.

The Songs help readers see the Jewish world around the New Testament. They show how Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1 were read and expanded. Carol Newsom published the first full edition of the Songs, Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice: A Critical Edition (1985). The Songs also show why some scholars read Colossians 2:18 as being about joining the angels’ worship. The singers praise God alongside the angels. They do not worship the angels themselves.

Luke’s Gospel opens in the Jerusalem temple. An angel appears to an old priest named Zechariah beside the altar of incense. He says he is Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God (Luke 1:19). He announces that Zechariah’s wife Elizabeth will have a son, John. Six months later, Gabriel goes to Nazareth and tells a young woman named Mary that she will bear a son, Jesus (Luke 1:26 to 38). This scene is called the Annunciation.

Then, outside Bethlehem, an angel of the Lord appears to shepherds at night. He tells them a Savior is born. Suddenly a multitude of the heavenly host appears, praising God (Luke 2:8 to 14). Matthew tells the story from Joseph’s side. An angel of the Lord speaks to Joseph three times in dreams, in Matthew 1:20, 2:13 and 2:19. The angel tells him to take Mary as his wife, to flee to Egypt, and to return.

The angels in these stories are messengers in the plain sense of mal’ak and angelos. They bring news and instructions. Again and again they begin with "Fear not." In the Bible, meeting a being from God’s presence is overwhelming, and these words calm the hearer. Readers of every tradition have loved these scenes. Christmas music and art have retold them for centuries.

Each Gospel tells of women coming to Jesus’ tomb early on the first day of the week. In Matthew 28:2 to 7, an angel of the Lord rolls back the stone and sits on it. His face is like lightning and his clothing white as snow. In Mark 16:5 the women see a young man in a long white robe sitting inside. In Luke 24:4 two men stand by them in shining clothes. In John 20:12, Mary Magdalene sees two angels in white, one at the head and one at the feet of where the body had lain.

Readers have handled these differences in two main ways. Some harmonize the accounts, fitting them together into one fuller story. On that view, one writer may simply mention the angel who spoke. Others see each Gospel as passing on its own form of the story, told for its own readers. Both kinds of readers note that the core message is the same in every account. He is not here. He is risen.

The descriptions also show something found across the Bible. Messenger angels often look like men. In Genesis 18, three visitors come to Abraham as travelers. In Mark and Luke, the tomb messengers are called a young man and men, and Luke later calls them angels (24:23). Many readers note that shining clothes and sudden appearing, not wings, are what usually mark these messengers in the text.

The book of Tobit is a Jewish story probably written around 200 BCE. Copies in Aramaic and Hebrew were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles. Protestants place it among the Apocrypha, books read for learning but not counted as Scripture. It tells of Tobit, a faithful man living in exile in Nineveh, and his son Tobias.

Tobias must make a long journey to collect money his father left in Media. A guide offers to go with him, calling himself Azarias. The two travel together. Along the way the guide helps Tobias catch a fish, arrange his marriage to a young woman named Sarah, and return home safely. At the end, Tobit’s eyesight is restored. Only then does the guide reveal who he is.

In Tobit 12, he says he is Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who stand before God. His name means "God heals." He tells the family to thank God, not him, and says he came by God’s will. He adds that they never truly saw him eat. Tobit shows how Second Temple Jewish writers could picture angels as named, caring messengers who still point beyond themselves to God.

Many ideas about angels come from movies, greeting cards and later traditions. A careful reader can go back to the texts and check. Some popular ideas turn out to fit the Bible well. Others add details the Bible never gives. In Angels (2018), Michael Heiser urged readers to sort them by asking, "Which verse says this?"

Here are three examples. First, many people picture every angel with wings. In the texts, the winged beings are mostly cherubim and seraphim. Messengers like the visitors in Genesis 18 or the angel in Judges 13 appear as men. Daniel 9:21 is sometimes read as Gabriel flying, but the Hebrew there is unclear. Second, many people say the dead become angels. Hebrews 12:22 to 23 keeps angels and humans distinct. Third, many think the Bible names many angels. The Protestant Bible names only two.

Heiser also spent years answering the ancient astronaut theory. This is the claim that beings from other planets visited early humans and were remembered as gods or angels. Some writers say Ezekiel’s vision in Ezekiel 1 describes a spacecraft. Heiser argued that such claims misread the ancient languages. Ezekiel 1:28 itself calls what the prophet saw the likeness of the glory of the LORD. Checking the context of a verse is often the quickest test.

Around 1320, the poet Dante finished his Paradiso, the last part of his Divine Comedy. In it he pictures the nine orders of angels circling God in rings of light, following Pseudo-Dionysius. In 1512 the painter Raphael finished the Sistine Madonna. Two small winged children lean on a ledge at the bottom of the painting. These putti became some of the most copied angels in the world.

Music carried the angel scenes too. Charles Wesley’s Christmas hymn, now known as Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, was first published in 1739. George Frideric Handel composed Messiah in 1741. One of its choruses sets the angels’ words from Luke 2:14, "Glory to God in the highest." Choirs in Chicago and around the world still perform Messiah each winter.

Art and music are forms of interpretation. Each artist chooses what to show and adds details the text does not give, such as halos, harps, feathered wings or baby faces. A reader can enjoy such works and still know where their details come from. A good habit is to ask of any image: which verse is this showing, and what has the artist added?