Angels in the Old Testament

The Bible describes the action of angels on numerous occasions, but there is no established doctrine about them other than simply their presence in the relationship between God and his creation. Right from the beginning of creation, angels are not so much described, as their presence noted. In the allegory of the Fall, where two prototype humans disobey the command of God not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a part of Adam's and Eve's fearsome punishment is total exclusion from paradise: "When he drove him out, God settled him to the east of the garden of Eden, and he stationed the cherubim and a sword whirling and flashing to guard the way to the tree of life" (Genesis 3.24). I believe that this episode is far better understood as a myth, a spiritual truth recounted in terms of symbols, than as an historical fact. In the equally tragic story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4, Cain is given a special mark of protection lest anyone should kill him in his solitary journey. This would seem to indicate the existence of an established group who might threaten Cain's life, an impossibility if he and his parents Adam and Eve were the sole inhabitants of the earth.

In fact, the Fall is a universal occurrence in the lives of us all, when we are obliged to quit the unreflecting safety of infancy and enter upon the experience of childhood and adult life, fighting our own way in a milieu of rivalry and conflicting spiritual values. The end of this perilous journey is the development of the free will, so that with courage and integrity we may claim entrance to the paradise we were obliged to leave as growing children. In the beginning we had received God's love without acknowledgement, while now we can, (indeed, have to), reciprocate that love in our own lives; we love because he loved us first (1 John 4.19).

More intimate experiences of angels occur later on in the story of Abraham and his descendants. Thus Hagar, Sarah's slave-girl, is first encouraged to cohabit with Abraham because Sarah is apparently barren and growing old. However, Hagar treated her mistress with contempt when she became pregnant, and was summarily dismissed from her post. As Hagar walks disconsolately in the wilderness, we are told that the angel of God appears to her and promises her a great future; yet first she has to return to Sarah and endure her ill-treatment. Soon afterwards, three holy men visit the home of Abraham, who shows them great hospitality They foretell the birth of Isaac, a physical impossibility in view of Sarah's advanced years, and then they take Abraham with them to Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities riddled with vice. When the men, who by now have revealed their true identity as angels of high degree, go towards Sodom, Abraham debates with the Lord the fate of these two accursed cities. It is noteworthy that these angels are often called the angels of the Lord; at an earlier period, they are identified with God himself, but later they are regarded as special messengers of the Deity. It is of interest how in Genesis 18 the interplay between the three angels and God is subtly interwoven. Thus the angels announce future events to Abraham, while he himself is privileged to have direct access to the Lord, and to debate with him the extent of destruction in store for Sodom and Gomorrah: even ten just men found in the cities would be sufficient to save them from ruin. Abraham's question is eternally relevant, "Will you really sweep away innocent and wicked together?" (Genesis I8.23).

In Genesis 19, the denouement is described: two of the angels visit Lot's house (he is Abraham's brother) in Sodom, where they excite the lust of the male population. These are successfully parried, and the angels urge Lot to flee with his family at once; he escapes to a small town called Zoar, from whence he moves on with his two daughters to a cave in the hill country Abraham witnesses the destruction of the two towns from a distance. The penultimate angelic visit in the Abrahamic story occurs in Genesis 21: Isaac is conceived and born to Sarah, but later she is affronted by the sight of his playing with Ishmael, Hagar's son. Once again, the servant-girl is driven out into the wilderness, and when all seems hopeless for the child, the angel of the Lord comes to give her support, promising that Ishmael will become a great nation. Go then opens Hagar's eyes and she sees a well full of water. God was indeed with Ishmael as he grew up, for he is the ancestor of the Arab people. The final appearance of angels in the story of Abraham occurs in Genesis 22.1 1-12, when an angel prevents Abraham's sacrifice of his son Isaac.

Jacob, Abraham's grandson, is visited by angels after his dispute with Esau, his twin brother Jacob fled; eventually he came to a shrine, where he stopped for the night. Using a stone as a pillow, he lay down and slept. Then came Jacob's famous dream: he saw a ladder that rested on the ground with its top reaching heaven, and the angels of God were going up and down it. The Lord was standing beside him saying, "I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. The land on which you are lying I shall give to you and your descendants" (Genesis 28.13). The end of the message is especially encouraging, and has heartened many people of later times: "I shall not leave you until I have done what I have promised you" (Genesis 28.15). Jacob had a further encounter with angels later on, and he called the place Mahanaim (Genesis 32.12). Yet what are we to make of the famous encounter he had on his return to Canaan, fleeing from his predatory uncle Laban and fearful of the revenge of his now powerful brother, Esau? The whole incident has an atmospheric quality that is worth recording (Genesis 32.22-31):

During the night Jacob rose, and taking his two wives, his two slave girls, and his eleven sons, he crossed the ford of Jabbok. After he had sent them across the wadi with all that he had, Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him there till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not get the better of Jacob, he struck him in the hollow of his thigh, so that Jacob's hip was dislocated as they wrestled. The man said, "Let me go, for day is breaking," but Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." The man asked, "What is your name?" "Jacob," he answered. The man said, "Your name shall no longer be Jacob but Israel, because you have striven with God and with mortals, and have prevailed." Jacob said, "Tell me your name, I pray." He replied, "Why do you ask my name" but he gave him his blessing there. Jacob called the place Peniel, "because," he said, "I have seen God face to face yet my life is spared." The sun rose as Jacob passed through Peniel, limping because of his hip.
It is highly unlikely that this assailant was God himself, but instead was an angel of God; for no one can see God directly and remain alive, a fact on which all mystics would agree. The morally ambivalent nature of the assailant is even more stunning, there being an almost demonic aspect to the attack. On the other hand, Jacob deserved it; his own morally ambivalent behaviour to Esau and Laban was turned sharply upon himself, but he proved himself to be a man of courage, which fully compensated for his moral ambiguity. The name "Israel" is best translated "may God show his strength".

A comparable enigmatic encounter is described in Exodus 4.24-6, when the Lord met Moses, whom he had already chosen for his great commission of delivering the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. Moses was on a journey and encamped for the night, and the Lord "would have killed him" (verse 24). Moses' wife Zipporah performed an emergency circumcision and so "the Lord let Moses alone" (verse 26). It is easy enough to dismiss these encounters as primitive views of God's transcendence, but I suspect a profound knowledge of God's majesty is enshrined in them. We cannot call God to account if we fail to obey the Law; his angel can exact a stern penalty.

In the course of the Israelite exodus from Egypt, angels play an unobtrusive yet constant role: "And now I am sending an angel before you to guard you on your way and to bring you to the place I have prepared" (Exodus 23.20). Similar thoughts are found in Exodus 23.23, 32.34 and 33.2. Numbers 20.16 reiterates this theme, but the story of Balaam and Balak brings the work of angels into stronger relief (Numbers 22-4). The Moabite king summons the seer Balaam to curse the menacing Israelite hordes approaching his land. First of all, Balaam consults God, and is told not to obey this request; he remains at home, but a subsequent delegation from Balak leads to God instructing him to go with the Moabite chiefs to Balak. Now, strangely, God is angry with Balaam for going to meet the king, and installs his angel in the path of Balaam's ass to obstruct its way. The animal's perverse action infuriates the seer, until he is told directly by the animal that it is the angel of the Lord who is obstructing his passage. Then Balaam's eyes are opened so that he too can see the angel, who tells him to proceed to the king's service. Here, contrary to Balak's instructions, he confers a mighty blessing on the Israelites according to the will of God, and much to Balak's fury. Afterwards, both men go their respective ways. The story has features in common with a fairy-tale, notably, the ass's sudden gift of speech, but it teaches us that God's will cannot be thwarted, no matter how capricious this may appear to be, and that he works in our world through the ministry of angels.

At the beginning of the Book of Judges (2.1-4), the angel of the Lord castigates the people for their disobedience to the Law given to Moses and their unfaithfulness to the one true God. They break out into loud lamentations, but their repentance is short-lived, a theme that runs through the Old Testament. God sends them judges, kings (at their own request, of whom David is by far the most spiritual), and later prophets, all of whom show the right way. Yet the people remain tragically fickle until the time of the Babylonian exile. A more positive visitation attends the birth of Samson, the Israelite Hercules: "There was a certain man from Zorah of the tribe of Dan whose name was Manoah and whose wife was barren; she had no child" (Judges 13.2). Recalling the story of Abraham and Sarah, an angel of the Lord then appeared to Manoah's wife, predicting the birth of a son, who was to abstain from drinking alcohol or eating any forbidden food, for he was to be a Nazirite, consecrated to God from birth. He was destined to strike the first blow for Israelite freedom against the power of the Philistines (Judges 13.1-5). The angel assumed a human form, like the three who visited Abraham and Sarah in the story of Isaac's birth and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Not surprisingly, neither Manoah nor his wife perceived the angelic nature of their visitor (though the woman had some intimations), who refused to reveal his name, which he described as a name of wonder: When they prepared an offering to the Lord, the flame went up from the altar towards heaven and the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame. Seeing this, Manoah and his wife both "fell face downward to the ground" (Judges 13.20). The angel of the Lord did not appear to them again (Judges 13.21).

At the end of 2 Samuel, there is the strange account of David being impelled to take a census of Judah and Israel (2 Samuel 24). In this account, God tells David to perform this action, whereas in the parallel in 1 Chronicles 21 the inciting agent is clearly identified as the devil (Satan). To take a census was tantamount to pre-empting God's work in providing and expanding the population of Israel. The punishment David chose was three days of pestilence in the land; and so the angel of the Lord stretched out his arm towards Jerusalem to destroy it, but fortunately the Lord repented of the evil and stopped the angel at once, who was then at the threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite. David bought the threshing-floor from Araunah, and built an altar on it where he made the customary offerings of that time. Then the Lord yielded to the prayer for the land, and the plaque in Israel stopped.

In the period after the schism between the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah, angels play a more important role. In 1 Kings 13.21-2, we learn that any message transmitted by an angel is as nothing compared with the direct word of God. An angel may assuredly be the messenger of God's word whose authority remains unassailable, for it has a direct power that should never be contravened. However, an angel has no direct authority of its own; it is the power behind it that tells whether it is of God or the devil. In this particular instance, there was no angel at all, for the man in question, though a prophet, was lying to his more illustrious peer when he persuaded him to take refreshment at his home instead of returning whence he had come without any delay (1 Kings 13.11-22).

Later on in the history of Israel appears the charismatic figure of Elijah; the Elijah sequence begins at 1 Kings 17 and continues on to much of 2 Kings 2. It was after he had destroyed the prophets of Baal, and Jezebel - the wife of King Ahab (the patron of the cult of Baal) - had threatened him with death, that Elijah fled by stages to Mount Horeb, the same Mount Sinai that Moses had climbed some four hundred and fifty years previously. Elijah was extremely dejected, but on the way angels had provided food for his immediate survival (1 Kings 19.1-9). While he was asleep in the course of his precipitate flight, an angel awakened him: and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones and a pitcher of water. Thus Elijah ate and drank and lay down again. Then the angel of the Lord awakened him a second time, providing him with food for a forty-day journey to Horeb, the mountain of God. There Elijah entered a cave where he spent the night. On the next day, he experienced God directly as "a faint murmuring sound ("still small voice" in the Authorized Version). This is God as Spirit who speaks intimately to his prophets. There is no need for the preliminary cosmic events like a hurricane, an earthquake, or a fire, which acted as a prelude to the events of Moses' conversation with God (Exodus 20.18-21).

My favourite angel passage concerns Elijah's successor, Elisha. The King of Aram was incensed that his plans for attacking the Israelite army always seemed to be known beforehand by the enemy. The blame was set squarely on the prophet Elisha, whose clairvoyant gifts allowed him to warn the King of Israel in advance about the Aramaean plans; and so the King of Aram ordered a detachment of his troops to seize Elisha by surrounding the town where he was staying, which was called Dothan. The next morning, Elisha's attendant saw that they were surrounded by a strong force of Aramaean soldiers, and he was terrified. He asked where they were to turn. Elisha offered this prayer: "Lord, open his eyes and let him see." The Lord opened the young man's eyes, and he was able to fathom Elisha's assurance that there were more on their side than on the enemy's, for he saw the hills covered with horses and chariots of fire all round Elisha. This is a marvellous demonstration of the ministry of angels protecting those who do God's will in service to their fellow creatures. In this account, Elisha prayed that the enemy force might be struck blind, after which he led them into Samaria, the Israelite capital, when their sight was restored. The account ends on a note of magnanimity; the Aramaeans are treated to a great feast and then sent back home. There was a cessation of Aramaean raids on Israel for some time afterwards (2 Kings 6.8-23).

In the great writing prophets, angelic intervention is described on only a few occasions. The first is Isaiah's vision of God in the Temple of Jerusalem (Isaiah 6.1-8), which has been alluded to in Chapter 1; seraphim were in attendance on the Lord, and each had six wings, one pair of which covered their faces, another pair their bodies, and the last pair were used for flying. They were calling one to another "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory." Isaiah was acutely aware of his uncleanness, and one of the seraphim touched his mouth with a glowing coal taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. This contact served to remove his sinfulness, so that he was able to respond to God's call to service: "Here am I! Send me" (Isaiah 6.9).

Angelic interpreters are a feature of the later prophetic literature, the earliest being encountered in Ezekiel 40.3-4: "I saw a man like a figure of bronze standing at the gate and holding a cord of linen thread and a measuring rod. "O man", he said to me, "look closely and listen carefully; note well all that I show you, for this is why you have been brought here. Tell the Israelites everything you see."" The man described here is clearly an angel.

Another prophetic writing that gives prominence to angelic intervention is the Book of Daniel. Although the story takes place during the Babylonian exile, it is generally agreed among scholars that the book was written during the Maccabaean revolt against the hellenizing tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes some four hundred years later (about 165 BC). In the account of the burning fiery furnace, King Nebuchadnezzar decrees that anyone who fails to worship an image he has set up will be cast into the furnace. Three Jewish exiles who are faithful to their own religion refuse to do homage to an image, and trust in God Almighty alone. They are cast into the furnace, but to the amazement of everyone they are seen unharmed in the depth of the furnace together with a fourth person, a man who looks like God. They are released intact, and the king blesses their God who has sent his angel to save his servants. Their trust in him allowed them to disobey the royal command with impunity (Daniel 3, with special reference to verses 24-8). A similar type of event is described in chapter 6 of Daniel: whoever offers a petition to anyone other than the Persian King Darius over the next thirty days is to be cast into the lion-pit. Daniel, chief of the Jewish exiles, continues to make petition to God and is duly apprehended by his jealous enemies. Despite the king's distress, the sentence is executed, but the next morning Daniel is found to be unharmed. He tells the king that God sent his angel to shut the lions' mouths and they had not injured him. God had judged him innocent; and, moreover, he had done the king no injury (Daniel 6.I6-22).

The last five chapters of the Book of Daniel have a different emphasis: they deal with things that are to happen in the last days (the study called eschatology). The Book of Daniel names two angels of high degree, usually classed as archangels - though not specifically designated as such in the Bible; these are Gabriel and Michael:

All the while that I, Daniel, was seeing the vision, I was trying to understand it. Suddenly I saw standing before me one with the appearance of a man; at the same time I heard a human voice calling to him across the bend of the Ulai [a canal mentioned in Daniel 8.2], "Gabriel, explain the vision to this man." He came to where I was standing; and at his approach I prostrated myself in terror (Daniel 8.15-17).
Gabriel explains to the terrified Daniel the import of his visions regarding what is to happen at the end of the period of wrath. Gabriel appears again in Daniel 9.21-2, in order to enlighten the prophets understanding about the things that are to occur in the distant future.

Michael is the guardian angel of the children of God, the Jews; and so we read, "...the guardian angel of the kingdom of Persia (probably a very powerful angel) resisted me for twenty-one days, and then, seeing that I had held out there, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me against the prince of the kingdom of Persia" (Daniel 10.13). These are their own guardian angels: "I have no ally on my side for support and help, except Michael your prince" (Daniel 10.21). In the last chapter, there is an enormous cataclysmic vision that begins:

At that time there will appear Michael the great captain, who stands guarding your fellow-countrymen; and there will be a period of anguish such as has never been known ever since they became a nation till that moment. But at that time your people will be delivered, everyone whose name is entered in the book: many of those who sleep in the dust will awake, some to everlasting life and some to the reproach of eternal abhorrence (Daniel 12.1 2).
This last verse is the first assurance in the Bible of personal survival of bodily death.

The Book of Zechariah was probably written soon after the return of the Jews to Palestine from Babylonian exile. The prophet is confronted by a series of eight visions that are described in the first five chapters and the first half of the sixth chapter. Each vision is interpreted by an angel close to the prophet. A good example is the eighth vision:

I looked up again and saw four chariots coming out between two mountains, which were mountains of copper The first chariot had bay horses, the second black, the third white, and the fourth dappled. I asked the angel who talked with me, "Sir, what are these?" He answered, "These are the four winds of heaven; after attending the Lord of the whole earth, they are now going forth. The chariot with the black horses is going to the land of the north, that with the white to the far west, that with the dappled to the south, and that with the roan to the land of the east." They were eager to set off and range over the whole earth. "Go," he said, "range over the earth," and they did so. Then he called me to look and said, "Those going to the land of the north have made my spirit rest on that land" (Zechariah 6.1-8).
It should be recalled that all the major invasions of the Holy Land (from the Assyrians and Babylonians) had come from the north.

The collection of writings that comprise the Apocrypha contain two significant angelic references. Most of these books, apart from Esdras 1 and 2 and the Prayer of Manasseh, are included by the Roman Catholic Church as part of the Old Testament. On the other hand, they form no part of the Hebrew scriptures, and the various Reformed Churches separate them into a special collection apart from the remainder of the Old Testament. Here the two Books of Esdras (the Greek Ezra) and Manasseh's Prayer are included In the delightful story of Tobit, written about 400 BC, Tobit, who has been rendered blind by the warm droppings of sparrows falling into his unprotected eyes (Tobit 2.9-10), ultimately has his sight restored by his son blowing fish-gall into his eyes (Tobit 11.11-15). The instructor in this early medical treatment is the angel Raphael, who also accompanies Tobias, the son, on his difficult journey to Ecbatana in Media. The angel first appears quite unobtrusively as a guide on the way: "Tobias went out to look for someone who knew the way and would accompany him to Media, and found himself face to face with the angel Raphael. Not knowing he was an angel of God, he questioned him: "Where do you come from, young man?" "I am an Israelite," he replied, "one of your fellow-countrymen and I have come here to find work (Tobit 5.4-5). Together they go to Media where Tobias is able to marry Sarah, the daughter of his kinsfolk Raguel and Edna. Until then, all Sarah's prospective marriages had been foiled by the demon Asmodaeus. Before the intervention of Raphael, both Tobit and Sarah had longed for death, hence Raphael is always regarded as the angel associated with healing.

In Christian usage there are three archangels: Michael (which means Who-is-like-God), Gabriel (which means God is my strength), and Raphael which means God heals). The Jews have a fourth angel, Uriel (which means God is my light). He is one of the seven holy angels (see below) over the world and over Tartarus, as recounted in the apocryphal Book of Enoch 20.2. It is said that the Lord set him over all the luminaries in heaven; in this capacity he served as guide for Enoch in his imaginary journeys through heaven and the underworld Uriel is also the angel who instructs Salathiel (Ezra), in 2 Esdras 4.1 (probably written in the first century AD), about the mysteries of the universe. The Jews have a special blessing in which all four archangels are invoked in prayer. Apart from this quartet, no other angels in the Bible are given special names. Among ecstatic Jews in the later centuries, apocryphal writings abound that name a host of angels, an extravagant miscellany that seem to be individually in control of many natural phenomena. This type of angelology has done the subject considerable harm, since modern science can explain such phenomena much more convincingly in terms of well-defined laws. I would never be so bold as to exclude angelic influence from any sphere of cosmic activity, but I would expect it to act coherently as part of the divine initiative rather than as idiosyncratic exhibitions of purpose. Raphael himself is presented as one of the seven angels who stand in attendance on the Lord and enter his glorious presence (Tobit 12.15). The list of the seven angels as been extravagantly completed by apocryphal writers. One also recalls the seven angels of the Apocalypse described in Revelation 8.2, and that we mention in Chapter 3.

The Psalms contain a number of references to angels. The best known is Psalm 91.10-12: "You have made the Most High your dwelling-place; no disaster will befall you, no calamity touch your home. For he will charge his angels to guard you wherever you go, to lift you on their hands." This passage was quoted by the devil when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4.5-7). Some other Psalm quotations concerning angels are: "The angel of the Lord is on guard round those who fear him, and he rescues them" (Psalm 34.7) "May they be like chaff before the wind, driven away by the angel of the Lord!" (Psalm 35.5); "There were myriads of God's chariots, thousands upon thousands, when the Lord came in holiness from Sinai" Psalm 68.17, which refers to Elisha and the chariots of fire that he revealed to his terrified servant at Dothan); "So everyone ate the bread of angels; he sent them food in plenty" (Psalm 78.25); "He unleashed his blazing anger on them, wrath and enmity and rage, launching those messengers of evil (Psalm 78.49, which refers to the demonic spirits that act as destroying angels); "Bless the Lord, you his angels, mighty in power, who do his bidding and obey his command" (Psalm 103.20); Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his hosts" (Psalm 148.2).

It is evident from these various accounts that the angels are creatures distinct from God, but members of the heavenly court, where they are called "sons of God", "holy ones", and "host of heaven". Good passages to illustrate this are: "Micaiah went on, "Listen now to the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord seated on his throne, with all the host of heaven in attendance on his right and on his left"" (1 Kings 22.19); Psalm 148.2 (quoted above); and "You alone are the Lord; you created the heavens, the highest heavens with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to them all, and the heavenly host worships you" (Nehemiah 9.6). Job 1.6-12 and 2.1-6 evoke the angelic gathering from which God sends his messengers, or angels, down to earth. Some are destructive in character, others have a guardian function, while yet others have an intermediary function in prophecy. Some of this has already been witnessed.

Thus it is clear that the Old Testament is a hive of angelic activity, and its ramifications are continued in the New Testament