On Angels

Okay, last time I had the nation of Israel in captivity in Babylon. Or, at least, their elites were. This, by the way, was a typical strategy of conquest at the time. Great empires tended to gather up the leaders of defeated nations and tuck them safely away somewhere else.

I also said that this was going to make a world of difference. That it was going to transform the religion that we now know as Judaism, and, indeed, become the foundation of all the Abrahamic religions.

Which it will. But before I explain that, I need to talk about something else. Specifically, Angels...and why they don’t exist. At least not for a very long time.

Here’s the thing, if you read the earlier bits of the Bible, all the way through Abraham, the Patriarchs, Exodus, and even fairly late into the First Temple Period...you notice something.

To wit, angels are few and far between.

I know that sounds bizarre. Pick up your copy of the St. James Bible, or, indeed, any English-language Bible, and it *seems* that you can find “angels” all over the place. They’re everywhere from Genesis to Ezekiel to wherever.

Ah, but there’s the rub. Sometimes they do appear to be like what we think of Angels, as messengers...which, of course, is what “angels” means. (The word “angel” is Greek, but it is a translation of the Hebrew mal'āk̠, which is precisely the same thing.)

But, most of the time, all through the Bible, right up to the Exile, when God wants to chat with one of His favs, He just comes down and does it. Adam and Eve, the prophets, the patriarchs...when they get the call, they get it from God himself. No intermediaries need apply.

And when there *are* beings present who are called “angels,” they usually only accompany Yahweh, or else they are then shown to be actually God in disguise. Thus Abraham is visited by three mysterious men (Genesis 18), but then one of them seems to be revealed as God himself. Similarly, when Moses meets the Burning Bush, it is first described as an “Angel of the Lord” (Exodus 3) but then, shortly thereafter, we learn that the Speaker is actually God--“Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.” (Exodus 3:6)

But, as I say, do a search of any English-language Bible and you’ll pick up lots of other places where the word “Angel” appears. How can I say that Angels are rare in the earlier books of the Bibles?

Answer: Many of those other Angels are not Angels.

To which you reply, “Say what? Are you daft?”

Not an angel. Rather, it is an Ophanim, the terrifying wheel-eye being that is supposed to accompany God.

And I answer “Well, yes, probably ...” but, you see, as I’ve already noted, Angel, in Hebrew, is “mal’akh,” which, again, means “messenger.” In most of the places in the Old Testament where we meet entities called “Angels” in English-language translations, they’re not. That is, in the original Hebrew, they’re not called mal’akh. They are, instead, identified as a variety of other celestial beings -- like Seraphim, Cherubim, and Ophanim (sometimes also called Thrones).

They are, indeed, an awe-inspiring crew. Thus, in Isaiah 6:1–7, we meet the Seraphim, the “burning ones,” who hover about God and his throne. They are distinctly not humanoid. Rather, they have six wings, two of which are used to fly, another to cover their eyes in the presence of the Lord, and the other two to cover their feet to show their modesty. They chant “Holy, holy, holy” ad infinitum.

But they’re not angels. Not mal’akh. They’re Seraphim.

And, then there are the Cherubim. Again, they are astonishing creatures. In Genesis 3:24 they stand guard outside the Garden of Eden. In Ezekiel 1 and 10, when Ezekiel has his vision of heaven, they support (or are) the throne of God. They have four wings and four faces -- a man’s, a lion’s, an ox’s, and an eagle’s. They have hands like man, but great single legs that gleam like brass, and each is tipped with a hoof.

But they’re not angels. They’re Cherubim.

And, finally, there are Ophanim. These are truly terrifying. They appear in Ezekiel 1:16–19 where they are wheel-like beings, equipped with thousands (millions?) of eyes. They roll beside the Cherubim and perhaps the throne of God with its motive power. They are, in other words, Wholly Other, and Wholly Alien, and they are fearsome beings that are depicted as “Biblically accurate angels,” that you see on the Web.

Except...once more... they’re not angels, accurate or otherwise. They are Ophanim.

So, even though Angels seem to be all over the Bible, they aren’t really. At least not in Hebrew. Angels simply don’t show up much. Or, if you prefer, the Ancient Israelites didn’t see a whole lot of reason to talk about ‘em.

But...as we shall see, that’s about to change.

And people will have a whole lot of reasons to think, and write, and talk about Angels.

More to come.

Addendum

Special Note: Even when figures are identified as “angels” in the Bible, they may not have always been such. Most often, when you find an angel in the text, it is identified as “an angel of the Lord.” The kicker? As scholar Dan McClellan notes in his amusing and informative book, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues, most of the time the “angel” part of the sentence was added much later. In the original texts, the Bible simply had God talking to his people. The problem was that as priests and scribes moved away from that highly informal, conversational God who’d talk to just anybody--not just prophets and priests--those texts became embarrassments.

So, later editors and redactors nipped in and added “angel of the” in front of “Lord” wherever He was found speaking. Thus, angels were provided to extract God from unauthorized conversations.

See: Dan McClellan, The Bible Says So: What We Get Right (and Wrong) About Scripture’s Most Controversial Issues (New York: St. Martin’s Essentials, 2025), 225.

Copyright©2026 Michael Jay Tucker

Copyright©2026 Michael Jay Tucker

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