Rabbi David E. Ostrich, Congregation Brit Shalom
Clergy Column for The Centre Daily Times
To be published Sunday May 19, 2024, 553 words
Though the belief in angels is quite ancient—and though angels appear many times in the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament, and the Koran, it does not make a lot of sense today. The ancients thought of God as a King located in one place, One Who sends out agents to do the various things that need to be done. Just as a monarch has servants or an executive has employees and assigns them various jobs, so does God send out m’lachim/angels. Though angels appear in many contexts—guarding the Garden of Eden, stopping Abraham from sacrificing Isaac, using Jacob’s Ladder to travel from Heaven to Earth, wrestling with Jacob and giving him a new name (Israel), slaying the firstborn of Egypt and passing over the houses of the Israelites, splitting the Red Sea, announcing the mysterious and holy cause of Mary’s pregnancy, and dictating the Surah portions of the Koran to Muhammed, the most illuminating example is from Chapter 6 of Isaiah where God is referred to as Adonai Tz’va’ot/The Lord of Hosts. The word hosts here does not refer to hospitality—though that might make an excellent sermon. Here the word refers to God’s army of angels: hosts and hosts of angels who are available for God’s every bidding. God gives orders, and the angels obey—while God sits on His heavenly throne and waits for their reports.
This is the ancient understanding. However, whereas the ancients thought of God as sitting in one place, we are taught that God is omnipresent, present everywhere at the same time. As Jonah learns, there is no fleeing from the Presence of the Lord. God is in the Land of Israel, in Tarshish, in Nineveh, and in the midst of the sea. The theological insight that God is omnipresent is not a matter of God changing. Rather it is a matter of our knowledge of God developing and becoming more accurate. We now understand that God is not limited to one spot, that God is everywhere at the same time and has no need to send out agents/m’lachim/angels. God can do it personally.
How then can we understand the notion and tradition of angels? Perhaps it is a matter of identifying part of a whole as an individual thing. We speak of wind or a storm as something separate from the atmosphere, but it is really just a manifestation of all the air around it. The same can be said about waves in the ocean. They seem individual but are really just an aspect of the water.
So, when ancient texts speak of an angel of the Lord, perhaps a better way to understand it is that our ancient ancestors experienced the omnipresence of God in a particular way—instructing righteousness, revealing wisdom, instilling faith or courage or perception. It was still miraculous and profoundly blessed, but it was God Whom they encountered: the Infinite God focused on us in a specific matter.
One more thing. Given that we who are created by God are also instructed and inspired to be godly, one could say that we have the ability to be manifestations or vessels of the Divine Will—to do God’s work in the world and be angels. Let us notice the angels around us, and let us strive to join God’s hosts.