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The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
Angels
A word that means messenger and describes a job, not a species of being.
2 Kings 19:35, in every translation this tool compares.
Angel is a job description, like courier. The Hebrew and Greek words behind it both mean messenger, and both get used of ordinary human messengers too. The word tells you nothing about what kind of being is doing the carrying, which is why using it for everything flattens a very mixed cast into one category.
The word means messenger and is used of human messengers throughout. It names a job and not a species, and an angelology built on the word alone flattens the council's real variety into one category. DDD's Meier gives a concrete case: an early Israelite wouldn't have called the theriomorphic cherubim or seraphim mal'akim, since creatures that terrifying were unlikely carriers of a message to a human being, and in fact neither one ever delivers one in the Bible. The catch-all sense of "angel," any supernatural being under God's authority whether or not it carries a message, comes later. It is absent from D and P and from most pre-exilic prophecy, where God simply speaks, and it becomes dominant only in the Apocrypha, the NT, and the later biblical books. The LXX's choices already show discomfort with the older and plainer "sons of God": it renders Job 2:1's bene elohim as angeloi theou, and Theodotion reworks Daniel's Watcher language into angel vocabulary in the same way.
H4397 (מַלְאָךְ), 213 occ (DDD counts over 200 including human messengers); G32 (ἄγγελος), 175 occ
The angel of Yahweh who strikes down Sennacherib's army (2 Kings 19:35, with parallels at Isaiah 37:36 and 2 Chronicles 32:21) becomes the model case of an angel carrying out mass, decisive judgment, and 2 Maccabees 15:22-23 cites the episode as precedent when it asks God to do it again.
- 2 Kings 19:35
- Isaiah 37:36
- 2 Chronicles 32:21
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/divine-council-index\/deuteronomy-32-43-hebrews-1-6\/","n":"Deuteronomy 32:43; Hebrews 1:6","s":"The end of the Song of Moses, where the Masoretic text is one line and every other witness is longer.","r":"Deuteronomy 32:43; Hebrews 1:6"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/divine-council-index\/1-corinthians-11-10\/","n":"1 Corinthians 11:10","s":"A woman ought to have authority on her head, because of the angels.","r":"1 Corinthians 11:10"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/psalm-8-5\/","n":"Psalm 8:5","s":"A little lower than the angels. The Hebrew says elohim.","r":"Psalm 8:5"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/psalm-104-4\/","n":"Psalm 104:4","s":"Who maketh his angels spirits. Ruach, the same word for wind, breath, and spirit, used twice in one sentence about natural forces.","r":"Psalm 104:4"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/bible-translation-differences\/john-5-3-4\/","n":"John 5:3-4","s":"The angel troubling the water. A whole verse that is not in the oldest manuscripts.","r":"John 5:3-4"}
- S. A. Meier, "Angel I," DDD, 45-49
