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What Angels REALLY Look Like in the Bible – Nothing Like the Art · truthunedited

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  Speaker 1: Picture a man who has spent his life reading and
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  Speaker 1: writing about God, who has seen war, exile, and loss.
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  Speaker 1: He stands by a great river when something arrives, and
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  Speaker 1: his body simply quits. The color drains from his face.
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  Speaker 1: His knees give out. He goes down onto his hands,
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  Speaker 1: then flat on the ground, forehead in the dirt, unable
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  Speaker 1: to speak. The people with him do not even see
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  Speaker 1: what he sees. but they feel enough to run and hide.
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  Speaker 1: This is not a man overwhelmed by beauty. This is
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  Speaker 1: a man whose nervous system is overloaded by contact with
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  Speaker 1: something his language cannot hold. Across the Bible from Genesis
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  Speaker 1: to Revelation, this is the ordinary reaction to meeting one
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  Speaker 1: of these beings. Not tears of comfort. Not a warm glow. Collapse.
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  Speaker 1: Now set that beside the picture most of us carry
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  Speaker 1: in our heads. a plump baby with tiny wings and
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  Speaker 1: a bow, hovering over a valentine, a serene blonde woman
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  Speaker 1: in a flowing robe, a hand on a sleeping child,
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  Speaker 1: a soft glowing figure of comfort. That image is everywhere.
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  Speaker 1: Stained glass, greeting cards, Christmas trees, tattoos, hospital chapel walls.
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  Speaker 1: It is one of the most recognizable images in all
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  Speaker 1: of Western culture. And it has almost nothing to do
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  Speaker 1: with what the biblical text actually describes. The gap between
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  Speaker 1: the art and the words on the page is not small.
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  Speaker 1: It is enormous. Often the exact opposite. Where the art
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  Speaker 1: gives us something to hold, the text gives what makes
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  Speaker 1: grown prophets fall on their faces. This is what this
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  Speaker 1: video is about. Not the angels of Renaissance ceilings, but
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  Speaker 1: the angels of the text. the guardians with flaming swords,
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  Speaker 1: the burning ones with six wings, the four-faced creatures moving
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  Speaker 1: beside wheels that are full of eyes, the messengers who
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  Speaker 1: look so much like ordinary men that you could share
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  Speaker 1: a meal with one and never know. We walk through
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  Speaker 1: the actual descriptions in order from the Garden of Eden
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  Speaker 1: to the Throne Room of Revelation, and by the end,
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  Speaker 1: the reassuring figure on the greeting card is going to
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  Speaker 1: look like what it really is. A very late, very
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  Speaker 1: human invention laid over the top of something far stranger
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  Speaker 1: and far older. To do that honestly, we have to
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  Speaker 1: start with a word. Because the whole confusion begins with
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  Speaker 1: a word. In English we say angel, and here a
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  Speaker 1: kind of creature, a species like dog or eagle, a
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  Speaker 1: specific shape. But that is not what the underlying words mean.
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  Speaker 1: In Hebrew, the word is malak. In Greek, it is angelos.
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  Speaker 1: And both of them mean simply messenger. They describe a job,
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  Speaker 1: not a body. A malak is one who is sent.
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  Speaker 1: One who carries a message from a sender to a recipient.
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  Speaker 1: The Bible uses the word for human messengers too. Ordinary
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  Speaker 1: men sent from one king to another. So when the
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  Speaker 1: text calls one of these beings an angel, it is
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  Speaker 1: not telling you what it looks like. It tells you
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  Speaker 1: what it is doing. It is on an errand. That
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  Speaker 1: fact changes how you read every description, because it means
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  Speaker 1: the Bible is not describing one kind of being with
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  Speaker 1: wings and a robe. It describes a whole range of beings,
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  Speaker 1: some like fire, some like animals fused together, some so
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  Speaker 1: completely human they can sit and eat, all doing the
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  Speaker 1: same job of carrying God's word into the world. The
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  Speaker 1: shape is not the point. The sending is the point.
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  Speaker 1: The word angel flattens that variety into one picture, which
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  Speaker 1: painters filled with the softest thing. The text never agreed
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  Speaker 1: to that. The New Testament writers assumed this range without
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  Speaker 1: pausing to explain it. In Hebrews 13 verse 2, the
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  Speaker 1: author writes, Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers,
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  Speaker 1: for by so doing some have shown hospitality to angels
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  Speaker 1: without knowing it. Sit with how strange that is. It
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  Speaker 1: only works if angels look just like a tired traveler
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  Speaker 1: at your door. You cannot host a glowing winged baby.
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  Speaker 1: You can easily host a dusty man asking for a
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  Speaker 1: place to sleep. And sometimes that man is not a
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  Speaker 1: man at all. The warning assumes a messenger so ordinary
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  Speaker 1: that the only way you find out is afterward, if
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  Speaker 1: at all. At the same time, the New Testament insists
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  Speaker 1: these beings are not minor decorations in the world. In
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  Speaker 1: Colossians 1 verse 16, Paul writes of Christ, For in
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  Speaker 1: him all things were created, in heaven and on earth,
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  Speaker 1: visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities.
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  Speaker 1: Those words are ranks of beings, not vague poetry. These
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  Speaker 1: were understood as ranks of invisible beings, a whole population
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  Speaker 1: of the heavens. The Bible assumes reality is crowded. Behind
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  Speaker 1: the visible world, a whole layered ordered creation, and that
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  Speaker 1: the messengers who occasionally break through into human sight are
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  Speaker 1: only the part of it we ever glimpse. And what
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  Speaker 1: are they in the end? The book of Psalms gives
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  Speaker 1: the cleanest one-line answer. Psalm 103, verse 20. Praise the Lord,
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  Speaker 1: you His angels, you mighty ones who do His bidding,
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  Speaker 1: who obey His word. And both of them cut against
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  Speaker 1: the greeting card image. First, they are mighty ones. The
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  Speaker 1: Hebrew points to strength, to force, not softness. And they
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  Speaker 1: exist to do his bidding and obey his word. They
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  Speaker 1: are not free-floating spirits drifting through the clouds to keep
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  Speaker 1: us company. They are under orders. When one of them appears,
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  Speaker 1: it is because it has been sent, and it will
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  Speaker 1: do exactly the thing it was sent to do, whether
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  Speaker 1: that is to announce a birth, or to guard a gate,
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  Speaker 1: or to level a city. The comfort you feel before
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  Speaker 1: the greeting card angel comes from imagining a being that
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  Speaker 1: exists for you. The biblical messenger exists for God and
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  Speaker 1: simply passes through your life on the way to carrying
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  Speaker 1: out a command. Hold those three ideas together. The messengers
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  Speaker 1: can be hidden walking among us as strangers. They belong
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  Speaker 1: to a vast, ordered, invisible creation. and they are mighty
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  Speaker 1: instruments of a will not ours. None of that matches
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  Speaker 1: a chubby infant with a bow. So the honest question
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  Speaker 1: is not why the angels look so scary. It is
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  Speaker 1: where the soft version came from, and what did it
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  Speaker 1: paint over? To answer that, we have to go back,
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  Speaker 1: all the way back, to the first time one appears,
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  Speaker 1: standing at a garden's entrance with a weapon that turns
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  Speaker 1: every way. Because the first angel in the Bible is
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  Speaker 1: not there to comfort anyone. It is there to keep
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  Speaker 1: us out. The first of these beings does not float
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  Speaker 1: and does not sing. It stands at a gate with
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  Speaker 1: a blade. At the end of Genesis 3, after the
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  Speaker 1: man and woman are driven out, the text says, in
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  Speaker 1: verse 24, After he drove the man out, he placed
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  Speaker 1: Cherubim east of Eden. and a flaming sword to guard
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  Speaker 1: the tree of life. The angelic debut, not a lullaby
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  Speaker 1: over a manger, a sentry at a border, with a
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  Speaker 1: weapon that moves on its own, set to make sure
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  Speaker 1: what was lost stays lost. The very first thing an
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  Speaker 1: angel does in the Bible is bar the door. And
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  Speaker 1: notice the name the text uses, not angel this time, cherubim.
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  Speaker 1: That word is going to matter for the rest of
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  Speaker 1: this story, because the cherub is the single clearest example
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  Speaker 1: of how far the popular image has drifted from the text.
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  Speaker 1: Say cherub today, and almost everyone pictures a fat, rosy baby,
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  Speaker 1: or a baby's head with a pair of little wings,
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  Speaker 1: the kind of thing painted in the corner of a
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  Speaker 1: ceiling to fill space, so fixed that cherubic means babyish.
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  Speaker 1: But Genesis' cherubim guard the world's most dangerous threshold, stationed
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  Speaker 1: with a sword of fire. Nothing about them is babyish.
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  Speaker 1: They are the reason the way back is shut. The
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  Speaker 1: Hebrew cherub belongs not in a nursery, but in the
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  Speaker 1: throne rooms and gates of the ancient Near East. Scholars
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  Speaker 1: connect it to the Akkadian Karibu, protective beings that guarded
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  Speaker 1: sacred space in Mesopotamia. In the palaces of that world,
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  Speaker 1: archaeologists find what a cherub was. Not infants, but composite creatures.
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  Speaker 1: Enormous winged beasts carved in stone, set at doorways to
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  Speaker 1: guard them. The most famous are the Lamassu of Assyria.
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  Speaker 1: Great figures with a bull or lion's body, an eagle's wings,
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  Speaker 1: and the face of a bearded man, standing five meters
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  Speaker 1: tall at a palace gate. So anyone coming to the
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  Speaker 1: king passed between two of them. That is the cultural
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  Speaker 1: furniture the word cherub comes out of. Winged, hybrid, powerful,
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  Speaker 1: and posted at the door. Israel's neighbors imagine the guardians
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  Speaker 1: of holy places as winged sphinxes. The Bible reaches for
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  Speaker 1: that image. We do not have to guess at this.
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  Speaker 1: because it is confirmed inside Israel's own artifacts. Excavations at
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  Speaker 1: Megiddo turned up a famous set of carved ivories, one
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  Speaker 1: showing a king seated on a throne, and the sides
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  Speaker 1: of that throne are winged sphinxes, creatures with a lion's body, wings,
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  Speaker 1: and a human face. The throne is literally supported by
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  Speaker 1: the same kind of being the Bible calls a cherub.
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  Speaker 1: At Ugarit, Texts show the high god enthroned, flanked by
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  Speaker 1: these winged guardian creatures. Across the region, the seat of
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  Speaker 1: a god or king is carried and guarded by winged
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  Speaker 1: hybrid beings. So when the Bible describes the cherubim, it
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  Speaker 1: is not inventing a private fantasy. It draws on an
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  Speaker 1: image its first audience already knew by sight and does
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  Speaker 1: something remarkable with it. Because after Eden, the cherubim reappear
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  Speaker 1: in the most important object Israel ever built. When God
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  Speaker 1: gives Moses the design for the Ark of the Covenant
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  Speaker 1: in Exodus 25, the instructions are precise. Verses 18-20 And
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  Speaker 1: make two cherubim out of hammered gold at the ends
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  Speaker 1: of the cover. Make one cherub on one end and
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  Speaker 1: the second on the other, of one piece with the cover,
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  Speaker 1: at the two ends. The cherubim are to have their
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  Speaker 1: wings spread upward, overshadowing the cover with them. The cherubim
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  Speaker 1: face each other, looking toward the cover. Two golden guardians'
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  Speaker 1: wings over the ark's lid, facing inward over the place
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  Speaker 1: where God would meet Israel. Then, in verse 22, God
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  Speaker 1: tells Moses what it is for, above the cover between
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  Speaker 1: the two cherubim that are over the ark of the
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  Speaker 1: covenant law. I will meet with you and give you
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  Speaker 1: all my commands for the Israelites. Stop and see what
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  Speaker 1: that means. The same being that guarded Eden with a
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  Speaker 1: flaming sword is now cast in gold and set over
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  Speaker 1: the ark, and the space between their wings becomes the throne.
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  Speaker 1: In Eden, the cherubim kept humanity from God's presence. Over
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  Speaker 1: the ark, they mark the one place that presence comes
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  Speaker 1: near again, Under extreme holiness and danger, the guardians of
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  Speaker 1: the closed door become the frame of the reopened meeting place.
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  Speaker 1: The same creature, the same job, guarding the line between
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  Speaker 1: human and holy on both sides of the story. This
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  Speaker 1: is why one of the oldest titles for the God
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  Speaker 1: of Israel is built directly out of these beings. In
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  Speaker 1: 1 Samuel 4, when the ark is carried into an
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  Speaker 1: Israelite camp, The text says in verse 4, The people
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  Speaker 1: brought the ark of the Lord Almighty, who is enthroned
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  Speaker 1: between the cherubim. That phrase appears again and again through
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  Speaker 1: the Psalms and the histories. The invisible God is pictured
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  Speaker 1: as a king whose throne's armrests and sides are living
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  Speaker 1: guardian creatures. Exactly the throne carved at Megiddo, the seat
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  Speaker 1: flanked by winged beings at Ugarit, except the seat is empty.
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  Speaker 1: because the king who sits there cannot be carved. The
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  Speaker 1: cherubim are the throne. They carry the presents. They are
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  Speaker 1: not decoration on the furniture of worship. They are the
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  Speaker 1: framework of God's own royal seat on earth. That shows
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  Speaker 1: how far the baby cherub has fallen. The being the
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  Speaker 1: Bible calls a cherub is not a symbol of innocence.
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  Speaker 1: It is a symbol of guarded, lethal holiness. The creature
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  Speaker 1: at the threshold you are not allowed to cross. The
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  Speaker 1: creature whose wings form the seat of a king so
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  Speaker 1: holy that men die for merely touching the ark it guards.
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  Speaker 1: Somewhere along the way, the West took that word. Guardian
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  Speaker 1: of Eden. Golden sentinel over the ark. The word for
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  Speaker 1: the living throne of God. And pinned it onto a
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  Speaker 1: plump infant with a bow. It is hard to imagine
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  Speaker 1: a fuller inversion. The guardian of the flaming sword became
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  Speaker 1: a Valentine's mascot. But at least the cherubim are recognizably strange.
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  Speaker 1: You look at a winged sphinx, and you know you
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  Speaker 1: are seeing something that does not belong to the ordinary world.
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  Speaker 1: The next kind of messenger is harder, and in a
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  Speaker 1: way more unsettling, because it hides the strangeness completely. For
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  Speaker 1: all the times the Bible shows us beings of fire
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  Speaker 1: and wings and hybrid faces, just as often It shows
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  Speaker 1: a messenger with no strangeness at all. One who walks
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  Speaker 1: the road, sits in the shade, accepts a meal and
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  Speaker 1: is taken by everyone who meets him for an ordinary man.
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  Speaker 1: Those are the angels you could never paint. Because there
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  Speaker 1: is nothing to paint. And they are where we turn next.
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  Speaker 1: There is a kind of angel no painter has ever captured.
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  Speaker 1: For a simple reason. There is nothing to paint. No wings,
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  Speaker 1: no glow, no flaming sword, no hybrid face. Just a man.
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  Speaker 1: A traveler on the road. A stranger at the gate.
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  Speaker 1: Someone you would pass without a second glance. This is
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  Speaker 1: the most common way messengers appear in the oldest scriptures.
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  Speaker 1: The one the greeting card image erases. Because it cannot
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  Speaker 1: become decoration. You cannot hang a picture of an angel
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  Speaker 1: who looks exactly like anyone else. But the text insists
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  Speaker 1: this is how they came. It happens first, unforgettably, at
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  Speaker 1: the great trees of Mamre. In Genesis 18, an old
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  Speaker 1: man named Abraham sits at the entrance of his tent
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  Speaker 1: in the heat of the day. The text says in
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  Speaker 1: verses 1 and 2, The Lord appeared to Abraham by
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  Speaker 1: the trees of Mamre as he sat at his tent
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  Speaker 1: in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up. and
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  Speaker 1: saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he
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  Speaker 1: hurried from his tent to meet them and bowed low
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  Speaker 1: to the ground. Three men standing nearby. That is what
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  Speaker 1: Abraham sees. Not a vision in the sky, not a
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  Speaker 1: chorus of light. Three travelers, close enough that he can
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  Speaker 1: run to them. And what he does next is the
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  Speaker 1: most ordinary thing in his world. He offers hospitality. He
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  Speaker 1: has water brought for their feet, has bread baked, has
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  Speaker 1: a calf prepared. And then the text says, He stands
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  Speaker 1: under the tree while they eat. These beings sit in
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  Speaker 1: the shade of a tent and eat a meal of
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  Speaker 1: curds and milk and roasted meat. There is no hint
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  Speaker 1: from outside that they are anything but three tired men
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  Speaker 1: on a journey. And yet they are not. One speaks
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  Speaker 1: with an authority belonging to God alone. promising the aged
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  Speaker 1: Sarah a son within a year, and then turning to
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  Speaker 1: confront Abraham about the cities on the plain below. The
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  Speaker 1: reader learns what Abraham only slowly realizes. He has been
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  Speaker 1: hosting the divine at his own table. This is the
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  Speaker 1: scene behind that warning in Hebrews about entertaining angels unaware.
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  Speaker 1: It is not a metaphor. The memory of Mamre, Three
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  Speaker 1: strangers who were messengers, welcomed as men, revealed only by
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  Speaker 1: what they said. Then two of those three walk on,
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  Speaker 1: down towards Sodom, and the disguise holds even under pressure.
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  Speaker 1: Genesis 19 opens in verse 1. The two angels arrived
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  Speaker 1: at Sodom in the evening, and Lot sat in the
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  Speaker 1: city gateway. He rose to meet them and bowed with
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  Speaker 1: his face to the ground. The narrator calls them angels,
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  Speaker 1: because the narrator knows what they are. But the people
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  Speaker 1: of the city do not. To everyone in Sodom, they
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  Speaker 1: are simply two men, visitors who have come to spend
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  Speaker 1: the night. The mob that gathers at Lot's door treats
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  Speaker 1: them as men, demands them as men. Only inside does
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  Speaker 1: their nature break through. when they pull Lot to safety
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  Speaker 1: and strike the crowd with blindness. Right up until that moment,
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  Speaker 1: the total human disguise is airtight. You could stand in
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  Speaker 1: the street and shout at one of these beings, never
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  Speaker 1: suspecting it was a messenger of God. The pattern repeats
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  Speaker 1: across the whole early history, and it grows stranger each time.
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  Speaker 1: In Genesis 32, Jacob is left alone at night by
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  Speaker 1: the ford of the Jabbok, And the text says, in
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  Speaker 1: verse 24, So Jacob was left alone, and a man
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  Speaker 1: wrestled him till daybreak. A man, written in that flat,
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  Speaker 1: physical word, Jacob wrestles no spirit or light. He grapples
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  Speaker 1: all night, hip to hip, with what reads as a
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  Speaker 1: human being. Only when his opponent wrenches his hip with
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  Speaker 1: a touch and refuses his name does Jacob grasp what
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  Speaker 1: he fought and that he has, as he says, seen
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  Speaker 1: God face to face and lived. The messenger came so
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  Speaker 1: ordinary that Jacob could physically fight it. That is how
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  Speaker 1: complete the disguise is. It is there again on the
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  Speaker 1: eve of Israel's great battles. In the fifth chapter of Joshua,
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  Speaker 1: just before the fall of Jericho, Joshua looks up and
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  Speaker 1: sees once more a man. Joshua 5 verse 13. When
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  Speaker 1: Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a
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  Speaker 1: man before him with a drawn sword. Joshua went up
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  Speaker 1: to him and asked, Are you for us or for
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  Speaker 1: our enemies? Neither, he replied. But as commander of the
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  Speaker 1: army of the Lord, I have come. Then Joshua fell
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  Speaker 1: face down to the ground and asked him, What message
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  Speaker 1: does my Lord have for his servant? The commander replied,
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  Speaker 1: Take off your sandals, for the place where you stand
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  Speaker 1: is holy. Joshua had challenged him like any armed stranger
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  Speaker 1: on the road. Are you one of ours or one
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  Speaker 1: of theirs? The answer refuses the question. and the ground
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  Speaker 1: turns out to be holy. The same command once given
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  Speaker 1: to Moses. But the first impression was a man with
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  Speaker 1: a sword. The strangeness stayed hidden until it chose to speak.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes the human likeness is so convincing that people only
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  Speaker 1: realize afterward, and it terrifies them. In Judges 13, a
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  Speaker 1: messenger comes to the wife of a man named Manoah
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  Speaker 1: to announce the birth of Samson. She runs to tell
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  Speaker 1: her husband, and the way she describes the visitor is telling.
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  Speaker 1: Verse 6. Then the woman went to her husband and
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  Speaker 1: told him, A man of God came to me. He
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  Speaker 1: looked like an angel of God, very awesome. I did
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  Speaker 1: not ask where he came from, and he did not
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  Speaker 1: tell his name. A man of God. Her first thought,
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  Speaker 1: only his bearing, something awesome and unplaceable about him. made
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  Speaker 1: her reach for the word angel at all. And even then,
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  Speaker 1: she does not truly know until later in the story,
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  Speaker 1: when the visitor rises in the flame of their altar sacrifice,
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  Speaker 1: and Manoah cries out that they will surely die. Right
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  Speaker 1: up to the fire, they took him for a man
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  Speaker 1: of God, a prophet, a human holy man passing through.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Put all of these together and a clear picture forms.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: a picture completely unlike the winged figure of the art.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: The most frequent way a messenger of God appears in
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: the oldest scriptures is with no supernatural marks at all.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: As a traveler, you would feed. As a stranger, you
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: would argue with. As a man, you could wrestle to
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: the ground. The concealment is the point. They move through
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: the world in perfect disguise, and the strangeness shows only
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: in what they say and know, and what they do
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: at the moment of their choosing. This is why the
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Bible can warn ordinary people that the guest at their
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: table might be one of them. It is not asking
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: you to look for wings. It is telling you that
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: you would not be able to tell. But there is
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: a thread inside these scenes more disorienting than any, and
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: the careful reader notices it early. In several scenes, the
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: man does not merely speak for God, He speaks as God.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: He accepts worship. He gives his name as the divine name,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: or refuses to give any name at all. The line
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: between the one sent and the one who sends begins
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: to blur, until at times it disappears entirely. That figure
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: has a title of his own in the Hebrew Bible,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: the angel of the Lord, and untangling who or what
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: he is has occupied readers for more than 2,000 years.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: That is where we go. Somewhere in these appearances, a
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: seam opens that the earlier scenes only hinted at. A
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: messenger arrives, and then, without warning, the messenger is speaking
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: in the first person, as God himself. Not the Lord says,
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: but I am the Lord. He receives worship no ordinary
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: angel is ever allowed to receive. He gives promises only
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: God can keep. The Hebrew text marks this figure with
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: a specific title, Malak YHWH, the angel of the Lord,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: or the messenger of the Lord, the single most puzzling
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: being in the Hebrew Bible. At the moment you are
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: sure he is a created servant standing in for God.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: The text calls him God to his face. The clearest
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: place to watch it happen is at the burning bush.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: In Exodus 3, Moses keeps his flock at the far
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: edge of the wilderness when something catches his eye. The
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: text says, verses 2 to 4, The angel of the
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: it did not burn up. So Moses thought, I will
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: go over and see this strange sight. When the Lord
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: saw that he had gone over to look, God called
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: to him from within the bush, Moses, Moses. Read those
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: two verses slowly. In verse 2, it is the angel
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: of the Lord who appears in the fire. By verse 4,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: it is the Lord who sees and God who calls
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: out from the same bush. The angel of the Lord
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: and God have become, in the space of two sentences,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: the same speaker in the same flame. And then, in
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: verse 6, the voice says, I am the God of
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: and the God of Jacob. At this, Moses hid his face,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: afraid to look at God. Not afraid to look at
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: an angel, afraid to look at God. The messenger in
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: the fire has spoken as the God of the fathers,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: and Moses covers his eyes. No slip of language. It
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: is a consistent feature of this figure, and it appears early.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Back in Genesis 16, a pregnant mistreated slave named Hagar
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: has fled into the desert and is found by a spring.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: It is the angel of the Lord who finds her,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: the angel of the Lord who tells her to return,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: the angel of the Lord who promises that her descendants
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: will be too numerous to count. Then, in verse 13,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: comes the line that has stopped readers for millennia. She
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: names the Lord who spoke to her. You are the
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: God who sees me, for she said, I have now
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: seen the one who sees me. Hagar does not call
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: him an angel. She names him the Lord, the God
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: who sees, marveling that she has seen him and lived.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: From her side, she has met God. The narrator introduced
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: the figure as the angel of the Lord. Hagar walks away,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: having spoken with God himself. The two descriptions sit on
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: top of one another, and the text does nothing to
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: pull them apart. and yet the title itself insists on
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: a distinction. He is the messenger of the Lord. A
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: messenger is, by definition, sent by someone else. He is
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: not the sender. So the same being who speaks as
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: God is also, in the very name the text gives him,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: someone dispatched by God. He is both the one who says,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: I am the Lord, and the one who has been
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: sent from the Lord. He carries the divine presence and
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: authority so fully that meeting him is meeting God, while
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: somehow remaining distinct from the one who sent him. He
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: stands on the line between heaven and earth, falling to
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: neither side. You can see why this figure was so
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: useful and so necessary in the story of the Exodus.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: where God has to be present with a whole nation
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: on the move without being contained or approached carelessly. In
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Exodus 14, at the sea with Pharaoh's army bearing down,
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: the text tells how Israel was protected that night. Verse 19,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: the angel of God traveling in front of Israel's army
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: moved and stood behind them. The angel of God and
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: the cloud move as one reality. The visible presence of
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: God guarding His people going before them, then standing between
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: them and the enemy. The messenger and the presence are
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: not two things. They are the same nearness of God
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: seen from two angles. For readers ever since, this figure
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: has been the great puzzle, and the answers have divided
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: along deep lines. In the world of early Judaism, the
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: sheer boldness of a being who speaks and is worshipped
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: as God, while somehow remaining distinct from the God of Israel,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: was recognized and debated intensely. Alan Siegel wrote a landmark
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: study of this problem, its title naming the danger, Two
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Powers in Heaven. He traced how some came close to
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: speaking of a second divine figure beside God, and how
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: the rabbis... Alarmed at where that could lead, eventually condemned
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: the two powers reading as heresy. The very existence of
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: that controversy tells you how real the tension in the
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: text is. Readers of the Hebrew scriptures kept meeting a
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: figure who seemed to be God, and beside God at once,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: and they argued for centuries about what to do with him.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: From the same soil grew traditions of an exalted angel,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: sometimes called Metatron, in the mystical texts, a being said
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: to bear the divine name and to sit in the
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: presence of God. An attempt in its way to give
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: a place to this uncomfortable second presence. Christian readers took
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: the puzzle a different direction. From early on, many read
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: the angel of the Lord, who appeared in the fire,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: found Hagar, wrestled Jacob, who stood before Joshua, that it
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: is you, as the pre-incarnate Son, the Word who would
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: later be born at Bethlehem, showing Himself in advance across
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: the pages of the Old Testament. On that reading, He
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: speaks as God, yet is sent from God, because He
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: is both fully divine and fully sent. The Reformers largely
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: continued this line, and you still find it defended today.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Others insist He is simply an angel who so fully
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: represents God that to meet the envoy is to meet
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: the king, the way a royal envoy in the ancient
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: world spoke with the full authority of the throne in
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: the first person, as though the king stood there. The
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Bible never settles the argument, and that restraint is worth respecting.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: What the text insists on is the effect. When the
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: angel of the Lord appears, people react as if seeing God.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: They fall down, they hide their faces. They are amazed
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: to be still breathing. Whatever this figure is, he carries
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: the weight of divine presence, and the human body responds
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: by collapsing, which brings us back to the thread we
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: started with. That reaction, the falling, the fear, the loss
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: of strength, is not reserved for this one mysterious messenger.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: It is what happens whenever the true nature of these
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: beings breaks through into human sight. And nowhere does it
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: break through more openly than in a temple, where a
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: prophet looks up and sees God's throne, ringed by beings
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: of fire, shaking the doorposts with a single word. That
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: is where we go next. In the year that a
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: king died, a man walked into the temple and saw
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: the room behind the room. Isaiah, a prophet in Jerusalem,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: records it in the sixth chapter of his book, one
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: of the few places in Scripture where a human is
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: allowed to look directly at God's throne and describe it.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: What he saw was not a choir of gentle figures
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: in white. It was fire that could speak. Verses 1-3
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: high and exalted, seated on a throne, and the train
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: each with six wings. Two covered their faces, two their feet,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: and two were flying. And they called to one another, Holy, holy,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: of his glory. Almost everything cuts against the familiar image. First,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: the wings, not one pair, but three, six on each.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: And notice how the wings are used. Only one pair
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: is for flight, the other four are for covering. With
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: two wings they cover their faces, and with two they
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: cover their feet. These beings stand in the immediate presence
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: of God, closer to the throne than anything else in
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: the vision, and even they will not look directly at
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: what they serve. Even the seraphim shield their faces. The
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: greeting card angel gazes serenely outward, making eye contact, offering comfort.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: The seraphim hide their own eyes in the presence of
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: a holiness too great to face. If the beings nearest
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: to God cover their faces before him, that tells you
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: what kind of presence this is and how far the
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: real throne room stands from casual reassurance. And what are
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: they doing? They are not resting. They are not watching
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: over a sleeping child. They cry out ceaselessly one to another, holy, holy, holy.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: In Hebrew, tripling a word is a superlative. To say
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: something three times is to push it to the absolute
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: limit the language can reach. The seraphim are not describing
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: God as very holy or especially holy. They declare him
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: holy to a degree that breaks the grammar. beyond any
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: comparison the human tongue can build, and the sound of
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: it is physical. Verse 4. At their voices the doorposts shook,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: and the temple filled with smoke. Their voices shake the stone.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: The foundations of the temple tremble at the noise these
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: beings make simply by speaking the truth about God. This
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: is not singing you would want playing softly in a
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: hospital chapel. This is a sound that makes the architecture
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: shudder and fills the sanctuary with smoke. And now the
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: name itself. The Hebrew is seraphim, from a root meaning
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: to burn. A seraph is, literally, a burning one. Not pale,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: cool figures of light. They are creatures of fire, named
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: for burning, standing in flame around a throne. The word
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: carries heat and danger in its very letters. And here
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: is the detail that unsettles readers most. That same word, seraph,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: is used elsewhere for serpents. In Numbers, the deadly snakes
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: sent among the people in the wilderness are called seraphim.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Burning ones, most likely for the burning of their venom.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: Numbers 21, verse 8. God tells Moses, Make a snake
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: and put it up on a pole. Anyone who is
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: bitten can look at it and live. So Moses made
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: a bronze snake and put it up on a pole.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: at the bronze snake, they lived. The burning serpent lifted
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: on the pole, and the burning ones around the throne
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: share a name. Fire and serpent are woven into the
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: very word for these highest attendants of God. Whatever they
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: looked like, the language ties the seraphim to something fiery
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: and serpentine, not soft infants. This is less strange than
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: it sounds, because Isaiah's world already had a visual vocabulary
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: for exactly this. In the Near East, especially Egypt, the
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: winged upright serpent was a sacred symbol of divine protection.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: The Uraeus, the rearing winged cobra, sat on the Pharaoh's brow.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: guarding thrones as a fierce, fiery guardian. And this imagery
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: did not stay in Egypt. In Judah, archaeologists found seals
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: and impressions, small carved stamps for marking property, depicting these
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: winged serpents, four- and six-winged urai, used by Judean officials
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: in the prophet's era. The people who first heard Isaiah
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: describe the seraphim were not baffled. They had seen winged,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: fiery serpents in clay and stone all their lives as
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: emblems of guardianship. Isaiah takes that image, the winged, burning
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: serpent guardian, and sets it glorified around God's throne. Now
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: put yourself where Isaiah stands, a prophet, a righteous man
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: who has spent his life speaking for God, and his
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: reaction to seeing this is not wonder. And it is
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: certainly not comfort, it is ruin. Verse 5. Woe to me,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: I cried, I am ruined. For I am a man
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: of unclean lips, and I live among a people of
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: unclean lips. And my eyes have seen the King, the
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Lord Almighty. The word is undoing. Isaiah feels himself coming apart.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: Confronted with the holiness these creatures shield their faces from,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: He feels his own impurity unbearably, and his first thought
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: is that he is finished, that a man like him
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: cannot survive having seen this. This is the same reaction
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: we keep meeting. The collapse, the sense of being unmade
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: before the holy. And here it comes not even from
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: God speaking, but simply from seeing the throne. and the
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: fiery ones around it. And then comes the mercy, and
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: even the mercy is made of fire. Verses 6 and 7.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: One of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: my mouth and said, See, This has touched your lips.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: The being that cleanses Isaiah brings no soft, gentle hand.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: It carries a burning coal, lifted with tongs, even a
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: seraph is careful, and presses it to the prophet's mouth.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Purification here is cauterization. The burning one sears away the uncleanness.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: The touch that forgives burns. The whole scene runs on
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: heat and holiness and awe, and not one element of
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: it survives in the popular image. No wings folded in rest,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: no serene faces. Instead, six wings mostly for hiding. Voices
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: that crack the stone. Creatures named for burning, shaped like
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: fiery serpents. And a prophet on the floor, crying he
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: is destroyed. Isaiah saw the throne from the front, from
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: inside the temple, as a worshipper looking up. But another prophet,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: a generation later, saw that throne from a stranger angle,
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: from outside a foreign land, coming toward him out of
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: a storm on the horizon. And what he saw did
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: not stay still and sing. It moved. It rolled. It
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: had faces on every side and wheels full of eyes,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: and it came for him across the plain of exile.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: That vision is the strangest description of the heavenly beings
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: in the whole Bible. And where we turn next. By
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: a canal in Babylon, among the deportees, the priest Ezekiel
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: watched the northern horizon as the sky opened. He was
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: a captive far from the ruined temple, where beings like
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Isaiah's seraphim were said to stand. in a land whose
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: gods were carved as winged bulls at the palace gates.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: What came from that storm is the strangest, most detailed
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: description of heavenly creatures in the Bible. He spends an
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: entire chapter trying to write it down, and you can
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: feel the language straining, reaching again for something like, and
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: the appearance of, because he describes what his words cannot hold.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: It begins as weather. Ezekiel 1 verse 4, I looked
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: and saw a windstorm coming out of the north. An
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: immense cloud with flashing lightning, and surrounded by brilliant light.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: The center of the fire looked like glowing metal. And
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: out of that fire come the creatures, not one, but four.
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: and each of them violates every expectation at once. Verses
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: 5 and 6. And in the fire was what looked
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: like four living creatures. In appearance their form was human,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: but each of them had four faces and four wings.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: Four faces, not one comforting face. Four, looking every direction
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: at once. So these beings never turn, never have a back,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: are never approached from behind. Ezekiel names the faces, verse 10,
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: Each of the four had the face of a human being,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: and on the right side each had the face of
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: a lion, and on the left the face of an ox.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Each also had the face of an eagle. A man,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: a lion, an ox, an eagle, the highest of men,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: strongest of beasts. the strongest of tame beasts, the king
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: of birds, fused into one creature, facing all four directions
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: at once, and they burn. Verses 13-14 The living creatures
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: looked like burning coals of fire, or like torches. Fire
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: moved back and forth among the creatures. It was bright,
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: and lightning flashed out of it. The creatures sped back
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: and forth like flashes of lightning. Fire moves between them.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: Lightning shoots out. They dart back and forth faster than
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: the eye can follow, quick as the lightning itself. Their
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: legs gleam like polished bronze, and beneath their wings are
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: human hands. Wherever the spirit goes, they go, all four
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: as one without turning. A face on every side needs
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: no turning. Try to hold the image steady, and it slips.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: because it is not built to be held. It is
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: built to overwhelm. Ezekiel is not finished. What he describes
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: next gave English a phrase whose origin most people never knew.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: Beside each of the four-faced creatures on the ground, he
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: sees wheels. Verses 15-17 I saw a wheel on the
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: ground beside each creature with its four faces. This was
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: the appearance and structure of the wheels. They sparkled like topaz,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: and all four looked alike. Each was made like a
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: wheel intersecting a wheel. Two wheels at right angles threw
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: each other, so it could roll any direction, forward or sideways,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: without turning, matching the creatures that never turn. This is
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: the origin of a wheel within a wheel. Then the
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: detail that has haunted every reader who reaches it. Verse
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: 18 Their rims were high and awesome, and all four
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: rims were full of eyes all around. Full of eyes.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: The rims of the wheels are covered all the way
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: around in eyes. These are not machines and not simple bodies.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: They are watching things, seeing every direction, wholly alive. Verse 19.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: Wherever the creatures moved, the wheels moved beside them. And
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: when they rose... The wheels rose too, because the spirit
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: of the living creatures was in the wheels. The wheels
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: are alive with the same spirit. Later Jewish tradition gave
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: these wheels a name of their own. The Ophanim, the
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: word simply meaning wheels, and counted them among the ranks
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: of the heavenly host, living wheels of eyes that move
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: with the throne. Because that is what all of this is,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: a throne. Above the creatures and wheels, Ezekiel sees a
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: vault gleaming like ice. And above it, a throne of sapphire.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: And on the throne, a figure like glowing metal wrapped
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: in fire, ringed with radiance like a rainbow in cloud.
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: The four burning, four-faced creatures and their eye-covered wheels are
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: carrying it. This is the same idea as the cherubim
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: over the ark. living guardians that form and carry the
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: seat of God. Except here it is not gold on
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: a box in a tent. It is moving. It has
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: come out of the north on wheels of fire and
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: eyes into a foreign land to a captive priest to
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: show him that the God he thought trapped in a
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: burning city can travel to Babylon and stand over him
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: at will. Ezekiel himself, later in his book, confirms what
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: these creatures are. In chapter 10, describing the same vision
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: at the temple, he says plainly in verse 20, These
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: were the cherubim, and that he now knew the beings
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: he had seen by the canal were cherubim. The eye-rimmed
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: wheels return, their bodies completely full of eyes all around. So,
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: the guardians of Eden, the golden ark figures, And these
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: four-faced burning creatures under the throne are one order. The cherubim,
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: seen at last in motion and on fire. And what
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: does it do to a human being to see this?
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: Exactly what it did to Isaiah and to Joshua and
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: to Manoah. Ezekiel writes at the end of chapter 1
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: that when he saw the likeness of God's glory, he
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: fell face down. The reflex again. The body gives out.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: A generation later, another exile felt the same, described it clinically.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: In Daniel 10, the prophet stands by another great river
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: when he looks up and sees a single figure, and
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: the description reads like Ezekiel's throne condensed into one being.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: Verses 5-6 Before me was a man dressed in linen,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: with a belt of fine gold from Uphaz around his waist.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: His body like topaz, His face like lightning, his eyes
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: like torches, his limbs like burnished bronze, and his voice
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: like the sound of a multitude. A face like lightning,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: eyes like torches, a voice like a crowd. And Daniel
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: tells us precisely what that did to him and to
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: the men around him. Verses 7-9 I, Daniel, was the
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: only one who saw the vision. The men with me
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: did not see, see it, but such terror overwhelmed them
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: that they fled and hid themselves. I was left alone,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: gazing at this great vision. I had no strength left.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: My face turned deathly pale, helpless. As I listened to him,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: I fell into a deep sleep, my face to the ground.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: no strength left, face gone pale as death, helpless on
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: the ground, unable even to stay conscious. The men who
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: could not see it fled anyway, driven off by terror
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: they could not name. This is the same being class
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: the greeting cards turn into a soothing presence, and the
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: effect it has on one of the most faithful men
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: in scripture is total physical collapse. For centuries this vision,
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: Ezekiel's throne chariot, the Merkabah in Hebrew, was thought so
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: dangerous and holy that Jewish tradition placed strict limits on
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: who could even study it. It became the seed of
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: an entire stream of Jewish mysticism. The Merkabah tradition, in
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: which the ascent toward that throne was seen as the
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: most perilous journey a human mind could attempt. That is
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: how far this is from decoration. The rabbis did not
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: hang the four living creatures on the wall. They warned
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: against staring too long. So far, every one of these
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: beings appears in the Hebrew Scriptures, but the New Testament
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: does not soften any of it. When messengers arrive in
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: the Gospels, and the throne room opens in the last book,
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: the same fire and faces, the same wheels of eyes,
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: and the same first words are all still there. That
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: is where the story comes together. And it is where
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: we go next. When the New Testament opens, centuries have passed.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: The language has changed from Hebrew to Greek. And the
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: setting has shifted from throne rooms and exile to a
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: small temple and a village in Galilee. You might expect
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: the messengers to have mellowed into the gentle figures of
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: later art. They have not. A New Testament angel does
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: what the old ones did. It appears, and a righteous
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: man is undone by fear. It happens inside the temple
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: in Jerusalem. In Luke 1, an old priest named Zechariah
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: burns incense in the sanctuary, alone, while the people pray outside.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: And there, beside the altar, someone is standing who was
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: not there a moment before. Verses 11-13 An angel of
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: said to him, Do not be afraid, Zechariah. Your prayer
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: has been heard. Gripped with fear, that is a professional
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: holy man at the most sacred duty of his life
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: when the messenger appears. And notice the very first words
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: from the angel's mouth. Do not be afraid. Sit with
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: why they are necessary. You do not need to tell
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: someone not to be afraid of a plump baby with
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: a bow. You do not say, do not be afraid,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: to a soothing figure of comfort. You say it to
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: someone already terrified, because the being in front of them
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: is genuinely terrifying to behold. That phrase, repeated whenever they
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: speak to people, is proof the biblical angel is is
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: not what the art shows. If it were, no one
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: would ever need to be told to calm down. This
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: messenger gives his name, and it is a name that
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: carries weight. Later in the same chapter, verses 26 to 30,
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee,
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: to a virgin pledged to a man named Joseph, a
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mer. The angel
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: went to her and said, Greetings, you who are highly favored.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: The Lord is with you. Mary was greatly troubled at
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: But the angel said, Do not be afraid, Mary. You
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: have found favor with God. Again, greatly troubled and shaken,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: again the same first reassurance. Do not be afraid. And again,
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: a name. Gabriel, that name is not new. It is
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: the same Gabriel who appeared to Daniel by the river
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: in the days of the exile, one of the very
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: few messengers in all of Scripture given a personal name
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: at all, which raises a point worth pausing on. In
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: most of the Hebrew Bible, the messengers are anonymous. They
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: refuse their names. The being who wrestled Jacob would not.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: The visitor to Manoah would not. Only in the later books,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Daniel among them, are a few of them named. Gabriel
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: and Michael, the great prince. That belongs to a flowering
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: of thought about the heavenly host just before the New Testament.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: As in Tobit, where the angel Raphael travels in disguise
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: as a human companion. And the traditions gathered in 1st Enoch,
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: where the ranks and names of the angels are laid
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: out in detail By the time Gabriel speaks to Mary,
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: he arrives already known, a named prince of the heavenly court.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: Then comes the central morning of the New Testament, its
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: messenger in the old language of lightning and terror. In
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: the 28th chapter of Matthew, the women come to the
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: tomb at dawn. Verses 2-4 There was a violent earthquake,
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: to the tomb. rolled back the stone and sat on it.
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: they shook and became like dead men. His appearance was
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: like lightning, the same word used of Ezekiel's creatures and
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: Daniel's man in linen. And look at what happens to
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: the soldiers. These are Roman guards, trained men, posted precisely
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: because they are not easily frightened. And at the sight
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: of this single messenger, they shake and fall down like
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: dead men. The being who announces the resurrection is not
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: a soft presence. It comes with an earthquake, looks like lightning,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: and hardened soldiers drop as if killed just from seeing it.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: Even at the story's most joyful moment, the messenger of
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: the news says, is something the body cannot stand before.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: At the very end of the Bible, the throne room
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: opens once more, and every strand we followed gathers into one.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: In Revelation, John sees, around the throne, Isaiah and Ezekiel
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: fused into one overwhelming picture. Chapter 4, verses 6 to 8.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: Around the throne were four living creatures, covered with eyes
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: in front and in back. The first was like a
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: lion the second like an ox, the third had a
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: face like a man, the fourth like an eagle. Each
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: of the four living creatures had six wings, and was
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: covered with eyes all around, even under its wings. Day
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: and night they never stopped saying, Holy, holy, holy is
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: the Lord God Almighty. See what John has done. The
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: four faces, lion, ox-man, eagle, are Ezekiel's creatures. The six
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: wings are Isaiah's seraphim. The eyes covering them, in front
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: and in back, and even under the wings, are the
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: eye-rimmed wheels of the exile. Their unending cry, day and night,
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: is the same three words that shook the temple doorposts. Holy, holy, holy.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: What the prophets saw in pieces, John sees whole and eternal.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: Burning wings, many faces, endless eyes and cry, encircling the
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: throne of God forever. And the messengers of revelation are
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: built on the same scale. In the 10th chapter, John
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: sees one of them come down, and the description reaches
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: for the size of the sky. Verse 1 Then I
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven. He was
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: robed in a cloud, a rainbow above his head, his
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: face like the sun, his legs like fiery pillars, crowned
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: with a rainbow, a face blazing like the sun, legs
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: like columns of fire. This is a being so vast
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: and bright that John describes it the way you would
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: a storm front or a sunrise. There is nothing here
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: you could set on the top of a Christmas tree.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: There is nothing here you would call cute. It is
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: the same terror and glory running through every one of
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: these appearances, from the gate of Eden onward, standing now
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: at the climax of the story, still burning, still enormous,
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: nothing at all like the pictures. So the shape of
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: it is clear, from the first book of the Bible
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: to the last. The guardians with the flaming sword, strangers
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: you could feed unknowing, the one who speaks as God,
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: the six winged ones, creatures on wheels of eyes, Gabriel
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: by the river and at the tomb. The mighty angel
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: with a face like the sun. Not once in all
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: of it does a plump winged baby appear. Not once
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: does the human reaction to seeing these beings match the
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: serenity of the paintings. Which leaves one honest question. And
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: it is the question we have been circling from the beginning.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: If the Bible describes something this strange and overwhelming, where
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: did the other picture come from? Where did the angels
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: get their baby faces? That last part of the story
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: does not begin in the Bible at all. The soft
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: angel does not come from the Bible. It comes from
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: an art studio, older than Christianity itself. If you want
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: to find the real origin of the plump winged baby,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: you do not open Genesis or Revelation. You look at
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: the walls of Roman houses and tombs, Centuries before any
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: Christian painter picked up a brush, and there he is,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: fully formed. A plump-winged infant, hovering, playful, sometimes holding a
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: small bow. The Romans called him Cupid, or Eros, and
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: multiplied him into swarms of little winged figures called putti.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: Decorative infant figures scattered across frescoes, sarcophagi, and garden statues
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: to fill space with charm. That is the true face
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: of the greeting card cherub. It was never a description
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: of a biblical being. It was a Greco-Roman decorating convention,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: a stock ornament, a motif you stamp in a corner
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: to warm a scene. For a long time, early Christian
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: art kept its distance from that figure. The oldest Christian
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: images show angels as dignified young men in robes, sometimes
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: with no wings at all. closer to the messengers who
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: walked up to Abraham than to anything hovering and infantile.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: Wings came in gradually, borrowed partly from the winged victory
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: figures of the classical world as a way to signal
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: this being belongs to heaven. But the beings themselves stayed adult, upright, serious.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: The terrifying scale of the biblical descriptions was hard to paint,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: and much of it was quietly set aside. Few medieval
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: frescoes even attempt four faces and wheels of eyes. But
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: the softening into babies had not come. The angel of
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: early and medieval Christian art is a solemn figure, not
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: a cute one. The great change came with the Renaissance,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: because it fell in love with the classical past. As
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: Italian painters rediscovered Greece and Rome, they brought the puto back,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: those plump winged figures. and folded them into Christian scenes.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: At first background, small figures around a Madonna, filling an
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: altarpiece's corners, adding tenderness. But the church had a word
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: sitting ready, and the two things fused. The winged figures
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: slid into the slot named Cherub, a Roman motif wed
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: to a Hebrew word for Eden's guardians, the cherub as
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: a fat, angelic baby. The most famous example is hangs
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: at the bottom of a single painting. In Raphael's Sistine Madonna,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: two small winged boys lean on a ledge, chins on hands,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: gazing up in boredom. Those two were later cut out
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: and reproduced more widely than almost any image in art.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: On cards, mugs, pillows. Millions of people have those two
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: Renaissance putti in their minds as the definitive picture of
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: a cherub. with no idea that the being whose name
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: they wear once stood at the gate of Eden with
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: a sword of fire. The whole mechanism, a pagan Roman
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: ornament revived by Renaissance painters, married to a word it
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: never fit, and mass-produced for 500 years until the copy
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: replaced the original. The Bible was not reinterpreted. It is
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: that a completely different image, from a completely different source,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: It was slid under the vocabulary until angel and cherub
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: summoned a picture the text would not recognize. Sorting the
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: angels into neat hierarchical ranks also came from outside the Bible.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: From a more thoughtful source, around 500, an anonymous writer
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: now called Pseudo-Dionysius wrote a work called the Celestial Hierarchy,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: sorting the heavenly beings into nine ranks in three tiers, seraphim, cherubim, thrones,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: then dominions, virtues and powers, then principalities, archangels and angels
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: at the bottom, nearest to us, an elegant influential system.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: The nine choirs shaped medieval theology, Dante's heaven, and later, imagination.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: But it is worth being honest about what it is.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: The Bible never lays out such a scheme. It names seraphim, cherubim, archangels, thrones,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: and powers, but never lines them up into nine tidy choirs.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: That structure is a later synthesis, an ordering imposed on
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: descriptions the biblical writers left wild. Scripture gives fire and
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: faces and wheels and terror. The hierarchy gives a chart.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: They are not the same thing. And the New Testament
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: itself adds a warning against getting too comfortable with any
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: angelic image. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, reminds them that
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: appearances can deceive precisely in this realm. 2 Corinthians 11.14
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. Consider what
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: that assumes. The danger Paul names is not a hideous
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: monster that anyone would flee. A beautiful, radiant figure of light.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: the serene glowing being the image trades in, used as
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: a disguise. The soothing angel of light is, in Paul's warning,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: the shape deception is most likely to take. The Bible
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: is not sentimental about beauty in these matters. It knows
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: the reassuring glow can be a mask, and it will
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: not let the comfortable picture stand as safe. There is
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: one more correction the New Testament makes. Dismantling a quiet
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: assumption behind much of the art, much angel imagery is
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: really about the dead. The idea that those who die,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: especially children, become angels, growing wings and watching over the living.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: It is a tender thought, and it is on countless
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: memorials and cards. But the Bible teaches otherwise. Angels are
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: a separate order made before humanity, never former humans. When
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: Jesus is asked about the life to come, in the
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: 22nd chapter of Matthew verse 30 he says, At the resurrection,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: people neither marry nor are given in marriage. They will
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: be like the angels in heaven, in a deathless existence
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: beyond marriage. Not that people become angels, but that they
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: share one quality. The messengers of the flaming sword and
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: the six wings and the wheels of eyes are not
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: the souls of the departed. They are their own ancient order,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: and they always were. So we end where we began,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: but able now to see the gap for what it is.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: The image on the card and the tree and the
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: chapel wall, the plump baby, the serene woman, the soft glow,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: is not a portrait of a biblical being at all.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: It is a Roman garden ornament wearing a Hebrew name,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: polished by painters until it buried the original. And the
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: original is still there, unchanged on the pages of the text.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: The guardians who close the gate of Eden, the strangers
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: you could share bread with, the voice that speaks for God,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: the burning ones who shake the stone, the four-faced creatures
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: on wheels of eyes, the tomb figure whose face is lightning,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: before whom soldiers fall. To every one of them, the
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: human body gives the same answer. It falls down. And
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: that is why whenever these beings speak to a human being,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: almost the first thing they say is the thing no
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: greeting card angel would ever need to say. Do not
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: be afraid. The art tells you they are here to
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: comfort you. The text says the first thing you would
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: feel before a real one is terror. The comfort comes
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: only after, spoken by something far stranger and far greater
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: than anything we ever thought to paint.