(for the week of October 23rd, 2010/14 Heshvan 5771)
Parashat “Va’yera”
(Genesis 18:1-22:24)
Do Jews believe in angels? The answer, like the answer to many such questions is yes…and no. At the risk of seeming to play annoying semantic games, much depends on what we mean by “Jews” and by “angels.” But from the time of the Torah on, Judaism certainly contains narratives in which Divine emissaries play an important role.
The question arises at the very beginning of this week’s parasha (Torah portion) because of an incongruity in the text. The first verse of the parasha reports: “God appeared to him [Abraham] by the oaks of Mamre as he was sitting at the entrance of the tent at about the hottest time of the day (Genesis 18:1).” However, the very next verse continues: “Looking up, he saw: lo—three men standing opposite him! Seeing [them], he ran from the entrance of the tent to meet them… (Genesis 18:2).”
What is the relationship between these two verses? Some midrashim (biblical interpretations) suggest that this progression is meant to teach us that Abraham took the mitzvah (religious obligation) of hachn’sat orchim (lit., ‘welcoming guests’) so seriously that he ran from the very presence of God to perform it!1 In this interpretation, the two verses describe separate events and Abraham interrupted his encounter with God to run and welcome the visitors.
Most of Jewish tradition, however, sees the two verses as continuous—the first verse provides an introduction to the events that follow. As Rabbi Plaut writes of Gen. 18:1: “The aim of this introduction is to make it clear that the visitors in the following story are an apparition of the Divine.”2 God appears to Abraham through the agency of these three, mysterious men. Though the Hebrew word is actually not used in this narrative, we are meant to understand that the three men are God’s malachim (lit., “messengers” or “angels”)3. This interpretation is reinforced by a similar progression of verses at the end of the encounter, where we read: “The men went up from there and gazed down upon Sodom, Abraham going along with them to send them off” (Genesis 18:16) immediately followed by: “The Eternal then thought: “Should I hide from Abraham what I am doing? (Genesis 18:17).”
In an extended essay in his Torah commentary, Rabbi Plaut notes that these three men belong to a category of Divine beings who collectively serve “…as a kind of nobility at God’s court, singing praises and occasionally acting at counsel.” Individual malachim, however, serve as Divine messengers whose task it is to: “…bring instruction, transmit revelation to prophets, announce the coming of events (here, Isaac’s birth; in Genesis 19 the destruction of Sodom) and guard places (such as Eden or Beth El) or individuals (such as Hagar and Ishmael, Isaac and Jacob).” Rabbi Plaut also points out that the English word “angel” comes to us by way of the Greek translation of the Hebrew word for messenger (malach) which is “angelos.”4
While there are extraordinary physical descriptions of Divine beings elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (see, for example, Isaiah’s vision of the winged seraphim that begins chapter 6), what is most striking about the description of the three malachim in Va’yera is that they seem like ordinary people. They walk. They talk. They eat. And there’s nothing in the narrative to suggest anything unusual about their appearance. In other words, these three angels look and act pretty much like you and me.
It’s tempting, as a next step, to reduce the whole complex of Jewish angelology to a lovely, humanistic interpretation: each of us and all of us have the capacity to be angels. Of course, unlike most of us, the human-looking angels in Va’yera seem to know that they are God’s emissaries and to have a very clear and specific sense of the message they are meant to convey. Whereas if we were to claim, with absolute certainty, that we are God’s messengers, we might be more likely to end up in McLean Hospital than in the pages of someone’s scripture.
But let’s say we do embrace the compelling notion that all of us have some potential to be God’s messengers. What gets lost in this oversimplification is the powerful mystery we encounter when we realize that if we are sometimes the instruments for delivering holy messages, those messages don’t entirely belong to us. What is lost, in other words, is the recognition that the malach (holy messenger) is not the Author of his message. No, the Source of the sacred messages we sometimes are inspired to share lies mostly beyond us. In other words, if, at times, we have the privilege to be beautiful and treasured instruments playing God’s song, we must never forget that we are not its ultimate Composer.
1See, for example, Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 127a where this story is used as a proof text for the idea that welcoming guests is more important than welcoming God’s presence!
2The Torah: A Modern Commentary (Revised Edition), ed., W. Gunther Plaut (New York: Union for Reform Judaism, 2005), pg. 123, commentary to Gen. 18:1.
3In fact, throughout the narrative, the three visitors are referred to only as anashim or “men.”
4Ibid., pg. 138.