20 Things The Bible Really Says About Angels That Will Surprise You

Cherubim are mentioned in Genesis as guardians of the entrance to Eden after Adam and Eve are expelled, alongside a flaming sword. In Ezekiel (chapters 1 and 10), the cherubim have four faces each: a human, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. They also have four wings, hooved feet, and human hands underneath the wings. They aren’t like the chubby babies we’ve come to associate with cherubs.

The only place where “Lucifer” appears in the King James Bible is Isaiah 14:12. There, the Hebrew text calls him Hillel ben Shahar, the “shining one, son of the dawn.” This was a taunt song against a very mortal king of Babylon. When Jerome translated the Latin Vulgate Bible in the fourth century, he called him lucifer, which means light-bringer in Latin. Subsequent English translators took that to be a name, and so capitalized it.

Seraphim, or “burning ones,” appear only once as heavenly beings in Isaiah’s vision of God’s throne in Isaiah 6. They have six wings in total: two covering their faces, two covering their feet (an indication of their reverence for God), and two for flying. In the vision, they sing out, “Holy, holy, holy” around God’s throne.

When King Hezekiah of Judah was praying for help against the invasion of Jerusalem by King Sennacherib of Assyria, an angel entered the camp of the Assyrians one night and struck down 185,000 soldiers (2 Kings 19:35). Not a soft angel with rosy cheeks!

Genesis 18 describes three visitors to Abraham’s camp at Mamre who come looking like ordinary men, with no wings or light or anything. One turns out to be the LORD, but the other two proceed to the city of Sodom in Genesis 19. Hebrews 13:2 says that some people have entertained angels without knowing it. By contrast, the winged beings described elsewhere in biblical visions include cherubim and seraphim.

In his throne vision, Ezekiel also speaks of glowing wheels, often called Ophanim, that are nested within each other and move in unison with the cherubim, with rims that are completely covered with eyes. They appear as part of the strange throne vision described in Ezekiel 1 and 10. But still, a wheel full of eyes is a little weird.

At the Jabbok River, the biblical patriarch Jacob engaged in a wrestling match that lasted until daybreak. According to Genesis 32:24-30, the unknown opponent hit him in the hip socket, causing his hip to become dislocated. And according to Hosea 12:3-4, this unknown opponent was an angel. Jacob came out of the contest with a blessing and a new name, Israel.

In the Protestant Bible (the 66-book canon lacking the later Apocryphal texts), there are only two holy angels named: Gabriel (in Daniel and Luke) and Michael (in Daniel and Jude). The angel of the bottomless pit in Revelation 9:11 is also named Abaddon in Hebrew and Apollyon in Greek. Raphael, another angel commonly named in Christian tradition, only appears in the Book of Tobit.

In Genesis 18, Abraham prepares a young calf, some cakes of bread, and curds and milk for three men who are sitting near him under a tree at Mamre. Two of these men are angels. In Genesis 19:3, two angels visiting Sodom eat unleavened bread baked by their host, Lot. The point is that angels can consume actual food in actual bodies; they don’t just pretend to do so for the sake of demonstration.

In Genesis 16, we have an “Angel of the LORD” speaking to a woman in the wilderness. Later, in Exodus 3:2-6, an angel appears at the burning bush, and then the speaker, in the first person, takes on God’s voice and receives worship. Some scholars see this as God himself, while others interpret it as a representative with God’s full authority.

Jesus never says that a dead person becomes an angel. He says that they will be like angels in Luke 20:35-36, which refers to not dying and not marrying, not to becoming angels. Angels and humans are distinct orders of created beings in Hebrews 1:14, 2:16, and throughout Scripture. A human does not become an angel.

Revelation 12:7-9 describes the archangel Michael leading angelic forces into battle against “the dragon,” identified as Satan, and his rebellious angels. Michael’s side wins, and the defeated angels are thrown out of heaven. The passage presents the battle as an apocalyptic vision of cosmic conflict. Scripture picks up the story of those defeated angels in the passages that follow.

The angels cast out of heaven didn’t just vanish. 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 1:6 say rebellious angels were bound in chains of darkness, held to await judgment. 2 Peter even uses a term tied to Tartarus, the deepest part of the underworld in Greek mythology. The biblical description stays brief here, nothing like the elaborate scenes Milton or Dante later invented.

The word archangel appears in the New Testament exactly twice, in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 and Jude 1:9. Michael is the only individual to whom Scripture actually gives that title. Gabriel is called an archangel constantly in tradition, but the Bible itself never uses the word for him.

There is one major question that even angels don’t know the answer to. Jesus says no one knows the exact day or hour the world will end, “not even the angels in heaven,” only the Father does (Matthew 24:36). That’s a pretty clear limit on angelic knowledge because they’re not omniscient.

When asked about marriage and resurrection, Jesus’ response was succinct: “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven.” (Matthew 22:30) This indicates another thing as well: the angels themselves do not get married.

When angels appear to shepherds, or to Mary, or at an empty tomb, their first words are invariably something along the lines of “do not be afraid.” The gospel accounts and the book of Acts repeatedly offer this reassurance because the expected human response to encountering an angel is fear, not relief. They’re there to reassure us precisely because the experience isn’t reassuring.

In 1 Corinthians 11:10, Paul tells the women of Corinth to cover their heads when they pray “because of the angels.” The command is straightforward; the reason for it isn’t. Scholars have suggested that the angels act as silent witnesses to their worship, that this echoes older traditions about angelic “watchers,” or that angels are responsible for preserving order in creation, and none of these is confirmed in the text.

After the biblical prophet Daniel fasted for three weeks, an angelic being was finally able to come to him, according to Daniel 10:2-13. He said that “the prince of Persia,” a spiritual entity rather than the human king of Persia, had kept the angel from coming all those days. It wasn’t until the angel Michael came to help him that he was able to come.

In 1 Corinthians 6:3, Paul chides the church at Corinth for settling their differences in court. “Do you not know that we will judge angels?” he asks them. He does not explain this remark, and we do not hear of it again. Yet, given how much authority the angels exhibit in the rest of Scripture, this is indeed a surprising claim.

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