Said Rabbi Berekhiya in the name of Rabbi Helbo: It
is written (Bereishit 32):

“A man wrestled with
him”

We know not who was in the power of whom;

Was the angel in the power of Yaakov, or was Yaakov
in the power of the angel?

But from the text: And he said, release for the
dawn has broken”

Said the angel to Yaakov:

“Release me, for my turn has come to give praise” –

It is evident that the angel was in the power of our
father, Yaakov.

                                                                                                                (Song of
Songs Rabba, Parasha 2)

“So that the socket of his hip was strained as he wrestled with
him” – A time of war and a time of peace.

“As he wrestled with him" – seems to be redundant. This is the basis
of Chazal’s exposition in Hullin (91a).
According to the plain reading, the meaning is “as Yaakov wrestled
with him”, for until now, the angel fought with Yaakov, and now he wished to
break off contact, but Yaakov took the offensive and resumed the struggle with
the angel; therefore, he was punished and his hip was displaced. This was
because Yaakov’s attribute was profuse love of peace, as we had noted above.
Therefore, he, too, should have rested – as did the angel who ceased to fight.
Yaakov, however, betrayed his own attribute, and therefore, was he punished in
his hip, which controls walking and which signifies man’s customary
behavior. We have a major generalization – when a person is used to exhibiting
a fine attribute, it takes on the status of a vow; should he later be
unfaithful to this attribute, he is punished. Furthermore, it may be said that
this comes to teach a lesson for all generations – the behavior of the fathers
is a sign unto the sons – as will be later explained (Haamek Davar, Bereishit
32:32)… and it comes to teach us
how one should behave with his adversaries, not challenging them too much, and
when the fright has passed, it is best to let the pursuer go on his way.

(Haamek
Davar, Bereishit 32:32)

WHAT IS AN ANGEL?

Gavriel Birenbaum

To Baruch and Pasit
with love

on the occasion of
their engagement

Rashi’s remarks on the opening verse of our
parasha are well-known:“And Yaakov sent ‘mal’akhim”’ (The word ‘mal’akh’, commonly
translated ‘angel’, also means ‘messenger’.) – ‘mal’akhim
mamash’ (real angels).

Ibn-Ezra, however, disagrees: These mal’akhim
were from among his servants.

The basis for their disagreement may already
be found in Bereishit Rabba: “Mal’akhim” – these are flesh and blood
messengers; our rabbis say: mal’akhim mamash.

Both the Midrash and Rashi use the term “mal’akhim
mamash” (real mal’akhim) to describe non-human messengers;
from this we derive that already during the period of Chazal – and certainly
from Rashi’s times onward – the word ‘mal’akh’ generally refers to a super-human
being.

            The
original meaning of the word was ‘messenger’. Today, as our knowledge of
Hebrew’s Semitic sister-languages has widened and deepened, we know this for a
certainty. The root m’l’kh’ in the sense of “send” existed, among others, in
Ugaritic (an ancient Semitic language very close to Hebrew) and Amharic (the
language of most Ethiopian Jews). It also exists in modern Arabic (in the hif’il
form). Incidentally, the word ‘melakha’ (work) is derived from that that
same root (not for naught is work also called ‘mishlach-yad’ – ‘that
which the hand is sent to do’).

            There
is no doubt that in many instances in the Bible, the word refers to a blood and
flesh messenger: “And the harlot Rahav… Yehoshua spared… for she had hidden
the messengers which Yehoshua had sent to spy out Jericho.” (Yehoshua 6:25); “When Zebul, governor of
the city, heard… he sent messengers to Avimelekh” (Judges 9:30-31); “And Jezebel sent a messenger to Eliyahu,
saying…” (I Kings 19:2); and many
other places.

            But
in some places in the Bible, the ‘mal’akh’ is an incorporeal messenger
of God. Often he is specifically termed “mal’ach of God”, or the context
leads us to understand that he is not a mortal. These angels can be divided
into two categories: A. messengers of God which have been appointed for a
special task, such as those sent to notify Avraham and Sarah and to overturn
Sodom; the angel which is revealed to Manoah and his wife, parents of Shimshon;
the angel which stood as an adversary before Bil’am. B. The type which is also
called by other names – ‘the sons of the gods,’ ‘cherubim’, ‘seraphim’ – and they are sometimes portrayed as
having wings, and even as flying.

            In
the books of the Bible composed during the period of the Second Temple, there
is an increase in the number of angels, and only there – especially in the Book
of Daniel – are they designated by personal names. This development was already
noted by Chazal in an enlightening item in the Talmud Yerushalmi:

Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said, even the names
of the angels went up with them from Babylon. Earlier: “And one of the
seraphim flew towards me”, “seraphim standing above Him” (Isaiah 6:2,6); and later on: “And the man Gavriel” (Daniel 9:21), “except your prince, Michael”
(Ibid., 10:21).

            The
assumption that angels exist presents a clear theological problem: Does the
one, all-powerful, God, whose glory fills the universe, need messengers,
intermediaries? Do they possess some independent power which is independent of
God? This cannot be. And if so, what need is there of them? All the forces of
nature are messengers of God – “Fire and hail, snow and steam, winds of
storm do His bidding” (Psalms 148:8) – what need is there for winged
creatures? The literature and thought devoted to this subject is wider than all
the seas, and here we can only offer a brief survey.

            A
number of times, the Bible itself mentions the limitations imposed upon angels:
“I can do nothing until you arrive there” – the words of the angel
appointed to destroy Sodom (Bereishit 19);
“If you offer a burnt offering – to God you must offer it” – the words
of the angel to Manoah (Judges 13:16). The
Bible records no prayer directed at an angel; King David turns to God even as
he sees the angel strike: “When David saw the angel who was striking down
the people, he said to the Lord, “I alone am guilty, I alone have done
wrong…” (II Samuel 23:24).

            The
literature of Chazal offers differing opinions as to the nature of the angels,
their tasks, and their power. Because of limitations of space, we present only
the words of the Amora, Rabbi Yuden:

A mortal may have a patron. Should distress
come upon him, he does not immediately enter his patron’s abode; he stands at
the door of his patron, and calls to his servant or son, saying: “So-and-so
stands at the gate to your courtyard.” Perhaps he will grant him entry –
perhaps not. But The Holy One, Blessed Be He, is not like that; if distress
comes upon a person, he cries out not to Michael and not to Gavriel, but to Me
alone does he cry out, and I answer him immediately.

 (Yerushalmi Berakhot 9b)

            According
to Rav Saadya Gaon, the angels are creatures composed of extremely refined and
delicate substances, a kind of fire, and they carry the throne upon which
appears “the perceived glory”.

            Rambam
opines that the angels are totally incorporeal; they are “intelligence without
matter”. In keeping with his major principle of “accept truth, whatever its
source” he is not afraid to say: And this is also what Aristotle said, but the
terminology is different; he says “unattached intellects” and we say “angels” (Guide for the Perplexed II:6). This
determination, of course, raises unavoidable questions: How can “unattached
intellect” be visible to man? How are we to understand the descriptions of
winged angels?

            The
Rambam’s answer is clear: All this occurs in prophetic vision, in proportion to
the imaginative faculty (Guide, I:49).
Just as the intelligent believer knows that the various anthropomorphic
attributes ascribed to The Holy One, Blessed Be He, (“eyes of God”, “hand of
God”, “and His feet will stand that day on the Mount of Olives”, “and God
smelled the pleasant aroma”, “and God said”, and many more) are not to be
understood literally, so must he divest himself of the descriptions which give
the angels body and form; he must understand them as a shell covering inner
content. On the other hand, the Rambam claims that that “angel” is also a
multi-meaning, encompassing, name for all natural forces, physical or
spiritual, which are also – in a certain sense – messengers of The Holy One,
Blessed Be He; there is an angel appointed over passion (as per the words of
Chazal in Bereishit Rabba 85:8), and the words of Rabbi Simon “There is not a
single blade of grass which does not have its constellation in heaven which
touches it and says to it ‘Grow’” (Bereishit
Rabba 10:6) are also to be understood in like fashion.

            Already
in early eras, poems were penned which addressed angels directly. A well-known
example is the “Makhnisey Rahamim”
– “Those who bring in the prayers”
– which are part of the Selihot service of the Ashkenazic
community, and the later poem “Shalom Aleikhem”, sung by many of us on
Shabbat eve. The Rambam and other Halakhic arbiters strongly opposed the
phenomenon; the fifth article of the famous Thirteen Principles of Faith
proclaims:

I believe in complete faith that the Creator,
Blessed is His Name – Him alone is it proper to worship and to exalt and to
publicize his greatness and his meaning, and it is improper to do so to that
which exists beneath Him – the angels, the stars, the spheres . . . as each has
predetermined activity, they have neither reign nor choice other than the will
of the Exalted, and they are not be employed as means by which to reach Him,
but only directly to Him are the thoughts to be directed, setting aside all
others.”

 (Rambam, Commentary on the
Mishna, Preface to Chapter “Helek”, Kappakh edition, p. 142)

The rulings of Halakhic authorities in
Germany and Italy were more lenient; they found ways to preserve these
beautiful poems (see D. Goldshmidt’s preface to The
Order of Sehlihot, According to Custom in Poland, pp. 11-21).

            In
the literature of the Hassidic and Mussar (ethical) movements, there is great
development of the motif of angels as creatures having no freedom of choice. Their
holiness and high position are not of their choosing – in contrast to man “whose “actions bring him close and whose
actions repel him”. These ideas have their basis in the famous Midrash, in
which Moshe our teacher is given the opportunity to convince the angels that
the Torah is suitable for Man and not for angels:

…And what else is written
[in the Torah]? “You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, you
shall not steal” – Does envy exist among you? Do you have a yetser hara (evil
inclination)? Immediately they admitted to God [the correctness of his
decision].

(Bavli Shabbat 89a)

The concept of peace is bound up in the
consciousness of many with the concept of angels. We find in the Bible: “Hark!
The Arielites cry aloud; Shalom’s messengers weep bitterly” (Isaiah
33:7). Yet more in Chazal:

Great is the peace awarded the righteous;
when they depart this world, three companies of angels of peace precede them.
The first proclaims: “He shall come to peace”; the second says: “He
shall have rest on his couch”; The third says: “Who walked
straightforward.

(Sifri
Zuta 6:21)

            Just
as Zionism – including religious Zionism – did not wait for a messiah to gather
the dispersed of Israel and to build the Temple in a miraculous, supernatural
way, but rather rose up and took action, as though in realization of “Level
in the wilderness a highway for our God” (Isaiah
40:3), so must the making of peace not be left in the hands of
angels. Peace is not “Hilkhata l’Mashiha” – “Laws for the Messianic era” – a matter for angels to
deal with; they are in a state of eternal peace imposed upon them by the very
nature of their creation. We mortals, given the freedom of choice, are
obligated to seek and pursue peace with our enemies.

Dr. Gavriel Birenbaum lectures on the Hebrew
Language in Bar-Ilan Univ.

“Shimon and Levi are brothers”

This is
problematic, for it would seem that they had acted with the consent of – and in
consultation with – her [Dina’s] father; for they stood before him, and he
understood that they were speaking deceitfully – why, then, was he angry?
Furthermore, it cannot be that he wished to marry off his daughter to the
Canaanite who defiled her, and if all the brothers were partners to the
deceitful answer – though Shimon and Levi
alone perpetrated the act – why did the
father cursed the wrath of Shimon and Levi alone?

The answer is thus: The deceit of all the brothers lay in their telling
them to circumcise all males, assuming that all the men of the town would not
do so, and even should they obey their leaders and circumcise themselves, they
would come on the third day, when all were in pain, and take back their
daughter from the house of Shekhem. This was the strategy of the brothers,
approved by their father. But Shimon and Levi sought vengeance, and decimated
all the men of the town…

Because the people of Shekhem were evil, and they considered blood to be
no more important than water, the sons of Yaakov wanted to take revenge by the
sword of vengeance, and they killed the king and all the inhabitants of his
city, for they were his servants, obeying his commands, and the covenant of the
circumcision was considered by them to be meaningless, no more than an act of
obsequiousness to their masters. Here Yaakov says that they endangered him, as
is written, “You have brought trouble upon me, making me odious”; later
on, he curses their wrath because they wronged the people of the town who had
said to them in his presence, “And we shall dwell with you and be one
people” and they might have turned to God; and they reneged on their word,
and perhaps they [the people of Shekhem] would have turned back to God and they
killed them with no justification, for they did them no harm whatever, and this
is the meaning of “their weapons are tools of lawlessness” (Bereishit 34:13).

(Ramban 34:13)

…And he was further angered lest people say that it was upon his advice
that the act was done, and this – a prophet performing acts of lawlessness and
plunder – would constitute a profanation of God’s name. This is the meaning of
“Let not my person be included in their council” – excusing himself by
explaining that he was not aware of their intent as they answered deceitfully,
and he was not counted in their assembly as they came upon the town and
murdered them.

(Ramban Bereishit 49:6)

…Even The Holy One, Blessed Be He seems to present a problem, for one
might come and claim: The Torah itself justifies their behavior, for what is
written following the incident? “The fear of the Lord was upon the
surrounding town, and they did not pursue the sons of Yaakov.” Does not
that miracle constitute proof that God approved of their action?

The Torah teaches and
reiterates that miracles and omens are not proof of truth. Pharaoh’s magicians
also succeeded in their magic… daily and throughout all of human history we are
witness to the victorious arm of falsehood – but none of this proves anything…
for – as a contemporary sage said – among the many and varied terms employed in
description of God’s attributes, we do not find the word “success”.

(Prof. Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in
the Book of Bereishit, 267-268)

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