The exact number of angels is no where mentioned in Scripture; but it is always represented as very great. Daniel, vii, 10, says of the Ancient of Days, “A fiery stream came from before him; thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him.” Jesus Christ says, that his heavenly Father could have given him more than twelve legions of angels, that is, more than seventy-two thousand, Matt. xxvi, 53; and the Psalmist declares, that the chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels, lxviii, 17, These are all intended not to express any exact number, but indefinitely a very large one.
Though all the angels were created alike good, yet Jude informs us, verse 6, that some of them “kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation,” and these God hath “reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day.” Speculations on the cause and occasion of their fall are all vain and trifling. Milton is to be read on this subject, as on others, not as a divine, but as a poet. All we know, is, that they are not in their first “estate,” or in their original place; that this was their own fault, for “they left their own habitation;” that they are in chains, yet with liberty to tempt; and that they are reserved to the general judgment.
Dr. Prideaux observes, that the minister of the synagogue, who officiated in offering the public prayers, being the mouth of the congregation, delegated by them, as their representative, messenger, or angel, to address God in prayer for them, was in Hebrew called sheliack-zibbor, that is, the angel of the church; and that from hence the chief ministers of the seven churches of Asia are in the Revelation, by a name borrowed from the synagogue, called angels of those churches.
THE ANGEL OF THE LORD, or the Angel Jehovah, a title given to Christ in his different appearances to the patriarchs and others in the Old Testament.
When the Angel of the Lord found Hagar in the wilderness, “she called the name of Jehovah that spake to her, Thou God seest me.”--Jehovah appeared unto Abraham in the plains of Mamre. Abraham lifted up his eyes, and three men, three persons in human form, “stood by him.” One of the three is called Jehovah. And Jehovah said, “Shall I hide from Abraham the thing that I do?” Appearances of the same personage occur to Isaac and to Jacob under the name of “the God of Abraham, and of Isaac.” After one of these manifestations, Jacob says, “I have seen God face to face;” and at another, “Surely the Lord (Jehovah) is in this place.” The same Jehovah was made visible to Moses, and gave him his commission; and God said, “I am that I am; thou shalt say to the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you.” The same Jehovah went before the Israelites by day in a pillar of cloud, and by night in a pillar of fire; and by Him the law was given amidst terrible displays of power and majesty from Mount Sinai. “I am the Lord (Jehovah) thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage: Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” &c. The collation of a few passages, or of the different parts of the same passages, of Scripture, will show that Jehovah, and “the Angel of the Lord,” when used in this eminent sense, are the same person. Jacob says of Bethel, where he had exclaimed, “Surely Jehovah is in this place;” “The Angel of God appeared to me in a dream, saying, I am the God of Bethel.” Upon his death bed he gives the names of God and Angel to this same person: “The God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads.” So in Hosea xii, 2, 5, it is said, “By his strength he had power with God; yea, he had power over the Angel, and prevailed.” “We found him in Bethel, and there he spake with us, even the Lord God of Hosts; the Lord is his memorial.” Here the same person has the names, God, Angel, and Lord God of Hosts. “The Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, (Jehovah,) that, since thou hast done this thing, in blessing will I bless thee.” The Angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire; but this same Angel “called to him out of the bush, and said, I am the God of thy fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.” To omit many other passages, St. Stephen, in alluding to this part of the history of Moses, in his speech before the council, says, “There appeared to Moses in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, an Angel of the Lord in a flame of fire,” showing that that phraseology was in use among the Jews in his day, and that this Angel and Jehovah were regarded as the same being; for he adds, “Moses was in the church in the wilderness with the Angel which spoke unto him in Mount Sinai.” There is one part of the history of the Jews in the wilderness, which so fully shows that they distinguished this Angel of Jehovah from all created angels, as to deserve particular attention. In Exodus xxiii, 20, God makes this promise to Moses and the Israelites: “Behold, I send an Angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him, and obey his voice; provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him.” Of this Angel let it be observed, that he is here represented as the guide and protector of the Israelites; to him they were to owe their conquests and their settlement in the promised land, which are in other places often attributed to the immediate agency of God; that they are cautioned to “beware of him,” to reverence and stand in dread of him; that the pardoning of transgressions belongs to him; finally, “that the name of God was in him.” This name must be understood of God’s own peculiar name, Jehovah, I am, which he assumed as his distinctive appellation at his first appearing to Moses; and as the names of God are indicative of his nature, he who had a right to bear the peculiar name of God, must also have his essence. This view is put beyond all doubt by the fact, that Moses and the Jews so understood the matter; for afterward when their sins had provoked God to threaten not to go up with them himself, but to commit them to “an angel who should drive out the Canaanite,” &c, the people mourned over this as a great calamity, and Moses betook himself to special intercession, and rested not until he obtained the repeal of the threat, and the renewed promise, “My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.” Nothing, therefore, can be more clear than that Moses and the Israelites considered the promise of the Angel, in whom was “the name of God,” as a promise that God himself would go with them. With this uncreated Angel, this presence of the Lord, they were satisfied, but not with “an angel” indefinitely, who was by nature of that order of beings usually so called, and therefore a created being; for at the news of God’s determination not to go up with them, Moses hastens to the tabernacle to make his intercessions, and refuses an inferior conductor:--“If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.”
The Jews held this Word, or Angel of the Lord, to be the future Messiah, as appears from the writings of their older rabbins. So that he appears as the Jehovah of all the three dispensations, and yet is invariably described as a separate person from the unseen Jehovah who sends him. He was then the Word to be made flesh, and to dwell for a time among us, to open the way to God by his sacrifice, and to rescue the race, whose nature he should assume, from sin and death. This he has now actually effected; and the Patriarchal, Mosaic, and Christian religions are thus founded upon the same great principles,--the fall and misery of mankind, and their deliverance by a Divine Redeemer.
ANGELICS, worshippers of angels. Those who consider this as a sect of the Apostolic age, think St. Paul, Coloss. ii, 18, cautions Christians against a superstitious reverence of these celestial agents of the Deity, which they conceive to have been borrowed from the idolatrous reverence paid by the Heathen to genii and demons. The Jews of that time are also accused of worshipping angels, and probably this superstition might through them influence the Judaizing members of some of the Apostolic churches. This idolatry may now be too justly charged upon the Romish and some other corrupt churches.
ANGER, a resentful emotion of the mind, arising upon the receipt, or supposed receipt, of an affront or injury; and also simple feeling of strong displacency at that which is in itself evil, or base, or injurious to others. In the latter sense it is not only innocent but commendable. Strong displeasure against evil doers, provided it be free from hatred and malice, and interferes not with a just placableness, is also blameless, Eph. iv, 26. When it is vindictive against the person of our neighbour, or against the innocent creatures of God, it is wicked, Matt. v, 22. When anger, hatred, wrath, and fury, are ascribed to God, they denote no tumultuous passion, but merely his holy and just displeasure with sin and sinners; and the evidence of it in his terrible threatenings, or righteous judgments, Psalm vi, 1, and vii, 11. We must, however, take care that we refine not too much. These are Scriptural terms, and are often used of God; and though they express not a tumultuous, much less an unjust, passion, there is something in God which answers to them. In him they are principles arising out of his holy and just nature; and for this reason they are more steady and uniform, and more terrible, than if they were emotions, or as we say passions. Nor can we rightly regard the severity of the judgments which God has so often executed upon sin without standing in awe of him, “as a consuming fire” to the ungodly.
ANIMAL, is an organized and living body, endowed with sensation. Minerals are said to grow or increase, plants to grow and live, and animals alone to have sensation. The Hebrews distinguished animals into pure and impure, clean and unclean; or those which might be eaten and offered, and those whose use was prohibited. The sacrifices which they offered, were, 1. Of the beeve kind; a cow, bull, or calf. The ox could not be offered, because it was mutilated; and when it is said oxen were sacrificed, we are to understand bulls, Lev. xxii, 18, 19. Calmet thinks, that the mutilation of animals was neither permitted, nor used, among the Israelites. 2. Of the goat kind; a he-goat, a she-goat, or kid, Lev. xxii, 24. 3. Of the sheep kind; a ewe, ram, or lamb. When it is said sheep are offered, rams are chiefly meant, especially in burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin; for as to peace-offerings, or sacrifices of pure devotion, a female might be sometimes offered, provided it was pure, and without blemish, Lev. iii, 1.
Besides these three sorts of animals, used in sacrifices, many others might be eaten, wild or tame; as the stag, the roe-buck, and in general all that have cloven feet, or that chew the cud, Lev. ix, 2, 3, &c. All that have not cloven hoofs, and do not chew the cud, were esteemed impure, and could neither be offered nor eaten. The fat of all sorts of animals sacrificed was forbidden to be eaten. The blood of all kinds of animals generally, and in all cases, was prohibited on pain of death, Lev. iii, 17; vii, 23–27. Neither did the Israelites eat animals which had been taken and touched by a devouring or impure beast, as a dog, a wolf, a boar, &c, Exodus xxii, 3; nor of any animal that died of itself. Whoever touched its carcass was impure until the evening; and till that time, and before he had washed his clothes, he did not return to the company of other Jews, Lev. xi, 39, 40; xvii, 15; xxii, 8. Fish that had neither fins nor scales were unclean, Lev. xi, 20. Birds which walk on the ground with four feet, as bats, and flies that have many feet, were impure. The law, however, excepts locusts, which have their hind feet higher than those before, and rather leap than walk. These were clean, and might be eaten, Lev. xi, 21, 22, as they still are in Palestine. The distinction between clean and unclean animals has been variously accounted for. Some have thought it symbolical, intended to teach the avoidance of those evil qualities for which the unclean animals were remarkable; others, that, in order that the Hebrews might be preserved from idolatry, they were commanded to kill and eat many animals which were sacred among the Egyptians, and were taught to look with abhorrence upon others which they reverenced. Others have found a reason in the unwholesomeness of the flesh of the creatures pronounced by the law to be unclean, so that they resolve the whole into a sanative regulation. But it is not to be forgotten that this division of animals into clean and unclean existed both before the law of Moses, and even prior to the flood. The foundation of it was therefore clearly sacrificial; for before the deluge it could not have reference to health, since animal food was not allowed to man prior to the deluge; and as no other ground for the distinction appears, except that of sacrifice, it must therefore have had reference to the selection of victims to be solemnly offered to God, as a part of worship, and as the means of drawing near to him by expiatory rites for the forgiveness of sins. Some it is true, have regarded this distinction of clean and unclean beasts as used by Moses by way of prolepsis, or anticipation,--a notion which, if it could not be refuted by the context, would be perfectly arbitrary. Not only are the beasts, which Noah was to receive, spoken of as clean and unclean; but it will be noticed, that, in the command to take them into the ark, a difference is made in the number to be preserved--the clean being to be received by sevens, and the unclean by two of a kind. This shows that this distinction among beasts had been established in the time of Noah; and thus the assumption of a prolepsis is refuted. The critical attempts which have been made to show that animals were allowed to man for food, previous to the flood, have wholly failed.