When we picture angels, the classic beings from Western paintings and sculpture often come to mind. They are clothed in white robes, have huge wings and shimmering halos. Sometimes they are playing a harp.
Other than harp-playing, they don’t seem to do that much. Alongside cherubs, they are peaceful pacifists, watching over the goings-on of the humans. Angelic, in English, seems to suggest sweet, beautiful, smiling, and passive.
But the angels of our Chumash are different. There are the three that visit Avraham – and those creatures are anything but passive. They each have a job. One is there to deliver the news of Issac’s forthcoming birth. Another is there to save Lot. But most remarkably, one has been sent with the task to destroy and kill the entire city of Sodom.
Then there’s the angel that encounters Jacob. They don’t sit down for tea. They fight and they wrestle. It’s an all-out, take-no-prisoners brawl. Jacob gets a new name, and permanent limp.
An angel stops Abraham from slaughtering Yitzchak. An angel blocks Bilam’s path – with a sword, no less.
I don’t think those angels had halos, and they are definitely NOT passive and peaceful. Angelic, to the Chumash, seems to mean something else entirely: something that is wildly interventionist – even sometimes violent. Angels do not stand by and passively watch. They engage.
Perhaps that is the Torah’s message: to be “angelic” is to act. To be angelic is to get up, and make our presence count.
That’s much harder than playing the harp. But to me, it sounds like the true meaning of heavenly.
May we all have the courage to stand and be angelic.