face of Abraham, the entertainer of angels, that the angels might do him no harm. They raise objections to God’s decrees, and not in vain; they.even prevent His wishes from being carried into execution. Gabriel was disobedient, and was punished on that account; but Dubbiel, who was set in his place, showed himself hostile to Israel, and was therefore replaced by Gabriel. Judgments are inflicted on the angel princes. Their sinlessness is only relative; sin is wanting only in so far as it is rooted in sensuality. A similar view is found in Enoch: the stars are punished for disobedience, and the “watchers” for their union with the daughters of men. It is also clear that where angels are thought of as elemental spirits the question of their morality can hardly arise. In the Apocalypse the angels of the Churches are praised or blamed for the spiritual condition of these Churches, which shows once more how unjustifiable is the sharp division of angels into the two classes of perfectly sinless and irremediably evil. Angels are mentioned which are not evil spirits, and yet are not wholly good.
In the O.T. not much is said which would lead us to infer any gradation of rank among angels, though in Daniel an elementary system of division is present. In Rabbinical theology we have a developed hierarchy, in which ten orders are enumerated (Weber, p- 153). In Enoch we read: “And He will call on all the host of the heavens and all the holy ones above, and the host of God, the Cherubim, Seraphim and Ophanim, and all the angels of powers and all the angels of principalities, and the Elect One, and the other powers on the earth, over the water, on that day” (Ixi. 10). Similarly we read in the Slavonic Enoch that in the seventh heaven Enoch saw “a very great light and all the fiery hosts of great archangels, and incorporeal powers; cherubim and seraphim, thrones and the watchfulness of many eyes. There were ten troops, a station of bright- ness” (xx. 1, cf. 3). Ranks of angels are recognised also in the N.T.
In Deut. xxxiii, 2 we have in our present text, which probably needs correction, a reference to the coming of God to His people from Sinai and from “holy myriads”.~ The LXX reads “ with the myriads of Kadesh,” but has a reference to “angels with Him on His right hand” in the next clause. This passage was interpreted to mean that the Law had been given through angels. We find this in Rabbinical writings, also in the report of a speech of Herod the Great in Josephus, «14., xv., 5,3. In the Book of Jubilees we have detailed accounts of the giving of precepts by the angels. We find a reference to this function of the angels in the speech of Stephen
(Acts vii. 53, cf ver. 38) and the Epistle to the Hebrews (ii. 2). VOL, IIL. 31