Berakhot 088

You will recall that Yiftah Shapir had asked two questions: what is the origin of the various angels that are mentioned in our prayers and can this be reconciled with our strict monotheism? I attempted to deal with the first question in the previous shiur and now will try to address the second question:-

I do not see that angels constitute an immediate compromise of strict monotheism; this would only be the case if they were accorded a divine status, as being in some way part of or equal to the Deity. In Jewish thought this has never been the case. The Hebrew word for angel, mal'akh strictly speaking means 'messenger' – as does the Greek word angelos. As long as angels are perceived only as agents of God I do not see how they could compromise even the strictest monotheism. For example, how does the angel that appears to Abraham at the crucial moment of the Akedah story [Genesis 22:11] compromise monotheism?

However, I think that Yiftah is not really concerned with that aspect of the question, but my hunch is that in fact he is uncomfortable with the very idea that other beings are even deemed to exist within the Divine aegis. Yiftah's question is therefore not really directed at monotheism but at another basic conceptualization that we have concerning the Deity: non-physicality. If God is non-physical how can the prophet speak of God being "seated on a high and lofty throne, his train filling the palace" [Isaiah 6:1]? But the question is even more complex. How many times do we read in the Torah "And Adonai said…"? But how can a non-physical Deity – by definition not possessed of vocal chords, a voice box and so forth – give utterance to anything at all?

When we put the question in this manner I do not think anyone will find it difficult to understand why Rambam sees every physical reference to the Deity, even the remotest, as being pure metaphor and not to be understood literally. God does not sit, God does not speak, God does not really have "a strong hand and an outstretched arm" – the list of examples could be endless. As far as Rambam is concerned all such expressions are no less obviously metaphoric than for us, say, lines such as John Donne's "Death, be not proud … Death, thou shalt die" or Homer's "Gossomer-clad dawn". Death is not really a personal entity, and neither, of course, is the dawn, so the dawn cannot wear any clothes at all! And even the most patriotic American knows, when singing "My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing", that the home of liberty is not listening, cannot listen. "It is all pure metaphor, simile and anthropomorphism" as Rambam so lucidly put it.

Now let us ask how this Deity, whose verity is so incomprehensible to us that we can only speak of God in metaphoric terms – how can this Deity be associated with angels?