Torah Study: Vayera 2021/5782

angel (n.)
"one of a class of spiritual beings, attendants and messengers of God," a c. 1300 fusion of Old English engel (with hard -g-) and Old French angele. Both are from Late Latin angelus, from Greek angelos, literally "messenger, envoy, one that announces," in the New Testament "divine messenger," which is possibly related to angaros "mounted courier," both from an unknown Oriental word (Watkins compares Sanskrit ajira- "swift;" Klein suggests Semitic sources). Used in Scriptural translations for Hebrew mal'akh (yehowah) "messenger (of Jehovah)," from base l-'-k "to send." An Old English word for it was aerendgast, literally "errand-spirit."
Of persons, "one who is loving, gracious, or lovely," by 1590s. The medieval English gold coin (a new issue of the noble, first struck 1465 by Edward VI) was so called for the image of archangel Michael slaying the dragon, which was stamped on it. It was the coin given to patients who had been "touched" for the King's Evil. Angel food cake is from 1881; angel dust "phencyclidine" is from 1968.

FUNCTIONS OF ANGELS
Offering praise to God is regarded as the major function of angels (I. En. 40; Test. Patr., Levi 4). Their functions as intermediaries between God and humanity were, however, also of special importance. As early as the Book of Tobit (3:16; 12:12, 15) Raphael is depicted as one of the seven angels charged with bringing the prayers of man before God's throne (compare Test. Patr., Dan 6). At times, an angel is ordered by God to accompany a man on his travels in order to ward off dangers that may beset him, or, as in the Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, to guide Baruch through the seven heavens and explain the sights. More frequent is the angels' role as intercessors, pleading for man before God (I En. 9:4 ff.; 15:2; etc.); sometimes man pleads with the angels to transmit his prayers to God (ibid. 9:2). Angels also appear in opposition to evil angels who wish to act as prosecutors before the throne of God. It is significant, that in spite of Exodus 33:11 ("God would speak to Moses face to face"), the prevailing opinion of later traditions is that at the giving of the Law the angels acted as intermediaries between God and Moses (Jos., Ant., 15:136; Jub. 1:27 ff.; Gal. 3:19; Heb. 2:2). Specific mention of the presence of angels at the right hand of God, during the Revelation on Sinai, is made in the Septuagint, Deuteronomy 33:2....
ORIGIN OF ANGELS
The Talmud and Midrash contain a variety of opinions on the origin and nature of angels. The angelswere created on the second or the fifth day of creation (R. Johanan and R. Ḥanina, Gen. R. 1:3 and parall.; S.A. Wertheimer, Battei Midrashot, 1 (1950²), 25; cf. also R. Kirchheim in Oẓar Neḥmad, 3 (1860), 59, ed. J. Blumenfeld). Creation of angels is continuous since every pronouncement by God results in the creation of angels. Angels walk upright, speak Hebrew, and are endowed with understanding; they can fly in the air, move from one end of the world to another, and foretell the future (Ḥag. 16a). Thus angels have something in common with both men and demons. They have the shape of man, but consist half of fire and half of water (TJ, RH 2; PdRK, ed. Mandelbaum, 6; Song R. 3:11, 15). The angels enjoy the splendor of the Shekhinah and are free of the yeẓer ha-ra ("evil inclination"; Gen. R. 48:11); they have no needs (Yoma 4b; Mid. Ps. to 78:25; cf. also LXX and Targum, Ps. 78:25; MGWJ, 22 (1873), 113); they are classified according to countries and as a result there are angels who must not leave Ereẓ Israel (Tanḥ. B., Gen. 178); no angel may carry out more than one mission at a time (BM 86b; Gen. R. 50:2; Justin Martyr, Dialog. 56c); and they are capable of error (Eccles. R. 6:10, no. 1: cf. Adam and Eve 13–05). According to one concept the size of an angel is equal to a third of the world (R. Berechiah, PR 83:12; Gen. R. 68:12).
(Encyclopedia Judaica, Angels & Angelology)

An 'angel' type story:
A colleague of mine told a story that when he was growing up, it was Purim and the person who read the Megillah for his congregation was unable to come that evening. The synagogue was in a tough spot, and then someone walked in who was unknown to the community. He explained he was able to read Megillah, and they invited him to read. At the end, they thanked him, he left, and they never saw him again.

Yehuda Ha'Levi, The Kuzari (Ch 2:2, 12th century)
He did not, however, perform any miracle for the patriarchs as He did for Moses, saying: 'but my name J H W H was I not known to them' (Exodus 6:2). This means by My name J H W H, since the bēth in beēl shaddāi refers to the former. The wonders done for Moses and the Israelites left no manner of doubt in their souls that the Creator of the world also created these things which He brought into existence immediately by His will, as the plagues of Egypt, the dividing of the Red Sea, the manna, the pillar of a cloud, and the like. The reason of this was not because they were higher than the Patriarchs, but because they were a multitude, and had nourished doubt in their souls, whilst the patriarchs had fostered the utmost faith and purity of mind. If they had all their lives been pursued by misfortune, their faith in God would not have suffered. Therefore they required no signs.

Isaac's Divine Conception?
Samuel Z. Glaser, "Isaac's Divine Conception?" TheTorah.com (2018). https://thetorah.com/article/isaacs-divine-conception
“The Lord visited Sarah” (Gen 21:1) – When God (and his angels) appears to Abraham to announce the birth of Isaac, the text implies a hidden visit to Sarah. Does this mean, as both Philo and Paul claim, that Isaac was born from a divine conception?
Abraham, Sarah and the three Angels. Marc Chagall 1966. Wikiart
‍Why God and the Two Men / Angels Inquire about Sarah
‍After Abraham circumcises his household and himself, YHWH appears to him while he is sitting in his tent.^[1] As the story unfolds, Abraham sees three “men” standing near him. According to the straightforward reading of the text, it is YHWH plus two angels.^[2] After they eat, they inquire about the absent Sarah:
^{בראשית יח:ט}וַיֹּאמְר֣וּ אֵׄלָׄ֔יׄוׄ אַיֵּ֖ה שָׂרָ֣ה אִשְׁתֶּ֑ךָ וַיֹּ֖אמֶר הִנֵּ֥ה בָאֹֽהֶל׃
^{Gen 18:9} They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he replied, “There, in the tent.”
Oddly, even though this verse suggests that the men are looking for her, the story simply continues with the men speaking to Abraham:
^יח:יוַיֹּאמֶר שׁ֣וֹב אָשׁ֤וּב אֵלֶ֙יךָ֙ כָּעֵ֣ת חַיָּ֔ה וְהִנֵּה־בֵ֖ן לְשָׂרָ֣ה אִשְׁתֶּ֑ךָ וְשָׂרָ֥ה שֹׁמַ֛עַת פֶּ֥תַח הָאֹ֖הֶל וְה֥וּא אַחֲרָֽיו:
^18:10 And he said, "I will return to you at the due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son!" Sarah was listening at the entrance of the tent, which was behind him.
Highlighting Sarah’s Modesty
The rabbis notice this problem, and offer some homiletical suggestions (b. Bava Metzia87a):
ויאמרו אליו איה שרה אשתך ויאמר הנה באהל - להודיע ששרה אמנו צנועה היתה. אמר רב יהודה אמר רב, ואיתימא רבי יצחק: יודעים היו מלאכי השרת ששרה אמנו באהל היתה, אלא מאי באהל - כדי לחבבה על בעלה
“They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he replied, “There, in the tent” – this comes to teach that our mother Sarah was modest. Rav Yehudah said in the name of Rav—and some say Rabbi Yitzhak—“The ministering angels knew that our mother, Sarah, was in the tent. So what was [the question leading to Abraham’s response] ‘in the tent’ for? In order to make her beloved to her husband.”
According to this answer, the angels were just trying to get Abraham to notice how modest Sarah was by calling his attention to the fact that she wasn’t there.
To Give Sarah “a Cup of Blessing”
The Talmud records yet another answer:
רבי יוסי ברבי חנינא אמר: כדי לשגר לה כוס של ברכה
Rabbi Yossi b’Rabbi Chanina said: “To be able to pass her the cup of blessing.”
This interpretation suggests that the angels sent Sarah back the cup of wine that was blessed during the meal, a rabbinic custom familiar from the Talmud.
Although neither of these answers fit with the simple meaning of the text, they highlight the lacuna. Having asked where Sarah is, why does the story change course and simply continue with the visitors’ conversation with Abraham?
Did Someone Go in the Tent?
In the MT of v. 9, the word אליו has dots called punctia extraordinaria, which, according to the rabbis, communicate some sort of hesitation about the whether the word(s) or letter(s) really belong in the biblical text.^[3] Genesis Rabbah (48:9, Theodor-Albeck) interprets:
[ויאמרו אליו איה שרה אשתך] איו נקוד ל' אינו נקוד,
“And they said to him: ‘Where is your wife Sarah’” (Gen 18:9) – The letters aleph, yod, vav have dots, the lamed has no dots.^[4]
...אמר ר' עזריה כשם שאמרו לאברהם איה שרה כך אמרו לשרה איו אברהם.
…R. Azariah says: “Just as they said to Abraham ‘where is she (איה),’ thus they said to Sarah ‘where is he’ ^[5](איו).”
R. Azariah here assumes that the dots communicate a missing scene, namely that the angels entered the tent and spoke with Sarah directly. The change of verb tense from the plural “they said” (וַיֹּאמְרוּ) in verse 9 to the singular “he said” (וַיֹּאמֶר) in v. 10 implies a change of scene.^[6] In the first scene, all three angels are speaking with Abraham, and the next scene, only one announces Sarah’s pregnancy and the future birth of Isaac. In between these two speeches, the angels entered the tent to be with Sarah.
Why does the text imply a scene with Sarah secluded with angels? Is it possible that this visit was not merely to announce that Sarah would become pregnant but is also explaining how Sarah, a menopausal woman, becomes miraculously pregnant?
וה' פקד את שרה: And YHWH Pakad-ed Sarah
Support for this possibility comes from the description of Isaac’s birth:
^{בראשית כא:א}וַי-הוָה פָּקַד אֶת שָׂרָה כַּאֲשֶׁר אָמָר וַיַּעַשׂ יְ-הוָה לְשָׂרָה כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבֵּר.
Gen 21:1 YHWH visited Sarah as He had promised, and YHWH did for Sarah as He had spoken.
The verse is written with poetic parallelism. YHWH “pakad”s Sarah and he does what he promised. The root פ.ק.ד has a broad semantic range in the Bible. In this context, it can mean “remember,” “take care of,” or “visit.”^[7] The idea that God visited Sarah goes together with the verb “to do” (ע.ש.ה) which is used in the parallel hemistich.
When did this visit take place? Ramban (1194-1270) suggests that it must have occurred some time between the visit in chapter 18 when Sarah’s pregnancy was announced and when Sarah gave birth in ch. 21, since in that passage, God promises to return; otherwise the promise of a future visit is never fulfilled:
...הקב״ה אמר לו בכאן למועד אשוב אליך ובין במלאך או בהקב״ה לא מצינו ששב אליו למועדו אולי נכלל בלשון וי״י פקד את שרה כאשר אמר...
…The Holy One, blessed be He, said here (Gen 18:14) “I will return to you at the time,” and whether this refers to an angel or God, we do not find that he ever returned at some time. Perhaps, this is referred to in the words (Gen 21:1): “God visited Sarah as he had promised…”^[8]
Nevertheless, Gen 21:1 could also be referring to the very visit recorded in ch. 18 (both texts are attributed to J in source critical scholarship). According to this, the verse is telling us that when YHWH visited Sarah, he caused her to conceive. YHWH further communicates this fact when he promises that when he returns in the future, Sarah would already be with child (Gen 18:14). In other words, the verse affirms what God did for Sarah then, i.e., that he caused her to become pregnant during that visit.
Either way, the cryptic allusion to God’s visit to Sarah implies that contact with, or proximity to, the divine was necessary for her to conceive. This need not be understood as something sexual in the style of a god seducing a human woman like we find in Greek myths. In fact, nothing in the Isaac story implies lust on the part of the divine being, but only grace towards an elderly barren woman, married to one of YHWH’s faithful worshipper’s.
‍

Divine Conceptions
The birth of Isaac is not the only place in the Bible in which a divine or angelic conception is implied.

• When Eve names Cain (Gen 4:1), she explains his name by saying “I have created a man with YHWH”^[9] (קָנִיתִי אִישׁ אֶת יְ-הוָה).
• The children of God (בני אלוהים) are said to have propagated with women and produced giants (Gen 6:1-4).
• The Second Temple works, 1 Enoch (106) and Genesis Apocryphon (col. 2) both describe how Noah’s father, Lamech, was worried that Noah was the product of a divine being and not his own son.
• Samson seems to be the product of a union between Manoach’s wife and a visiting angel.^[10]

Unlike the children of God account, nothing carnal is implied in the Isaac story, only that Sarah needed to be in physical proximity to the deity in order for the miraculous conception to take effect.
Philo’s “Mystery of Isaac”
Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 BCE-50CE), the most influential Jewish Hellenistic philosopher, explicitly read the account of Isaac’s birth as referring to divine conception. He believed that an important philosophical “mystery” inhered in the story of Isaac’s birth.^[11] Isaac represents joy (his name means “laughter”), because he is one with the power behind the universe. This is because Isaac is actually God’s son and not Abraham’s:
[W]hen happiness, that is Isaac, was born, she says, in the pious exaltation, "The Lord has caused me laughter, and whoever shall hear of it shall rejoice with Me." Open your ears, therefore, O ye initiated, and receive the most sacred mysteries. Laughter is joy; and the expression, "has caused," is equivalent to "has begotten." So that what is here said has some such meaning as this, "The Lord has begotten Isaac." (Allegorical Laws, 3:219, Yonge trans.)
And I will bring forward as a competent witness in proof of what I have said, the most holy Moses. For he introduces Sarah as conceiving a son when God beheld her by himself; but he represents her as bringing forth her son, not to him who beheld her then, but to him who was eager to attain to wisdom, and his name is called Abraham. (On the Cherubs, 45, Yonge trans.)
In one passage (On the Change of Names, 131), Philo even calls Isaac “God’s son” (υἱὸς θεοῦ). Howard Schwartz, a scholar of Bible and Jewish thought, explains Philo’s exegesis:
How does Philo arrive at this explanation? He interprets Sarah’s comment that “God has caused me laughter” (Gen. 21:6) to mean that the Lord has begotten Isaac. He interprets “has caused” to mean “begotten,” and he substitutes Isaac for “laughter,” since “Isaac” means “laughter,” referring to Sarah’s laughter in Genesis 18:12, when the angel said that she would have a child even though Sarah was 90 years old.^[12]
Although Philo is more interested in the philosophical implications of this divine conception, he is basing it on a reading of the text similar to the one suggested above.^[13]
From Philo to Paul
Paul of Tarsus (c. 5-67 C.E.) appears to have shared this idea. His letter to the Galatians states:
^4:22 …It is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and the other by a free woman. ^4:23 One, the child of the slave, was born according to the flesh; the other, the child of the free woman, was born through the promise.
In explaining Paul’s exegesis, Daniel Boyarin writes:
It should be noted that in the biblical text, it is not stated that Abraham “knew Sarah his wife” after the “annunciation.” There may have even been, then, a tradition that the conception of Isaac was entirely by means of the promise… The point would be that Hagar had sex with a man in order to conceive, but Sarah did not!^[14]
Paul was likely influenced by Philo’s thinking here, whether directly (Philo was an older contemporary of Paul) or because Philo’s allegories were “in the air” among Hellenistic Jews reading the Pentateuch.^[15]
Purging Divine Conception from Judaism
Ironically, Paul’s adoption of Philo’s reading, and his application of the concept to Jesus, likely sealed its fate among Jewish interpreters. The New Testament traditions of Jesus’ birth through the holy spirit (Math 1:18, Luke, 1:35) rendered any such idea anathema, even as applied to Isaac and even without the connotations of divinity familiar from Christian theology. Jewish tradition thus permanently rejected Philo’s “mystery of Isaac,” nevertheless, certain clues in the text point to the possibility that Philo was reading the Torah correctly all along.