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Part One · Chapter Forty-Nine — Angels: Incorporeal Intellects and the Imagery of Wings
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The angels likewise are not corporeal — rather they are intellects separate from matter; they are created beings, and God created them, as will be explained. In Bereshit Rabbah they said: 'the flaming sword that turned every way' (Gen 3:24) — 'on account of His ministering servants who are a flaming fire that turns: sometimes men, sometimes women, sometimes spirits, sometimes angels.' They stated explicitly by this saying that they are not corporeal, and that they have no fixed material form outside the mind; rather all of this is within the prophetic vision and in accordance with the action of the imaginative faculty, as will be mentioned in connection with the meaning of the reality of prophecy. As for their saying 'sometimes women,' the prophets too may see the angels in the prophetic vision in the form of women — this points to the saying of Zechariah, peace be upon him: 'and behold two women coming out, and the wind was in their wings' etc.
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You already know that apprehending something entirely free of matter, totally devoid of corporeality, is exceedingly difficult for a human being except after great habituation — and especially for one who does not distinguish between the intellectually apprehended and the imaginatively apprehended, and who relies mostly on imaginative apprehension alone, so that everything he imagines he takes to be existent or possibly existent, while what does not fall within the net of his imagination he takes to be nonexistent and impossible. Indeed, such persons — and they are the majority of those who engage in inquiry — will never grasp any true meaning, nor will any intelligible notion become clear to them.
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Because of this same difficulty, the books of the prophets employed sayings whose external sense suggests the corporeality of the angels, their movements, their being in human form, their being commanded by God, executing His commands, and doing what He wills by His command — all of this to guide the mind toward their existence and that they are perfect living beings, as we explained in the case of God. But had one remained at the level of this imagination concerning them, their reality and essence would come to resemble the essence of God in the imagination of the multitude — for similar things were also said concerning God, sayings whose external meaning suggests that He is a living body that moves and is in human form. So in order to guide the mind to the fact that the rank of their existence is below the rank of the Deity, animal features were mixed into their image — so that what is understood from the existence of the Creator would be more perfect than their existence, just as a human being is more perfect than a non-rational animal. Nor was any animal feature added to them at all except for wings, since flight cannot be conceived without wings just as walking cannot be conceived without legs — for these capacities cannot be conceived to exist except in these substrates by necessity. The motion of flight was chosen as the hint to the effect that they are living, since it is the most complete and most noble of the spatial movements of non-rational animals, and a human being regards it as a great perfection — to the point that a human being yearns to fly, so that he might more easily flee from everything that harms him and pursue everything that suits him swiftly even from a distance. So this motion was attributed to them.
Also, a bird appears and then vanishes, draws near and then recedes, in the swiftest possible time — and all these are conditions that one should believe to hold of the angels, as will be explained.
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This supposed perfection — the motion of flight — is in no way attributed to God, since it is a movement of a non-rational animal. Do not be misled by the verse 'He rode upon a cherub and flew' (Ps 18:11), for it is the cherub that flew; the intent of that metaphor is the swiftness of the arrival of that matter — just as He said 'Behold, the Lord rides upon a swift cloud and comes to Egypt' (Isa 19:1), meaning the swiftness of this calamity's descent upon them.
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Nor should you be confused by what you find in Ezekiel — particularly the face of an ox, the face of a lion, the face of an eagle, and the sole of a calf's foot — for these have a different interpretation that you will hear; and in any case these are descriptions of the ḥayyot, and these purposes will be clarified by sufficient indications in the Treatise on the Prophecy.
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As for the motion of flight — it appears in the Scriptural texts in every passage, and cannot be conceived except with a wing; so wings were assigned to them to indicate the condition of their existence, not to describe the reality of what they are.
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Know that anything that moves with extreme speed is described as flying, to indicate the swiftness of the movement — it is said 'as an eagle swoops down' (Deut 28:49), for the eagle is the swiftest in flight and in descent among all birds, and for this reason it serves as the comparison. Know also that wings are the causes of flight; therefore the wings you see correspond to the number of causal factors of the movement of the moving entity. But this is not the aim of this chapter.