Karl Knausgaard - A Time for Everything

The same holds good for the concept of the nature of angels. The system into which Pseudo-Dionysius organizes them is perfect and harmonious. But if there is one thing that characterizes human nature, it is the fear of the small and ugly, the foolish and insignificant, and nowhere in history has this fear found a greater or more monumental expression than in the notion of God’s luminous majesty and the celestial hierarchy of the angels.

But even though the ethereal hierarchy is a human construct, it doesn’t mean that all angels are the same. From the descriptions in the Bible, we can say that there are at least four classes. There could be more, which haven’t been named, or which remain obscure in one of the many undefined revelations, but the only ones we know of with absolute certainty are the following: the CHERUBIM, with two pairs of wings, four faces, human hands, eyes all over their bodies, enveloped in flame, associated with wheels; the SERAPHIM, also enveloped in flame, and which have three pairs of wings, as described by Isaiah in their only revelation in scripture; the ARCHANGELS, seven in number, and the only angels with clear personal characteristics and individual names — Uriel, Raguel, Sariel, Jeremiel, Raphael, Michael, Gabriel; and finally the ANGELS, which is the category that most frequently reveals itself in the scriptures, and which sometimes, as in Manasses’s prayer, goes under the name of “the powers of the heavens.”

All four categories can on various occasions be found in the Lord’s immediate presence, so that strictly according to the Bible, it’s impossible to say to what extent one is closer to him than another. The fact that the archangels are the only ones to have individual names has made many assume that they are of nobler clay, but as Bellori writes, it’s also possible to come to the opposite conclusion, because don’t their names bring them closer to humanity and human things?

The same duality applies to the cherubim. The name “cherub” indicates a superfluity of knowledge and wisdom, something that presumably explains why they’ve always been placed in the uppermost hierarchy when theologians have pondered the angels’ seniority. But if we look at their first appearance in the Bible, as guardians of the tree of life, they are given two attributes, fire and swords, which indubitably bring them into a more concrete physical world. This isn’t unique to the cherubim. Just as all four categories of angels have been observed in the immediate vicinity of the Lord, so have all four been observed in this vale of tears. The angels’ revelations are strikingly often associated with fire and swords, and the robust, warrior-like presence this gives them must, according to Bellori, be regarded as part of their general nature. When the Israelites fled from Egypt, they were led by an angel in the form of a pillar of fire. The angel who spoke to Zechariah said: “I will be a wall of fire around her.” When Isaiah was taken to heaven, it was in a burning chariot pulled by fiery horses. When Nebuchadnezzar threw Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego into a glowing furnace so hot that even the guards outside it were killed, an angel stepped in and protected the three from the flames with its own presence. When Gideon carried meat and unleavened bread in a basket and soup in a jar to offer to the Lord, an angel told him to place the meat on a rock and pour the soup over it, at which the angel at one touch set the meat on fire.

Examples of the close connection between fire and angels are many, but we need no more than these to draw the following conclusion, writes Bellori: all angels can assume the form of fire, wholly or partially, without being devoured by it, and they can set light to things by touching them.

Their link with swords is just as firm and is seen just as often. The angel that Joshua saw by Jericho stood before him with a drawn sword in his hand; the angel David saw in Jerusalem stood between heaven and earth with a drawn sword in his hand; the angel described in chapter nineteen of the Second Book of Kings went out and killed 185,000 men in the Assyrian camp.

The angels are guardians, soldiers, slaughterers. But they also have another side. The brutal impression given by their merciless activities is constantly moderated by actions that help or protect people in need.

How are we to understand these two very different aspects of angelic behavior, which at first glance seem, if not irreconcilable, at least extremely contrasting? At one moment they are massacring 185,000 men, in the next setting out a newly baked loaf and a jug of water for Isaiah, at one moment destroying Jerusalem, the next carrying hot soup to Daniel. But, as Bellori writes: Just as the angels’ merciless actions aren’t an expression of cruelty, so their good deeds aren’t an expression of goodness . When they appear in the Bible, it is always on errands for the Lord, it is his bidding they follow, and the consequences for us are totally immaterial to them. In themselves angels aren’t beyond good and bad, but only in relation to human beings, whose lives do not concern them. Because they are creatures of perfection, the coldness and cruelty we sometimes spot in their behavior can be explained only by the way they regard us , and not the other way around. And they regard us with total apathy.

The Bible narrates how the divine exhibits itself to human beings, and even though it manifests itself in many different forms, the perspective is always the same, always inextricably linked to human experience, history, and limited understanding. We know what it was like for Ezekiel to see the cherubim hovering in the air above him, we can imagine it and identify with it, but we know nothing about what it was like for the cherubim to hover in the sky above Ezekiel. We can identify with Abraham and the emotions that filled him when the Lord and his two angels suddenly turned up at his tent and he ran to prepare a meal for them, or when he methodically got ready to sacrifice his own son to the Lord, but we can never know anything of what it was like for the angel of the Lord to massacre the Assyrian soldiers, or what they saw as they sat outside Abraham’s tent eating.

Or can we?

Bellori says that as eternal beings, time can have no meaning for the angels. And as their presence on earth is generally brief, nothing of what happens here can leave a mark on them but must glide shadowlike past, we might think of it as something like the images of our dreams, frightened up by what is to them an unknown will. In the angels’ time — which is our time before we are born and after we die, and therefore impossible, although material, as it means that that precious and inalienable I, to which we cling as fast as the shipwrecked mariner to a piece of flotsam, wouldn’t exist all the time that death and the divine exist — everything ephemeral is in constant flux. The dead get mixed up with the living, what happened a century ago with what is happening now. A city mushrooms up, for a few centuries it quivers with activity, waves of bodies rise and fall in the streets, its inhabitants die, are born, die, are born again. Then, just as suddenly as it began, it vanishes. Only a shell remains. Then that, too, is expunged, buried in the sand. An army appears on the horizon, in the sky above it the sun blazes, the next moment it is making camp beneath the mountain where you are, and the clear evening air is filled with the noise of thousands of men and horses. When you unsheathe your sword and go in among them, their tents are dimly lit by the light of the moon, which is rising rapidly in the sky behind you. A pair of eyes open, filled with fear, and as you sever head from body, the fear lives on in them for a few seconds. Then that, too, dies. The blood that seeps out over the ground is red and warm. Some of the bodies tense in spasm, others never relinquish the tranquillity of sleep. Hands clench, legs kick, mouths open, eyes lose their spark, and out of the jugulars blood pours, red and warm. Faces are faces, limbs limbs, skin skin, blood blood. A pair of eyes open in front of you, you see your own reflection in them, and when you part head from neck, you think that it lives on in them for a few seconds. Then it dies as well. A canal is dug, is filled with water, its banks explode with trees, splinters of green fly out in all directions. A man comes walking along the canal, he halts and stares up at you, and only a superhuman effort enables you to cling to the moment, which grows in richness and intensity around you with each minute that passes, until finally you can let it go, and the world’s heart can begin to beat again.