Timeless Torah

Seen any angels lately? I don’t mean the ones that appear on your sentimental Hallmark card. I refer to the real, full blown, three-D, larger than life, celestial beings kind of angels. The ones that hung around Jacob, that go up and down ladders, and are sent to warn off fellows like Eisav and his band of cutthroat mercenaries. You know, the ones from this week’s Biblical reading.

But where do such creatures come from anyway? In this instance, even Rashi was bothered by this question, as seen from his commentary on the verse, “Behold, a ladder stood on the earth, and its top reached to the heavens, and behold, angels of the L-rd were ascending and descending on it.” The medieval scholar from France asks since angels are usually stationed in the heavens, should not the Torah have stated that they were first, “descending and only then ascending?”

As usual there are a plethora of answers to this anomaly, but let me suggest one in the name of the often overlooked Targum Yonason, who quite frequently offers fascinating insights from behind the scenes. According to the Targum, these two angels were for many decades earthbound. In fact, our two wing-bearing characters were none other than the two angels that had been sent to destroy Sodom back in the days of Abraham.

Unfortunately for them, at that time they were banished from the heavenly spheres for their sin of presumptuousness. This occurred when they claimed independent powers in their warning to Lot to flee, “For we (implying, not G-d) will be destroying this place.” Later, one of the pair was compelled to make the humiliating confession that, “I can do nothing (without G-d).”

It would take one hundred and twenty three years for theses two to be readmitted upstairs via Jacob’s ladder. The first question that comes to mind is, how can angels sin? Angels are understood to be different from us in that they have no free will and thus no capacity to deviate from G-d’s will. And yet, this is not the first time that the malachim (hebrew for angels) have fallen from grace. No greater example of this is the angels who prior to the Flood, “Saw that the daughters of men were fair, and they took themselves wives from whomever they chose.” Once again, we come across what-should-be the impossible phenomenon of corrupt angels.

What emerges from these two episodes is that heavenly beings are not innately holy. Rather they are a product of their environment. Force them down however to our world where G-dliness is concealed and expose them to human temptation and they can quickly degenerate into rebellious creatures. Fallen angels are naturally ejected from heaven. But do they stand no chance of return? Is their exile from their friends a permanent sentence?

We all recognize the unique roles played by the three Patriarchs. Where Abraham’s son was reclusive, his grandson marched into the worst societies of his time, Lavan in Aram and Pharaoh in Egypt. Thus Isaac never fought to withstand the negative influences of his neighbors and peers. Indeed, when Avimelech became hostile, he was quite willing to remove himself from the battlefield. Jacob on the other hand played the part of Eisav when necessary, and yet remained, “the chosen of the three fathers.”

It was therefore precisely at this point in patriarchal history that the malachim saw the reverse of their own behavior. Where Jacob acted angelic, regardless of his surroundings, they capitulated. Subsequently as the Targum elucidates, they were allowed to ascend; for it would be they who would carry the message of a Jew’s fortitude to their haloed peers. “Go down the ladder,” they whispered to the others, “and see why Jacob’s image is fixed on G-d’s throne of Glory.”

Jacob declared, “How awesome is this place. This is none other than the abode of G-d.” Everyone assumes that it was the angels, “ascending and descending,” that made Jacob realize that, “This is the gate of the heavens.” Perhaps, it was the other way around: it was the revelation that angels flee in embarrassment from the moral courage displayed by humans that made Jacob state, “Surely Hashem is in this place and I did not know.”