210 A History of Judaism
observed this they raised great cries to heaven so that even the nearby val-
leys resounded with them and brought an uncontrollable terror upon the
army. Then the most glorious, almighty, and true God revealed his holy
face and opened the heavenly gates, from which two glorious angels of
fearful aspect descended, visible to all but the Jews. They opposed the
forces of the enemy and filled them with confusion and terror, binding
them with immovable shackles. Even the king began to shudder bodily,
and he forgot his sullen insolence. The animals turned back upon the
armed forces following them and began trampling and destroying them.
Such notions about angels existed alongside other speculation
about intermediaries between God and humankind. We have seen
(Chapter 7) the role of the Logos in the philosophy of Philo. The author
of Wisdom of Solomon, composed probably in the second century bce,
built on the biblical wisdom tradition to portray the personified figure
of Wisdom herself as a companion of God (although, in the rather
breathless description, the precise relationship is left unclear, perhaps
deliberately):
For wisdom is more mobile than any motion; because of her pureness she
pervades and penetrates all things. For she is a breath of the power of God,
and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; therefore nothing
defiled gains entrance into her. For she is a reflection of eternal light, a
spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness ...
She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders
all things well. I loved her and sought her from my youth; I desired to take
her for my bride, and became enamoured of her beauty. She glorifies her
noble birth by living with God, and the Lord of all loves her. For she is an
initiate in the knowledge of God, and an associate in his works.^15Visions and Prophecy
Both the figure of Wisdom and angels might bring divine messages to
humans. Angels played this role particularly in the narrative of apoca-
lyptic texts, of which a great variety survives from this period, mostly
because of their popularity among later Christians. So, for instance, the
Apocalypse of Abraham, preserved only in Slavonic, contains the instruc-
tion of the patriarch by the angel Yaoel: ‘The angel he sent to me in the
likeness of a man came, and he took me by my right hand and stood me
on my feet.’ In these apocalyptic texts theological understanding comes