Here begins a series of articles on Genesis. I hope to explore odd questions that have intrigued me from my study of this most ancient of holy texts. From the outset, I’m not interested here in exploring some of the more well-tread, ahem, “answers” in Genesis (e.g., concerning evolution/creationism or the historicity of the Flood account, etc.). We can discuss these, if you want, sometime and somewhere else. Here, I want to talk about the little seeds of detail Moses leaves us in Genesis that contribute to the larger shapes of redemptive history in the rest of the Scriptures.
Learning to Read Ancient Stories
Though we often don’t give this much specific attention, contemporary stories include far more granular detail than their ancient prototypes. We could offer various reasons for this. The most mundane of these, the lower cost of paper and printing in more contemporary times, might account for the majority of the difference. But, whatever the no doubt fascinating reasons, the contemporary tradition of story-telling has birthed such effulgent forms as the novel and even the multi-volume series of novels. Contemporary authors tend to crowd even their “short” fiction with a crush of details, some symbolic and some incidental.
Raised to expect this kind of detail from our stories, we have trained ourselves, perhaps unwittingly, to overlook many details as peripheral color. Consequently, we sometimes rush through often skeletal ancient narratives, finding little to slow us down. Since we have no training in adding the hot water of rumination to this narrative bouillon, we tend to miss quite a bit. And we often overlook when ancient narratives do include seemingly extraneous details. A good rule of thumb for assessing ancient narratives: if the author included details, he probably had reasons for it. And investigating those reasons often yields at least interesting results.
In my study of Scriptures, I have found again and again that I simply cannot take the details of Scripture too seriously. That may sound religiose or precious. But if you know me, you know I don’t mean it that way. The truth, whatever it may be, matters most to me. I will suffer for it. And the Scriptures, though I do grant them faith, have also earned my intellectual respect as uniquely and dumbfoundingly trustworthy. Particularly for this series, I will assume that Moses, and at least the Holy Spirit who “carried him along,” intended to write Genesis exactly the way they wrote it. Let us take note of some often overlooked details and see what we can find when we slow down a bit and consider.
When Were Angels Created?
If God created everything in the six days of the creation week, He must have created angels during that week as well. Either that, or God did not create the angels, and they simply have always existed with God. Most would reject this idea, as I do. Most traditions, drawing from the biblical reiterations of God’s uniqueness, define angels as created beings. But if so, when did God actually create them? Do they appear in the creation week account of Genesis?
To be clear, the word “angel” does not appear in Genesis 1. Moses, very apparently—given his zoom-in on human creation in Genesis 2, intended the creation story to frame the central human concerns of his human readers. And he did not choose to make the creation of angels explicit in his account. But Moses did leave hints which other biblical authors elaborated more explicitly in later texts.
The Stars to Rule
The greatest of these hints appears in Genesis 1:16–18:
God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also. God placed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good.
The Hebrew words translated “to govern” in this text come from the root word (mashal, משׁל). In no other place in all of Scripture do these words apply to inanimate objects. Objects do not “govern.” Beings do. And if the sun and moon “govern” the day and night, and the stars “govern” times and the separation of light and dark, perhaps these greater and smaller governors are not simply inanimate celestial objects.
YHWH, God of Hosts
Certainly, ancient people did not consider the sun, the moon, or the stars as inanimate objects. They generally viewed them as heavenly beings and sometimes as gods. Moses explicitly warns against worshipping the sun, moon, and stars—the “host of heaven”:
And beware not to lift up your eyes to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, and be drawn away and worship them and serve them, those which YHWH your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. (Deut. 4:19)
This would make almost no sense unless—at least to the ancients—the sun, moon, and stars had some legitimate personal quality.
Throughout the Old Testament, the “host of heaven” refers either to created heavenly bodies or to the angelic inhabitants of God’s heavenly kingdom or perhaps both (Deut. 4:19; 17:3; 1 Kings 22:19; 2 Kings 17:16; 21:3, 5; 23:4–5; Is. 34:4; Jer. 8:2; 19:13; 33:22; Zeph. 1:5; Dan. 8:10; Neh. 9:6; 2 Chr. 18:18; 33:3, 5). The Scriptures often refer to God as the Lord of these Hosts. Again, this would have almost no practical meaning and would inspire no holy awe if the “host” in question included only inanimate objects—burning gas balls and orbiting rocks.
The Scriptures do not make a great distinction between the host of heaven as a created reality (sun, moon, and stars) and the host of heaven as the army of God’s angels. The stars are angels. The angels are stars. Some would say that the stars are “symbols” of the angels. I think it more fit to say that the angels spiritually govern the stars and light and darkness in the way that our spirits govern, but are not limited in influence to, our bodies. I’m not saying the stars are the bodies of angels. But that God assigned angels to govern material realities, specifically—at least in the beginning—celestial bodies. In the same way that we can be and often are identified with our earthly bodies, angels can be and often are identified with the heavenly bodies of their domain.
So, at the very least, we can say for now that God created the angels when He created “the host of heaven”—the sun, moon, and stars. When did that occur? On the fourth day of creation. We can say also that the personified language Moses uses concerning the creation of stars in Genesis 1 is not merely poetic personification. The sun and moon and stars really did have dominion to do and declare God’s will in heaven, to separate light and darkness, and to govern the day and the night. Though it may seem trivial to designate the fourth day as the day God made angels, and to connect the celestial spheres with the angelic host, it opens up a lot of other inquiries.
Did the Ancients Worship Gods or Angels (or Both)?
For instance, this means that ancient peoples, including Israel, worshipped angelic spirits. The sacrifices made to “the host of heaven,” they made to fallen angels. Possibly, every “real” god of the ancients was actually an angel, and a fallen angel at that. The ancients connected most of their gods to some elemental, and usually heavenly elemental, reality. Indeed, even today, we still name all our planets (“wandering stars” to the ancients) after ancient gods.
Assuredly, some ancient gods did not exist. Some were mythical creations of human speculation developed to make sense of the world or legitimize and consolidate tyrannical rule. But if any ancient gods did exist, they were fallen angels.
Old Testament writers, including even Moses, make this claim explicitly. Moses says in Deuteronomy 32:17 (cf. Psalm 106:37) that the Israelites sacrificed to “demons” when they served other gods. Paul, following Moses, makes this same claim in 1 Corinthians 10:20 concerning Gentile idolatry: “No, but I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God; and I do not want you to become sharers in demons.”
The book of Revelation deepens this connection between angels and stars. For instance, John says the seven stars in the hand of Jesus are the seven angels of the churches (Rev. 1:20). Drawing imagery from Daniel 8 and Isaiah 14, John also personifies and even names fallen stars, describing them as spiritual agents of evil power on the earth (Rev. 8:10; 9:1f). John describes the great dragon sweeping “a third of the stars from the sky” (Rev. 12:4). He goes on to identify this dragon with “the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world.” He continues, “he was thrown down to earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Rev. 12:9). In signs then, John connects the stars the dragon swept from the sky and “his angels” which fell with him to earth.
Just Another Ancient Superstition?
Let’s pause here for a moment to consider something I think important. We tend to consider ancient people gullible, superstitious, and ignorant. So we think that they, cowering in their fearful stupidity like fanciful children, imagined monsters under every bed and malevolent spirits hiding in every darkness. And we, confidently strutting about in the fig leaves of our supposed enlightenment, think we have rid ourselves of such nonsense.
We think that, if only those ancient dupes had understood that the sun is nothing more than a burning ball of gas and the moon a mere cratered rock, they would never have offered such needless sacrifices to imaginary gods. Most modern people spend little time thinking about angels or demons or gods outside of fiction. They think that evil spirits served as mythical scapegoats in the ancient imagination. Since the ancients lacked the science to describe and explain things like epilepsy, birth defects, sudden death, and failed crops, they made up gods and demons. Most people nowadays apparently know better.
If you find yourself in that basically naturalist camp, I cannot join you. I have too much respect for the probity, grit, skepticism, and cleverness of ancient writers and people. And, to be honest, I have little respect comparatively for myself or my contemporaries. We are no less gullible than our ancient forefathers, and certainly no more enlightened. So I offer an alternative explanation.
The Vanquishing of Demons Really Occurred
Perhaps we have become largely rid of the ubiquity of demons. Perhaps we have fewer superstitions, especially those connected to unreliable goods, unpredictable cruelties, or the fear of the malevolent unknown. But it’s not because the ubiquity of demons or the malevolent unknown never existed. These realities almost certainly did exist, unless the ancients were, as we sometimes quite erroneously suppose them, only a few iterations of advance away from knuckle-dragging neanderthals. If evil spirits once did have a much greater dominion on the earth, the ancients had great cause to be terrified of them.
If then perhaps we are less terrorized and less superstitious, we do not have ourselves to credit. Through no help from us, Jesus broke the power of evil, bound Satan and his demons, crippled their capacity to deceive the nations, and redeemed for us some shred of freedom and dignity. The age after Jesus’ coming barely resembles the age before it on this count. Back in the day, humans couldn’t just thumb our noses at the power of evil spirits and lightly cast off the superstitions and deceptions they employed to subjugate us. A time existed when this world truly was in the grip of evil power. And human beings had little to protect themselves from it.
Let us not, then, consider ourselves so far superior to those ancient people who sold their souls, their children, and everything else they could kill or steal to gain some protection from the overwhelming evil power of the fallen host of heaven. Perhaps, if we can imagine ourselves not so different from our ancient parents, we can understand the bargains we all make for a little fleeting peace of mind.
So, our ancient forefathers, including the Israelites who should have known better, worshipped the fallen host of heaven. And it seems they did this, by their own reports, to receive some protection from, and perhaps control over, the evil such a host could wield against them. In this way, much pagan worship seems like paying the mafia for protection against the mafia. Or appeasing an abusive spouse as a strategy to avoid his abuse. We know that holy angels will not receive worship (Rev. 22:8–9). Only fallen angels would. So, the part of the host of heaven that willingly receives worship from humankind, must be, as Moses and Paul indicate, demons.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Moses left hints that other biblical writers picked up on, through which we can make a very good case that God created angels on the fourth day. The sun and moon and stars were identified with angelic elemental spirits who really did have dominion to do and declare God’s will in heaven, to separate light and darkness, and to govern the day and the night. And ancient pagan worship, almost all of which involved “the host of heaven” in one way or another, was not only mythos or etiology, but also involved real human bondage to fallen angels.
We will explore in the next article how the fourth-day creation of angels figures prominently in this very fall of Satan and his one-third host.