Angels in Judaism
supernatural beings that appear in Jewish texts
In Judaism, angels (Hebrew: מַלְאָךְ, romanized: mal’āḵ, lit. 'messenger', plural: מַלְאָכִים mal’āḵīm) are supernatural beings that appear throughout the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), Rabbinic literature, Jewish apocrypha, Christian pseudepigrapha, Jewish philosophy, Jewish mysticism, and traditional Jewish liturgy as agents of the God of Israel. They are categorized in different hierarchies. Their essence is often associated with fire. The Talmud describes their very essence as fire.
Etymology
Hebrew mal’ākh is the standard word for "messenger", both human and divine, in the Hebrew Bible; it is also related to the words for "angel" in Arabic (malāk ملاك), Aramaic and Ethiopic. It is rarely used for human messengers in Modern Hebrew, as the latter is usually denoted by the term shaliyakh (שליח). The noun derives from the verbal consonantal root l-’-k (ל-א-ך), meaning specifically "to send with a message" and with time was substituted with more applicable sh-l-h.
In Biblical Hebrew this root is attested only in this noun and in the noun מְלָאכָה məlʾāḵā́, meaning "work", "occupation" or "craftsmanship".
The morphological structure of the word mal’ākh suggests that it is the maqtal form of the root denoting the tool or the means of performing it. The term mal’ākh therefore simply means the one who is sent, often translated as "messenger" when applied to humans; for instance, mal’ākh is the root of the name of the prophet Malachi, whose name means "my messenger".
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