NOTES for Tob 12:15

The biblical books do not tell us much about the angels. There is nothing surprising in this: because the biblical narrative is about God and about man, about their complex and dramatic relationship. Angels participate in this history, mostly as messengers of God (and the word "angel" in the translation from Greek means, "messenger", who by the way, according to the sense of the word could be not only the spirit, but also man). Nobody of the biblical authors tells us anything about the nature of the angels. It is clear: according to the biblical descriptions, angels, these messengers of God (if, of course having in mind not men) are beings very less similar to us and possessing a completely different nature.

They are so different that it is even impossible for man, according to all the descriptions, to see the angel as the other angels see it: it happens to the angel to take the human form so that it won’t seem to the man, to whom he is sent, that he communicates with the emptiness. And really, in the biblical books there is of course no description of the angelic world, the hierarchy or anything else like that. In the first place, we, men, in any case know nothing of it and it is unlikely we will know one day authentically: even if in the Kingdom we shall be with angels face to face, our human nature (although transformed) will hardly be closer to the angelic. Secondly, the fates of the angels even if they intersect with ours, it is above all functional; our salvation does not depend on them, and God, in order to save us, became not an angel, but a man. That is why the biblical authors in their books pay attention on angels only because their mission is connected to the characters of the corresponding books.

Tobit's book in this respect is not different from all other biblical books: the angel in it accompanies the protagonist, and his presence in the book is connected to the fate of Tobit. His name is full of meaning, it means "God is the Healer" or "God heals", and it is doubtless connected with the subject of the history told in the book. As for the mention of "seven angels", the author addresses already not the biblical, but apocryphal tradition. In Apocrypha (in particular, those of the Old Testament) many are said and in detail about the angelic hierarchies.

God in a way goes in the background in these descriptions, and in the foreground come the angels and the other spiritual beings, which often, instead of connecting man with God (as the angels of the biblical books do that), on the contrary, separate him from God, becoming between man and God a kind of irresistible spiritual wall. At that time, when Tobit's Book was written, this kind of literature was already widely spread and well known. The author of the Book of Tobit uses this notoriety, by mentioning the "seven angels". By the way, one can see that the names, which the angels receive in the deuterocanonical books, are also taken from the apocrypha. However the image of the angel in Tobit's Book is all the same not apocryphal, but completely biblical: he plays the same role as the angels of the biblical books, accompanying Tobit on the way, where he goes.