Gabriel
1:
GABRIEL (ANGEL) [Heb gabrı̂˒ēl (גַּבְרִיאֵל)]. Gabriel (whose name means “God is my warrior”) is one of two angels named in the Hebrew Bible (Dan 8:16; 9:21), the other being Michael (Dan 10:13, 21; 12:1). Along with Michael, Gabriel regularly figures as one of the 4 archangels (see 1 En. 9:1; 40:9; 54:6; 71:8; Apoc. Mos. 40:2; 1QM 9:14–16; Num. Rab. 2:10; etc.). In the book of Daniel, Gabriel is preeminently an angel of eschatological revelation. He is sent to Daniel to explain a vision of “the time appointed for the end” (8:15–26) and again to reveal the hidden meaning of the words of Jeremiah that Daniel is reading (9:20–27). Gabriel is implicitly the angel who appears to Daniel in Daniel 10–12.
Gabriel’s functions are more varied in 1 Enoch. In the Book of the Watchers (1 Enoch 1–36) he is listed as “the one of the holy angels who is in charge of paradise and the dragons and the cherubim” (20:2). He is commissioned to destroy the offspring of the rebellious angels and human women (10:9–10). The fruitless petition addressed to Gabriel by the rebels in 10:10 complements the reference (40:6, 9) to Gabriel’s association with petition and prayer in the Similitudes (1 Enoch 37–71).
In the War Scroll from Qumran (1QM) the names of the 4 archangels, Michael, Gabriel, Sariel, and Raphael, are written on the shields of the 4 towers of the army. The positioning of the 4 archangels around the throne of God or other sacred space has a long subsequent history in both Jewish and Christian tradition (see Milik 1976: 173; Yadin 1962: 239–40).
The gospel according to Luke identifies Gabriel with “the angel of the Lord” (Luke 1:11, 19, 26; cf. Luke 2:9; Acts 5:19; 8:26; 12:7). Gabriel’s announcements to Zechariah and to Mary of the births of John and Jesus draws on an ancient tradition (cf. the announcement of the birth of Samson in Judges 13). In the Hebrew Bible, however, the angel of the Lord (Heb mal˒ak YHWH) is never named and in general is not conceived of as a distinct, personal being, but is rather the manifestation of God’s presence. See ANGELS.
Bibliography
Milik, J. T. 1976. The Books of Enoch. Oxford.
Yadin, Y. 1962. The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness. Trans. B. and C. Rabin. London.
Carol A. Newsom
Freedman, D. N. (1996, c1992). The Anchor Bible Dictionary (2:863). New York: Doubleday.
2:
GABRIEL Gabriel, whose Hebrew name may mean “God is powerful” (gabriel) or possibly “man of God,” is mentioned four times in the Bible. In Dan. 8:16 he comes in human form to clarify the eschatological significance of Daniel’s vision; later (Dan. 9:21) he grants Daniel special wisdom and understanding. In the NT he appears to Zacharias the priest “on the right side of the altar of incense” in the Temple, announcing the coming birth of a son (John the Baptist) to Zacharias and his wife Elisabeth (Luke 1:11). Gabriel is also the angel of the Annunciation, informing Mary that she will become the mother of Jesus (Luke 1:31). Each of these appearances, in both the OT and NT, is connected in some way with the promise of Immanuel, the coming Messiah.
In pseudepigraphic texts, Gabriel is an archangel. He is one of the “glorious ones” who look down upon all mankind (1 Enoch 40:3); he is one of four angels who lift up to God’s presence the prayers of the martyrs as they appeal for an end to anarchy and violence upon the earth (9:1-11); and, as an agent of God’s supreme power, he is seated at his right hand (2 Enoch 24:1). His duties include casting the wicked into the fiery furnace after the Last Judgment (1 Enoch 54:6). Various Targums extend to him, among other things, agency in guiding Joseph to his brothers (sup. Gen. 37:5), in the burial of Moses (sup. Deut. 34:6), and even in gathering dust for the creation of mankind (Ḥag. 12a; Pirqe R. El. 3). Indeed, his role expands so dramatically in later midrash that he dominates all angels, although often he is accompanied by Michael, Uriel, and others in marvelous exploits. In Islam Gabriel is revered for having dictated the Koran to Mohammed.
Among the Fathers, and down to the later Middle Ages, Gabriel acquires significance principally from his role in the Nativity story (including his calling Jesus “Lord,” according to St. Ephraim Syrus, Hymns on the Nativity, 14.23). The Glossa Ordinaria, citing Bede, says Gabriel is named in the Annunciation scene only in order to indicate that it is the “fortitude of God” which here declares itself to be coming into the territory of the devil to claim victory (PL 114.246; the point is later amplified by Calvin in his commentary on Luke 1:9). For St. Ambrose Gabriel’s power is to be distinguished from that of Christ. That Christ, unlike Gabriel, experienced death for the redemption of humankind should not be taken to suggest that the sovereignty of God was not far more powerfully displayed in Christ than in his nuncio (De fide, 3.21). Peter Abelard’s hymn “To Gabriel of the Annunciation” begins “On with your embassy! / Say AVE! Say ALL HAIL!”
Gabriel’s “embassy” is often featured in early English literature: it becomes, e.g., a prominent subject in the Advent Lyrics of the Exeter Book, where he is the “bearer of grace” to Mary; hence the poet’s prayer: “Iowa us nu þa are þe se engel þe, / godes spelboda, gabriel brohte” (9.61-62; cf. 7.37-38). Numerous ME Annunciation lyrics are direct translations or paraphrases of the Latin sequence “Angelus ad Virginem” (Dreves, Analecta, 8.49), and many were set to music (e.g., “Gabriel, fram evene-king,” in C. Brown, English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century, no. 44). The Latin original is parodied in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale, where “hende Nicholas,” a “false clerk” and far from angelic, descends from his loft to commence an unsubtle wooing of his landlord’s wife after announcing himself by playing “a gay sautrie” and singing Angelus ad Virginem (1.3213-16). In many Annunciation carols and poems on the “Five Joys of the Virgin” (e.g., R. Greene, The Early English Carols, nos. 229-56), the “archaungell shynyng full bright” (nos. 248, 252) is represented as kneeling to the Virgin (“In the most demuere and goodly wys he ded to hyre omag” [Greene, no. 239; cf. 237]), although occasionally, in a variation of earlier iconography, he stands or hovers and Mary “was full sort abashyd, iwis, / And wened that sche had don amysse” (no. 238; cf. the “Annunciation” of Simone Martini). Other features of the iconography represented in the poems include a figuration of the conception “as the sonne beame goth thurgh the glass” (Greene, no. 246); Gabriel’s bearing of a lily (Brown, Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century, no. 112); and his utterance of the “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum,” the Vg text of Luke 1:28—often rendered in Latin in English poems much as it often appears in art in a phylactery or scroll issuing from Gabriel’s mouth. Typically, as in Van Eyck’s altarpiece, Mary indicates her submission to her unique calling by placing her hand over a copy of the opened Scriptures (cf. Luke 1:38):
“Goddes handemayde behold,” seide she
To Gabriell, that archaungell;
“Thy worde in me fulfilled be,”
Vt pariem Emanuel.” (Green, no. 245)
In literature after the Reformation Gabriel is much less prominent, largely because of Protestant de-emphasis not only of the Virgin (and hence, the Annunciation) but of angel lore as well. In Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata Gabriel is sent by God to urge the Crusaders after seven years to march on Jerusalem. In Donne’s “The Annunciation and Passion,” he links the two events: “At once a Sonne is promis’d her, and gone, / Gabriell gives Christ to her, He her to John.” Milton is the great angelologist of this period, however, and Gabriel plays an important role in Paradise Lost, where he is the “chief of the Angelic Guards” who fights against Moloch until the blasphemous foe of heaven “down cloven to the waist … fled bellowing” (6.354-62). He returns in Paradise Regained as the angel chosen to hear the divine plan of redemption and to bear the news to Mary. Cowper finds an odd place for him in his apostrophe to free trade and international shipping in “Charity,” in which he well wishes a ship “That flies, like Gabriel on his Lord’s commands, / An herald of God’s love to pagan lands” (135-36), a dubious evocation of the missionary spirit.
Hardy seems to have the biblical angel in mind in the character of Gabriel Oak, the rejected suitor of Bathsheba Everdene, who watches over her farm as she marries someone else in Far from the Madding Crowd. In George Eliot’s narrative poem The Death of Moses, based on haggadic Jewish sources, Gabriel does not have the heart to carry the soul of Moses to God when commanded to do so. In Melville’s Moby-Dick a “scaramouch” is hired on as seaman, “but straightaway upon the ship’s getting out of sight of land, his insanity broke out in a freshet. He announced himself as the archangel Gabriel, and commanded the captain to jump overboard” (chap. 71). Emily Dickinson’s two robins in her apple tree are “Two Gabriels”; more retiring than the scaramouch, they “have that modest way / To screen them from renown” (“Forever Cherished Be the Tree”). Joyce paraphrases Luke 1:38 in the litany section of the “Nausicaa” episode of Ulysses, while in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Stephen co-opts the Annunciation scene to describe the birth of a poem: “O! in the virgin womb of the imagination the word was made flesh. Gabriel the seraph had come to the virgin’s chamber.” He is parodied as an ineffectual suitor in Katherine Anne Porter’s Old Mortality, where Amy has kept her second cousin, Gabriel, waiting for five years.
See also angel; annunciation; mary, mother of jesus.
Jeffrey, D. L. (1992). A Dictionary of biblical tradition in English literature. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans.
3:
Gabriel — champion of God, used as a proper name to designate the angel who was sent to Daniel (8:16) to explain the vision of the ram and the he-goat, and to communicate the prediction of the seventy weeks (Dan. 9:21–27).
He announced also the birth of John the Baptist (Luke 1:11), and of the Messiah (26). He describes himself in the words, “I am Gabriel, who stand in the presence of God” (1:19).
Easton, M. (1996, c1897). Easton's Bible dictionary. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
4:
GABRIEL One of the two angels mentioned by name in the Bible (the other is Michael). Gabriel appeared in human form to Daniel to reveal to him the meaning of a vision, to show what would transpire on the Day of Judgment, and to give Daniel wisdom and understanding (Dn 8:16; 9:21–22). In the NT Gabriel appeared to Zechariah the priest as he served in the temple, to announce the birth of Zechariah’s son, John the Baptist (Lk 1:11–20). Six months later Gabriel appeared to Mary to announce that she would become the mother of Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah (Lk 1:26–33). Gabriel is commonly called an archangel but is not referred to as such in the Bible.
There is an abundance of material about Gabriel in the noncanonical writings of the Jews. In the books of Enoch he is pictured as one of the four chief angels, along with Michael, Raphael, and Uriel (1 Enoch 40:3, 6). He is one of the holy angels (20:7) who looks down from heaven and is a principal intercessor (1 Enoch 9:1; 40:6; 2 Enoch 21:3). He is to destroy the wicked (1 Enoch 9:9–10) and cast them into the furnace (54:6) and is set over all powers (40:9). Michael sits at God’s right hand, and Gabriel sits on the left (2 Enoch 24:1). Michael, as guardian angel of Israel (cf. Dn 12:1) and a high priest of heaven, is more occupied with affairs in heaven, but Gabriel is God’s messenger who goes from heaven to execute God’s will on earth.
See also Angel.
Elwell, W. A., & Comfort, P. W. (2001). Tyndale Bible dictionary. Tyndale reference library (505). Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers.
5:
GA´BRIEL (gāʹbri-el; “man” or “hero of God”). The word used to designate the heavenly messenger sent to explain to Daniel the visions that he saw (Dan. 8:16; 9:21), who announced the birth of John the Baptist to his father, Zacharias (Luke 1:11–20), and who spoke of the Messiah to the virgin Mary (1:26–38). As to his relation to other angels and archangels, the Scriptures give no information; but in the book of Enoch “the four great archangels, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Uriel,” are described as reporting the corrupt state of mankind to the Creator and receiving their several commissions. In the rabbinical writings Gabriel is represented as standing in front of the divine throne, near the standard of Judah. The Muslims regard Gabriel with profound reverence, affirming that to him was committed a complete copy of the Koran, which he imparted in successive portions to Muhammad. He is called in the Koran the Spirit of Truth and the Holy Spirit, and it is alleged that he will hold the scales in which the actions of men will be weighed in the last day.
bibliography: A. C. Gaebelein, Gabriel and Michael, the Archangels, Their Prominence in Bible Prophecy (1945).
Unger, M. F., Harrison, R. K., Vos, H. F., Barber, C. J., & Unger, M. F. (1988). The new Unger's Bible dictionary. Revision of: Unger's Bible dictionary. 3rd ed. c1966. (Rev. and updated ed.). Chicago: Moody Press.
6:
GABRIEL (Heb. Gaḇrı̂’el, ‘man of God’ or ‘strength of God’). One of the two angels whom the Bible names: the other is *Michael. He is sent to interpret Daniel’s vision (Dn. 8:16) and to give him the prophecy of the 70 weeks (Dn. 9:21). Some commentators identify the angel of Dn. 10:5ff. as Gabriel.
In intertestamental Jewish literature, Gabriel is one of the archangels, the ‘angels of the presence’ who stand before God’s throne praising him and interceding for men (Tobit 12:15; Jubilees 2:2; 1QH 6:13; 1QSb 4; Testament of Levi 3:5, 7; cf. Lk. 1:19; Rev. 8:2). He is named either as one of four archangels, with Michael, Sariel (or Uriel) and Raphael (1 Enoch 9:1; 1QM 9:15f.; cf. 1 Enoch 40:6; 54:6; Sibylline Oracles 2:215 (some mss); Numbers Rabbah 2:10), or as one of seven, with Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Michael, Sariel (or Saraqael) and Remiel (1 Enoch 20). Gabriel’s special responsibility is paradise (1 Enoch 20:7). He destroyed the antediluvian giants (1 Enoch 10:9). With the other archangels, he will officiate at the last judgment (1 Enoch 90:21f.; cf. 54:6; Sibylline Oracles 2:214–219; 1 Thes. 4:16; Rev. 8:2). The Targums and rabbinic literature often identify anonymous angels in the OT as Gabriel or Michael.
In the NT, Gabriel is sent to Zechariah to announce the birth of John the Baptist (Lk. 1:11–20) and to Mary to announce the birth of Jesus (Lk. 1:26–38). His self-description, ‘I am Gabriel, who stand in the presence of God’ (Lk. 1:19) identifies him as one of the archangels (cf. Tobit 12:15). r.j.b.
Wood, D. R. W., Wood, D. R. W., & Marshall, I. H. (1996, c1982, c1962). New Bible Dictionary. Includes index. (electronic ed. of 3rd ed.) (389). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.
7:
Gabriel, one of the archangels in Jewish and early Christian thought. In the ot, Gabriel appears only in Dan. 8:15-26 and 9:21-27, and, in the nt, only in Luke 1:11-20, 26-38. In these passages, Gabriel appears as a messenger (‘angel’) from God and an interpreter for the people to whom he is sent. In the apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings, angels were organized into categories with specific duties and status before God. In Tob. 12:15, for example, ‘Raphael’ is mentioned as ‘one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints and enter into the presence of the glory of the Holy One’ (cf. also Rev. 8:2). In 1 Enoch 40, Gabriel is considered one of the top four in rank, perhaps second only to Michael. Gabriel’s duties included intercession on behalf of God’s people (1 Enoch 9:1; 40:6) as well as being the instrument for destruction of the wicked (1 Enoch 9:9-10). Tradition associated Gabriel with the archangel whose trumpet blast would announce the return of Christ (cf. 1 Thess. 4:16; Matt. 24:31). See also Angel; Michael. J.M.E.
Achtemeier, P. J., Harper & Row, P., & Society of Biblical Literature. (1985). Harper's Bible dictionary. Includes index. (1st ed.) (326). San Francisco: Harper & Row.
8:
Gabriel (Heb. gaḇrɩ̂˒ēl; Gk. Gabriḗl)
A prominent angel. Gabriel reveals eschatological mysteries in Dan. 8:15–26; 9:21–27 and announces the births of John the Baptist and Jesus in Luke 1:11–20, 26–38. The etymology of the name is disputed, meaning “God is my Warrior” or perhaps “Man of God.” Gabriel and Michael are the only two angels explicitly named in the OT. In the more developed angelology of Jewish apocalyptic traditions, they appear regularly together with Raphael and others as prominent archangels who stand in the presence of God (1 En. 9:1; 10:1–12; 1QM 9:14–16; Luke 1:19; cf. Rev. 8:2, 6).
In Daniel Gabriel serves primarily as interpreter of visions and mysteries; in later apocalyptic sources his functions are more varied. In 1 Enoch he is identified as one of the holy angels whose role is to oversee the garden of Eden, the serpents and the cherubim (1 En. 20:7); in 10:9–10 he is sent in judgment against the children born from the “Watchers” (fallen angels). In the War Scroll at Qumran the names of Michael, Gabriel, Sariel, and Raphael are written on the shield of the towers carried into battle (1QM 9:14–16).
In Luke’s birth narrative Gabriel appears again in a revelatory role, announcing to Zechariah and Mary the fulfillment of eschatological hopes in the births of John, the Elijah-like forerunner of the Lord (Luke 1:11–20), and Jesus, the messianic king from the line of David (vv. 26–38).
Mark L. Strauss
Freedman, D. N., Myers, A. C., & Beck, A. B. (2000). Eerdmans dictionary of the Bible (474). Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans.
