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Gabriel — Description

Genesis 6 opens right where last we left Steve's big oopsie, a Fertile Crescent now crawling with things that were never supposed to be sentient, let alone mingle. Now they're out in the wild carrying through on the first, dangerously simple command function Steve gave them upon their creation: “Be fruitful and multiply”. Boy do they. Adam returned to the clay years ago, but now we got nine generations of his descendants destroying the human ecosystem. On top of that, Lilith's out here using humans as incubators to build her army of demons, and she's managed to hijack a bunch of Steve's angels with the power of being an extremely sexy yet temptatiously unstable girl boss. It's a fuckfest, an environmental catastrophe that's tearing the world apart. The other gods are pissed at Steve. His one job was to make sure the experiment didn't get this far out of hand, and Steve is beginning to lose his very, very short temper.
Now admittedly that's my reading, the exact wording Genesis 6:1-4 is notoriously more vague. The text presents a narrative where the Bene-Elohim (“sons of the gods”) actually end up finding human women quite attractive. I can't blame them, I mean have you seen a woman? That's pretty awesome. These infatuations end up creating a hybrid caste of demigods which the Bible refers to as the Nephilim. This word means “fallen ones”, but in Biblical Hebrew it's used more in the sense of falling upon something, as how an army falls upon a fort, rather than falling from Heaven as modern audiences might be biased to read. In Genesis's own words, “These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown”. While the Nephilim are an essay unto themselves, it's actually that last quote I'd like to highlight, specifically the word that gets translated as “heroes” here in the NRSV. The word in Hebrew is “gibborim”, derived from the word “geber”, which technically can be translated as just “man”, but it's more accurately manly. It carries explicitly masculine connotations of strength, might, and initiative, so less our modern use of the word “hero” and more like how the ancient Greeks defined it. More like English “champion” or “badass”, neutral on the actual morality of said badass thing. In Heathenry, for reference, our equivalent word is “drengr”.
Probably the most recognizable roundtable that got lumped under this umbrella are David's Mighty Men, described in the Second Book of Samuel and the First Book of Chronicles. These Gibborim were 37 of the king's closest, most renowned warriors, the homies he'd take with him into every battle against the Philistines. It follows then that Gabriel, the Gibborim-of-El, literally the “Champion of God”, was initially conceived as fulfilling a similar role under Steve himself as the divine king of a rapidly expanding heavenly host. See, individually-named angels are actually a shockingly late development in the Hebrew Bible. Angels make an appearance as early as Genesis, but that appearance is inconsistent, probably because the word angel itself is pretty democratic. The Hebrew word that later got translated into Greek as “angelos” was “mal’ākh”, but both of these words simply mean “messenger”, neutral on any distinction between humans with newspaper routes or descendant cosmic horrors beyond euclidean comprehension. They're a lot less systematized in the actual Biblical text than people think, and this is frankly just not the essay to dissect a coherent history of angelology. I'm trying to keep it narrowed down to one for my own sanity.
You however probably don't have the book of the Bible in which Gabriel makes his appearance on your shelf. It's certainly not in mine, and I've got an NRSV, the standard scholarly edition of these texts. Unless you're a rabbi or you grew up in Ethiopia (which if that's you, welcome! I'd love to hear your story!), the only familiarity you're likely to have with the Book of Enoch is its direct quotation in the Book of Jude, verses 14 and 15: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgement on all, and to convict everyone of all the deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” For the sake of brevity, the Book of Enoch, originally composed in Aramaic some time between the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, is a work of spinoff literature which seeks to explain that weird bit at Genesis 5:23-24. In an eye-glazing list of Adam's descendants who each very succinctly die, as mortals are to do, Enoch is the outlier. “Thus all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty-five years. Enoch walked with the gods; then he was no more, because the gods took him”.
Whatever the hell that may originally have meant in the mind of the author, the Book of Enoch connects it back around to that talk of Sons of the Gods getting freaky with human chicks in Genesis 6. Enoch reframes these as the “Watchers”, angels who decide they simply must make babies with the primates. I find this really funny to scene-build because in my lore, inspired by Islamic thought, angels are these tinker toy things, they're porcelain cog-machines and aren't sentient. As we've seen in previous essays though, Lilith has the absolutely ruinous superpower to make toasters horny, and that's a big part of the compounding problem. For the record, those last two run-on sentences are worldbuilding notes for the sake of my own creative license, none of that is in the historical text of Enoch. Back into what's actually on the page.
The chief of these fallen angels is actually not the Satan Samael, but rather an angel named “Shemihazah”, which seems to mean something like “Stargazer”, he was an angel of horticulture. There's a Sith name, write that down- To prevent the other 199 Watchers from chickening out, they bind themselves by a mutual curse, and then descend to the dirt planet to find human wives with beautiful endowments. The resulting hybrid offspring are the Nephilim, goliaths with heavier appetites than there is food to sustain it. They start going full on Marvel Zombies, as in they resort to eating people first and when that's not enough, they start ripping up the rest of the ecosystem for anything with ATP in it. The very clay of the Earth is overengorged with gore of every single living thing, until all that remains are ghosts screaming to Heaven for help in a bog of blood.
Four archangels are watching the Watchers from their perches in Heaven above: Michael, Sariel (Uriel in the Greek version), Raphael, and our subject today, Gabriel. They figure they should probably get involved, but of course these are angels so they have to do their whole singing cuckoo clock routine before they can ask their father for the command. Steve approves, programs a post for each of them. Sariel gets to be the one who tells Noah that nay mortal, everything is going to be perfectly okay actually, don't worry about it. Raphael meanwhile is tasked with healing the world. Remember clerics: the Resurrection spell works on any remnant of a creature that's been dead for less than a century, it heals all wounds and restores any missing body parts :) Michael then of course takes the lead on the sting, tasked with casting the Watchers into the broiling desert wasteland of Doudael (the “Cauldron of God”) for all eternity, then making sure the earth is cleansed of their genepool. Then at last honest men will be able to die of old age, and Steve will never have to kill anyone eeeeeeeeverrrrr agaiiiiiin.
It's actually Gabriel who gets the edgiest kill command out of all of them though. His instructions are, “Go, Gabriel, to the bastards, to the half-breeds, to the sons of miscegenation; and destroy the sons of the Watchers from among the sons of men; send them against one another in a war of destruction. Length of days they will not have; and no petition will be granted to their fathers in their behalf, that they should expect to live an everlasting life, nor even that each of them should live five hundred years”. Harsh, but poignant. Gabriel doesn't feature all that prominently in the rest of the narrative. They do eventually defeat the Watchers of course, and Gabriel is a fourth of the party who casts the rebel angels into perdition, alongside Michael, Raphael, and Phanuel. Later in the text, when Enoch's doing his walking with gods, Gabriel is described as one of Seven Archangels, alongside his brothers Uriel, Raphael, Reuel, Michael, Sariel, and Ramiel. Gabriel's particular supervision is over the Garden of Eden itself, the serpents in said paradise, curiously, and the cherubim who guard the gate. Here he tends to the Tree of Wisdom, petitioning prayers for the people of Earth and interceding in human affairs when Steve's not feeling up for walking all the way downstairs.
Gabriel's first appearance in everyone else's Bibles though comes about as late as he could possibly cut it. He is only mentioned explicitly by name in the Book of Daniel, the last of the canonical books of the Old Testament to be put to paper. Though the story itself is set during the Babylonian Exile (587 to 539 BCE), the actual text was authored in the wake of the Maccabean Revolt which began in 167 BCE. That's why each of Daniel's acid trips “predict” the coming eras of the Jewish people suffering under foreign rule, leading up to the intolerable reign of the Seleucid King Antilochus IV, who slaughtered a pig to Zeus in their own Temple. As a historical fantasy writer myself, the most handy thing about writing prophecies in hindsight is that they've already come true. I will be skipping over the real meat of these visions because they all amount to the same thinly veiled metaphor, and really we're here today for the framing device.
Daniel has his first night terror in chapter 7, but it just kinda leaves him dazed and unnerved. The second unnecessarily vague prophecy he receives in chapter 8 isn't much better, but as he's in the middle of looking at the signs and trying to figure out what in the blue fuck is happening here, the camera pans over to some random dude acting like he's been standing there next to Daniel the whole time. The intercom then implores of the stranger, “Gabriel, help this man understand the vision”, ey there ‘e is! As Gabriel approaches Daniel, his angelic presence compels the mortal to fall to his knees in frightful prayer. Gabriel, more ominously than I think he intends, opens his explanation with, “Understand, O mortal, that the vision is for the time of the end”, i.e. the reign of Antilochus, which is further foretold. “The vision of the evenings and the mornings that had been told is true. As for you, seal up the vision, for it refers to many days for now”. Then Daniel just kinda wakes up, immediately vomits, then gets on with his day a more traumatized man.
Gabriel comes back around in chapter 9, set one year later from Daniel's perspective, Daniel now pulling his hair out over a cryptic prophecy of his own passed down from the Book of Jeremiah. As Daniel is weeping for the sins of his people, Gabriel, quote, “came to me in swift flight”, which I choose to interpret as Gabriel, all smiles, busting down his door and big swoop hugging his best bud Daaaaaniel. “Daniel, I have now come out to give you wisdom and understanding. At the beginning of your supplications a word went out, and I have come to declare it, for you are greatly beloved”. He just sounds so excited about it, he's like a golden retriever, I love him. Again, roll with me on my idea that angels are just tinker robots, it makes it all the funnier when Gabriel goes on to regurgitate just every horrible, sacrilegious abomination that will befall his people for the next 437 and a half years with this dopey smile I gave him on his emotionless porcelain face, oblivious.
Chapter 10 then hard cuts to three years later. Now Daniel is just kinda baking in the summer heat next to the Tigris River because he's been in mourning for the past three weeks. The mirage he hallucinates over the river is of “a man clothed in linen, with a belt of gold from Uphaz around his waist. His body was like beryl, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the roar of a multitude”. Daniel leans over like a stick of jerky to ask his buddies who are out there with him if they're seeing this shit too. Nah man, they say, but as he starts explaining himself they think damn, if that is real man I don't think we should stick around it, smell ya later. Daniel, thoroughly abandoned to witness this trip alone, just sorta planks over on his face the second this thing, Gabriel's true form, tries to talk to him. Gabriel, very friendly, rouses him back up, chirping, “Daniel, greatly beloved, pay attention to the words that I am going to speak to you. Stand on your feet, for I have now been sent to you”. Daniel is groggily ragdolled to his feet, the angel then apologies for not pickin’ up the phone sooner. Sorry buddy I've been tied down by the Prince of Persia for the past three weeks, until Michael could tap me back in, but now I'm here and I can finally lore dump about the end of the world to youuuuuu! :)
I love Daniel's narration immediately thereafter: “While he was speaking these words to me, I turned my face towards the ground and was speechless”. It's like please, God, no, not again. Gabriel however giddily responds, “Do not fear, greatly beloved, you are safe. Be strong and courageous!” That exclamation mark is in the Bible, I love it. Then he like injects Daniel with an adrenaline spike and Daniel is snapped into agreeing aaaaaaaaa fine okay tell your story, I guess I'm awake now anyway! The angel, given permission to speak, begins not as he did before. There's a somber ponderance in his tone now. He says it's gotten really hard on the front lines, trying to kill the Prince of Persia and all. It's only him and Michael out there, and then once we kill him we're gonna have to fight the King of Greece afterwards. I liked that Darius the Mede guy, I was there at his coronation. I miss him.
Then he snaps back into the whole reason he's here, to foretell the future. He tells Daniel about the destiny of the Achaemenid Empire, of the rise of Alexander the Great, the wars of his Diadochi, and the general tyranny of the Seleucids. Then he trails off, shit's gonna go down in 167 BCE, that pig sacrifice is Michael's cue to rise up and lead the army of your people against their oppressors. Things will get bad before things get worse, but the dead in their graves have already had their cosmic destinies fixed, while you alive still have a choice between wisdom and wickedness. When Daniel asks how he can help, the angel passes him a copy of this prophecy and orders that he keep it hidden until the time is right. “Happy are those who persevere and and attain the thousand three hundred thirty-five days [167 BCE]. But you, go your way, and rest; you shall rise for your reward at the end of the days.” So closes the Book of Daniel, I actually like that. It's a beautiful melancholy, very May the Force be with You.
Sadly, the independence which the Maccabees were in fact able to secure for their people rotted into an incredibly violent civil war within only a hundred years. It got so bad that Rome had to get involved, by which of course I mean Rome decided they had to get involved regardless of whether anyone actually wanted them there or not. Everything sucks, the revolution failed, they're right back to square one, slaughtering pigs in the name of the gods of foreign occupiers. Next thing you know even the carpenters are getting it in their heads that they could do a better job, and then getting lynched by the cops for it. The New Testament presumes that Gabriel is stuck on the ground floor, still fighting a war that was supposed to be over centuries ago. Gabriel's entire screen time in the Christian gospels however only takes up a singular page. Luke 1:5 introduces us to a priest named Zechariah, a simple man who wanted more than anything to bear a child with his beloved wife Elizabeth, but her tubes are tragically barren. The couple's desires are answered by Gabriel, who appears spontaneously while Zechariah is in the Temple doing priest things. Gabriel opens with the classic “Be not afraid”, then goes on to foretell the birth of his son, John the Baptist. When Zechariah responds with what I think is a completely reasonable followup question, “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years”. Gabriel however, the angelic equivalent of Clippy, crackles out, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur”. Just takes the man's voice right out of his face hole. Again, going off of my thesis that angels aren't sentient, I don't think this was a malicious act of spite, I think that's just the programmed punishment for wasting an angel's time. Gabriel can't tell the difference, which I'd argue is a more esoteric bent than giving them human personalities, and the more important benefit: it's funnier. Don't worry about Zechariah, he's fine. His pipes are cleared, his wife gives birth, and they are very happy to raise a son together at last.
Six months later, and approximately 65 miles to the north, Gabriel jumpscares Elizabeth's cousin Maryam, a carpenter's wife. Gabriel materializes and chirps, “Greetings, favored one! The lord is with you! Blessed are you among women!” Maryam, clearly not expecting this to be how her spring was gonna start, goes u… uhhhhhh…hh..h.? The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
Maryam cocks her head and squeaks something to that effect of, “I'm sixteen?”
Gabriel explains on cue that oh it's quite simple you see, very efficient, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born to you will be holy; he will be called Son of God”. Thank you Gabriel, that cleared so much up. This poor girl is so lost. Gabriel then tacks on an elaboration that he had to have this talk with her cousin Elizabeth just six months ago, she's also having a miraculous birth, we're doing a whoooooole thing, it's gonna be great! Then Mary, not really able to conceive of what she could do if she didn't go along with this, just kinda goes o-kayyy, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word”. Then Gabriel just kinda… bamphs, mission accomplished, leaves her to process… this? There's a lot she has to explain to Joseph, that's for sure. Maybe it's just me and my Giger itch but there's a lot of weird parasitic body horror I read out of the Annunciation. Don't get me wrong, I eat that stuff up, but giving birth is already a daunting affair, let alone when you've got a god umbilicaled to your insides. I can't imagine that poor girl's hormonal imbalance.
The Gnostics don't make it any less eerie either. One of the many poignant questions the main character of Gospel of Judas has for his teacher JC is, “Does the human spirit die?” I love that question and too would like an answer, but much of JC's response didn't survive the beating the papyrus took over the centuries, so I guess we'll be stuck in the dark on that one. In the fragments that do survive though, it's mentioned that Gabriel (who is described in the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit as the physical embodiment of God's love for humanity) was the one put in charge of stuffing angelic souls inside of human suits to funnel them through the simulation. His brother Michael is the one responsible for collecting volunteers to make the dive into material life, but Gabriel is the one that actually has to implant the spirits in the meat.
You may notice that Gabriel and Michael are thick as thieves, and it turns out that's actually by design. Moving forward into Talmudic literature, Avot de-Rabbi Natan 12:6 puts in the mouth of 2nd century rabbi Simeon ben Eleazar yet more arguments for my thesis that angels are robots. While discussing the meaning of Psalm 34:14, “Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it”, Simeon argues that one way Steve pursued peace in his house was to not name ten of his angels Gabriel, another ten Michael, another ten Raphael, etc, as if they're just makes and models. Steve had a debug assessment before launching the project, and it occurred to him that if angels are supposed to come when they're called, if he makes ten Gabriels then he's gonna be swarmed with a room of ten Gabriels each fighting to answer him as the Gabriel. That's going to get annoying real fast, so no, each angel has to be individually manufactured. There will be only one Gabriel, and only one Michael. He will take the time and effort to make each of his drones personalized, because as we've seen in many of these essays, the basalmost driver of Steve's character is that he loves his kids. He's not good at it, and he knows at the end of the day these are wind up toys, but he does remember each and every one of their names and birthdays. He even installs a deep pack bond at the core of each angels’ programming, angels are to admire and protect each other, to never leave one of their own behind. Gabriel looks up to Michael, and Michael looks up to Gabriel, it's cute. It's also extremely tenuous, and is the exact pride that got so many angels banished to the pit with their commanding officer. Angels do not like humans, they see us as unworthy mud puppets.
Except, however, for Gabriel. Now, don't get me wrong, the Talmud puts all sorts of heinous deeds under Gabriel's scythe. And this one's just a note for me: Sanhedrin 95b:10, Gabriel does wield a scythe, because again he's the one tilling the Garden of Eden. His night shift involves pruning the Tree of Life for new human souls and passing the plucked harvest onto Lailah (“Night”), the angel of pregnancy. Humans are like his bonsais, he tries to weave their lives into the best possible worldline before sending the souls off to be born. Day shifts meanwhile, he's been summoned to use that scythe for a swath of raptorial reapings. He was at Sodom, for example, Bava Batra 75a:1. He's the one that blew it the fuck up, while Michael was the one who evacuated Lot's family. He also nuked the Assyrians in 701 BCE, 185,000 soldiers poxxed off the face of the Earth. Gabriel castrated Potiphar for purchasing Joseph as a sex slave, Sotah 13b:12. That action I agree with. He also beat the pulped shit out of two of the Pharaoh's Daughter's handmaidens who tried to suggest well ma'am, your own father made sparing this basket baby illegal, which is… one way to solve that moral conundrum I guess? It's almost comically brief, “After the maidens tried to convince her not to save Moses, the angel Gabriel came and beat them to the ground and they died”, robotically efficient. Again, I don't put the blame on the toasters for their actions, I don't think there's actual minds in there, just instructions. Gabriel's a little odd though, because he likes humans. He thinks they're silly and neat! Gabriel doesn't want humans who haven't been marked to hurt. He leaves Pharaoh's Daughter one maidservant alive because, “it is not proper that a princess should stand alone”. He warns Joseph about his brothers' intentions to kill him, “You refer to them as brothers, but they have clearly distanced themselves from such brotherly sentiments”, and mass downloads seventy languages into Joseph's brain just so he'll be more impressive when presented to Pharaoh.
In Sotah 10b, Gabriel helps Tamar gather the proof that her babies are Judah's, despite Samael's schemes to have her put to death and thus smother out the line of King David in its own womb. Knowing Samael's angel-supremecist assknot, his brother actively foiling his plans specifically to ensure that more humans are safely born had to sting, put another straw on the camel's back. Samael and Gabriel share one very crucial job, you see. Both of them are the angels put in charge of throwing Steve's words back in his face, of keeping him consistent. Whereas Samael is the Satan, Heaven's court-appointed Devil's Advocate, specifically designed to poke dad's wrath, Gabriel is the one who has to remind Steve of the kindnesses he promised. He's like the good angel on Steve's shoulder, laying out all the reasons he thinks humans should not be annihilated, thx man really appreciate swingin for us down here. According to Sanhedrin 44b:5, Gabriel is given three titles as part of this position opposite to the Satan: Piskon, the “Splitter”, because he splits words with God (that's fun I like that), Itmon, the “Concealer”, because he covers for the sins of man, and Sigron, the “Closer”, because he's never lost a case on humanity's behalf. Or at least, he's not supposed to.
Shabbat 55a:6 opens the scene in the middle of the Book of Ezekiel, chapter 9. For context, Ezekiel has just survived the first Babylonian attack on Jerusalem, he himself was taken by the enemy as a captive alongside his conquered king, and now God himself has personally showed up to tell him he's so pissed at his childrens’ behavior that he's gonna make sure Jerusalem's Order-66ed even harder in 587 BCE, in just five years time. Ezekiel is being held by the hair to be shown extremely lucid visions of all the cool pagan stuff inside the Temple which led to all this anger, like a dog having its face shoved in a piss stain. God then orders six angels to march in and slaughter the idolaters, executioner style. Among these six is Steve's stenographer, described as a “man clothed in linen”, which Sanhedrin 44b:5 takes to mean Gabriel, the man clothed in linen from Daniel. Dad gives Gabriel one simple task, can't fuck it up: “Go through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of those who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed against it”. In the Sanhedrin version, Gabriel anxiously tilts his head, “Master of the Universe, how are these different from those?”
Oh that's simple son! The people you're marking are inherently good, and the people without are irredeemably evil! Gabriel is just like well that… doesn't compute, I mean how would you even quantify such a thing? “Master of the Universe, it was in the hands of the righteous to protest the conduct of the wicked, and they did not protest”. Steve then gets mansplainy and asserts that no son, even if they protested, the problem is not going to listen. I genuinely love Gabriel's very brave reply, it's a beautiful retort, “Master of the Universe, if it is revealed before You that their reprimand would have been ineffective, is it revealed to them?” Steve gives his son the meanest dad look, puts the literal fear of God in him, then turns to the other executioners, quoting from Ezekiel 9:5, “Pass through the city after him, and kill; your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity. Cut down old men, young men and young women, little children and women, but touch no one who has the mark. And begin at my sanctuary. Defile the house, and fill the courts with the slain. Go!” He then gives Ezekiel a whole maniacal thing about no no no, you were the ones who started saying I abandoned you, and Gabriel sheepishly returns swiftly after, having only one thing to report: “I have done as you commanded me”.
Then it just keeps going. Yoma 77a adds a bit of dialogue between Ezekiel 9 and 10. Steve turns to Michael, the archangel stationed in defense over the entire Jewish world, and puts it simply: “Michael, your nation has sinned”. Michael nods, he's less hung up about the good and evil split than Gabriel is, affirming, “May it be enough for the good people among them to save them from destruction. I will burn them and the good among them because the good do not rebuke the wicked”. Steve is pleased, there's a son who knows how to follow orders. He then turns to Gabriel, Ezekiel 10:2: Go within the wheel work underneath the cherubim; fill your hands with burning coals from among the cherubim, and scatter them over the city”. Steve here is referring to the engine powering his hover chair, for clarification. It's carried by four weird gyroscope-lookin angels called Ophanim, themselves supervised by a staff of cherubim, like heavy machinery. Gabriel obeys, the cherubim shovel some coal out, hand it to him, and Gabriel… he holds on just long enough to let them cool down. Just a little bit.
That very hesitation however is what gets his hazing taken too far. While God gets on with Cthulhu-ing Ezekiel's wildest imaginations, the other executioners drag Gabriel behind a curtain and start kicking the shit out of him with sixty Firebender ass kickbox moves. As uncomfortable as it is to watch, I love this overstimilating robotic dialogue they interrogate him with while he's down like a swarm of angry hornets: “If you did not do it, you did not do it; if you did do it, why did you not do it according to what you were commanded but deviated from what you were instructed to do? Moreover, after you already did it, do you not have knowledge of the principle: One should not deliver a report about destruction? If one is sent on a mission of destruction, he should not deliver a detailed report of its success but should only hint at it.” Their gigachad ringleader is Dobiel (“Bear of God”), the guardian angel of the Persians, and they've already unanimously voted him as Gabriel's replacement while he's in time out for malicious compliance.
Sanhedrin 44b fast forwards us to Ezekiel 16:3, where Steve is now commanding Ezekiel to go out and inform his countrymen of their parentage between a hamster and a man who smells of elderberries. Gabriel at this point is just rattled with the way dad is losing his temper, and barges back in to beg, to insist. “Master of the Universe, were the patriarch Abraham and the matriarch Sarah to come now and stand before You, would you speak to them in such a manner and put them to shame? Is it not stated: ‘Debate your cause with your neighbor, and do not reveal the secret of another?’” He's quoting directly from Proverbs 25:7-10 here. Yoma 77a doesn't specify Steve's response, probably because Ezekiel 16 is more than 3 verses, in fact the next verse is basically God saying “and another thing!” The Book of Ezekiel goes up to 48 chapters. Dad's not listening right now.
Dobiel is the Prince of Persia which Gabriel was in conflict with for twenty-one days. His first edict is to set up the dominoes for the prosperous conquests of his beloved Achaemenid Empire. As his brothers are drafting the edict that'll impose Persian taxes on their Jewish subjects, Gabriel is just kinda withering behind the curtain, staticking Psalm 127:2 to himself, “In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat— for he grants sleep to those he loves”. That hits me in the same spot as “My battery is low, and it's getting dark”. We miss you Oppy, one day we'll turn ya back on. Gabriel however shambles out again just to get an answer from his brothers, “Is this the reward they deserve, to pay more taxes?” They ignore him, and in this pitiable state, Gabriel starts weirdly obsessing about his buddy Daaaaaniel in his isolation, just babbling about how cool and awesome Daaaaaniel is until eventually Steve starts hearing it in the vents and thinks dang this Daniel guy does sound pretty cool. He asks the room, “Who is the one who teaches the virtue of my children?” The angels go that would be Gabriel, father, and Steve goes oyeaaaaah, get that kid back in here.
Gabriel of course is over the moon! He's all fixed up and put back in charge of his favorite animals! Pesachim 118a casts him as the fourth guy who materialized inside the Rack, Shack, and Benny's furnace, and that's actually a big deal in itself for Gabriel, apparently. You know that Doofenschmirtz bit about the nickels? There's an extrabiblical tradition that Nimrod tried to wickerman Abraham for being a henotheist, oh the things boys get up to. In this version, Gabriel sees this going down and is the first to jump like good heavens we have to help that human! Steve however holds him back like noooo, it's fine slugger, I got this one, Abraham is special to me. Proud of Gabriel for standing up for a human in danger though, Steve promises there'll be an opportunity to carry that good energy forward one day, just like this. Getting to save these three guys from Nebuchadnezzar, to Gabriel, meant that no matter how badly dad blows his lid, every promise he makes does eventually come back round. “And the truth of the Lord endures forever”, Gabriel quotes Psalm 117:2. He shoves Yurkamo, angel of ice out of the way, make room for Gabriel the angel of fire! He's gonna do this cool thing where he inverts the furnace and the air in the room it's stored in!
Ohh, and he's gonna give Daaaaaniel all sorts of futuresight dreams, because Daaaaaniel is already so cool and Daaaaaniel would be even cooler if he could see the future! There's just one thing he's gotta do before anything: find Dobiel before he can complete any more paperwork! He barges into Dobiel's office, and as if instinctively, Dobiel crams the letter into his mouth and swallows it. Gabriel however manages to save its postscript, and what it reads disturbs him deeply: “And when I depart from him, the prince of Greece comes”. Motherfucker has written the finale for the Achaemenid screenplay. Gabriel goes out in a screaming panic, no this is all wrong, it's too mean! We are not going to let our humans fall under Zeus's jurisdiction, right brothers? Are you with me?! No. No one was. They ignored him again and kept on carrying out Dobiel's functions, as if Gabriel had never even come back in the first place. That was the moment Gabriel calculated the exact future Daniel needed to see in his next vision. Daniel now knew how to save his people. Gabriel, meanwhile, had a rendezvous with Michael to get to. They together had decided that their brother had to be killed. I couldn't find what they ended up doing to Dobiel, but the last Achaemenid king was tied to an ox cart by his own governors and left to die in the desert, where Alexander the Great would weep over the body of his greatest foe.
It's in the Qur’an however that Gabriel (Jibrīl in Arabic) would find his star prominence in the human imagination. He's part of the reason it's called the “Qur'an” in the first place. Fundamental to Islam is the core belief that the Qur’an, literally the “Recitation”, is the exact, quote for quote, inflection by inflection, word of God, a transcript given first to Jibrīl, who then in turn recited it to the Prophet Muhammad in 609 CE. By name, Jibrīl is only mentioned three times in the Qur’an: firstly in Surah 2 verses 97 and 98, when the book is discussing the wickedness of those who have read the scriptures and chosen to disregard them anyway. “Say: Whoever is an enemy to Gabriel – for he brings down the revelation to thy heart by Allah's will, a confirmation of what went before, and guidance and glad tidings for those who believe – Whoever is an enemy to Allah and His angels and Messengers, to Gabriel and Michael – lo! Allah is an enemy to those who reject Faith”. The second occurrence is at Surah 66:4, where Muhammad's wives are being warned not to gossip between each other about the things Muhammad confided to each of them in private. “If ye two turn in repentance to Him, your hearts are indeed so inclined, but if ye back up each other against him, truly Allah is his Protector, and Gabriel, and every righteous one among those who believe – and furthermore, the angels – will back him up”.
Jibrīl is less directly referred to by the title “Rūḥ al-qudus”, meaning “Holy Spirit”. He's mentioned in this context four times in the Qur’an, the first three (Surahs 2:87, 2:253, and 5:110) describing how Jibrīl was sent to Mary and Jesus to strengthen his ministry and deliver unto him the gift of miracle-working shipped straight from the big guy upstairs. Surah 9 in fact presents the Islamic riff on Luke's Annunciation, where here Mary is off on her own trying to get some alone time away from her family house, when suddenly an angel barges into her personal space. She obviously gets scared shitless and defensive, “I seek refuge from thee to Allah Most Gracious: come not near if thou dost fear Allah”. I like to imagine she's brandishing a frying pan and she ain't afraid to use it. Jibrīl however assures her, “Nay, I am only a messenger from thy Lord, to announce to thee the gift of a holy son”. Mary blinks, confused as she was in Luke, “How shall I have a son, seeing that no man has touched me, and I am not unchaste?” Then Jibrīl gives her the whole God works in mysterious ways deflection and next thing ya know she's got a virgin birth on the way.
The Rūḥ al-qudus is mentioned one more time in Surah 16:102, circling back to the Prophet Muhammad, being advised on how to handle being labeled a fraud when he encounters non-believers. “Say, the Holy Spirit has brought the revelation from thy Lord in Truth, in order to strengthen those who believe, and as a Guide and Glad Tidings to Muslims”. In the appropriately-named Hadith of Gabriel, Jibrīl very much spotlights as the Prophet Muhammad's Jedi Master. He drills the Prophet on the tenets of Islam, teaches him how to be an authority just as he was said to do with the other twenty-four prophets who came before him. Hadith also identifies Jibrīl with the angel who escorts the Prophet Muhammad through the seven heavens on his Night Journey, meeting each of the angel's previous students, until they reach God's chamber at the top and Jibrīl is not permitted to follow his charge inside. Jibrīl was fighting at the Prophet's side at the Battle of Badr, and he was there when the Prophet was on his death bed.
The trumpet detail is actually a shockingly late development. The New Testament makes frequent mention of horns being blown to signal Armageddon and the resurrection of the dead, but nowhere is Gabriel specifically named as the herald. In Islam, out of their big four archangels (that is Michael, Gabriel, Azrael, and Israfil) the task of announcing the end times is instead assigned to Israfil, not Gabriel. The horn isn't given to Gabriel until a 12th century Armenian manuscript attributed to Nerses IV the Gracious, largely out of nowhere. In fact, the only future prediction for Gabriel specifically which I stumbled across was back in the Talmud, at Bava Batra 75a, where Rabbi Yonatan says that one day, Gabriel will go fishin’ for Leviathan with dad, which is adorable. I really do think that's all Gabriel wants, for things to go back to the way that they were, or, barring that, for everyone to at least just get along. Gabriel loves the humans under his charge, I really think he does, sentient or not. It's in his core, the stickling logic which continues to insist that no, good people don't deserve to have bad things happen to them, and that there is always hope to do something about lifting this veil of its festering darkness. One step, one life, one human, at a time. Then and only then will things be okay again, at last.
Design notes, ehhhhh my heart wasn't really in this one. It's been a week, lot of stuff in my personal life weighing me down lately. Like it's fine, I put on paper what I wanted to draw, but I usually try to aim above that minimum. It was really that linen coat that was giving me the most lip, could not get the line art of the fabric to cooperate. Eventually I had to concede that trying to do any more erasing was gonna damage the rest of the piece, and convince myself that what I had was good enough. There was also just a lot of experimental detail in this one that I just wasn't in the emotional mood to expound upon further, like I wanted his green to have a little more of a sparkly gemstone quality to it, he's made of beryl. It's a little crusty, but the design itself at least I'm satisfied with, and sometimes, for a reference sheet, that's what ya gotta prioritize. I'm gonna go take a nap now.