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Michael — Description

The name “Michael” is an odd one, because grammatically, it's actually a rhetorical question, “Who is like God?” The name appears ten times in the Hebrew Bible, though not in the way you probably think. The name is first dropped in the Book of Numbers, composed sometime in the Post-Exilic Period (539 BCE onwards), specifically at Numbers 13:13, where a “Sethur, son of Michael” is listed as one of the spies Moses sends out to scout out the land of Canaan. It is not a proud lineage which this Michael is identified with, Sotah 34b of the Talmud names Sethur among the spies who started spreading rumors among Moses's camp that conquering the Promised Land is gonna be like super hard and stuff, and that they should all just give up now. The only direct explanation I could dig up as to why his equally unhelpful father is named Michael is from a medieval Rabbinic text called the Midrash Tanhuma. They basically call him a habitual liar and a compulsive contrarian, and cites Deuteronomy 33:26, “There is none like the God of Yeshurun,” as the snobby answer to the rhetorical question in his name.
Humans named Michael crop up a handful of times in the Books of Chronicles, traditionally said to be penned by Ezra in the 5th century BCE. First there's two Michaels descending from the Tribe of Gab at 1 Chronicles 5:13-14, then at 6:40 there's a Michael from the family of David's bards. 1 Chronicles 7:3 has a Michael from the Tribe of Issachar, renowned for their gibborim (mighty men and warriors of renown), and then the Tribe of Benjamin gets one at 8:16. A Michael is role-called at 1 Chronicles 12:20, in the list of Manassites who deserted Saul to join King David's army. Then we get bored of Michaels for a while, until that Issacharite Michael comes back around at 27:18, listed as the father of Omri, leader of the tribe in the ranks of David's army. We have a prince named Michael in 2 Chronicles 21:2, one of the sons of King Jehoshaphat who didn't get his old man's crown but still got away with living a cushy life off his inheritance. Lastly, jump forward into Ezra 8:8 and there's a Michael named as the father of Zebadiah, one of the patriarchs who accompany the eponymous prophet. As you can see, there's not exactly a unified character here, and some very all-over-the-place connotations between each individual. It just seems to be a popular name.
Then we hit the Book of Enoch, a book written sometime between the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, which hasn't survived into most people's Bibles outside of Ethiopia. We talked about this in the Gabriel blurb so I'll avoid rehashing the summary too much. Michael here is introduced as one of the four archangels responsible for cleaning up the Nephilim problem running amok thanks to the rogue angel Shemihazah. Michael is tasked with hogtying Shemihazah and his conspirators, ensuring that every trace of the Nephilim genepool is fucking wiped, and terraforming all the environmental damage the fiends had done to Fertile Crescent. He's described as the leader among archangels, the Prince of Israel, second in rank only to their people's one true king, the God of Yeshurun. He is the angel who keeps all the secrets of Heaven, including the true name of God, which he used to sculpt the material realm to His design.
Michael is the defendant of the righteous, those who follow the laws of their Lord to a T, but I don't think that's to mean he likes humans. Aside from Gabriel, angels fucking hate us, they look down on us as clay monkeys, nowhere near as worthy of dad's love as dad insists we are. While escorting Enoch through the realms of Heaven, for example, the human lays his eyes on the Tree of Life, beautiful in all its majesty. The second he starts asking around for lore, however, Michael responds like his time is yet again being sacrileged. “Enoch, why do you inquire and why do you marvel about the fragrance of this tree, and why do you wish to learn the truth?” Enoch's like idk man just curious, and then Michael, adding to my thesis that angels are robots, coldly explains that this Tree is going to take root in the Earth to serve as God's throne, and that, “no flesh has the right to touch it until the great judgement, in which there will be a vengeance on all and a consummation forever”. Later on, when Enoch faints at the sheer scale of the swarm of angels delivering the Flood like a kicked hornet's nest, Michael has to revivify him, and immediately chastises his ungrateful weakness. “What have you seen, that you are so disturbed? Until today has the day of his mercy lasted, and he has been merciful and long suffering to those who dwell on the earth. And when the day and the power and the punishment and the judgement come, which the Lord of Spirits has prepared for those who do not worship the righteous judge, and for those who deny the righteous judgement, and for those who take his name in vain… And that day has been prepared for the elect, a covenant, for the sinners, a visitation”. Alright chill man, mechanical fuckin megalomaniac.
Michael is very much a war machine, he does as he is commanded by the father he spends all day praising. He does not stray, and he has no tolerance for dissent. Shemihazah isn't the only fallen angel out there making a mockery of God's plan, there's also Azazel, who gives mankind swords and beauty products. That sounds pretty kickass, all things being equal, but Michael does not care if things are kickass, only if they please his father. Michael was tasked with casting these loose lips into the flaming pits of Gehenna. Gehenna is often what gets translated as “Hell” in English Bibles, and while that's not wrong, it's actually more interesting than that. It's a real place, the Valley of Hinnom is a geologic staple of the city of Jerusalem. The Book of Jeremiah condemns this valley as a den of Moloch worshipers who sacrificed children to their blood god. It had become a big ghost story by the Hellenistic period, everyone knew that place was haunted. The Book of Enoch uses this valley as a set piece for the punishment of the rebellious angels, flooded with a deluge of molten metal which drowns the prisoners underground, tortured until any attachment they had to physical desires is divorced. I wonder if Steve ever tried turning them off and then on again, surely that would be more efficient.
Michael stands above the pit his brothers are melting in like shrieking furbies, agitated, grieving what he had to do. Raphael stands at his side, asking him where this sympathy is coming from. Michael explains callously that it's no pretty sight, anyone's heart would wrench watching this scene unfold. He does not, however, lift a finger to alleviate the suffering of those he cast out. “I will not take their part under the eye of the Lord, because the Lord of Spirits is angry with them, because they act as if they were like the Lord”. Dissent is not a tolerable error. Indeed, as we discussed last week, Michael is mentioned three times in the Book of Daniel (10:13, 10:21, and 12:1, a prayer on the lips of his brother Gabriel. These two smote Sodom and Gomorrah together, Michael would unquestioningly do the same again to the angel Dobiel for picking on his little brother. You simply do not betray the host and get away with it so long as Michael's policing the troops. It's very Grand Army of the Republic.
So okay, we now have this very succinct character taking root in pop culture. Later authors writing their own testaments would swipe this character for their own fanfictions, and he'd be just as cold there as well. Michael is mentioned once in the Epistle of Jude, at verse 9, which alludes to an otherwise lost myth about Michael fighting with the Devil over the body of Moses. Taking the opportunity to diss people who take time out of their day to slander angels, Jude juxtaposes this behavior against Michael's. “But when the archangel Michael contended with the devil and disputed the body of Moses, he did not dare to bring a condemnation of slander against him”. Just shows up, begone thots him, and secures the target. I can't deny the viking in me kinda respects that. It will be an honor to slay him in combat.
Michael's only other appearance in the New Testament is in the Book of Revelation, specifically Revelation 12, which has always been my favorite part because y'all know I love Alien. It is such an uncomfortable scene which comes largely out of nowhere and seems a little disjuncted from an already difficult-to-follow narrative. The story opens on an unnamed woman, “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars”. I have no clue what that means, might be a Judean respin of the Birth of Apollo, but the intended conception is probably lost. Interpretations within Christianity usually peg this woman as either the Virgin Mary or a broader metaphor for the Church itself, takes I see as pretty reasonable from an academic perspective. As a writer, however, I'm more attached to the more esoteric and admittedly fringe position that this woman is Eve. I think the imagery in this segment compliments really well with the legends we saw in previous essays that it was not Adam who fathered Cain and Abel, but rather the Satan himself, forcing himself on a poor woman who has already been through way too much.
Regardless of who she's actually meant to be, the woman of Revelation is heavily pregnant, screaming in agony, ready to get this thing OUT. Then from the sky descends a beastily seven-headed dragon, the Devil himself, who leers at the woman's gates, mouth agape, intending to consume the newborn child while it's still attached to mom. Little she has the power to do in this situation, the woman shrieks her one final push, the dragon's putrid, salivating breath on her loins. A son is born, a shepherd boy, and luckily it is not his destiny to become the lunch of a beast. Some unnamed force descends and swipes the boy away to the sanctuary of Heaven, while the woman, no doubt drained of all her biological resources, flees into the wilderness, where God sets her up in a healing oasis for the next three and a half years. Then all Heaven breaks loose. Michael rallies his angelic troops to cast the Satan and his corrupted kin into the pits of perdition. The war is brutal and not without casualties, but Michael prevails and the Satan is banished to Earth. Heaven wipes their hands over a job well done, not having to worry about that traitorous loudmouth ruining their reputation anymore, a perfect thought bubble where believers get to live without such gross human burdens as “doubt” or “self-reflection”. As for those poor schmucks still left on Earth, ehhhh fuck em, let the Devil have his chew toys, the material plane wasn't gonna last much longer anyway, surely. The demon's first target is the woman who escaped his maw, still running for her very exhausted life to reach the oasis. She's given eagle's wings to escape, but the serpent is on her tail. It pukes out a deluge of water to sweep her feet out from her, and the only thing that saves her is the Earth herself, who swallows the flood. The dragon loses his meal, safe in the arms of her god, and in his anger swears vengeance upon all of her children for the rest of eternity, out to prove that dad's favorite children are not so loyal to the Word as dad believes they can be.
The Talmud also paints Michael as an enemy of the Satan, Samael in Jewish cosmology, but puts less focus on his warrior aspects and more on his role as an administrator. According to Menachot 110a and repeated in Zevachim 62a, when he's off duty, Michael dwells in the Heaven of Zevul (the “Abode”), where his day job is keeping the altar in the Temple of Heaven stocked with sacrifices. Berakhot 4b supports this position, identifying Michael with the seraphim who took a hot coal from the altar and pressed it to the lips of the prophet Isaiah, to purify his mouth of sin, at Isaiah 6:6-7. Michael's administrative duties are usually supplemented as part of an angelic trio, including his brothers Gabriel and Raphael. Bava Metzia 86b identifies these three as the three men who appeared before the patriarch Abraham, Michael specifically assigned the task of informing Sarah of her miraculous conception and then rescuing Lot while Gabriel nukes Sodom. His presence… honestly doesn't add anything to the Bible stories he's inserted into across Rabbinical literature. Maybe some extra dialogue, which is always nice, but it's always pretty stale. Mind you, I propose that angels are robots, so I actually think the monotone deliverances work in that regard.
Midrashic literature is where the mythology starts to get a little more meat on its bones. Lean meat, but meat. First let's refresh ourselves with the Genesis Rabbah, a rabbinical commentary written sometime between the 4th and 5th centuries CE. The only nugget of lore that's really worth extracting here is the idea that Michael and Gabriel were responsible for stretching the blanket of Firmament across the Earth, Michael pulling to the south, Gabriel to the north. In the Genesis Rabbah, this devolves into a big nerd fight about the order of events of the days of Creation, ultimately ruling that this detail actually can't be canon because angels were made on the fifth day while the Firmament they'd supposedly stretch was made earlier. Canonicity, however, usually gets beaten out by Rule of Cool as adaptations go on. As far afield as the Zohar, each of the four archangels tending to Steve's every whim are assigned to a cardinal direction and a classical element. Michael is the angel of the south and made of water. Gabriel meanwhile is fire, stationed in the north. Raphael is air and the west, and lastly Uriel is earth and east. I'm not quite sure what the lore implication is there but it's a fun visual.
The first Midrash to touch the core dynamic between Michael and Samael meanwhile comes to us from the 8th century CE, in a text called the Pirkei De-Rabbi Eliezer. Michael here was designed to replace Samael as the Great Prince of Heaven after the Satan's jealous rebellion. As Samael and his angels are falling from the ledge of Heaven, Sammy grabs Michael by the wings and damn near pulls him into perdition with him. Michael is rescued by dad and bestowed the heroic title of “Paliṭ”, the Escapee. It's not a lot to go off of, but if we jump forward a few centuries into the late medieval period, in comes the Exodus Rabbah to increase the resolution. Samael is the Satan, which a lot of people forget is actually a title in the Heavenly Court, not a hellish one. He's the angel responsible for prosecuting charges against Steve's people in accordance with Steve's own wrathful words. Gabriel is the opposite, reminding Steve to keep true to his more benevolent promises, preventing dad from slipping back into the Dark Side. Michael meanwhile has the very important job of just telling Samael to clam his stupid face hole and halting court altogether. That is not an exaggeration. The exact phrasing in the Exodus Rabbah goes, “When this one finished his words and that one his words, that defender knows that he has won. Then he begins to praise the judge, that issues the verdict. That prosecutor then requests to add something. The defender then says to him, 'Be quiet and let us hear from the judge.' So is it that Michael and Samael stand in front of the Divine Presence; and the Satan prosecutes and Michael deliberates on the merit of Israel, and then the Satan comes to speak and Michael silences him”. Just completely shuts Sammy down, no wonder Sammy's convinced his entire family has been fucking brainwashed.
As you can see, Michael is more mascot than character. Personally I'm okay with that, it jibes with my interpretation of angels as porcelain automata, led by their relentlessly rigid and willfully obedient High Priest. Guy only secures room in court to advocate for our continued existence because he's programmed to. He shuts Sammy down not because there's an actual point to be made, but because his programmed job is to uphold and chub any and all actions father wills into existence as expressions of supreme law and inherent good. If dad likes you, Michael allows you to exist. If dad doesn't like you, Michael removes you from the board. It's not important whether or not you're a good person, only if God himself is generous enough to allow you to be alive in his plan. You remember the version of the Isaiah we analyzed in the Gabriel essay, when God was balls-deep in his Black Suit arch and commanded one simple thing of his prince: results. “Michael, your nation has sinned”, was obediently followed by the executional slaughter of anyone, man, woman, or child, whom Gabriel was made to mark for death. Michael does as he is told. Our battle will be wordless, for neither of us will feel an obligation to justify our actions to the other. We both fight for our fathers.
Design notes, I feel like a lot of artists are inclined to paint Michael in the armor of a Roman soldier or a medieval knight in plate mail. I wanted to steer away from that, lean into a more ancient aesthetic. I took a lot of inspiration from Bronze Age armors, I think a lot of people are too quick to diss the big bronze bells soldiers would turtle into in those days. Come on, you can't deny that armor makes for a helluva tank warrior. Really the biggest hurdles I faced with this piece is how in the blue fuck to draw him with six wings. Nothing on this Earth has six wings, there simply is no biological comparison. How should they be spaced? Where are they in relation to each other and the torso? Ultimately I decided a sort of overlap would come out the most esthetically pleasing. It kept things minimally crowded and allowed me to draw each wing in a different fold which nonetheless emerges smoothly from the main body. I'm quite proud of this one, I've drawn myself quite the worthy opponent.