Isaiah 6:2
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Seraphim, What does it mean?
The name, a Hebrew masculine plural form, designates a special class of heavenly attendants of Yahweh’s court. In Holy Writ these angelic beings are distinctly mentioned only in Isaiah’s description of his call to the prophetical office (Isaiah 6:2 seq.). In a vision of deep spiritual import, granted him in the Temple, Isaiah beheld the invisible realities symbolized by the outward forms of Yahweh’s dwelling place, of its altar, its ministers, etc.
While he stood gazing before the priest’s court, there arose before him an August vision of Yahweh sitting on the throne of His glory. On each side of the throne stood mysterious guardians, each supplied with six wings: two to bear them up, two veiling their faces, and two covering their feet, now naked, as became priestly service in the presence of the Almighty. His highest servants, they were there to minister to Him and proclaim His glory, each calling to the other: "Holy, holy, holy, Yahweh of hosts; all the earth is full of His glory."
These were seraphim, one of which flew towards Isaiah bearing a live coal which he had taken from the altar, and with which he touched and purified the Prophet’s lips, that henceforth these might be consecrated to the utterances of inspiration. Such, in substance, is Isaiah’s symbolical vision from which may be inferred all that Sacred Scripture discloses concerning the seraphim. Although described under a human form, with faces, hands, and feet (Isaiah 6:2, 6), they are undoubtedly existing spiritual beings corresponding to their name, and not mere symbolic representations as is often asserted by advanced Protestant scholars.
Their number is considerable, as they appear around the heavenly throne in a double choir and the volume of their chorus is such that the sound shakes the foundations of the palace. They are distinct from the cherubim who carry or veil God, and show the presence of His glory in the earthly sanctuary, whilst the seraphim stand before God as ministering servants in the heavenly court. Their name too, seraphim, distinguishes them from the cherubim, although it is confessedly difficult to obtain from the single Scriptural passage wherein these beings are mentioned a clear conception of its precise meaning.
The name is oftentimes derived from the Hebrew verb Sarah ("to consume with fire"), and this etymology is very probable because of its accordance with Isa., vi, 6, where one of the seraphim is represented as carrying celestial fire from the altar to purify the Prophet’s lips. Many scholars prefer to derive it from the Hebrew noun sarah , "a fiery and flying serpent", spoken of in Num., xxi, 6; Isa., xiv, 29, and the brazen image of which stood in the Temple in Isaias’s time (2 Kings 18:4); but it is plain that no trace of such serpentine form appears in Isaiah’s description of the seraphim. Still less probable are the views propounded of late by certain critics and connecting the Biblical seraphim with the Babylonian Sharrapu, a name for Nergal, the fire-god, or with the Egyptian griffins (seraph) which are placed at Beni-Hassan as guardians of graves.
The seraphim are mentioned at least twice in the Book of Enoch (l.I., 10; lxxi, 7), together with and distinctly from the cherubim. In Christian theology, the seraphim occupy with the cherubim the highest rank in the celestial hierarchy (see CHERUBIM), while in the liturgy (Te Deum; Preface of the Mass) they are represented as repeating the Trisagion exactly as in Isa., vi.
"... I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and His train filled the temple. Above Him stood the Seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew."
In the vision the seraphim cry continually to each other, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory" (vi.3). The "foundations of the thresholds" of the Temple were moved by the sound of their voices.
This is the sole occurrence of the word "seraphim" in the canonic Hebrew Bible as heavenly beings. The name is unparalleled, but heavenly beings with multiple wings are often represented in art of Israel’s neighboring cultures in the Ancient Near East.
The 2nd-century B.C.E. Book of Enoch also mentions the Seraphim, but the term used is the Greek dragonet serpekovg meaning "serpents"). Enoch was never accepted in the Hebrew canon, but it was widely read and quoted by early Christians. From the usage of the word "saraph" in this late text, exegesis identifies as seraphim the snakes responsible for the deaths of the blaspheming Israelites in Numbers chapter 21:"And the LORD sent fiery serpents .
Seraphim in the Book of Revelation. While there is no explicit references to seraphim in the New Testament, in the Book of Revelation (4:8) is a description clearly drawn from Isaiah:
"And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to sing ’Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come!".
Like the seraphim of Isaiah, these angels sing the Trisagion and bear six wings. If the first hearers of Revelation were intended to bring the Seraphim to mind in this description, then they are again identified with animals. However, this citation could refer to the Ophanim, or Thrones, as there are indeed apparently 4 Ophanim, each of which is covered with eyes. Disputed fact: The seraphim and the living creatures are often thought of in Christian theology as two separate ranks/types of angels.
Seraphim in Christian theology In medieval Christian neo-Platonic theology, the Seraphim belong to the highest order, or angelic choir, of the hierarchy of angels. They are said to be the caretakers of God’s throne, continuously singing Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, I. e. "holy, holy, holy" — cf "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of His Glory" (Isaiah 6:3). This chanting is referred to as the Trisagion. The early medieval writer called Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite included seraphs in his "Celestial Hierarchy" (vii), which helped fix the fiery nature of seraphs in the medieval imagination. It is here that the Seraphim are described as being concerned with keeping Divinity in perfect order, and not limited to chanting the trisagion’.
Taking his cue from writings in the Rabbinic tradition who gave an etymology for the Seraphim as "those who kindle or make hot": "The name Seraphim clearly indicates their ceaseless and eternal revolution about Divine Principles, their heat and keenness, the exuberance of their intense, perpetual, tireless activity, and their elevative and energetic assimilation of those below, kindling them and firing them to their own heat, and wholly purifying them by a burning and all- consuming flame; and by the unbidden, unquenchable, changeless, radiant and enlightening power, dispelling and destroying the shadows of darkness" (Celestial Hierarchy, vii)
Bonaventure, an important Franciscan theologian, uses the six wings of the seraph as an important analogical construct in his mystical work The Journey of the Mind to God.
Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologian offers a description of the nature of the Seraphim:
The name "Seraphim" does not come from charity only, but from the excess of charity, expressed by the word ardor or fire. Hence Dionysus (Coel. Hier. vii) expounds the name "Seraphim" according to the properties of fire, containing an excess of heat. Now in fire we may consider three things.
"First, the movement which is upwards and continuous. This signifies that they are borne inflexibly towards God.
"Secondly, the active force which is "heat," which is not found in fire simply, but exists with a certain sharpness, as being of most penetrating action, and reaching even to the smallest things, and as it were, with superabundant fervor; whereby is signified the action of these angels, exercised powerfully upon those who are subject to them, rousing them to a like fervor, and cleansing them wholly by their heat.
"Thirdly we consider in fire the quality of clarity, or brightness; which signifies that these angels have in themselves an inextinguishable light, and that they also perfectly enlighten others."
With the revival of neo-Platonism in the academy formed around Lorenzo de’ Medici, the seraphim took on a mystic role in Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man (1487), the epitome of Renaissance humanism. Pico took the fiery Seraphim— "they burn with the fire of charity"— as the highest models of human aspiration: "impatient of any second place, let us emulate their dignity and glory. And, if we will it, we shall be inferior to them in nothing," the young Pico announced, in the first flush of optimistic confidence in the human capacity that is the coinage of the Renaissance. "In the light of intelligence, meditating upon the Creator in His work, and the work in its Creator, we shall be resplendent with the light of the Cherubim. If we burn with love for the Creator only, his consuming fire will quickly transform us into the flaming likeness of the Seraphim." As they were developed in Christian theology, seraphim are beings of pure light and have direct communication with God. They resonate with the fire symbolically attached to both purification and love. The etymology of "seraphim" itself comes from the word saraph. Saraph in all its forms is used to connote a burning, fiery state. Seraphim, as classically depicted, can be identified by their having six wings radiating from the angel’s face at the center.
Names attributed to this angelic order
Elaborating upon the celestial hierarchy that was created by Pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite, the expanding modern literature of angelology has assigned many names to the unnamed seraphim [citation needed].
* Michael
* Seraphiel
* Gabriel
* Metatron
* Uriel
* Nathanael
* Jehoel
* Chamuel (Kemuel, Shemuel)
* Satan
* Abandon
* Amadeus
* Astarte
* Leviathan
* Samiel
* Semisweet
