Who Is Archangel Barachiel, the Angel of Blessings in Orthodox Tradition?

What does the name Barachiel mean, and is it in the Bible?

Barachiel joins the Hebrew verb barak, “to bless,” to el, “God,” which gives the usual readings “blessing of God” and “God has blessed.” Russian Orthodox books spell the same name Varakhiil and translate it the same way.

No book of the Bible names an angel Barachiel. The Orthodox Encyclopedia says so directly, and the Russian church calendar Azbyka adds that his name is known only through church tradition.

The closest scriptural match is a man.

Job 32:2 introduces “Elihu son of Barachel the Buzite” (NRSVUE), and the Hebrew spelling of that father's name, barakh'el, carries the same blessing root.

A reader who looks up Barachiel in a concordance will land on Job 32, so a devotional page that cites that verse as proof of the archangel has mistaken a human father for an angel.

Even the rank has a thin scriptural base. The Greek word archangelos appears only twice in the New Testament, at 1 Thessalonians 4:16 and Jude 9, and neither verse offers a list of seven.

English spellings of the name Barachiel vary between books, with Barakiel and Varachiel both in print. Most of these point to the same Orthodox figure. The Barakiel of 3 Enoch is the exception, because his name may come from a different Hebrew word.

Is the Barakiel of 3 Enoch a prince over lightning?

Partly, and the answer depends on which chapter a source means.

In Hugo Odeberg's 1928 translation of 3 Enoch, the angel set over lightning is Baraqiel in chapter 14, while chapter 17 names a Barakiel who rules the second heaven.

3 Enoch 14:4 lists “the rulers of the world”: Gabriel over fire, Baradiel over hail, Ruchiel over wind, and “Baraqiel who is appointed over the lightnings.” The speaker is Metatron, telling Rabbi Ishmael how these angels trembled when he was crowned.

Chapter 17 is a different list. Seven princes rule the seven heavens, each “accompanied by 496,000 myriads of ministering angels,” and verse 3 places Barakiel over the second heaven, Raqia, with Badariel over the third.

So Baradiel is the hail angel and Badariel a prince of the third heaven, which leaves Baraqiel in chapter 14 as the only lightning figure.

The spelling carries the real question.

Hebrew baraq means lightning, and Odeberg himself glosses “lightning (Baraq)” elsewhere in the book, while the blessing verb barak ends in a different letter.

An English form such as Barakiel can hide that difference between q and k. The Orthodox Encyclopedia still cites 3 Enoch 14 and 17 for Varakhiil, so one Orthodox reference work reads these angels as Barachiel, while the q in Odeberg's chapter 14 points to lightning.

A third figure makes the tangle worse. 1 Enoch 6:7 names Baraqijal among the chiefs of the Watchers who came down to earth, and 1 Enoch 8:3 says he taught astrology.

Barachiel of the Orthodox feast is a blessing figure, and the lightning prince of 3 Enoch should stay a related but unconfirmed name until a Hebrew edition settles which letter the manuscripts use.

Why does Barachiel carry white roses on his garment?

Russian Orthodox icons of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries paint Barachiel “bearing white roses on his garment on his chest.” The Orthodox Encyclopedia explains why in the same line: he appears “as if rewarding by God's command for prayers, labors and moral conduct of people.”

The roses therefore stand for blessing given in answer to a life, which matches the OCA's phrase for him, “distributor of the blessings of God for good deeds.”

The painting rule was written down in V. D. Fartusov's 1910 manual for icon painters, which both the Orthodox Encyclopedia and the Drevo encyclopedia cite. Some icons from the same period show a single flower in his hand instead, and on the Unburnt Bush icon of the Mother of God he sometimes holds a bunch of grapes.

Drevo reads the color simply: white roses mean God's blessing, and it asks what could be purer or more fragrant than the flower from which rose oil is made.

English devotional writing often describes something else: Barachiel scattering rose petals, or petals strewn across his cloak, as blessings falling on people. Learn Religions writer Whitney Hopler gives this version, while Fartusov's manual describes roses carried at the chest.

In Christian art the color white has its own long history of purity and resurrection, wider than any one angel. The Orthodox sources use the painted rose to identify him in an icon, and none of them treats a rose seen in daily life as a sign that Barachiel is present.

Is Barachiel the patron of families and marriage?

The family patronage is a modern devotional claim. The OCA, the Orthodox Encyclopedia, Azbyka, and Drevo all describe Barachiel as a bearer of blessing without naming marriage or family as his charge.

The patronage appears in English-language sources. The Wikipedia entry calls him “a patron of family and married life” in Byzantine Catholic and Eastern Orthodox tradition, and some devotional sites add a bread basket or staff standing for the blessing of children.

Other titles come from the same layer: chief of all guardian angels, patron of converts, and links to February, Pisces, and Jupiter. None of them appears in the OCA or Russian Orthodox descriptions of the feast.

A family that asks Barachiel to bless its home is keeping a personal devotion that borrows older Orthodox blessing language, while the patronage label itself comes from modern English-language sources.

What does the Catholic Church say about Barachiel?

The Roman liturgy does not use Barachiel's name. The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (2001), paragraph 217, says that “the practice of assigning names to the Holy Angels should be discouraged, except in the cases of Gabriel, Raphael and Michael whose names are contained in Holy Scripture.”

The same paragraph calls devotion to the holy angels “legitimate and good,” so the limit falls on the names while prayer to the angels in general stays open to Catholics.

The rule is old. In 745 a Roman synod under Pope Zachary condemned the preacher Aldebert, who prayed to angels named Uriel, Raguel, Tubuel, Adinus, Tubuas, Sabaoc, and Simiel.

Barachiel is not on that list. The Western sources that name him, the Apocalypsis Nova and the Palermo image, come from around 1500, more than seven centuries later.

Lo Duca's campaign pushed against this line and won only part of what he asked.

The Roman church that Pius IV authorized in 1561 honors all the angels together, and the seven names did not enter the Roman calendar.

Eastern Catholic churches of the Byzantine rite are the exception inside the Catholic communion. They keep the November 8 feast and, like the Orthodox, honor seven or eight archangels, Barachiel among them.