Who Is Archangel Michael, the Defender in Scripture?

Where is Michael mentioned in the Bible?

Michael is named in five verses: three in the Book of Daniel, one in Jude and one in Revelation. Every one of them sets him inside a conflict, and none of them describes what he looks like.

Daniel reached its final form in the second century BCE, and its Michael answers a political question: who fights for Israel when empires rule it? Persia and Greece each have a heavenly prince in chapter 10 (10:20), and Israel's prince, Michael, is the one ally the speaking angel can count on.

Jude 9 tells a story that appears nowhere else in the Bible. Origen, writing in the third century, identified the source as "a little treatise" called the Ascension of Moses, "of which the Apostle Jude makes mention" (On First Principles 3.2.1). The single surviving Latin manuscript of that work, now usually called the Testament of Moses, is incomplete and does not contain the scene, so the source cannot be checked.

The New Testament uses the word archangel only one other time. In 1 Thessalonians 4:16 the Lord descends "with the archangel's call," and that archangel has no name; the verse matters later, because it is the main text for readers who identify Michael with Christ.

What do Jewish writings add to Michael's story?

Rabbinic and apocalyptic writings give Michael roles the Hebrew Bible never mentions. The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1904 collects the main ones, each from a named text:

• Heavenly priest. Hagigah 12b places an altar in the fourth heaven, Zebul, where "Michael, the great prince" offers sacrifice.
• Jacob's opponent. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Genesis 32:25 names Michael as the angel who wrestled with Jacob and then blessed him.
• Survivor of Samael's fall. Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer 26 says Samael seized Michael's wings to drag him down, and God saved him.
• Angel of mercy. 1 Enoch lists Michael among seven archangels and describes him as the angel of forbearance and mercy who taught Enoch the mysteries of clemency and justice.

Taken together, these texts turn Daniel's national prince into Israel's advocate in heaven, the angel who answers Samael, Israel's accuser. In Jewish angel tradition this advocacy defines Michael, while the war scene of Revelation belongs to Christian scripture.

The rabbis also limited how far devotion to him could go. The Jerusalem Talmud (Berakhot 9:1) says that a person in trouble "should cry neither to Michael nor to Gabriel" but to God, who promises to answer at once. Jewish prayer names Michael, and it still addresses its requests to God.

Is Michael in the Qur'an?

Yes, once. Surah al-Baqarah 2:98 names him beside Gabriel: "Whoever is an enemy to Allah and His angels and His messengers and Gabriel and Michael, then indeed, Allah is an enemy to the disbelievers" (Sahih International). The Qur'an spells the name Mikal, while many hadith use the longer form Mika'il.

Islamic tradition gives Mikal a different job from the Christian warrior. Britannica summarizes it: he carries out God's rizq, or provision, and natural events such as rain. Muslim tradition also remembers Mikal and Jibril as the first angels to bow before Adam, credits Mikal with helping the Muslims at the Battle of Badr in 624, and says he has not laughed since hell was created.

A Muslim reader therefore meets Michael first as the angel of rain and sustenance. Badr is the closest Islamic parallel to Revelation's war in heaven, and it is a battle on earth, fought alongside people.

When is Saint Michael's feast day?

Western churches keep September 29, known in English as Michaelmas. The date is tied to the dedication of a basilica of the angel on the Via Salaria near Rome, and the sixth-century Leonine Sacramentary already has Masses for it. Since the Roman calendar reform of 1969, Catholics honor Gabriel and Raphael on the same day; before that, Gabriel's feast fell on March 24 and Raphael's on October 24.

The Orthodox Church in America traces the November Synaxis to the Council of Laodicea in the fourth century. Shrines added local dates of their own: Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy keeps the memory of an appearance to Bishop Aubert of Avranches in 708. A Latin, Byzantine or Coptic Christian could meet Michael's name on the calendar several times a year, which helps explain why his cult outgrew those of other angels.

Why is Michael shown with a sword, a dragon, and scales?

The dragon comes from Revelation, the armor and weapon come from artists picturing that battle, and the scales come from later paintings of the Last Judgment. Revelation 12:9 names the dragon "that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan," but it gives Michael no weapon.

Each attribute therefore has a date. When a modern image shows Michael with a sword in blue light, the sword goes back through centuries of Christian painting, while the blue goes back to twentieth-century Ascended Master teaching and has no source in scripture or the church fathers.

What does Michael protect people from in Christian tradition?

The Catholic Encyclopedia lists four offices Christian tradition gives Michael: to fight against Satan; to rescue the souls of the faithful from the enemy "especially at the hour of death"; to be the champion of God's people, the Jews under the Old Law and Christians under the New; and to call souls from earth to judgment.

The second and fourth offices explain why Michael appears in prayers for the dying and in Last Judgment paintings. The third made him patron of the Church and, in the Middle Ages, of orders of knights; Catholic devotion today names him patron of soldiers, police officers and the sick.

Churches in the Greek East also remembered Michael as a healer. Christians in Phrygia credited Michael with a medicinal spring at Chairotopa near Colossae, and hot springs at Pythia in Bithynia were dedicated to him.

None of these offices promises that harm will not come. Daniel 12:1 sets Michael's rising in "a time of anguish," and the dying person of the second office still dies; the tradition asks for his help within those events. Scripture also gives protective work to many unnamed protecting angels, from Psalm 91 to the angel who frees Peter in Acts 12, so Michael is the best-known protector among the angels and by no means the only one.

How is Michael different from Gabriel and Raphael?

Michael, Gabriel and Raphael are the three angels named in the Catholic Bible, which is why the Roman calendar joined their feasts. Their scriptural jobs barely overlap:

A guardian angel differs from all three. Christian tradition gives each person an unnamed guardian, usually on the basis of Matthew 18:10, while Michael's charge in Daniel is a whole people and, in the Catholic Encyclopedia's list, the Church.