Is Sariel in the Bible?

No. The name does not appear in the Hebrew Bible, the Catholic deuterocanonical books, or the New Testament. It comes from 1 Enoch, which the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church counts as scripture, and from Dead Sea Scrolls texts such as the War Scroll.

Is Sariel one of the seven archangels?

In 1 Enoch 20 he is, spelled Sariel in the Greek and Saraqael in the Ethiopic. Later seven-angel lists, including the Eastern Orthodox ones, usually name Selaphiel, Jegudiel, and Barachiel instead.

What is the difference between Sariel and Sahariel?

Sahariel, or Sahriel, is the watcher of 1 Enoch 6:7 and 8:3 whose name contains the Aramaic word for moon, while Sariel is the holy angel of 9:1 and 20:6. The confusion starts in the Greek copies, which spell the watcher Sariel or Atriel in 6:7 and Seriel in 8:3. R. H. Charles followed the Greek there, so his 1917 translation has a fallen Sariel in chapter 8 and a holy Saraqael in chapter 20.

Does Sariel mean "command of God"?

Only loosely. The name joins Hebrew sar, a prince or ruler, with El, God, so "prince of God" is the closer reading; "God's command" comes from Gustav Davidson's 1967 dictionary entry for Suriel.

Is Sariel the angel who wrestled Jacob?

Targum Neofiti says so in its paraphrase of Genesis 32:25. Genesis itself calls the wrestler "a man," Hosea 12:4 calls him an angel, and the Prayer of Joseph names him Uriel.

Does Sariel have a feast day?

Not under that name. The Coptic Orthodox Church commemorates Archangel Suriel on 27 Tobi, and the Catholic and Byzantine calendars have no feast for him.

Who Is Archangel Sariel, and How Is He Described in Ancient Texts?

Archangel Sariel is a holy angel of ancient Jewish literature outside the Bible. 1 Enoch 20:6 names him among seven angels who watch, and the War Scroll found at Qumran writes his name on the shields of its third tower.

The confusion starts with a second name. The watcher who taught the course of the moon in 1 Enoch 8:3 is spelled Sahriel in the Aramaic fragments, and Greek copyists spelled him almost the same way as the archangel.

A third form, Suriel, later picked up the title "angel of death" in Ethiopian Jewish literature. A 1967 angel dictionary then folded all three into one entry, and most modern profiles still copy it.

Quick Facts

Name: Hebrew sar (prince, ruler) plus El (God); spelled Saraqael in the Ethiopic of 1 Enoch 20:6
Where the holy angel appears: 1 Enoch 9:1 (Aramaic) and 20:6; War Scroll, 1QM column IX, lines 15 to 16
The watcher with a similar name: Sahriel, a leader of the rebel watchers who taught the course of the moon (1 Enoch 6:7 and 8:3)
Related forms: Suriel and Suryal in Greek, Ethiopic, rabbinic, and Coptic sources
Canonical status: Not named in the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament; 1 Enoch is scripture in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church
Church memory: The Coptic Orthodox Church commemorates Archangel Suriel on 27 Tobi, usually February 4

Is Sariel a fallen angel or an archangel?

Both answers appear in print because 1 Enoch contains two figures whose names look alike in its later copies. One is a leader of the rebel watchers who came down to earth; the other is a holy angel who never leaves heaven.

Chapter 6 lists the chiefs of the two hundred watchers who swore their oath on Mount Hermon, and 8:3 records what several of them taught, ending in R. H. Charles's 1917 translation with "Sariel the course of the moon."

The holy angel appears in chapter 20, a list of "the holy angels who watch." Verse 6 in Charles reads: "Saraqael, one of the holy angels, who is set over the spirits, who sin in the spirit."

The oldest copies keep them apart: in the Aramaic fragments from Qumran the watcher is Sahriel, while the angel who looks down from heaven beside Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel in 9:1 is Sariel.

How the copies of 1 Enoch spell each name
Passage	Oldest reading	Later Greek and Ethiopic spellings	Who he is
6:7, the list of watcher chiefs	Sahriel (Aramaic)	Greek Sariel or Atriel; the Ethiopic form is garbled	A rebel watcher
8:3, what the watchers taught	Sahriel, who taught "the signs of the moon" (Aramaic)	Greek Seriel; Ethiopic Esdreel, which Charles judged a corruption	The same watcher
9:1, four angels see the bloodshed	Sariel (Aramaic)	Greek Uriel; Ethiopic Suryal	A holy angel
20:6, the seven holy angels	Sariel (Greek)	Ethiopic Saraqael	A holy angel

Charles printed "Sariel" for the watcher because he restored the name from the Greek, before the Aramaic was published. Nickelsburg and VanderKam's 2012 translation, which follows the Aramaic, prints Sahriel in 6:7 and 8:3 and Sariel in 9:1 and 20:6.

So the archangel Sariel is never a fallen angel in 1 Enoch, which leaves the rebellion to the watchers and places its holy Sariel among the angels who report them to God.

Does Sariel mean "prince of God" or "command of God"?

Sariel joins two Hebrew elements: sar, a prince, chief, or official, and El, God. Read that way the name means "prince of God" or "God is my prince," and some writers give it as "God is my ruler."

Sar is the title Daniel uses for angels who stand over a people. The JPS translation of Daniel 10:13 calls Michael "a prince of the first rank" and his opponent "the prince of the Persian kingdom."

The gloss "command of God," repeated on many angel websites, goes back to Gustav Davidson's A Dictionary of Angels (1967), which prints "God's command" under Suriel. Hebrew sar names a person of rank, so "command" is at most a loose paraphrase of the idea of rule.

The watcher's name rests on a different word: Charles pointed out in 1912 that sahar is Aramaic for the moon, so Sahriel reads as "moon of God."

Each teacher in 1 Enoch 8:3 carries his subject in his name

Names and subjects follow Nickelsburg and VanderKam's translation; the word inside each name follows Charles's notes.

Sahrielsahar, moon

Taught the signs of the moon

Kokabelkokab, star

Taught the signs of the stars

Shamsielshamsh, sun

Taught the signs of the sun

Baraqelbaraq, lightning

Taught the signs of the lightning flashes

That pattern is the strongest reason to treat Sahriel and Sariel as two names. The archangel's name contains a title of rank, and the watcher's contains the thing he taught.

The Ethiopic spelling Saraqael has no agreed explanation, and because the Greek of the same verse reads Sariel, Nickelsburg and VanderKam print Sariel in 20:6.

What does the holy Sariel do in 1 Enoch?

His one fixed assignment is in 20:6: he is placed over "the spirits who sin against the spirit," in Nickelsburg and VanderKam's wording. The text never says what that sin is, so any specific explanation of it is a later interpretation.

Each angel in that list gets a field of its own. Uriel is over the world and Tartarus, Raphael over human spirits, Raguel over vengeance on the lights of heaven, Michael over the good ones of the people, and Gabriel over paradise.

A seventh name, Remiel, set over "those who rise," survives only in the Greek, so the Ethiopic list stops at six.

Sariel's name also stands in 9:1, where four angels see the blood being shed on earth and bring the human complaint before God. In the Aramaic the four are Michael, Sariel, Raphael, and Gabriel.

Two more scenes depend on a scholarly correction. Nickelsburg and VanderKam restore Sariel in 10:1, where an angel is sent to warn Noah of the flood, and in 27:2, where an angel explains the cursed valley to Enoch, while Charles's translation has Uriel in both places.

Read together, the holy Sariel is a figure of judgment and warning who watches over sinners, joins the appeal against the watchers' violence, and in the restored readings carries the flood warning to Noah.

Why is Sariel's name on a Dead Sea Scrolls shield?

The War Scroll (1QM) describes a final battle between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, and it gives the soldiers of each tower unit an angel's name for their shields. Column IX, lines 15 to 16, reads in the Wise, Abegg, and Cook translation: on the first "Mi[chae]l," [on the second "Gabriel," on the third,] "Sariel," and on the fourth "Raphael."

The brackets matter here. Sariel's name survives on the scroll, while Gabriel's is supplied by the editors where the line is damaged.

This is the text behind calling Sariel one of four chief angels. Geza Vermes observed that at Qumran "Sariel becomes one of the four chief angels, replacing Uriel, the traditional fourth archangel in the Greek Enoch and midrashic literature."

The shields say nothing about Sariel's character or duties. They show that the community behind the scroll ranked him with Michael and Raphael, the two angels already named in Daniel and Tobit, and trusted his name to protect the men carrying it.

Is Sariel another name for Uriel, or for Suriel?

Sariel and Uriel take turns in the same place in several lists, especially where a text names four chief angels, which is why many writers treat them as one angel.

Four chief angels, and who fills the uncertain place
Text	Setting	Name in that place
1 Enoch 9:1, Aramaic copy	Qumran fragment	Sariel
1 Enoch 9:1, Greek copy	Greek translation of Enoch	Uriel
1 Enoch 9:1, Ethiopic copy	Ge'ez translation	Suryal
War Scroll, 1QM IX 15-16	Qumran battle text	Sariel
Origen, Against Celsus 6.30	An Ophite diagram, third century	Suriel, "the bull-like"
Numbers Rabbah 2:10	Rabbinic midrash	Uriel

Nickelsburg explains the Greek and Ethiopic readings of 9:1 as a copying slip. Greek scribes confused the letters sigma and omicron, the difference between Souriel and Ouriel, and the Ethiopic Suryal preserves the form with the S.

The story of Jacob's wrestling match shows the same overlap outside Enoch. Targum Neofiti, an Aramaic paraphrase of Genesis 32:25, names Jacob's opponent "the angel Sariel," while the Prayer of Joseph gives the part to Uriel.

The Slavonic Ladder of Jacob keeps the name Sariel. In chapter 3, God sends "Sariel, leader of those who comfort, you who is in charge of dreams" to explain Jacob's dream of the ladder.

Suriel is the form the name takes in several Greek, Ethiopic, rabbinic, and Coptic sources, though scholars do not all treat Suriel and Sariel as one angel. In the Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 51a, Rabbi Ishmael receives three rules for daily life from "Suriel, the heavenly ministering angel of the Divine Presence."

The Coptic Synaxarion for 27 Tobi says Archangel Suriel "was with Ezra, the righteous prophet, and instructed him about many hidden mysteries." The angel who answers Ezra in 2 Esdras 4:1 is Uriel, so the Coptic Suriel has taken on a role the book itself gives to Uriel.

The evidence shows a pair of names that copyists and traditions easily swapped. It does not prove one angel: 1 Enoch 20 lists Uriel and Sariel as two separate members of the seven, and anyone who merges them has to set aside the one text that names both.

Three worn brass tags hanging together from one iron ring, with no markings visible on any of them — Three blank, worn brass tags hanging together from one iron ring.

Why is Sariel called an angel of death?

The death title reaches Sariel through Suriel, and its clearest source is Ethiopian. In "The Death of Moses," a Beta Israel text translated in Wolf Leslau's Falasha Anthology (1951), a young man stops Moses on Mount Sinai and says, "I am Suryal, the Angel of Death."

Leslau adds in his notes that the rabbinic midrashim treat Sammael as the angel of death. The Ethiopic Suryal is a regional tradition, and it names Suriel, not Sariel.

How the death title moved toward Sariel

Each step is a spelling or a borrowing, and none of them is a statement about Sariel himself.

Aramaic 1 Enoch 9:1
Sariel stands among the four angels who look down from heaven
No link to death anywhere in the book
Greek and Ethiopic copies
The name becomes Ouriel in Greek and Suryal in Ethiopic
A second spelling now circulates
Beta Israel literature
Suryal comes to take the soul of Moses
The death role attaches to the Ethiopic form
Davidson, 1967
One dictionary entry joins Suriel, Sariel, and the Moses story
The combined figure reaches English readers

Davidson's Suriel entry lists Sariel as another name for the same angel and calls Suriel "the angel of death (one of a number)" sent to fetch the soul of Moses. His Sariel entry says the angel "is cited both as a holy angel and a fallen one," and most modern Sariel profiles repeat both claims.

Nothing in 1 Enoch, the War Scroll, or Targum Neofiti calls Sariel an angel of death. His charge over sinning spirits in 20:6 may make the link feel natural, yet it describes oversight of sinners, and no passage has him take a soul.

The angel most readers mean by that title is Azrael, a name from later Islamic and Jewish tradition, while the Qur'an itself speaks only of "the angel of death" at 32:11.

Where do Sariel's moon symbolism and prayers come from?

Modern Sariel pages often give him moonlight, a scroll, and a role as a patron of learning. The moon has an awkward source: it belongs to the watcher Sahriel, whose lesson in 8:3 is one of the teachings 1 Enoch blames for leading people astray.

We have found no traditional Jewish or Christian prayer addressed to Sariel by that name. The nearest church memory is the Coptic Orthodox commemoration of Archangel Suriel on 27 Tobi, which usually falls on February 4.

Catholic practice is narrower still, since the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (no. 217) discourages giving angels names other than Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the three named in Scripture.

Prayers to Sariel for guidance, dreams, or protection are modern compositions. The older texts closest to those requests are the Ladder of Jacob, where Sariel explains Jacob's dream, and the restored reading of 1 Enoch 10:1, where Sariel is sent to warn Noah before the flood.