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Five Angels of Destruction Appeared Before Moses and He Stopped Them All

When Israel built the golden calf, five named angels of wrath materialized in the heavenly realm. Moses faced each one and held them back alone.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. What Was Happening Above the Mountain
  2. The Five Names
  3. How Moses Stopped Them
  4. The Fasting That Prepared Him

What Was Happening Above the Mountain

Moses had been on the mountain for forty days. The people below could not hold on. They came to Aaron and demanded a god they could see. Aaron made the calf. The singing rose toward the summit.

What Exodus records next is Moses coming down, breaking the tablets, grinding the calf to dust, confronting Aaron, sending the Levites through the camp with their swords. That is the story as it appears in the text. What Midrash Tehillim preserves, through the testimony of Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani, a third-century Amora whose dramatic reconstructions of celestial events appear throughout the Talmud and Midrash, is what was happening simultaneously in the heavenly realm, above the mountain, in the space where the tablets had just been written and were about to be smashed.

Five angels of destruction materialized before Moses. Not one. Not a general force of divine anger. Five specific agents, each with a name that was itself a declaration of intent.

The Five Names

Af, which means Anger. Chima, which means Wrath. Ketzef, which means Fury. Hashmed, which means Destruction. Mashchit, which means Corruption. Five names, five presences, each embodying a specific mode of the divine response to Israel's sin at the base of the mountain.

They were not confused about their purpose. They had been sent, or had appeared, with a specific target. The Jewish people had received the Torah forty days ago and had already broken the central commandment of the entire document. The appropriate response, in the logic of the heavenly realm as Midrash Tehillim describes it, was not a single blow but a comprehensive annihilation reaching into every corner of what Israel was and might become.

How Moses Stopped Them

Moses did not argue about Israel's guilt. The sin was not disputable. He argued about something else: the name of God's relationship to the patriarchs. He seized each angel by the name of a covenant.

He invoked Abraham, who had walked into an unknown land on the strength of God's promise and built the altar at Moriah. He invoked Isaac, who had lain bound on that altar and not flinched. He invoked Jacob, who had wrestled until dawn and come away with a new name and a limp and the certainty that he had seen the face of God and survived. Each patriarch was a standing argument against the angels: these people existed because of what had been promised to those men. The destruction of Israel would be the nullification of those promises, and the nullification of divine promises was a different kind of problem than anything the five angels had been sent to address.

One by one, he held them back. The Midrash records that he seized Anger and held him. He seized Wrath and held him. He worked through all five, holding each one back through the weight of what God had already committed to Israel's ancestors.

The Fasting That Prepared Him

The tradition in the Midrash does not present Moses' intervention as effortless. He had fasted for 120 days on the mountain across the three periods of his ascent and descent, the first forty days receiving the Torah, the days of intercession after the golden calf, and the second forty days receiving the replacement tablets. The physical preparation of 120 days without food or water was the condition that made the spiritual capacity to stand before five named angels of destruction possible.

Rebbi's statement in the Midrash makes clear the scale of what Moses accomplished: all the merits Moses had accumulated, his prophetic gift, his intimacy with God, his performance of the commandments throughout his life, could not match the merit of the circumcision covenant. What in the end held the five angels back was not Moses' personal righteousness but the covenantal sign in the flesh of every Israelite male, the mark that God had placed in the body of Abraham's descendants as the physical anchor of the promise. Moses could stand before Af and Chima and Ketzef and Hashmed and Mashchit because the covenant they would have destroyed was written into bodies, not just into tablets that could be smashed.

SinaiGolden CalfAngelsMosesWrathIntercessionPatriarchs
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From the tradition

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Midrash Tehillim 7:6Midrash Tehillim

The story, as told in Midrash Tehillim, is truly terrifying.

Moses, up on Mount Sinai, receiving the Torah. A moment of ultimate revelation. And down below? The Israelites, succumbing to fear and impatience, building a golden idol. A betrayal of the covenant. The consequences, according to this Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary), were almost unimaginable.

Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani tells us that when the Israelites committed that terrible sin, five terrifying, destructive angels materialized before Moses in the heavenly realms. Not just one, but a whole terrifying quintet! Their names, each one a chilling embodiment of divine wrath: Af (Anger), Chima (Wrath), Ketzef (Fury), Hashmed (Destruction), and Mashchit (Corruption).

The Midrash emphasizes each angel's destructive purpose, almost as if to hammer home the sheer magnitude of the danger. Each one seems to represent a different facet of God's potential response to such a profound transgression.

Moses, seeing these forces arrayed against his people, understandably panicked. What could he possibly do? He turned to God, pleading for guidance. And God, in turn, reminded Himself, or rather, was reminded by Moses, of the merit of the patriarchs: "Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants" (Exodus 32:13).

And here’s where the story takes a turn. The Midrash Tehillim tells us that at that moment, God was filled with mercy, as it says, "And the Lord was sorry for the evil" (Exodus 32:14). Because of the merit of the Patriarchs and Moses's plea, three of the destructive angels – Ketzef, Hashmed, and Mashchit – simply vanished! Incredible. But the danger wasn't over.

Af and Chima, Anger and Wrath, remained. Moses was still afraid, and rightfully so. (Psalm 106:23) tells us that God "said to destroy them, if not for Moses, his chosen one." The situation was still dire! Moses, realizing he couldn't face these remaining forces alone, cried out to God, "Rise up, O Lord, in your anger!" (Psalms 7:7). It's a bold move, asking God to essentially fight fire with fire.

But wait a minute... wasn't Moses the one interceding for the Israelites? How could he be invoking anger? The Midrash anticipates this question, pointing out the seeming contradiction. (Isaiah 27:4) says, "I have no anger." So, how could Moses, a representative of God, call upon anger?

The Midrash doesn't give a clear answer here, but it hints at the complexity of divine judgment and the need for a balanced approach. Perhaps Moses was acknowledging the justice of God's anger while simultaneously appealing for mercy. The text even quotes (Ecclesiastes 4:2), "I praise the dead," a possible acknowledgement of the destruction that could have been.

The Midrash then transitions to another story, this time about King Solomon and the building of the Temple in Jerusalem. When Solomon asked for fire to descend from heaven to consecrate the Temple, it didn't happen immediately. Only after Solomon prayed and said, "Remember the kindness of David, your servant" (2 (Chronicles 6:4)2), did the fire finally come down (2 Chronicles 7:1).

What's the connection between these two stories? Both emphasize the power of remembering the merits of our ancestors. Moses invoked Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, while Solomon invoked David. It suggests that even in moments of great crisis, the legacy of those who came before us can offer protection and redemption.

So, the next time you read about the Golden Calf, remember those five destructive angels. Remember the precariousness of our existence, and the power of memory to avert even the most terrible of decrees. It’s a reminder that our actions have consequences, but also that mercy and redemption are always within reach.

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Legends of the Jews 4:171Legends of the Jews

As retold by Ginzberg, in the last heaven, Moses witnesses something truly awe-inspiring – and a little terrifying. He sees two massive angels, Af (Anger) and Hemah (Wrath). Can you picture them? Each one is five hundred parasangs tall – a parasang is an ancient unit of distance, so They're forged from chains of black and red fire, created at the very beginning to carry out God's will.

Moses, understandably, is shaken. But luckily, Metatron, the angel who guides him, steps in. "Moses, Moses, thou favorite of God, fear not, and be not terrified," Metatron reassures him. And just like that, Moses finds his calm again. It’s comforting to think even Moses needed a little reassurance sometimes, isn't it?

The journey isn't over. There’s another angel in the seventh heaven, unlike any other. This one has a frightening appearance. Picture this: it would take five hundred years to travel a distance equal to his height. And from head to toe, he’s covered in glaring eyes, so intense that anyone who looks at him falls prostrate. Who is this imposing figure?

Metatron identifies him: "This one is Samael (the angel of death), who takes the soul away from man." Samael, often associated with the Angel of Death.

"Whither goes he now?" Moses asks. Metatron explains that Samael is on his way "to fetch the soul of Job the pious." Even righteous Job, a man who suffered immensely yet remained faithful, faced this moment. It's a stark reminder of our own mortality.

Overcome by the sight and the knowledge of Samael's mission, Moses does the only thing he can: he prays. "O may it be Thy will, my God and the God of my fathers, not to let me fall into the hands of this angel."

It’s a simple, heartfelt plea. A prayer for mercy, a prayer for divine protection. And perhaps, it's a prayer we can all relate to, a yearning for comfort in the face of the unknown.

What does this encounter tell us about the nature of the heavens, and perhaps even more importantly, about ourselves? Is it a reminder of divine power, the inevitability of death, or the importance of faith? Or maybe, it's all of the above.

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Mekhilta Tractate Amalek 3:24Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael

Rebbi. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, the compiler of the Mishnah (the earliest code of rabbinic law), declared that circumcision was so great that all of Moses' accumulated merits could not protect him when he was lax in performing it.

The story is one of the most mysterious episodes in the Torah. God had just commissioned Moses at the burning bush, telling him to go to Egypt and demand that Pharaoh release the Israelites. Moses obeyed. He took his wife Tzipporah and his sons and set out on the road. And then, at a lodging place along the way, "the angel sought to kill him" (Exodus 4:24).

The attack came without warning. An angel, sent by God Himself, tried to kill the very man God had just appointed as Israel's redeemer. The reason, according to rabbinic tradition, was that Moses had delayed the circumcision of one of his sons. For "a short time," as Rebbi put it, Moses had been lax in fulfilling this commandment, and that brief lapse nearly cost him his life.

Rebbi's teaching emphasizes the severity of the moment. This was Moses, the man who would part the Red Sea, ascend Mount Sinai, receive the Torah directly from God, and speak with the divine presence face to face. His merits were staggering, unmatched by any other human being in history. And yet those merits counted for nothing when weighed against the neglect of circumcision.

The covenant of circumcision, first commanded to Abraham (Genesis 17:10), was not one obligation among many. It was the foundational sign of the relationship between God and Israel. So fundamental that even the greatest prophet could not be exempted from its demands, not even for a moment, not even on a divinely commanded mission.

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Shemot Rabbah 47:7Shemot Rabbah

What did he eat? Did he even sleep? to what Shemot Rabbah, a classical collection of Rabbinic homilies on the Book of Exodus, tells us.

The verse from (Exodus 34:27), "The Lord said to Moses: Write for yourself these matters," is our launching point. It’s connected to a verse in (Psalms 119:71), "It is good for me that I was afflicted, so I might learn Your statutes." According to the Etz Yosef commentary, the affliction refers to the 120 days Moses fasted on Mount Sinai. That's forty days before descending with the first tablets, forty days interceding after the Golden Calf incident, and forty days before descending with the second set. All that time, he was studying Torah!

What fueled him? Shemot Rabbah offers a few intriguing answers. One idea is that Moses was sustained by the "aura of the Divine Presence," drawing on (Nehemiah 9:6): "And You sustain them all." It's a beautiful image, picturing Moses drawing sustenance directly from God's radiant energy.

Another answer? The Torah itself! The text quotes (Ezekiel 3:1), 3, where the prophet is told to eat a scroll: "Son of man, eat what you find, [eat this scroll]…I ate it." Why? Because, as (Psalms 19:11) says, the Torah is "sweeter than honey and the nectar of ripe fruit." Think of it: Moses was nourished by the very wisdom he was receiving, a spiritual feast. It was the "bread of Torah," as (Proverbs 9:5) puts it: "Come, partake of my bread."

But what about sleep? Did Moses ever doze off? Shemot Rabbah uses a wonderful analogy. Imagine a king who loves his treasurer and gives him a limited time to collect gold from the royal treasury. Overjoyed, the treasurer forgets about food, drink, and sleep, driven only by the desire to gather as much treasure as possible. But eventually, fatigue sets in. He thinks, "If I sleep, I'll lose this opportunity!"

Moses, too, was in a similar situation. He was so engrossed in learning the Torah, realizing the limited time he had, that he forgot to eat, drink, and sleep. He feared that if he slept, he would lose precious learning time.

So, what was the reward for this dedication? God says, "You afflicted yourself; by your life, you will not lose. On the first tablets there were only the Ten Commandments. Now that you afflicted yourself, I will give you halakhot (Jewish laws), midrashim (rabbinic interpretive commentary) (interpretive stories), and aggadot (anecdotal teachings)." That’s why God commanded Moses to "write for yourself these matters" (Exodus 34:27).

Wait a minute... If the script was "the script of God" (Exodus 32:16) and God inscribed the tablets "like the first inscription" (Deuteronomy 10:4), why tell Moses to write for himself? Here’s the key: God was instructing Moses to write down the Torah, Prophets, and Writings, but the halakhot, midrashim, aggadot, and Talmud would be passed down orally.

This distinction highlights the importance of both the written and the oral traditions in Judaism. The written Torah provides the foundation, while the oral tradition enriches and expands upon it, offering layers of interpretation and understanding.

Realizing this profound gift, Moses exclaims, "It is good for me that I was afflicted" (Psalms 119:71); "The Torah of Your mouth is better for me [than thousands of gold and silver pieces]" (Psalms 119:72). In other words, the effort, the sacrifice, the "affliction" was worth it, because it led to a deeper, richer understanding of God's word.

It makes you wonder: What "afflictions" in our own lives might actually be opportunities in disguise, leading us to a greater appreciation for the wisdom and guidance that surrounds us? Perhaps, like Moses, we too can find sweetness even in moments of hardship, discovering that the greatest treasures are often earned through dedication and perseverance.

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