The sun went down. Smoke rose from the ground like the smoke of a furnace (Genesis 15:17). The angels who held the portions of the sacrifice ascended from the top of the smoking furnace into the sky.
Then Iaoel took Abraham by the right hand, set him upon the right wing of the pigeon, and seated himself upon the left wing of the turtledove. These were the same birds that had not been slaughtered or divided. They were the vehicle of ascent.
The angel bore Abraham upward, past the borders of flaming fire, ascending as if carried by many winds to the heaven fixed above the surface of the earth.
On the height to which they ascended, Abraham saw a light so strong it was impossible to describe. The uncreated light, the primordial radiance that tradition says originally illuminated the entire world before Adam's transgression, when a person could see from one end of creation to the other.
Within this light, Abraham saw a fiercely burning fire. And within the fire, people. Many people, all of them constantly changing in aspect and form, running and being transformed, worshipping and crying out with sounds Abraham could not understand.
These were the hosts of angels born daily from the river of fire that flows beneath the throne of glory. Each morning God creates a new angelic host. They sing their song of praise before Him. Then they vanish. They never repeat the same song twice. Abraham was watching this daily creation and dissolution of angelic life, the most intimate rhythm of the heavenly world.