The angel who takes man's soul from his body. While life and death are for God to apportion, there are occasional biblical references to a host of "destroying angels" (Ex. 12:23; II Sam. 24:16; Isa. 37:36), to a fatal "reaper" (Jer. 9:20), and to wrathful "messengers of death" (Prov. 16:14). Such evil forces begin to act on their own initiative in post-biblical literature, where they are personified as the demon Ashmedai or Asmodeus of the Apocrypha (Tobit 3.8, 17) and as more notorious figures of dread. According to the Talmud, Satan, the evil inclination, and the Angel of Death (Heb. malakh ha-mavet) are one and the same (BB 16a); no mortal can escape the all-seeing angel (Av. Zar. 20b), who waits for no man (Eccl. R. 8:8). Thus, "Israel only accepted the Torah so that the Angel of Death should have no dominion over them" (Av. Zar. 5a). Such notions gave rise to many folk tales and also to various superstitious practices associated with death, burial, mourning, and even with childbirth (see Lilith). On the strength of the biblical phrase, "righteousness delivers from death" (Prov. 10:2, 11:14), tsedakah ("righteousness") was popularly interpreted as Torah study, benevolence, and piety, through which the Angel of Death can be defied and overcome. In Jewish folklore, he was also viewed as a fearsome, death-dealing physician, a notion that inspired a quip by the 12th-century Spanish poet Joseph Ibn Zabara that "both the doctor and the Angel of Death kill, but the former charges a fee" and a sardonic echo by Naḥman of Bratslav: "It was difficult for the Angel of Death to slay everyone in the world, so he found doctors to assist him." Talmudic legend portrays Joshua ben Levi outwitting the Angel of Death and only consenting to give back his sword when the Almighty decides to intervene (Ket. 77b). This inspired Longfellow's poetic version, "The Legend of Rabbi Ben Levi," in Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863). By contrast, an allegorical interpretation is given to the Angel of Death who figures in ḥad Gadya, the last song concluding the Passover Seder. Here, the Angel of Death personifies those medieval (Christian) persecutors whose reign of violence God would finally bring to an end.
The New Encyclopedia of Judaism. Copyright © 1989, 2002 by G.G. The Jerusalem Publishing House, Ltd. All rights reserved.
