(d) The exaltation of angels.

Angels can be exalted within the divine council in contradistinction to rebellious angels and hostile gods. Daniel’s “one like a son of man” is an angelic-messianic figure who is given dominion, glory, and kingship over the world (Dan 7.13-14). Ben Sira has Wisdom acclaim her own glory in the council of the Most High (Sir 24.2). The Philonic Logos, God’s firstborn and eldest angel, is elevated above the various angels to rule over them (Conf. 146). The Qumran War Scroll describes a scene after a great battle where God will “exalt the authority of Michael among the gods and the dominion of Israel among all flesh” (1QM 17.7-8). Similarly, Qumran’s Melchizedek midrash explicitly applies the position of Yahweh over the heavenly council in Pss 7.7-8 and 82.1 to the angelic Melchizedek (11QMelch 2.12-14). In Qumran’s self-glorification hymn, the chief figure, whether angelic or human, is given a throne in the council of the “gods” (4Q491c 5).

(e) Angels and kings.

Attention should also be given to the intersection of Jewish messianology and angelology. In several court scenes a supplicant lauds a monarch as one “like the angel of God” (2 Sam 14.17, 20; 19.27; Add Esth 15.13). The Israelite king in Isa 9.6 is called “Mighty God” (el gibbor) in Hebrew (Isa 9.5 [MT]), but “angel of the great counsel” (megalēs boulēs angelos) in the Greek version (LXX), which marks a transition from a royal-salvific figure to an angelic figure. A sizable number of scholars would argue that the “one like a son of man” in Dan 7.13-14 is an angelic figure, either “Michael” (cf. Dan 10.13, 21; 12.1), or “God’s vice-regent” (cf. Dan 10.5-6; Ezek. 1.26-28; 1 En. 46.1-2). There is a fascinating textual variant in Dan 7.13, where some Greek witnesses have the Son of man coming not “towards” (eōs) the Ancient of Days but “as” (ōs) the Ancient of Days—either a scribal error or an acute theological judgment of the Son of Man as a second divine figure besides Yahweh. At the same time, Daniel’s Son of Man received messianic interpretation in subsequent Jewish and Christian sources, often to narrate the heavenly origins of an earthly deliverer (e.g., 1 En. 48.1-5; 4Q246 1-2; Mark 8.27-31; 14.62; John 1.51; 3.13; 12.34; 4 Ezra 7.28-29; 12.31-32; 13.3; Sib. Or. 5.255). The “one like a son of man” is a complex figure who is divine, angelic, royal, and represents the saints of the Most High over and against the pagan nations themselves signified by the various beasts. Taken together, these court scenes, Isa 9.6 and Dan 7.13-14 (LXX) are fascinating cases of the merging a royal/messianic figure with a principal angel in the Jewish interpretive tradition. As John Collins puts it: “Just as the king could be conceived as a god in pre-exilic Judah, so the messianic king could be conceived as an angelic being in the Hellenistic-Roman period.”