Can Angels Sin?

By Yehuda Shurpin

At first glance the answer seems simple enough. After all, did we not receive the Torah precisely because
angels cannot sin? As Moses retorted in his winning argument to the angels during his epic debate in
heaven over who should receive the Torah. "It is written in the Torah 'Thou shall not murder,' 'Thou shall
not commit adultery,' 'Thou shall not steal.'" Moses said. "Is there jealousy among you!? Do you have an
evil inclination!? Obviously the Torah is not meant for you."1

In other words, only man has been endowed with the inclination for both good and bad. And only man
has been given free choice to choose either one. An angel, on other hand, has no evil inclination and
therefore no free choice. This would seem to mean that an angel is something like a robot, which cannot
rebel or sin.

Even the oft-cited example of the Satan as a rogue angel is a gross misunderstanding. Satan is merely the
name of an angel whose divinely assigned task is to seduce people towards sin. This angel is also the
prosecutor who levels charges in front of the heavenly court against those who succumb to his crafty
seductions. The word satan simply means prosecutor in Hebrew. If the Heavenly court decides that it is
time for someone to die, then the Satan is the one sent down to take his life. In fact, the Talmud tells us
that, "Satan, the urge to do evil, and the Angel of Death are all one."2 All these titles are simply multiple
job descriptions for one angel. An angel fulfilling its divine duty is hardly in conflict with its own Creator.3

All this, however, is seemingly contradicted by the verse in Job which states:

Can a mortal be more righteous than God, or can a man be purer than his Maker? Behold, He does not
trust His servants and He casts reproach upon His angels.4

And we say in the liturgy of Yom Kippur:

The angels are dismayed, they are seized by fear and trembling as they proclaim: Behold the Day of
Judgment! For all the hosts of heaven are brought for judgment. They shall not be guiltless in Your eyes.
Both of these quotes clearly imply that in spite of what we have said, angels do somehow manage to sin
even without having an evil inclination, and are judged on Yom Kippur.

Furthermore, we find various instances in the Midrash and Talmud of angels being punished. A
punishment implies that one had a choice in the matter.

For example, the Midrash seeks an explanation for the verse concerning Jacob's dream, "And he
dreamed, and behold, a ladder set up on the ground and its top reached to heaven; and behold, angels
of God were ascending and descending upon it."5 This seems to be in reverse order. Shouldn't the angels
have been descending first into this world from the place of their origin, and only afterward ascend?

Rabbi Chomah the son of Rabbi Chanina interpreted this reverse sequence as follows: When the angels
who were sent down to save Lot and destroy Sodom, they were haughty and attributed the act to
themselves, saying, "For we are destroying this place, because their cry has become great before the
Lord, and the Lord has sent us to destroy it."6 Subsequently, they were punished and left to wander the
world for 138 years. Only now, at the time of Jacob's dream,7 were they permitted to return. This is why
the verse first says they were ascending and only afterwards descending.8 9

Punishment implies sin. If so, the above cited Midrash implies that angels can indeed and in fact did sin.

Rabbi Yeshaya Halevi Horowitz in his classic Shnei Luchot HaBrit (Shelah), provides an explanation. He
concedes that angels do not have an evil inclination and, therefore, cannot sin in the conventional
meaning of the word, deliberately contravening the will of their Creator. However, angels are creations of
G-d just like any other creation, albeit more spiritual and intellectually inclined creatures who live on a
much higher plain than we do. By definition, there is no creation that is perfect; the only one that is
perfect is the Creator. Every created being, even the highest intellect, in some way conceals the ultimate
reality. Therefore, although an angel cannot sin, it can nevertheless make a mistake or at least present a
distortion of the truth.10

An angel is not merely a robot; it is something like a robot with its own intelligence. Perhaps the best
analogy would be one of those androids in sci-fi which have their own intelligence and yet are incapable
of deliberately doing something contrary to the function for which they were designed—but
nevertheless make mistakes.

This is how the angels who were sent to destroy Sodom sinned. When an angel is sent on a divine
mission, it is meant to fulfill that duty while putting its own identity totally aside. However, when the
angels went to destroy Sodom, they spoke as if they themselves were going to destroy the city. While
this had no impact upon the actual mission, it nevertheless was considered a sin in that it distorted the
truth of their role in that mission. This was an error due to their imperfections, rather than a failure to
fulfill a divine mission.

Additionally, Rabbi Yonatan Eibshitz11 explains that there are two types of sins. The first is the most
common kind, a sin that comes through the evil inclination enticing us to do wrong. But there is another
sort of sin which does not come through the evil inclination; on the contrary, this sin is transgressed out
of "holiness."

Every person—and every angel—has his or her level of understanding and holiness. A person is meant to
strive to reach higher and higher along an ordered path. The problem arises when a being (whether
human or angel) tries to rise too rapidly and reaches a level of revelation or understanding that acutely
transcends his objective state of being. This, Rabbi Eibishitz writes, can be compared to one who drinks
too much wine too fast, or "more than he can hold," which causes him—at best—to fall asleep, while if
he would have sipped his wine slowly not only would nothing negative have happened, it would have
even been beneficial to his health.12

This then sheds new light upon the meaning of the above cited verse in Job. The angels are reproached
not so much for sins that they may have committed in the conventional sense. Rather, it is for sins done
out of purity and righteousness, by seeking to rise to a level that is higher than their objective state of
being, as the verse states, "Can a mortal be more righteous than God, or can a man be purer than his
Maker?"13

So in answer to your question, yes angels can sin. However, they can only sin through mistaking their
mission or trying to reach levels of revelation where they do not belong.

Footnotes

1.
Talmud, Shabbat 88b-89a; For an in-depth elaboration on this epic debate, see The Sinai Files.

2.

Talmud, Bava Batra 16a.

3.

With regards to the bnei elokim or nephilim in Genesis 6:2, while some do indeed interpret it as referring
to angels, it is only once they were upon this earth and assumed the characteristics of human beings—
effectively ceasing to be angels—that they sinned.

4.

Job 4:17-18.

5.

Genesis 28:12.

6.

Genesis 19:13.

7.

Some explain that this is because they were the angels that escorted Jacob from his father's house.

8.

Midrash, Breishit Rabah 68:12. See there for alternative answers; see also Rashi to Genesis 19:22.

9.
Another example of angels being punished can be found in the Talmud (Chagigah 15a) where the
archangel Metatron received "sixty strokes from a fiery rod" as a punishment. However, some
commentaries explain that he was not actually punished for any sins he had committed. Rather in
heavens they "put on a show" of punishing him, in order to teach others a lesson. See Maharsha ibid.

10.

Shnei Luchot Habrit, Beit Yisroel; see also Igrot Kodesh, vol. 14 p. 147.

11.

Yaarot Devash, vol. 1 lecture 2.

12.

See Talmud, Yuma 76a.

13.

Job ibid.