The primary feast day of the archangel Gabriel in the
Byzantine rite is March 26th, but the calendar also includes the Synaxis of
Gabriel on July 13th. The latter feast is especially dedicated to all of
Gabriel’s beneficent interventions in salvation history.
As Michael Foley explained in an article posted on NLM a couple years ago,
Along with Saints Michael and Raphael, Gabriel is one of only three angels mentioned by name in the canonical Scriptures. Unlike Michael, the Bible does not refer to Gabriel as an archangel, but he is nonetheless recognized as such by the Church. As Pope St. Gregory the Great explains, angels as an order are the spirits that deliver messages of lesser importance, and archangels are, among other things, the order of spirits that deliver messages of greater importance. Since the message that Gabriel was delivering was of the utmost importance, it stands to reason that he was an archangel.
The name “Gabriel” is thus of exceptional significance: this
chosen messenger announced the Incarnation of the eternal God, and furthermore,
out of the innumerable host of angelic beings, Holy Scripture assigns names
only to three of them. The name “Gabriel” is typically explained as meaning
“man of God” or “strength of God.” Even if we concede that ancient cultures
naturally associated physical strength with masculinity, the two
interpretations are rather different.
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| The Annunciation. France, late fifteenth century. Tempera and shell gold on parchment. |
The first part of the name derives from the Hebrew noun גֶּבֶר (gever), which means “man” but more in the sense of Latin vir than of Latin homo. The uncertainty arises because gever may also refer, by the metonymic extension that is common in biblical Hebrew, to a man’s strength. In the Book of Job, for example, God twice exhorts Job to “gird up now thy loins like a man,” where “like a man” translates כְגֶבֶר, i.e., the preposition כְ (“like, as”) prefixed to gever. The evident meaning is that Job should gird himself with (manly) strength, or perhaps even with the strength and courage of a warrior, for gever (by another metonymic extension) can signify “soldier.” The word’s connection to strength is more direct in Isaiah 22, 17: “Behold, the Lord will carry thee away with a mighty captivity, and will surely cover thee”; in this rendering from the King James Bible, the adjective “mighty” corresponds to the noun gaver (gever with a vowel change). The verse is a difficult one and was thoroughly reworked in the 1885 Revised Version: “Behold, the Lord will hurl thee away violently as a strong man; yea, he will wrap thee up closely.”
This is all to say that “Gabriel” can indeed convey either
“man of God” or “strength of God,” but “man of God” is more faithful to the
core meaning of gever. It is also more faithful to Gabriel’s role in
salvation history, and this is what I wish to emphasize: given the literary
sophistication of the Bible—which of course reflects the supreme literary
sophistication of its Author, whose words are also deeds, and whose stories are
scenes in the factual drama of human history—we would expect to find poetic
resonance between Gabriel and the incomparably momentous message that he
brought to Mary of Nazareth. His name supplies this resonance, and his
appearances in the Old Testament intensify it.
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| The Annunciation. Switzerland, early fourteenth century. Tempera, ink, and gold on parchment. |
As shown above, Hebrew gever is a terrestrial sort of word, denoting the physical, male being called man and expanding to man’s strength, man’s vocation as warrior, man’s role as husband (Proverbs 6, 34), and male offspring (Job 3, 3). To name an immaterial, celestial being “man of God” is highly paradoxical—and yet eminently fitting, for this is the celestial being whose privilege it was to announce the all-surpassing Paradox of the hypostatic union. Gabriel is thus a living icon of the Incarnation, and the Hebrew Scriptures surround him with incarnational language. When Gabriel is sent to explain the vision that Daniel received, Daniel saw someone standing before him “as the likeness of a man” and heard “a man’s voice” (Daniel 8, 15–16). Later, Daniel identifies the archangel as “the man Gabriel” (9, 21), not because he is a man but because he, like Christ, appears in the form of a man; here, “man” is אִישׁ (ʾish), which is closer than gever to Latin homo (or to English “human being”).
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| Gabriel interprets Daniel’s vision. Spain, thirteenth century. Courtesy of the Morgan Library & Museum. |
Finally, Daniel speaks of “a certain man” who may again be Gabriel, and if not, he is some other glorious being who is certainly much more than a man:
Then I lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a certain man clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with finest gold: his body also was like chrysolite, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like the color of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the voice of a multitude. (Daniel 10, 5–6)
Troparion of the Archangel Gabriel
O people, with a candlelight assembly let us sing the praises of the leader of heaven’s hosts. He is the servant of light sent from the Light divine to enlighten all who sing with love: O Gabriel, leader of the angels, rejoice with all the powers of heaven.
