How many angels are there?

Question 08114.

Scripture never gives us the number of angels, and I think that silence is deliberate. What it gives instead is a vocabulary of vastness, used repeatedly and by different writers, which is designed to leave you with an impression rather than a figure.

That impression is worth having. A believer who grasps the scale of the angelic host will pray differently, worship differently, and be a good deal harder to frighten. So let me take you through what the Bible actually says.

Why the Number of Angels Is Given as a Multitude

The most striking statement comes in Revelation 5, where John hears the voice of many angels around the throne, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands. A myriad is ten thousand, so a myriad of myriads is a hundred million, and the doubling of both terms is the biblical way of saying that counting has broken down.

Daniel 7 gives the same picture from the other side of the Testaments. A thousand thousands served Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. The number of angels in that vision is not a statistic but an overwhelming.

Hebrews 12 speaks of innumerable angels in festal gathering, and the Greek there carries the sense of a company beyond reckoning. Three writers, three visions, one impression. Whatever the number of angels is, it is beyond us.

The Armies of Heaven

One of God’s most common titles in the Old Testament is the LORD of hosts, and the hosts in question are armies. That title appears hundreds of times, and every occurrence is a quiet reminder that the God of Israel commands forces we cannot see.

Jesus made the same point in Gethsemane when He said He could appeal to His Father and be given more than twelve legions of angels. A Roman legion was about six thousand men, so twelve legions is over seventy thousand, and the point of the remark is that this would be available immediately and would not exhaust the supply.

That is the way Scripture handles the number of angels throughout. Not a census, but the assurance that there is always more where that came from.

A Fixed Company

Although the number of angels is not revealed, there are good reasons to think it is fixed. Angels do not marry or reproduce, as Jesus stated plainly when answering the Sadducees about the resurrection, and there is no suggestion anywhere in Scripture of new angels being created after the initial work.

Job 38 places their creation before the founding of the earth, when the sons of God shouted for joy. That points to a single creative act rather than an ongoing process.

If that is right, then the number of angels created at the beginning is the number that exists now, minus those who fell, and nothing will change it. Their company neither grows nor diminishes, which is a strange thought for creatures like us who are used to birth and death as the rhythm of existence.

What About the Fallen Ones?

Revelation 12 pictures the dragon’s tail sweeping down a third of the stars of heaven, and this is commonly read as indicating that a third of the angelic host fell with Satan. I think that reading is likely, though I would not build a doctrine on a single symbolic image.

If it is correct, then two thirds of an innumerable company remained faithful, and the loyal angels outnumber the fallen by two to one. That is worth remembering when the demonic seems overwhelming, though I would not want anyone’s confidence to rest on arithmetic.

I have looked at this more closely in whether a third of the angels fell. The relevant point here is that even after the rebellion, the number of angels serving God remains beyond counting.

Why God Has Not Told Us

I suspect the number of angels is withheld for the same reason many details are withheld. A figure would satisfy curiosity and stop the enquiry, whereas an impression of vastness keeps driving us back to the God who made them all.

There is also a pastoral wisdom in it. Give people a number and they will start doing sums, allocating angels to individuals and building systems on it. Give them myriads of myriads and there is nothing to do but worship.

Scripture consistently tells us what we need rather than what we would like. The number of angels belongs to the second category, and I have made my peace with that.

The Scene at Dothan

The passage that has done me most good on this is 2 Kings 6. Elisha’s servant wakes to find the city surrounded by the Syrian army and panics, which seems a reasonable response. Elisha prays that his eyes might be opened, and the young man sees the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire.

What I want you to notice is that nothing changed except his perception. The heavenly forces had been there all along. The servant’s problem was not that he was outnumbered but that he could only count one of the two armies present.

Elisha’s line is one of the great statements of Scripture: those who are with us are more than those who are with them. He is making a claim about the number of angels, and he is making it while apparently surrounded.

What This Does to Worship

Set your Sunday morning against Revelation 5 for a moment. Whatever the size of your congregation, whatever the state of the singing, you are joining a chorus already in progress that numbers beyond calculation.

Hebrews 12 says we have come to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and it uses the perfect tense. This is not something we are working towards but something we have already joined. The number of angels around the throne is not decorative information. It sets the scale of the assembly you belong to.

That ought to do something to the way we sing. Small churches in particular need this truth, because the visible arithmetic on a wet February morning can be discouraging and it is not the whole count.

Holding It Humbly

I want to add a caution against speculation. Some writers have produced elaborate hierarchies with precise numbers at each level, largely borrowed from medieval sources rather than from Scripture. It is interesting reading and it is not revelation.

The honest position is that we know the number of angels is vast, we know it is fixed, we know a portion fell, and we do not know more than that. Anyone who tells you otherwise is drawing on something other than the Bible, and I would want to know what.

Curiosity is not a sin, but confidence beyond the text is. See my introduction to angelology and demonology for how I approach the subject as a whole.

The Vocabulary Behind the Vastness

It is worth looking at the words themselves. The Greek behind the innumerable company of Hebrews 12:22 is myrias, the same root that gives us myriad, used in Revelation for the heavenly throng. In Daniel 7:10 the Aramaic doubles its figures in exactly the same way, a thousand thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand.

The Hebrew term for the heavenly armies is tsaba, the word behind LORD of hosts, and it is a military word rather than a poetic one. The angelos of the New Testament belongs to the same ordered company under the same commander.

None of this vocabulary is trying to be precise about the number of angels. It is trying to overwhelm, and the writers use the largest figures their languages possessed and then multiplied them, which is the ancient way of saying that the total is past finding out.

An Angel for Every Star

People occasionally ask whether the number of angels might correspond to something we can measure, and the honest answer is that we have no idea. Speculation of that kind has a long history and no biblical warrant whatever.

What Scripture does do is set the angelic host alongside the created heavens as evidence of the same generosity. The God who scattered stars beyond counting also made a company of spirits beyond counting, and neither was necessary. He simply delights in abundance.

I find that quietly encouraging. A God who works on that scale is not likely to be running short of resources for your situation, and Psalm 147:4 says He counts the stars and calls them each by name. If He can manage that, the number of angels presents Him with no difficulty at all.

So, now what?

Let the scale of it settle on you. The God you pray to commands a company beyond counting, every one of them ready to be sent, and He has committed some portion of that service to the good of people who will inherit salvation.

That does not mean life becomes easy, and Elisha’s servant still had a difficult day ahead of him. It means you are never as alone or as outnumbered as the visible evidence suggests. When did you last pray as though the room were fuller than it looks?

Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands.

Revelation 5:11 (ESV)