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Find the answers to all those questions you were too embarrassed to ask in Sunday School. Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. Hosted by Luke Taylor.
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Can Angels Die? “Like Men You Shall Die” in Psalm 82
Psalm 82 & Enoch 15
Introduction
We have covered Psalm 82 on the podcast before. It’s the chapter where God holds His Divine Council to account. These are a group of higher-up spiritual beings. He has placed these principalities in charge of certain sectors of the world, yet they haven’t influenced humanity rightly.
So for those of us who like studying the weird stuff in the Bible, Psalm 82 is familiar territory.
And yet, it has this one really puzzling line in verse 7. God tells this group of disloyal beings “…like men you shall die…”
Now, what in the world could that mean? I know how a human can die. But how can eternal beings die? Wouldn’t a spiritual being be immortal?
The answer to that question is…complicated. It’s not a simple yes-or-no answer. The Scriptural journey this question takes us on is going to surprise you as you realize what the Bible actually says about angelic mortality.
I know it surprised me. And I find it to be weird, so I’d like to explore why the Bible has to say about it.
Turn to Psalm 82, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]
The Watchers of Psalm 82
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about how eternal beings- such as angels- can be threatened with death.
We’re also in a series on the book of Enoch, looking at places where it intersects with the Bible. But more on that later.
So, we all have the cute little nicknames we have for our husbands and wives, right? I have several that I call my wife.
A couple Sundays ago, we were walking into church, and I was leading my family through the parking lot, and I turned to say something to her. I don’t even remember what I was saying to her now, but when I addressed her, apparently I called her babe.
And she and my son stopped in their tracks. They stared at me disapprovingly. My wife informed me that I am not supposed to call her babe. I’ve called her a lot of things, but she says the word “babe” has never been on the list.
I was like, “What are you talking about? I’ve called you babe lots of times.” And she said, “no you haven’t.” And even my 7-year-old son got in on the action. He’s like, “No you haven’t, daddy; you’ve never called her babe before.”
I was calling her “babe,” short for “baby,” and that is forbidden. I normally call her “hon,” short for “honey,” or short for “Atilla,” but not “babe.”
Apparently, I guess since I’ve never called her that before, I’m not allowed to start now…? I’m not sure what the rules are. All I know is that “babe” is against them. It’s a bad word in my household. Babe is “the B-word” for us.
There is also a group of beings in the Bible who are called by a lot of different names, including another b-word: Bene Elohim. AKA the Sons of God. AKA the Watchers. AKA the morning stars. Or the holy or glorious ones. Or the lower-case g gods. These are all names in the Bible for the members of God’s Divine Council.
Now, if you’ve been listening to this podcast, you’ve been hearing about the Watchers a lot. Perhaps too much. I know some of you are like, “Say Watchers one more time!” I get it; they’ve been a large element of this Book of Enoch series we’ve been doing. And we’re actually going to be closing the book on the Watchers pretty soon. We won’t be 100% done with our Book of Enoch study- though we’re getting close- but the portion that’s about the Watchers is just about finished.
But before we leave them behind, I want us to look at this passage where God addresses His Divine Council in Psalm 82. I’ve referred to this before: God is speaking to the Watchers He has put in charge of various sectors of the world. These are the principality spirits set in authority over various nations and territories of humanity.
We’ve talked about these verses in the past on the podcast as I introduced the concept of the Divine Council, and you can review some of those teachings in episodes 68-70 if you want.
Psalm 82 begins
God has taken his place in the divine council;
in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:
“How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked? Selah
It’s a short psalm, and God is upset with the members of His Divine Council that have not done a good job in their oversight of the nations. The word for the members of the Divine Council here is elohim. Some are good; some are not. The ones getting called into the principal’s office here are not loyal beings; they are disloyal. In some cases, they have even sought the worship of humans. And God says this to them
In verses 6 and 7
6 I said, “You are gods,
sons of the Most High, all of you;
7 nevertheless, like men you shall die,
and fall like any prince.”
So God threatens the members of His Divine Council with death. Now, these are angelic beings. You can call them angels, but there are a lot more specific terms that I’d rather use to help differentiate them from other angels.
That said—these are angelic beings. That means they are eternal beings. And yet, God says “like men you shall die.” What did God mean by that?
The Watchers in Enoch 15
Before we dive into that, let me deal with a possible question on your mind: are these the same Watchers from the Book of Enoch? No, this is actually a different group. The Watchers in Psalm 82 are post-flood, post-Tower-of-Babel Watchers.
There were the original Sons of God that came down in Genesis 6:1-4, and this account is also expanded upon in Enoch’s book. In case you are new to this series on the Book of Enoch, let me provide a quick recap.
Enoch 6 tells us, And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.'
So the Watchers of Enoch’s book saw women in those days and, if you’ll pardon a slightly controversial term, thought the women were total babes. They descended to the earth to marry and produce children with these women, and this (1) created the giants or Nephilim, and (2) caused God to lock these Watchers up in an Underworld prison. In our exploration of Enoch’s book, we are up to chapter 15, and in this chapter, Enoch has just met God. Next, God sends Enoch to deliver one more message of condemnation to the chained-up Watchers.
So I’m going to read part of Enoch 15 today, and this time I will read from Ken Johnson’s 2012 translation, because it’s very readable in modern English. It reads:
He [which is God] said, “Fear not, Enoch, righteous man, and scribe of righteousness. Go, say to the Watchers of heaven, who have sent you to intercede for them, ‘You should intercede for men, and not men for you.’
In other words, similar to what God tells His Watchers in Psalm 82, God wanted His Divine Council to benefit man, not use man. Just like Hebrews 1 says that angels are supposed to be ministering spirits.
Enoch 15 continues: Why have you left the eternal heaven, and lain with women, and defiled yourselves with the daughters of men by taking them as wives, like the children of earth do, and begotten giants as your sons? Although you were holy, spiritual, living an eternal life,
Let me read that again: you WERE holy, spiritual, living an ETERNAL LIFE. Were.
You have defiled yourselves with the blood of women, and have begotten children with the blood of flesh, and have lusted after flesh and blood as the children of men do who die and perish. This is why I gave them wives, that they might beget children by them, so that nothing might be wanting to them on earth.
You know, Jesus had that comment in Matthew 22. He was asked about marriage in the afterlife, and Jesus said that when we get to the afterlife, we won’t get married because we’ll be (quote) “like the angels in heaven.” So some use that verse as proof to argue against the supernatural understanding of Genesis 6. But Jesus is making the exact opposite point: the angels in heaven DID remain celibate. The angels- or Sons of God- who came down to earth are the ones who left their heavenly domain and got married. They’re the ones who broke the rules, and they’re the ones who aren’t in heaven anymore. So here is what God says to them:
But you were formerly spiritual, immortal for all generations of the world, which is why I did not appoint wives for you; for spiritual beings have heaven as their dwelling.
Formerly spiritual. Formerly immortal for all generations of the world. “Formerly” means “used to.” But not anymore. They were immortal, and now they’re not. Just like God told the post-Babel Watchers in Psalm 82- and I would assume just as how God would tell any Watcher spirit who rebells against Him today- “Like Men You Shall Die.”
The Physics of Spiritual Immortality
So now let’s define immortality. There are two types of immortality. One is when something is inherently immortal. That means, it is in the nature of something to be immortal. For example, God is inherently immortal. He has existed in eternity past and will exist in eternity future. God is immortal by His very nature. Nothing can kill God. God does not require sustenance like we do in order to continue to exist.
Sustenance means “things that sustain you.” For my continued existence, I require food, water, and Dunkin Donuts coffee. But God can get by without those things. So we would say God is inherently immortal. He is immortal in His very nature.
There’s another kind of immortality which must be acted upon or sustained by an outside force. For example, perhaps in grade school you remember learning about Ponce de Leon, who discovered Florida, only he wasn’t looking for alligators or Disney World. He was looking for the Fountain of Youth. For thousands of years, various people were looking for a mythical spring that would restore the youth or rejuvenate the body of whoever drank from it.
And metaphorically, the search continues today. I was just hearing a podcast about Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, also known as ChatGPT. He has become a very very rich man the past few years; so rich that he has sunk $180 million into research for how to stop or reverse human aging. Sam Altman has also reserved a service which- at the time of his death- will chemically preserve his brain in the hopes that future scientists can scan it and upload his consciousness to a computer server. He is trying to figure out how to live forever.
Human beings- as mortal beings- can only achieve immortality when acted upon by an outside force. So that’s the second type of immortality: when someone is immortal because it’s acted upon by an outside force.
Now, before we talk about spiritual beings, here’s a quick brain teaser: in the garden of Eden, before the fall, were human beings inherently immortal- like God- before sin, could we live forever and ever without sustenance? or were we the second kind of immortal: could we only live forever when acted upon by an outside force?
There is an answer to that question, and to find it, we have to go back to the early chapters of Genesis. In Genesis 2, we read that God created a garden in Eden, and that it was full of trees. Two of those trees are highlighted in particular, and there’s something supernatural going on with them.
Genesis 2:8-9
8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
I don’t know about the other trees, but there are supernatural qualities to these two trees. We know that if you partake of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, you will know evil. God didn’t want Adam and Eve to know evil; God wanted them to be innocent. You don’t normally learn new information by eating a fruit; there was obviously something supernatural in regard to this tree.
And God had told Adam there was a solemn warning for eating of this tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Genesis 2:17
“…you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
So prior to Adam eating of the fruit, he was not going to die. He was immortal. But what kind of immortality did he have? We’ll see.
Satan tempts Eve into taking the forbidden fruit by saying, “…when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like [Elohim—like the members of the Divine Council], knowing good and evil.”
The other supernatural tree in this story is the Tree of Life. This tree was not forbidden for Adam. In fact, Adam needed the fruit of this tree to be immortal. Adam had the second type of immortality: he could only live forever if he continually ate of the fruit of this tree. Why do I say this? Let’s look at the words at the end of chapter 3 as Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden for eating the forbidden fruit:
(Genesis 3:22-24)
22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
Notice that Adam and Eve were forced to abandon the garden specifically because it had the Tree of Life. This tree brought immortality to those who ate of it, but that immorality wasn’t permanent. You had to continually return to this tree to maintain your eternal life.
And we also see that even in his fallen state, Adam and Eve had the potentiality of continual existence if he had eaten of this tree, so God had to kick them out and guard the way.
Angelic Mortality
And now let’s return finally to our original question: what about angels? What about Cherubim, Seraphim, the Sons of God—are they the first kind of immortal- inherently immortal- or are the they the second kind- that they must partake of the Tree of Life to live forever as well? Let’s re-read
Genesis 3:22, more slowly this time
Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.
Wait- did God just say “one of us.” Who is God talking to? He’s speaking to the elohim.
This is a Divine Council conversation. Man was given dominion of the world. Man sinned. And God has called together an emergency meeting of the Divine Council. We will talk about this in a future episode this summer, but the Garden of Eden was a meeting place of the Divine Council. The gang got together and had to decide what to do.
Verse 22 again:
22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—”
Notice what God said: lest he reach out his hand and take also. “Take also.” Adam and Eve were not the only ones who ate of the Tree of Life. The members of the Divine Council did as well.
Now, from Genesis 6 and other passages, we know that some spiritual beings such as the Sons of God are able to manifest in fleshly bodies and interact with the physical world. We know from passages like Genesis 18:8 and Psalm 78:25 that angels eat food.
Therefore, we can conclude from all of these passages that the Watchers, the Sons of God, are not immortal in the way that God is. They are not inherently immortal. They are not immortal in their very nature. They, too, must eat of the Tree of Life in order for their bodies to be sustained.
I mean, wow. This totally rewrites what I thought I knew about spiritual beings.
Now, at the time that these Divine Council members were in Eden in Genesis 3, they were all still loyal to God. But we see that when Adam and Eve had rebelled against God, they were cut off from the Tree of Life. Satan as well; he was cursed to be an earth-dweller from here on out. He seems to be able to visit heaven, but he doesn’t have free reign there.
It would seem to follow that when any other spiritual beings rebel against God- including the Watchers- they are cut off from the Tree of Life as well. They might still have positions of authority. They might still participate in the Divine Council. But they lose access to the Tree of Life. And therefore, their bodies are dying.
What does that mean? I don’t have all the answers to that today, but I will say, make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast because we will continue to develop these ideas for the future.
Before we go, I will leave us with this comment from Timothy Alberino’s excellent book Birthright. He says here- and he’ll admit he’s somewhat speculating, but I think it’s biblically-rooted speculation: “If the defected sons of God are indeed dying, then it follows that their bodies, like ours, are growing increasingly decrepit over the course of time; in other words, they are aging. It would be illogical to assume, however, that elder beings age at the same rate as human beings. Considering that Adam had a lifespan of nearly a thousand years and that the morning stars possess a biology far superior to man’s, it is likely that they would live many thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years before succumbing to death…”
And so to add to that, perhaps they are alive, but in a deteriorated state. Perhaps when Enoch saw the Watchers in their underworld prison, they were starting to look like zombified versions of themselves.
Sustained By God
So, this teaches us the spiritual principle that eternal life is sustained by loyalty to God.
Nehemiah 9:6 includes these words in Nehemiah’s prayer
“You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you.
Notice that it says God made heaven with all their host- this refers to the spiritual beings who populate heaven- and it says God preserves all of them. To preserve here is the Hebrew word chayah (kye-yah), which means “sustain life” or “be restored to life or health.” (Luke note: see NASB version on Bible Study Tools).
Colossians 1:16-17
16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
So I have always read those words and applied them to things of the earth, but it specifies: things in heaven AND on earth. God holds the things in heaven together, too- and that would include all the heavenly spiritual beings.
Now, one interesting element of the Book of Revelation is that the Tree of Life once again makes an appearance in the very last chapter of the Bible- speaking of the eternal state, the new heavens and the new earth.
Revelation 22:14
Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.
Even in our eternal glorified bodies, we will be immortal, but not inherently immortal. We will be sustained by our relationship with God.
Now, how does the Tree of Life get from the Garden of Eden to the New Heavens and New Earth? The Book of Enoch is going to fill in some gaps in our understanding, so I can’t wait to share some of those details with you in the months ahead.
Next Time
Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get those episodes as they come.
Next week, I want to spend perhaps one more week on the Watchers; there’s this really bizarre phrase in I Corinthians 11 where it’s speaking about head coverings. It says in
Verse 10
That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.
Most scholars recognize that Paul is referring to the Genesis 6/Book of Enoch story about the Watchers coming down right there. But what is Paul saying bringing that up for- is he actually saying that if women don’t wear head coverings, that there might be another incursion of Watchers trying to get with them?
I’m gonna try to solve that mystery next week. And a couple shout-outs real quick- to Demi, a new super-weirdo who emailed me this week. That means she’s listened to every episode. And the longer this podcast goes on, the harder it is to achieve super-weirdo status, so thank you for joining me on this journey, Demi! Also shoutouts to other listeners I heard from this week: Allen, Alex in Savannah, GA; from Rick, and Michelle. Appreciate hearing from you all. If anyone needs to get in touch with me, my email is WeirdStuffInTheBible@gmail.com.
Closing Thoughts
In closing, this lesson kind of rewrote my understanding of spiritual beings. Sometimes we think we know the rules, just like I thought it was alright to call my wife “babe.” Similarly, I would have thought that angels were just eternally existent. I would have thought that humans in their glorified bodies were as well. But the Bible has never hid the ball from us on this, I had just missed it.
I Timothy 6:15-16 told us all along
God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light
God alone is immortal. By which it means inherently immortal. Immortal in His very nature.
God didn’t create anyone else as immortal in their very nature. For the rest of us, we have to come to God to find immortality. We must be sustained by God for immortality.
That’s why it’s called the gift of eternal life. It’s not something we have inherently.
Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So just as when humans rebel against God, we receive death; angels do as well.
And in Revelation 19 and 20, all who have rebelled against the Lord are consigned to the Lake of Fire. This is known as the Second Death. And it’s not just the fate of humans who rejected God. It’s also the fate of Satan and all the evil spiritual beings who rejected God as well.
But when we align ourselves with Jesus in this cosmic, eternal war between good and evil, He tells us in
Revelation 2:7
To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’
And in 2:11
The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.
Guys, these rules around immortality might sound weird, but it’s been in the Bible all along, ever since its opening chapters. We’re weird, because we didn’t know that angels can die. But now we do. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.
If ever making a book:
Nickelsburg has a good quote for this section, quoted in the Heiser commentary on pages 144-145