Do Angels Have Wings? In the Bible, Cherubim and Seraphim Do

In the Bible the seraphim and the cherubim have wings, six for the seraphim and four or two for the cherubim. The angels who visit people in human form, from Abraham’s tent to the empty tomb, are never described with wings, and the winged angel of paintings and Christmas cards came later, from Christian art.

Where Scripture does give wings, it shows us what they are for. Isaiah saw the seraphim above the Lord’s throne, and “each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly” (Isaiah 6:2). Four of the six wings cover them before a holiness too bright to look at, and the seraphim cry, “Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3). Then the two wings for flying come into use. When Isaiah cries, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips,” we read, “Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar.” The seraph touches his mouth and says, “thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged” (Isaiah 6:6–7). The wings that hide before God’s glory are the same wings that carry his mercy to a sinner.

Are seraphim and cherubim angels?

Scripture gives them names of their own and never calls them angels, and in Ezekiel and Revelation it calls them living creatures or “beasts.” Christian tradition has counted them among the angels all the same, as the highest of the heavenly ranks. Dionysius the Areopagite, writing around the year 500, set out nine orders in three groups of three and put the seraphim, cherubim and thrones in the first, nearest to God. He wrote that “The theologians also call the most holy ranks of the highest Beings ‘Angels,’” so the word can cover them all. So when we ask whether angels have wings, the answer comes in two halves: the highest orders have them in every passage that shows them, and the messengers who come to us are never said to.

How many wings do angels have?

Each passage gives its own number of wings, and one gives no number at all.

The temple cherubim stood ten cubits high, and “five cubits was the one wing of the cherub, and five cubits the other wing” (1 Kings 6:24), so that the two figures spanned the whole inner room and their wings “touched one another in the midst of the house” (1 Kings 6:27).

Michael is called “the archangel” (Jude 1:9), Daniel speaks of “the man Gabriel” (Daniel 9:21), and Luke tells us Gabriel was “sent from God” to Mary (Luke 1:26), yet none of the angels Scripture calls by name is ever given wings. In the Book of Tobit, which is read in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles, Raphael travels with young Tobias as “a beautiful young man, standing girded, and as it were ready to walk,” and Tobias does not know “that he was an angel of God” until Raphael tells him, “I am the angel Raphael, one of the seven, who stand before the Lord” (Tobit 5:5–6; 12:15).

What do the wings of the cherubim mean?

In Ezekiel’s vision the wings are full of movement and sound. The four creatures had wings “joined one to another; they turned not when they went; they went every one straight forward” (Ezekiel 1:9), and Ezekiel says, “When they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty” (Ezekiel 1:24). Only later did he learn what they were: “I knew that they were the cherubims” (Ezekiel 10:20). Revelation’s “four beasts” are close kin to them, with “each of them six wings about him,” and “they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come” (Revelation 4:8).

On the ark the wings did their work without moving. Two cherubim of gold sat at the ends of the lid, and “the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings” (Exodus 25:20). God told Moses what would happen there: “And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims” (Exodus 25:22). Under those wings was the place where a holy God came close to his people and spoke with them.

Christian writers have read these wings as signs. Dionysius explained that “the wing displays the elevating quickness and the heavenly progress towards higher things,” and that “the lightness of the wings denotes their being in no respect earthly.” So the wings tell us that those who bear them belong to heaven and move at God’s word, swift and unburdened.

Do angels have wings when they visit people?

Scripture never says they do. The angels who came to Abraham’s tent, to Samson’s mother and to the women at the tomb are described as men, which is why Hebrews can tell us, “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (Hebrews 13:2). Even the angel John saw “fly in the midst of heaven” is given no wings (Revelation 14:6). The many forms angels take are gathered in what angels look like.

Do angels have bodies?

Hebrews calls angels “ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation” (Hebrews 1:14), and so an angel has no body and no anatomy, wings or otherwise. When one is seen, it takes the form its errand needs, and the wings of Isaiah and Ezekiel are what the prophets saw in vision.

Why are angels painted with wings?

The oldest Christian paintings of angels, in the catacombs of Rome, show them as men in tunics, without wings. Winged angels appear in Christian art from the fourth century, borrowed from the winged Victories of Roman art, and by the fifth century the Annunciation mosaic in St Mary Major in Rome shows Gabriel “soaring through the air towards Mary.” The wings let anyone looking know at a glance that this young man came from heaven. The cherubim of the Bible look nothing like the plump winged children of later paintings, and cherubs and angels compared sets the two side by side.

Whose wings does the Bible care about most?

The wings Scripture cares about most are God’s own, and again and again it speaks of them as a refuge. David prayed, “Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings” (Psalm 17:8). Boaz blessed Ruth by “the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust” (Ruth 2:12). And Jesus, grieving over Jerusalem, reached for the same picture from the farmyard: “how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” (Matthew 23:37).

The seraphim cover their faces before him, and yet we are invited closer than that, under his wings themselves: “He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler” (Psalm 91:4).

Related reading

• What does the Bible say about angels?
• What Are Archangels and Their Roles?
• How many angels are there?
• 23 Bible Verses About Angels
• 17 Bible Verses About Angels and Protection