Seraphim: who are the burning angels of Isaiah

The seraphim are celestial beings explicitly mentioned in Sacred Scripture only once: in the inaugural vision of the prophet Isaiah in the temple of Jerusalem (Is 6,1-7). The Hebrew name, *serafim* (שְׂרָפִים), is the plural of *saraph* and literally means “the burning ones” or “the ones that burn.” Isaiah sees them standing near the throne of God, each with six wings, crying out to one another the triple “Holy” that is repeated in the liturgy today in the Sanctus of the Mass. In later theological tradition, especially from Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, the seraphim came to be counted as the highest of the nine angelic choirs, the circle closest to the divine throne.The text of Isaiah 6: the only vision of the seraphimThe scene takes place “in the year of the death of King Uzziah” (Is 6,1), around 740 BCE. The prophet sees the Lord seated on a high and exalted throne, and the edges of His cloak fill the temple. Above Him are the seraphim:> שְׂרָפִים עֹמְדִים מִמַּעל לוֹ שֵׁשׁ כְּנָפַיִם שֵׁשׁ כְּנָפַיִם לְאֶחָד בִּשְׁתַּיִם יְכַסֶּה פָנָיו וּבִשְׁתַּיִם יְכַסֶּה רַגְלָיו וּבִשְׁתַּיִם יְעוֹפֵף > > “Serafims were standing above him. Six wings, six wings had each: with two they covered their face, with two they covered their feet and with two they flew” (Is 6,2, literal translation of the Masoretic text).> וְקָרָא זֶה אֶל-זֶה וְאָמַר קָדוֹשׁ קָדוֹשׁ קָדוֹשׁ יְהוָה צְבָאוֹת מְלֹא כׇל־הָאָרֶץ כְּבוֹדוֹ > > “And he cried out to another, saying: Holy, holy, holy is YHWH of hosts, the fullness of all the earth is his glory” (Is 6,3, literal translation).To the cry, the curtains tremble and the temple is filled with smoke. Isaiah recognizes himself as a “man of unclean lips” and then receives the single gesture that Scripture attributes to a seraphim beyond praise: “One of the seraphs flew to me and, with a burning coal in his hand, taken from the altar with tongs, he touched my mouth and said: Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is atoned for, and your sin is expiated” (Isaiah 6:6-7, literal translation). The fiery purifies with fire. His nearness to God does not close him in on himself: it makes him a minister of the sanctity he contemplates, and from the purification of his mission as a prophet arises.What does saraph mean: the burning ones?The word *saraph* comes from the Hebrew root meaning “to burn,” “to consume by fire.” The plural *serafim* therefore designates “the burning ones,” “the incandescent.” Outside of Isaiah 6, the Old Testament uses the same term for scorching snakes in the desert (Numbers 21:6-8) and for flying snakes (Isaiah 14:29 and 30:6), which led exegetes to debate the background image of the vision. However, in Isaiah 6, the seraphs are clearly personal beings: they have a face, feet, wings, hands, and a voice, they speak, fly, and perform a ministry of purification.It is worth noting that Isaiah does not call them *mal’akh*, the common Hebrew word for “messenger” or “angel,” whose scope we explained in the article on what means angel in Hebrew. *Angel* is a name of office, not of nature, as Saint Augustine teaches, cited by the Catechism (CIC 329). *Serafim*, on the other hand, describes a mode of being: the spiritual creature as ablaze by the nearness of the divine fire. Christian tradition read into this name the symbol of perfect charity, the love that burns before God without being consumed.The six wings explainedThe most celebrated detail of the vision is the distribution of the six wings, which the text itself explains. With two, the seraph covers his face: not even the highest of creatures can gaze directly into the glory of God, and the gesture is adoration and reverence. With two, he covers his feet: in biblical language, the gesture veils the creature before the Creator and confesses that even the burning one is a creature, not God. With two, he flies: remains ready for service, as shown by his flight to Isaiah with the coal from the altar.Four wings cover, two serve. The proportion already is theology: in the seraphs, adoration precedes and involves the mission. And the whole scene corrects a pious image that became habit. The seraph of Isaiah is not the decorative cherub of late art, the winged boy on altars. It is a terrifying presence, before which the prophet feels lost, and which Rilke still intuited when he wrote that every angel is terrible. Recovering this numinous beauty, which fascinates and makes one tremble at the same time, is to restore to faith in angels their seriousness, against every esoteric or sentimental banalization.From the temple to the liturgy: the SanctusThe triple “Holy” of Isaiah 6:3 did not stay in the prophet’s book. It entered into the Church’s liturgy and became the Sanctus, the acclamation that opens the Eucharistian Prayer at every Mass. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explicitly teaches:

The Holy Trinity is to be praised and invoked in every celebration of the Eucharist, in keeping with the tradition of the Church and the practice of the early Community. This is the meaning of the Sanctus, which expresses the universal prayer of the assembled assembly: “Holy, Holy, Holy” (Isaiah 6:3).

“In its liturgy, the Church associates itself with the angels to praise God three times holy; it invokes their assistance (as in the prayer ‘In paradisum deducant te angeli’ – Conduct you to paradise, angels, from the Liturgy of the Dead, or also in the ‘Cherubic Hymn’ of the Byzantine Liturgies), and celebrates in a more particular way the memory of certain angels” (CIC 335).Associating: the verb is decisive. In the Sanctus, the Church does not merely imitate the angels, but truly joins in the praise that they never ceased to offer. The liturgy of the earth is the liturgy of heaven already begun, and the visible assembly is surrounded by the invisible one. The Directory on Popular Piety and Liturgy reminds, along these lines, that the faithful know that the angels “praise the Lord incessantly,” citing precisely Is 6,1-4 (Directory on Popular Piety and Liturgy, n. 214, our translation). From this it follows that the proper place of the seraphs is not ancient cosmology, which has passed, but worship, which remains: defined by their cosmic function, the seraphs fall with cosmology, defined by their liturgical office, they are as eternal as adoration. The seraphs are, so to speak, the liturgists par excellence of the universe’s temple.The Seraphims in Celestial HierarchyBased on the names provided by Scripture, tradition organized the angelic world into choirs. Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, in his work On the Celestial Hierarchy (5th-6th century), placed the seraphs at the apex of the first triad, above the cherubim and thrones, a scheme that St. Gregory the Great and St. Thomas Aquinas adopted and that became fixed in the list of the nine choirs of angels. The logic is simple: if the name means “fiery,” the seraph is the spirit most consumed by love of God, and thus the closest.It is important to distinguish the levels. The existence of angels is a sure doctrine: “The existence of spiritual beings, non-corporeal, usually called angels by Sacred Scripture, is a truth of faith” (CIC 328). The division into nine choirs, however, is a venerable theology, not a dogma. And the Dionysian hierarchy must be read well: not as a pyramid of power, but as a chain of illumination, in which the superior does not dominate the inferior, but illuminates it, transmitting the light that he himself receives. In this context, the seraphs are the first mirrors of glory, alongside other figures from prophetic vision, such as the mysterious wheels of Ezekiel, full of eyes around (Ez 1,18).Frequently Asked QuestionsDo you want to study angelology with academic rigor?This article arises from the works in the Locus Mariologicus library. Angelology is one of the disciplines of the Graduate Program in Mariology, within a 360-hour curriculum that ranges from Scripture to the Fathers of the Church and the Magisterium.See the Graduate Program curriculum