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250 THE MAGIO OF JEWELS AND CHARMS
where
Christ speaking of little children says : "Their angels do always
behold the face of my Father who is in Heaven." Another New Testament
passage testifying distinctly to the existence of this belief in the
Apostolic Age, is in the Acts of the Apostles (xii, 15), where we read
that after the miraculous rescue of Peter from his imprisonment, his
friends could not believe the report that he had been seen standing at
the door of their dwelling, and exclaimed: "It is his angel."
That
not only individuals but nations also had special guardian angels was,
as we have already noted, a belief held to a certain extent among the
Jews after the Babylonian Captivity. To the trace of this in the tenth
chapter of Daniel (vs. 13, 21), where Michael stands for Israel, may be
added the evidence afforded by the Greek Septuagint version of
Deuteronomy xxxii, 8, part of the "Song of Moses." Here the Revised
version based on our Hebrew text reads :
He set the bounds of the peoples,
According to the number of the children of Israel.
The
Septuagint translators, however, must have had a slightly different
text before them for they render the last words: "According to the
number of God's angels." It therefore seems probable that they read in
Hebrew bene Elohim instead of bene Yisrael. Of the bene Elohim or
"Sons of God" we read in Genesis, chapter vi, verse 2, that they wedded
with the ' ' Daughters of Men. ' ' This has been given a poetic form by
Thomas Moore in his "Loves of the Angels." The Book of Job also, in its
Prologue in Heaven (i, 6-12), introduces the "Sons of God" among whom
appeared Satan, the "Adversary." Of angel names, as has been noted,
there is Biblical warrant only for Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael, the last-mentioned, in the Apocryphal Book of
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