angelos

In the New Testament this is by far the more common meaning, and it names a created heavenly being who belongs to God's court, carries out his commands, and very often brings his word to people. The one idea holding the whole picture together is older than any thought of wings or halos: the Greek word means simply someone who is sent, a message-bearer. That is why the same word can name the being who tells Mary she will bear a son and the being who pours out a bowl of judgment in Revelation. What kind of errand is in view, and even whether the being is on God's side, is something the surrounding text tells you, not something the word itself decides.

Within this meaning the range is mostly about role and standing, not a different kind of creature. Angels:

• announce God's word and interpret his visions
• carry out his rescues, acts, and judgments
• are spoken of together as the heavenly host who worship him and once carried his Law to Israel
• and, in a handful of texts, stand opposed to him as fallen spirits

The Bible never pauses to define angels as a species; it uses the word flexibly for whatever heavenly servant God sends. So a reader should let each passage, rather than a fixed picture, fill in who a given angel is and what it is doing. One group of texts stands apart as genuinely debated: the seven letters of Revelation are each addressed to "the angel" of a church, and scholars have never settled whether that means a heavenly counterpart of the congregation or its human leader.

This is the older, everyday meaning of the Greek word, the one it carried in ordinary Greek long before it was used for heavenly beings, and the same sense as the Hebrew word it usually translates (מַלְאָךְ). A messenger is simply a person sent by someone else to deliver word or carry out an errand.

The New Testament keeps this plain human sense in a small but clear set of texts. John the Baptist is God's "messenger" sent ahead to prepare the way; John in turn sends his own "messengers" to question Jesus; Jesus sends "messengers" ahead of him into a Samaritan village; and Rahab is praised for sheltering the "messengers," the spies Israel had sent into Jericho. In each case an ordinary person is meant, sent on an errand by another.