chapter xviii

, v. 10, 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 _benê Elohim_ instead of _benê Yisrael_. Of the _benê Elohim_ or “Sons of God” we read in Genesis,