What Angel or Prince Is Like Your Redemptive Help?

Abstract The rhetorical flourish of 1 QM 13:14 has been interpreted as a reminder that the ultimate resource of the sectarian community is not an angel but the God of Israel. This reading, however, stands in tension with the many sections of the War Scroll that look expectantly to the eschaton for the martial “help” of the angels. This study will develop a lesser-known understanding of 1 QM 13:14: that no angel can compare to the “help” appointed by God, namely, the Prince of Light/Michael. Proposed reconstructions of the lacuna of 1 QM 13:14 and the relevance of a War Scroll-related fragment (4Q491 11 ii 14) will also be evaluated. It will be demonstrated that the ‮ עז׳׳ר ‬‎ root was frequently employed to describe angelic assistance in not only the War Scroll but also other Second Temple texts, indicating that the “redemptive help” of 1 QM 13:14 is most cogently read as the celebration of a divinely commissioned principal angel.