The word just means messenger
Angel comes from the Greek angelos, meaning MESSENGER, itself a translation of the Hebrew mal'akh, which means the same. In the Bible and the Quran, angels are above all bringers of messages from God: warnings, instructions, announcements.
Angels appear in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and two are named in all three. GABRIEL — Jibril in Arabic — announces the birth of Jesus to Mary in the Gospels, and Muslims believe he brought the words of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad. MICHAEL, Mika'il in Arabic, is pictured as a protector and leader of the HOSTS of HEAVEN. Belief in angels is one of the six articles of faith in Islam, which teaches that they were created from LIGHT. Muslims believe two recording angels accompany every person, one noting good deeds and one bad. In the Hebrew Bible, Jacob dreams of a ladder stretching up to heaven with angels going up and down it.
Cherubs were not babies
In the Bible, a CHERUB is formidable. Cherubim guard the way back into the garden of Eden with a flaming sword, and the prophet Ezekiel describes them with four faces and four WINGS. The SERAPH of Isaiah's vision has six wings — two covering the face, two covering the feet, and two for flying — and calls out holy, HOLY, HOLY.
The chubby winged babies on Valentine's cards come from somewhere else entirely. They are putti, borrowed by Italian painters of the Renaissance from ancient Roman art, where they were little love spirits. Over time the two got mixed up, and cherub came to mean a sweet child.
Wings and halos were added by artists
The earliest Christian pictures of angels, in the Roman catacombs, show them as ordinary young men without wings. Wings and FEATHERS became standard from around the fourth century, borrowed in part from winged figures of victory in Roman art, as a clear visual sign of a being from heaven. The HALO, a circle of LIGHT around the head, was taken from older images of sun gods and emperors and came to mean holiness.
Gabriel blowing a TRUMPET on the last day is another later tradition; the book of Revelation has seven unnamed angels with trumpets. A CHOIR of angels singing GLORY at the birth of Jesus comes from Luke's Gospel.
Names, ranks and guardians
RAPHAEL, whose name means God heals, appears in the book of Tobit, which is in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles but not most Protestant ones. URIEL comes from other ancient Jewish writings, such as the book of Enoch. ARCHANGEL means chief angel; Michael is the one given that title in the Bible, and Christian tradition later extended it to Gabriel and Raphael too.
A sixth-century writer arranged angels into nine ranks, from seraphim at the top down to ordinary angels, and the scheme shaped centuries of art and poetry. Many Christians believe each person has a GUARDIAN angel, an idea drawn from words of Jesus about children's angels in heaven. For believers, angels are a sign of DIVINE care, GRACE and a SPIRIT world close by.