The angels are represented throughout the Bible as a body of spiritual beings intermediate between God and men: "You have made him (man) a little less than the angels" (Psalm 8:6). They, equally with man, are created beings; "praise ye Him, all His angels: praise ye Him, all His hosts . . . for He spoke and they were made. He commanded and they were created" (Psalm 148:2, 5: Colossians 1:16, 17)
Attendants at God's throne
It is as messengers that they most often figure in the Bible, but the image and name “angel”expresses neither their essential nature nor their essential function, viz.: that of attendants upon God's throne in that court of heaven of which Daniel has left us a vivid picture.
God's messengers to mankind
But such glimpses of life beyond the veil are only occasional. The angels of the Bible generally appear in the role of God's messengers to mankind. They are His instruments by whom He communicates His will to men, and in Jacob's vision they are depicted as ascending and descending the ladder which stretches from earth to heaven while the Eternal Father gazes upon the wanderer below. It was an angel who found Agar in the wilderness (Gen., xvi); angels drew Lot out of Sodom; an angel announces to Gideon that he is to save his people; an angel foretells the birth of Samson (Judges, xiii), and the angel Gabriel instructs Daniel (Dan., viii, 16), though he is not called an angel in either of these passages, but "the man Gabriel" (9:21).
Such appearances of angels generally last only so long as the delivery of their message requires, but frequently their mission is prolonged, and they are represented as the constituted guardians of the nations at some particular crisis, e.g. during the Exodus (Exod., xiv, 19; Baruch, vi, 6)
Personal guardians
Throughout the Bible we find it repeatedly implied that each individual soul has its tutelary angel. Thus Abraham, when sending his steward to seek a wife for Isaac, says: "He will send His angel before thee" (Genesis 24:7). The words of the ninetieth Psalm which the devil quoted to Jesus (Matt., iv, 6) are well known. These passages and many like them (Gen., xvi, 6-32; Osee, xii, 4; III K., xix, 5; Acts, xii, 7; Ps., xxxiii, 8), though they will not of themselves demonstrate the doctrine that every individual has his appointed guardian angel, receive their complement in Jesus’s words: "See that you despise not on of these little ones; for I say to you that their angels in Heaven always see the face of My Father Who is in Heaven" (Matt, xviii, 10).