GABRIEL
“man of God”
The angel who was sent to Daniel to explain to him the vision he had had of the ram and the goat, and to reveal to him the prophecy of the Seventy Weeks. Daniel calls him “the man Gabriel” and “one in the appearance of a man” (Dan. 8:11; 9:21).
He was also sent to Mary the mother of Jesus, and to Zechariah the father of John the Baptist, to announce the birth of his children.
Although in apocryphal literature he is called an archangel, he is not like that in the Bible. To Zechariah he said: “I am Gabriel, who stand before God” (Lk. 1:19, 26).