Prophets...What If They Were Angels?

Why
did God choose human beings as His messengers? Wouldn't it be more
appropriate if God sent angels to guide people and to show them the
straight path? Wouldn't people be more eager to believe an angel than
merely another human like themselves? How fair would it be for human
beings to have angels as their prophets?

A messenger
is assigned to convey the law of God and to inform people about the
divine message, so he must be one of them — speaking their language and
knowing their habits — to be able to convey the message. People must
have known him before his mission; his honesty, truthfulness, and noble
manners should be unquestionable.

Not only would the prophet
convey the divine law, but he would also teach people how to apply it.
The law is theoretical and must be practically applied; people need to
see their messenger offering prayers, performing Hajj, and applying the
divine law he brought to them. Therefore, the humanity of the prophet
is imperative.

For this reason, God chose honorable humans
to be His Prophets, a choice that the disbelievers would oppose till
the Day of Judgment. Every prophet was a human and was attacked by his
people for being one.

[Is it a wonder for humankind that We have
inspired a man among them, saying: Warn humankind and bring unto those
who believe the good tidings that they have a sure footing with their
Lord? The disbelievers say, "Lo! This is a mere wizard."] (Yunus 10:2)

If God had sent down angels as prophets, people would have not recognized them, being that angels do not live on earth.
Questioning
the prophets' humanity is not limited to a single prophet, but it was
the norm among all prophets starting from Noah, the first messenger
sent after Adam (peace and blessings be upon both of them), and this
was shown in the Qur'an.

[But the chiefs of those who
disbelieved from among his people said, "We do not consider you but a
mortal like ourselves, and we do not see any have followed you but
those who are the meanest of us at first thought, and we do not see in
you any excellence over us; nay, we deem you liars."] (Hud 11:27)

The
same attitude was repeated in nation after nation. The Qur'an narrates
the stories of the peoples of `Aad and Thamud and those after them.
They rejected the prophets' message under the pretext that the prophets
were no more than human beings like them.

When Allah sent
Shu`aib (peace and blessings be upon him) to his people to tell them
that they should give full measure and weigh with the true and straight
balance, they accused him of lying.

Also, Pharaoh and his people
accused Moses and his brother Aaron (peace and blessings be upon both
of them) of lying, when they told them [Shall we believe in two men
like ourselves, and their people are servile unto us?] (Al-Mu'minun
23:47).

Similarly, the humanity of Muhammad (peace and
blessings be upon him) was taken as a basis for raising doubts about
his message:

[Their hearts trifling; and those who are unjust
counsel together in secret: He is nothing but a mortal like yourselves;
what! will you then yield to enchantment while you see?] (Al-Anbiyaa'
21:3).

Moreover, if God had sent down angels as prophets,
people would have not recognized them, being that angels do not live on
earth. Even if we assume that He had made the angel prophets known to
people, they would say, "Such angelic prophets could not Aexamples to
us because they are created from light and we are created from clay.
They are infallible by nature and they carry out the commands they
receive from Allah. Unlike them, we humans are liable to err."

Angels,
therefore, could not be prophets to humans because angelic powers and
nature differ from those of humans. Allah willed that His prophets be
as human as the peoples to whom they were sent, so that none would dare
argue on the Day of Judgment, "O Lord, You have burdened us beyond our
power and enjoined on us what we could not do." The answer would simply
be that your prophet was a human like you, yet he was able to
faithfully apply the divine law without feeling burdened beyond the
capacity of humans.