Raphael's Visit — The angel warns Adam of danger
Book 5 of Paradise Lost by John Milton
Morning returns to Eden, but Eve wakes troubled and distressed. She tells Adam of a disturbing dream: a voice like his called her to walk beneath the moonlight, led her to the Tree of Knowledge, where a winged figure plucked and ate the fruit, then offered it to her. In the dream she tasted it, and was suddenly lifted into the clouds, flying over the Earth in exhilarating freedom — until the guide vanished and she sank back to sleep. The dream is Satan's work, whispered at her ear before Ithuriel discovered him, and it rehearses in miniature the temptation that will come in Book Nine. Eve is shaken; Adam comforts her, reasoning that evil may enter the mind through dreams without staining the will, since reason did not consent.
Adam and Eve resume their morning worship, a spontaneous hymn of praise that Milton presents as an unfallen psalm. Their prayer calls upon all creation to join in adoration — sun, moon, stars, elements, mists, winds, fountains, birds, fish, and every living thing. This canticle echoes the Benedicite of the Anglican liturgy and Psalm 148, but Milton gives it a freshness that belongs to beings for whom praise is not yet duty but delight. The scene establishes the rhythm of their unfallen life: work, worship, conversation, and love, all flowing naturally from their relationship with their Creator and with each other.
God, observing from Heaven, decides that Adam must be warned of the danger approaching him. He dispatches Raphael, the sociable angel, to visit Adam and Eve in Paradise. Raphael's mission is specific: to tell Adam of his enemy, to inform him of Satan's malice and intent, and to remind him of his free will — that his happiness depends on his own choice, and that he has the power to stand but also the freedom to fall. God wants no excuse of ignorance: Man must be fully forewarned so that when the trial comes, the responsibility is entirely his own. The emphasis on free will and foreknowledge is Milton's central theological argument.
