Around 1180, Maimonides set out ten ranks in Yesodei ha-Torah 2:7: Chayot Ha Kodesh, Ophanim, Erelim, Chashmalim, Seraphim, Malakhim, Elokim, Bene Elokim, Cheruvim, Ishim. Crucially, he explains the ranks as degrees of understanding, not power: each class comprehends God only through the class above it. Other Jewish systems, the Zohar, Maseket Atzilut, Berit Menuchah, offer rival ten-rank lists that agree on almost nothing except the number ten.
The Torah's angels refuse to give names, ask Jacob's opponent, ask Manoah. Named angels appear only in Daniel, written in the exile's shadow, and the Jerusalem Talmud itself comments that angel names came back from Babylon with the returnees. Gavriel, Michael, Refael: the names are Hebrew, but the habit of naming angels at all looks imported, Persian religion being thick with named yazatas.
The claim: a hierarchy ranked by comprehension implies the lowest angels barely grasp the God they serve, making heaven's majority a workforce running on trust, and making rank a measure of information access, exactly like a clearance system. Verdict: it is what the text says, Maimonides is explicit, but applying the clearance metaphor is ours, not his. Still: a cosmos where knowledge is rank is a cosmos where the omniscient are necessarily few.
If rank is comprehension, what do the bottom ranks think is going on?