Raphael's warning, the rebellion in heaven

Eve wakes troubled by her dream — Adam, moved, comforts her, and they pray together at sunrise in one of the most beautiful morning scenes in the poem. God, watching, decides the time has come to make sure Adam cannot later claim he was caught unaware. He sends the angel Raphael down. Adam sees him approach in the noon heat, his six wings like a phoenix, and runs to meet him. Eve, told a guest is coming, prepares a feast from the unlimited produce of the garden, plucking fruit and pressing wines from the vine.

The three of them sit at table together — an angel and two humans — and eat. Milton insists Raphael eats with "real hunger" rather than appearance only; the body of the angel transubstantiates the food. The strangeness of the scene is the strangeness of an unfallen world: an unfallen man, an unfallen woman, and an unfallen angel sharing a meal in a garden where everything is still permitted except one thing.

After the meal, Adam asks the question that gives Raphael his opening. Adam has heard there is an enemy somewhere in this universe; what is the story? Raphael begins. He tells how God elevated the Son and proclaimed him heir; how Satan, in envy, gathered his followers in the north of heaven and proposed revolt; how the archangel Abdiel — one of Satan's own captains — heard the proposal, stood up in the rebel camp, denounced Satan to his face, and walked out alone. "Among the faithless, faithful only he." The book ends with Abdiel making the long march back through the hostile ranks to the loyal side.