The song dramatizes a teaching of Rabbi Yose ben Yehuda in the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 119b): "Two ministering angels accompany a person home from synagogue on Friday night, one good and one evil. If the house is prepared, the lamp lit, the table set, the bed made, the good angel says 'may it be so next Shabbat' and the evil angel is forced to say 'Amen' against his will. If not, the reverse." The song is the household's answer to this idea, instead of fearing the visit, we welcome it.
The familiar tune was composed in 1918 by Israel Goldfarb, a cantor in Brooklyn (later Boro Park). He wrote it while sitting on a bench in front of Columbia University's Low Library. Goldfarb published it in a songbook (Friday Evening Melodies) thinking it would be used by Reform congregations; it spread so widely across all denominations that most singers today think it's anonymous folk music. Goldfarb himself wrote in 1963: "The popularity of the melody travelled not only across this country but also overseas, so much so that many people came to believe that the song was handed down from Mt. Sinai by Moses."
The Maayan Band arrangement (recorded mid-2000s) keeps the melody intact but moves it from a slow synagogue chant to a moderate-tempo groove with bass, percussion, and call-and-response between male and female voices. It's the version most secular Israelis encounter at kabbalat Shabbat events.
מַלְאֲכֵי הַשָּׁרֵת (malachei ha-sharet), "ministering angels". From the root ש.ר.ת = to serve. These are angels with a specific function: they accompany, they witness, they report. Not powerful angels, not warrior angels, service angels.
מַלְאֲכֵי עֶלְיוֹן (malachei elyon), "angels of the Most High". Elyon is one of the oldest names of God, predating Jewish monotheism (Genesis 14:18, Melchizedek's blessing). The angels come from the highest source.
מֶלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים (melech malchei ha-melachim), "King of kings of kings". A three-tier superlative. Earthly kings have kings above them (emperors). Those emperors answer to God. So God is not just King of kings (like the Persian title "Shahanshah"), He's one level higher.
בָּרְכוּנִי (barchuni), "bless me". The verb takes a plural subject (you angels, plural) acting on a singular object (me, singular). It's the household head requesting the angels bless him/her, and by extension the household.
The structure mirrors how a guest visits: greet (V1) → welcome inside (V2) → receive what they bring (V3) → send off (V4). It's a courtesy ritual disguised as a prayer. The angels are imagined as honored guests with limited stay, they came with you from synagogue, they'll leave when Shabbat ends. Some kabbalists explain V4 (tzeitchem) as also addressed to the negative angel: go in peace, you too, even the trial-angel is dismissed with grace.
The 18th-century kabbalist Rabbi Yaakov Emden objected to Barchuni leshalom (V3), "you don't ask angels to bless you, only God." Some communities skip V3. Others (most Hasidic and Sephardic) sing all four. The Vilna Gaon also reportedly didn't sing it. But the song's popularity overrode the objections, by the early 20th century it was universal in Eastern European homes. The dispute is theologically substantive (angels as intermediaries vs. direct prayer) but practically settled.