Metatron

It is best to begin with what he is not. The Book of Enoch, the one called First and dating from the third century before our era, does not mention Metatron a single time. The name appears centuries later, in the Jewish literature of the heavenly palaces, and the text that tells the whole story is the Third Book of Enoch, or Sefer Hekhalot, of the fifth or sixth century, where an angel introduces himself to Rabbi Ishmael saying: I am Enoch, the son of Jared.

Of the name itself no one has managed to give an account. A Greek compound meaning beside the throne has been proposed; the Latin metator, the surveyor who in the Roman army went ahead marking out the layout of the camp, a word that did indeed pass into rabbinic Hebrew; and even a connection with Mithra. None of the three fully convinces, and that remains the situation after a thousand years of discussion.

What the text does specify is how many names he has: seventy, given him by God. And the title that sums them up, Prince of the Presence, describes not a power but a post: to stand before. The scriptural foundation of the whole edifice is a single verse of Exodus, where God announces that he sends an angel ahead of Israel who must be obeyed, for my name is in him. Rabbinic tradition read Metatron there, and from that reading comes the rest.

Sefer Hekhalot is precise where art never arrived: seventy-two wings, thirty-six on each side, each able to cover the world; three hundred and sixty-five thousand eyes, each like the sun; a throne made at the door of the seventh palace, in imitation of the throne of Glory; and a crown on which were engraved the letters by which heaven and earth were created. Ancient iconography of him does not exist. He is an angel of text, not of image, and every portrait of him is a modern illustration of an ancient description.

Metatron's Cube, today the first thing that appears when one searches his name, does not belong to this tradition. It is a figure of modern sacred geometry, drawn by joining with straight lines the thirteen circles of the so-called Fruit of Life, and it is not found in Sefer Hekhalot, nor in the Zohar, nor in any medieval Kabbalistic manuscript. It borrowed the angel's name, not the other way round: it is a twentieth-century object with a sixth-century name. It deserves a place here because it is what most people are looking for, but it is worth knowing where it comes from.

The same goes for the colour, the wings of light and the sceptres added by contemporary devotional prints. None of that is in the sources. What is there, and is stranger than any sceptre, is that the highest angel of the court should have the biography of a man who once walked the earth.

His trade is writing. Metatron records the merits of Israel and the deeds of men, and from that comes his title of heavenly scribe; the Sefer Raziel ha-Malakh, a medieval Hebrew grimoire, adds him as the transmitter of the knowledge that comes down from the throne to men.

His place in the court is almost always told wrongly. He does not command Michael or Gabriel: no ancient source says so, and the one who captains the heavenly armies is Michael. Nor is he the prince of the seraphim, who in Sefer Hekhalot itself is Seraphiel. His is another thing, and it has no choir: to stand before the Presence, a post of one. Sandalphon, whom tradition identifies with Elijah taken up in the whirlwind, is paired with him by symmetry, two men made angels; the talk of twin brothers is late esoteric language, not that of the ancient sources.

And there is a limit the texts take pains to mark. In tractate Hagigah of the Talmud, Aher enters the garden, sees Metatron seated and writing, and concludes that there may be two powers in heaven. The story answers in the only way it can: Metatron is given sixty lashes of fire for sitting, because a servant stands. The scene does not celebrate his height, it bounds it. And later Kabbalah added one more caution, distinguishing a primordial Metatron from the elevated Enoch, so that the promotion of a man should not compromise the Creator. Everything said of this angel comes with that clause attached.