Metatron
Metatron is the supreme angel of the Hekhalot and Merkabah traditions, vizier of the heavenly court and scribe who records the merits of Israel. In the Talmud he sits in heaven, an anomaly that leads the apostate Elisha ben Abuyah to imagine 'two powers'; he is chastened with fiery lashes to prove his subordination to God. The Third Book of Enoch identifies him with the antediluvian patriarch Enoch, who 'walked with God' and was taken up, his mortal flesh transmuted into flame and his stature enlarged to fill the world; enthroned and crowned, he is granted seventy names and the title 'Lesser YHWH', for the divine Name dwells in him. Later Kabbalah pairs him with Sandalphon as one of the two loftiest angels. Sources differ on the origin of his name.
Domains
- heaven scribe
- cosmogony
Powers
- records the merits of Israel
- bears the Lesser Name of God
Epithets
- יהוה הַקָּטָן
- שַׂר הַפָּנִים
Relations
- twin: Sandalphon
Sources
- 3 Enoch (Sefer Hekhalot), trans. Hugo Odeberg (Cambridge, 1928), chs. 3-15
- Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 15a; Sanhedrin 38b; Avodah Zarah 3b
- Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken, 1941), pp. 43-79