3 Enoch

Odeberg1928 source English page 234

26 THE HEBREW BOOK OF ENOCH [CH. Ix each wing *was as the whole world®. (4) And He fixed on me 36 5 eyes: each eye was as the great luminary. (5) And He left no kind of splendour, brilliance, radiance, beauty 4in (of) all the lights of the universe? that He did not fix on me. 3-3 so BCDEL. A: ‘filled the world’ 4-4 so BCL. A: ‘praise, lights of the universe’ —symbolize Metatron’s rulership over these. 36 on each side may be compared with ch. xvi. 1: ‘the princes of kingdoms were standing. ..on my right hand and on my left’. (4) 365 eyes. For the number 365 (= the number of days of the solar year) as mystical number cf. chh. v. 4, xxi. 3 (‘the size of each wing of the Chayyoth as 365 wings’), xxxiii. 4 (‘the breadth of each of the fiery rivers is 365 thousand para- sangs’). The body of an angel-prince covered with eyes (round about) is a regular feature of the descriptions of angels: cf. chh. xxii. 8 (‘his body is full of eyes’, of Kerubiel), xxv. 2, where the number of eyes assigned to the angel-prince in question (’Ophanniel) is devised on the basis of calendary calculations (8466 eyes corresponding to the number of hours of a year’), xxvi. 6. Cf. notes ad loca. each eye was as the great luminary. An identical statement about the eyes of Seraphiel, ch. xxvi. 6. (5) fixed on me all kinds of splendour, brilliance etc. of the lights (lumina- ries) of the world. Cf. in the angelological descriptions: chh. xxii. 4, xxv. 6, xxvi. 2, 4. Cf. also Mass. Hek. iv: “On every door in the Hall(s) of ‘Araboth there are fixed 365 thousand myriads of different kinds of lights like unto the great luminary”’. The repeated references by comparisons to the ‘world’ in the present chapter, vss. 2, 3, 5, and the possible allusion to the seventy-two princes of kingdoms or to the rule of the world in vs. 3 (cf. above) might conceivably be traces, if not inten- tional symbolical expressions, of Metatron’s function as the Prince of the World. Vs. 2, ‘I was raised to the size of the world’, might also be a remnant of Metatron’s connection with the speculations on the Primordial Man, the '/10070 Qadmon. Acc. to Chag. 12 a the first Adam reached from one end of the world to the other. This connection, which like the identification of Metatron with the Prince of the World (existing from the Days of Creation), was perhaps suspended in consequence of Metatron’s identification with Enoch, reappears in later cabbalistic literature: the statement that Enoch-Metatron is the Néshamd of the first Adam, who left him before the sin of Adam (just as the universal size of the first Adam is repre- sented as diminished through Adam’s sin: TB. Chag. 12 a) is frequent. The difficulties arising from Metatron’s identification with Enoch were now overcome through the new conceptions brought in with the doctrine of metempsychosis and related speculations. 7 : |