Metatron: Who Is the Angel Called the Lesser YHWH?

The highest angel of Jewish mystical texts, once the human Enoch, called 'the lesser YHWH' and given a throne of his own.

Metatron is the chief angel of early Jewish mystical texts, the Prince of the Presence and scribe of heaven. In 3 Enoch he says he was once Enoch son of Jared, transformed into fire and titled "the lesser YHWH."

Metatron is the chief angel of the Hekhalot, or palace, literature of early Jewish mysticism. He is the Prince of the Presence, the scribe of heaven, and in 3 Enoch he reveals to Rabbi Ishmael that he was once Enoch son of Jared. God took him from the generation of the Flood and transformed him: his flesh became flame, his veins fire, his eyelashes lightning and his eyeballs torches. He was given a crown, a throne at the door of the seventh palace and the title "the lesser YHWH."

The Babylonian Talmud mentions him in a famous and uncomfortable passage (Hagigah 15a). The rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah ascends to heaven, sees Metatron seated, and concludes "there are perhaps two powers in heaven." To correct the error, Metatron is punished with sixty lashes of fire. Another passage (Sanhedrin 38b) explains that Metatron's name is like his Master's.

The name itself is a mystery. Suggestions include a Greek phrase meaning "beside the throne," a Latin metator meaning a guide who marks out a route, or an invented mystical word. The link with Enoch is not in the Talmud and appears fully only in 3 Enoch and later texts. Metatron fascinates because he is a man who crossed over. A human being is remade into something else, becomes the highest-ranking figure after God, and is so exalted that the rabbis had to publicly discipline him.