Is Metatron in the Bible?

No. The Bible says that Enoch was taken by God (Genesis 5:24; Hebrews 11:5) but never names Metatron. The name first appears in the Babylonian Talmud, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan and 3 Enoch.

Is Metatron the same as Enoch?

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 5:24 and 3 Enoch 4 say so. The Talmud's Metatron passages in Hagigah 15a, Sanhedrin 38b and Avodah Zarah 3b do not mention Enoch, so the identification belongs to particular texts rather than to every source that names Metatron.

What is Metatron's Cube?

It is a sacred-geometry figure made by joining the centers of thirteen circles with straight lines. Its popular name spread through late twentieth-century sacred-geometry books, and it does not appear in the Talmud or 3 Enoch.

What is Metatron prayed to for?

Contemporary devotion asks Metatron for help with study, clear thinking and order. Maimonides' fifth principle of faith rejects serving angels as intermediaries, and Christian critics cite Colossians 2:18, so whether to pray to him at all depends on the reader's tradition.

Who Is Archangel Metatron in Enochic Mystical Tradition?

Q: Who is Archangel Metatron?

In rabbinic and Jewish mystical literature, Metatron is the heavenly scribe, identified with Enoch after God "took" him (Genesis 5:24). The Talmud (Hagigah 15a) describes him writing down Israel's merits, and 3 Enoch tells the story of his transformation, throne and crown.

Archangel Metatron is the heavenly scribe of rabbinic and Jewish mystical literature, usually identified with Enoch, the man of Genesis 5:24 who "walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." The name never appears in the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament. It enters the written record in the Babylonian Talmud, in the Aramaic Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, and above all in 3 Enoch, where Enoch himself tells Rabbi Ishmael how he became Metatron.

Those sources give him a throne, a crown and a divine title, "the lesser YHWH," and then pull him back: the same literature punishes him when a rabbi takes him for a second divine power. Renaissance Christian Kabbalah later fitted him into correspondence tables, and modern sacred geometry attached his name to a diagram, Metatron's Cube, that none of the older texts describes.

Quick Facts

Name meaning: Uncertain; proposals include Latin metator (guide) and Greek meta thronon (beside the throne)
Primary role: Heavenly scribe who writes down Israel's merits (Talmud, Hagigah 15a) and "angel of the Presence" in 3 Enoch
Core source context: Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 5:24, the Babylonian Talmud, and 3 Enoch (Sefer Hekhalot)
In the Bible?: Not named; Genesis 5:24 and Hebrews 11:5 say only that Enoch was taken by God
Common symbols: Writing and records, a throne at the door of the seventh heavenly hall, a crown, and the modern Metatron's Cube
Devotional use: Modern devotion asks him for help with study and order; Maimonides rejects praying to angels as intermediaries

Why Does Metatron Begin in Mystical Scribal Tradition?

Metatron's first job in the surviving texts is writing. The Babylonian Talmud (Hagigah 15a) describes him as the angel "granted permission to sit and write the merits of Israel," and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, an Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah, expands Genesis 5:24 to say that Enoch "ascended to the firmament" and "his name was called Metatron the Great Saphra," the great scribe. Both are rabbinic readings built around a short biblical line, and the Hebrew text of Genesis names only Enoch.

The biblical verse says nothing about what Enoch became. Christian readers meet the same silence in Hebrews 11:5, which says Enoch "was translated that he should not see death" without giving him any angelic office. The step from Enoch to Metatron belongs to Jewish interpretation in late antiquity, so a claim that the Bible describes Metatron is really a claim about how later readers explained Genesis 5:24.

The scribal role has an older root. The Ethiopic Book of Enoch (1 Enoch) already calls Enoch "the scribe" and "scribe of righteousness" when the Watchers send him to carry God's verdict to the fallen angels (1 Enoch 12:3-4). When the Targum names Enoch "Metatron the Great Scribe," it gives an angelic title to a role Enoch already held in earlier Enochic writing. That continuity helps explain why Metatron's defining image is a writer in heaven.

What Do 3 Enoch and Hekhalot Say About the Heavenly Scribe?

3 Enoch, also called Sefer Hekhalot ("Book of the Palaces"), is the one text in which Metatron tells his own story. It presents itself as the account of Rabbi Ishmael, a second-century sage, but scholars such as Philip Alexander place its final editing in Babylonia around the fifth or sixth century CE. The title "3 Enoch" is modern: Hugo Odeberg gave it to his 1928 edition, which was also the first translation of the book into English.

The book moves through a sequence of scenes. Rabbi Ishmael ascends through the heavenly halls, meets the angel and asks why he is called "Youth"; Metatron answers, "I am Enoch, the son of Jared," youngest in days among the angels (chapter 4). God then enlarges him to the length and breadth of the world and gives him 72 wings (chapter 9), seats him on a throne at the door of the seventh hall (chapter 10), and sets a crown on his head, calling him "the lesser YHWH" before the whole heavenly household (chapter 12). The same chapter ties that title to Exodus 23:21, "my name is in him."

The transformation matters because it makes Metatron a former human being. Michael and Gabriel are angels from their first appearance in Daniel, while Metatron's rank comes after a human life that ended when God "took" Enoch, and 3 Enoch tells it as Enoch's promotion from the earth to the throne room.

Metatron is not the only record-keeper in 3 Enoch. Chapter 27 names Radweriel as the angel "appointed over the treasuries of the books," which places Metatron at the head of a heavenly court that already has its own archivist.

Why Does Metatron Resist Simple Name Meanings?

No one knows what "Metatron" means, and the texts that use the name do not explain it. It is not built like Michael ("Who is like God?") or Gabriel ("God is my strength"), which end in the Hebrew -el and carry their meaning on the surface. Scholars have proposed several origins:

Latin metator. A guide, or one who marks out a route; the Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) judged this derivation "doubtless correct."
Greek meta thronon. "Beside the throne," a popular reading that matches the throne scenes of 3 Enoch.
Aramaic words for guarding. Hugo Odeberg, Adolf Jellinek and Marcus Jastrow connected the name with mattara, "keeper of the watch."
Persian Mithra. Alexander Kohut proposed a link with the Zoroastrian Mithra, one of several theories the Jewish Encyclopedia lists.

The sources themselves point away from a single meaning. 3 Enoch 3 gives Metatron seventy names, one for each of the seventy languages of the world, all "based upon the name Metatron," and the "lesser YHWH" title of chapter 12 treats the name as a share in God's own name rather than a word with a dictionary meaning of its own. A website or pendant that translates Metatron with confidence as "the one beside the throne" has picked one hypothesis, the Greek one, and presented it as settled.

Is Metatron a Second Power Beside God?

The texts that raise Metatron highest also answer this question, and their answer is no. Hagigah 15a tells how Elisha ben Abuyah, a second-century sage later called Aher ("the Other"), saw Metatron seated in heaven. An old tradition held that no one sits in the world above, so Aher concluded that there might be "two authorities" and turned heretic. The Talmud then has Metatron removed from his place and struck with "sixty rods of fire" so that others would not make Aher's mistake.

3 Enoch 16 tells the same story from Metatron's side. He says a prince came at God's command, gave him "sixty strokes with lashes of fire," and made him stand. The book that crowns him and calls him "the lesser YHWH" records his correction in his own voice.

Sanhedrin 38b shows the same caution in argument. A heretic asks why Exodus 24:1 says "Come up to the Lord" instead of "Come up to Me," and Rav Idit answers that "the Lord" there is Metatron, "whose name is like the name of his Master" (Exodus 23:21). Asked whether Metatron should then be worshipped, Rav Idit reads "do not defy him" as "do not exchange Me for him" and adds that Israel refused to accept the angel even as a guide on the way to the land (Exodus 33:15).

Popular descriptions of Metatron as "second only to God" take the throne and the divine title from these texts and leave out the correction attached to both. In the Talmud and 3 Enoch, Metatron is allowed to sit, is seen by the wrong person, and is made to stand again before a God who has no rival.

How Did Metatron Move from Throne Lore to Modern Geometry?

One route by which Metatron reached Christian Europe was Renaissance Christian Kabbalah. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1533) sets out a "scale of the number ten" that pairs each of the ten sefirot with a divine name, an order of angels and a ruling angel. Metatron heads the first line, beside Kether, the divine name Eheieh and the holy living creatures (Haioth ha-Kadosh), and Tzaphkiel stands on the third, beside Binah and the Thrones.

That table turns Metatron from a figure in a story into a slot in a system of correspondences. Agrippa's printed scale is a Renaissance source for the pairing of Metatron with Kether, the "crown" at the top of the sefirot, that modern angel lists still repeat, even though 3 Enoch's crown belongs to a narrative about Enoch's transformation.

When each layer of the Metatron tradition appears
Period	Source	What it adds to Metatron
Hebrew Bible	Genesis 5:24	Enoch "was not; for God took him"; no angel is named
c. 3rd to 6th century CE	Babylonian Talmud: Hagigah 15a, Sanhedrin 38b, Avodah Zarah 3b	He writes Israel's merits, bears a name "like the name of his Master," and in one opinion teaches schoolchildren
Late antiquity to early medieval	Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 5:24	Enoch is called "Metatron the Great Scribe"
c. 5th to 6th century CE	3 Enoch (Sefer Hekhalot)	Enoch's transformation, the throne, the crown, the title "lesser YHWH," and the sixty lashes
1533	Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy II.13	Metatron placed at Kether in a ten-part correspondence table
Late 20th century	Sacred-geometry books and workshops	Metatron's Cube, a figure drawn from thirteen circles

Metatron's Cube is the newest layer. The figure is drawn by joining the centers of thirteen circles, a pattern sacred-geometry writers call the Fruit of Life, with straight lines, and its popular name spread through late twentieth-century books such as Drunvalo Melchizedek's The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life (1999). Neither the Talmud nor 3 Enoch describes the diagram, and Agrippa's scale lists Metatron without any geometric figure.

A wooden drawing board with brass compasses and a steel straightedge resting on a blank sheet — Compasses and a straightedge on a drawing board. Metatron's Cube is drawn with tools like these, and no older text about Metatron describes it.

What Do Cube, Crown, and Records Mean for Metatron?

Each of Metatron's symbols comes from a different source and changes meaning when it moves. The oldest is writing. In Hagigah 15a Metatron is seated because he is writing down Israel's merits, so the image concerns a record of good deeds kept for a people. Modern websites that call him keeper of the Akashic records attach a much later idea to that scribe.

Youth is the least known symbol and the one with the strongest claim to the modern link between Metatron and children. 3 Enoch 4 explains the title "Youth" (Na'ar) by Enoch's being the youngest in days among the angels, and the Talmud (Avodah Zarah 3b) offers, as one of two possible answers, that before the Temple's destruction Metatron taught Torah to schoolchildren. The protective role found in modern devotional writing goes further than either text.

Where Metatron's symbols come from
Symbol	In its source	In later use
Writing and records	Hagigah 15a: he writes down Israel's merits	Study, accountability, and personal record-keeping
Throne	3 Enoch 10: a seat at the door of the seventh hall	Closeness to God, sometimes stretched into "second only to God"
Crown	3 Enoch 12: given with the title "lesser YHWH"	Kether, the first sefirah, through Agrippa-style tables
Youth (Na'ar)	3 Enoch 4: youngest in days among the angels	A teacher of schoolchildren (Avodah Zarah 3b), later a protector of children
Metatron's Cube	No ancient source	Order and pattern in sacred-geometry meditation

The cube is the only symbol in the table with no older text attached to Metatron at all. It can still serve as a meditation image for order and proportion, but its link to Metatron rests on a modern naming choice, while writing, throne and crown carry the claims the tradition actually makes about him.

An archive card drawer pulled open on a desk with index cards standing upright in close order — An open drawer of index cards on a desk. The oldest image of Metatron, in Hagigah 15a, is a scribe writing down Israel's merits.

Scribe and record-keeper, where Sandalphon carries prayer

Modern devotion often pairs Metatron with Sandalphon and treats Sandalphon as the angel who carries prayer upward. The Talmud's own picture (Hagigah 13b) is physical: Sandalphon stands on the earth with his head reaching the holy creatures, behind the divine chariot, weaving crowns for his Maker. Metatron sits at the throne and writes, so the two occupy opposite ends of the same vertical picture.

The Enoch connection separates Metatron from Uriel as well. In 1 Enoch, Uriel is the angel who shows Enoch "the book of the courses of the luminaries of the heaven" (1 Enoch 72:1) and teaches him as a human visitor. In 3 Enoch that visitor has become the angel who receives visitors, and Rabbi Ishmael is the one asking questions.

Scripture separates Gabriel from Metatron most clearly. Gabriel is named in Daniel 8:16 and speaks in Luke 1:19 as the angel "that stand in the presence of God," while Metatron's title "angel of the Presence" comes only from post-biblical Jewish writing.

Daniel 10:13 and 12:1 present Michael as a prince who stands up for Israel, a defender in a conflict. Metatron's office in the Talmud and 3 Enoch is record and presence, and nothing in those sources sends him into battle.

Can You Pray to Metatron?

Traditions answer differently. Maimonides, in the fifth of his principles of faith, holds that God alone is to be served and that it is "not fitting to serve them in order that they be intermediaries," naming the angels among those excluded. The Talmud's treatment of Metatron in Sanhedrin 38b points the same way, since Rav Idit refuses him even the role of guide.

Christian writers who object to Metatron devotion usually cite his absence from scripture and Paul's warning against the "worshipping of angels" (Colossians 2:18). For Christian readers, the question of praying to Metatron turns on both points: he is not a biblical figure, and the New Testament is wary of angel veneration even for figures it names.

Contemporary angel devotion addresses Metatron directly, usually asking for help with study, clear thinking and keeping one's life in order. Those requests draw on the scribe image, though the older texts show Metatron writing about Israel, not answering individual petitions.

A practice that stays close to the oldest image of Metatron, the scribe of merits, does not need to address him at all: a reader can keep a nightly written record of one thing done well and one thing still owed to someone, borrowing the scribe's discipline while directing prayer wherever the reader's own tradition places it.