The hypothesis about the identification of Jacob’s image and the Divine Glory returns us again to the imagery of God’s Kavod with which, as has been shown earlier, the Face in Ladder and 2 Enoch is closely associated. ............

....... Enochic materials may also correlate the Face of God (divine Kavod) with the heavenly counterpart of the visionary. In 2 Enoch, the Face of the Lord seems to play an important role in the description of Enoch’s heavenly counterpart. 2 Enoch 39:3-6 depicts the patriarch who, during his short trip to the earth, retells to his children his earlier encounter with the Face. Enoch relates:

You, my children, you see my face, a human being created just like yourselves; I am one who has seen the face of the Lord, like iron made burning hot by a fire, emitting sparks. For you gaze into my eyes, a human being created just like yourselves; but I have gazed into the eyes of the Lord, like the rays of the shining sun and terrifying the eyes of a human being. You, my children, you see my right hand beckoning you, a human being created identical to yourselves; but I have seen the right hand of the Lord, beckoning me, who fills heaven. You see the extent of my body, the same as your own; but I have seen the extent of the Lord, without measure and without analogy, who has no end.[1]

Enoch’s description provides a series of analogies in which the earthly Enoch compares his face and parts of his body with the attributes of the Lord’s Face and body. For this investigation, however, another juxtaposition is most pertinent. It is a contrast between the two identities of the visionary: the earthly Enoch (“a human being created just like yourselves”) and his heavenly counterpart (“the one who has seen the Face of God”). It appears that Enoch tries to describe himself in two different modes of existence: as a human being who now stands before his children with a human face and body and as the one who has seen God’s Face in the celestial realm. These descriptions of two conditions (earthly and celestial) occur repeatedly in tandem. It is possible that the purpose of Enoch’s instruction to his children is not to stress the difference between his human body and the Lord’s body, but to emphasize the distinction between this Enoch, a human being “created just like yourselves,” and the other angelic Enoch who has been standing before the Lord’s face. Enoch’s previous transformation into the glorious one and his initiation into Sar ha-Panim in 2 En. 22.7 support this suggestion.  It is unlikely that Enoch somehow completely abandoned his supra-angelic status and his unique place before the Face of the Lord granted to him in the previous chapters. An account of Enoch’s permanent installation can be found in chapter 36 where the Lord tells Enoch, before his short visit to the earth, that a place has been prepared for him and that he will be in the front of Lord’s face “from now and forever.”[2] Finally, in chapter 43,[3] Enoch introduces himself to his children as the Governor[4] of the World. [5]  This title gives additional proof for the fact that the permanent installation of Enoch-Metatron in the heavenly offices, including the office of the Prince of the World (Mlw(h r#), has already taken place. The importance of this account for the idea of the heavenly counterpart in 2 Enoch is apparent because it points to the simultaneous existence of Enoch’s angelic double installed in heaven and its human counterpart, whom God sends periodically on missionary errands. Targumic and rabbinic Jacob accounts also attest to this view of the heavenly counterpart when they depict angels beholding Jacob as one who at one and the same time is installed in heaven and is sleeping on earth.[6]

The idea about the heavenly counterpart of the visionary found in 2 Enoch is also present in another early Enochic account. One of the booklets of 1 (Ethiopic) Enoch attests a similar tradition. Scholars have previously observed[7] that the Similitudes seem to entertain the idea of the heavenly twin of a visionary when it identifies Enoch with the Son of Man.[8] For a long time, students of the Enochic traditions were puzzled by the fact that the Son of Man, who in previous chapters of the Similitudes has been distinguished from Enoch, becomes suddenly identified in 1 Enoch 71 with the patriarch. James VanderKam suggests that this puzzle can be explained by the Jewish notion, attested in several ancient Jewish texts, that a creature of flesh and blood could have a heavenly double or counterpart.[9] To provide an example, VanderKam points to Jacob’s traditions in which the patriarch’s “features are engraved on high.”[10]  He stresses that this theme of the visionary’s ignorance of his higher angelic identity is observable, for example, in Prayer of Joseph.

It is noteworthy that in the Similitudes, similarly in 2 Enoch and Ladder,[11] the theme of the heavenly counterpart seems to conflate with the imagery of God’s Kavod. 1 Enoch 71:5 reports that Enoch is brought by Michael to the fiery structure, surrounded by the rivers of living fire, which he describes as “a something built of crystal stones, and in the middle of those stones tongues of living fire.”[12]

There is no doubt that the fiery “structure” in the Similitudes represents the Throne of Glory, which, in another booklet of 1 Enoch, is also described as the crystal structure issuing streams of fire.[13] An explicit reference to the Throne of Glory in 1 En. 71:8,[14] immediately after the description of the fiery “crystal” structure, makes this clear.

Similarities between 1 Enoch 71 and 2 Enoch 22 in the depictions of Kavod and Enoch’s transformation near the Throne of Glory are also apparent.

a.  In both accounts (1 En. 71:3-5 and 2 En. 22:6), Enoch is brought to the Throne by archangel Michael.

b.  Angelology of the Throne in 1 Enoch, as in 2 Enoch and Ladder,[15] includes three classes of angelic beings: ophanim, cherubim and seraphim.

c. Both Enochic accounts speak about the transformation of the visionary. Enoch’s metamorphosis in 1 Enoch 71 recalls the description of the luminous transformation of Enoch into a glorious heavenly being from 2 En. 22:8-9.

d. In both cases, the transformation takes place in front of the fiery “structure,” a possible source of both transformations.

e.  Studies in the past have noted that in both accounts the transformation of the visionary takes place in the context of the angelic liturgy (2 En. 21:1-22.10; 1 En. 71:11-12).[16] The same feature is also observable in Ladder 2.15-18.

f.  In both accounts Enoch falls on his face before the Throne.[17]

g.  The manner in which Enoch is greeted near the Throne of Glory in 1 En. 71:14-17 evokes the scene from 2 En. 22:5-6, where the Lord personally greets Enoch. In both accounts we have an address in which the visionary is informed about his “eternal” status. [18]

 

These features of both Enochic accounts, entertaining the idea of the heavenly twin, point to the importance of the vision of the Kavod in the process of acquiring knowledge about the heavenly counterparts of the visionaries. It is not coincidental that in Jacob’s tradition, which also attests the idea of the heavenly counterpart, the vision of God’s glory also becomes an important theophanic motif. It is clearly recognizable in the targumic Jacob’s accounts and the Ladder, where reports about Jacob’s angelic counterpart are creatively conflated with theophanic traditions about the vision of God’s Kavod.

 

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