# 3 Enoch (Hebrew Enoch) 43

**Not Scripture.** Read [Why](https://apologetics.wiki/non-canonical/3-enoch#research-notice) and [the Issues With This Book](https://apologetics.wiki/non-canonical/3-enoch#issues-with-this-book).

**Mysticism or Magic.** Chapters 41–48 have Metatron show Rabbi Ishmael the letters by which heaven and earth were created, the souls, and the Curtain of the Throne. [This issue](https://apologetics.wiki/non-canonical/3-enoch#issue-names).

Not received as Scripture by the Jewish canon or by the major Christian churches, apart from local exceptions such as the Ethiopian Orthodox canon, which includes 1 Enoch and Jubilees. This is not the Apocrypha.

1. R. Ishmael said: Metatron said to me: Come and I will show thee where are the spirits of the righteous that have been created and have returned, and the spirits of the righteous that have not yet been created.
2. And he lifted me up to his side, took me by his hand and lifted me up near the Throne of Glory by the place of the Shekina; and he revealed the Throne of Glory to me, and he showed me the spirits that have been created and had returned: and they were flying above the Throne of Glory before the Holy One, blessed be He:
3. After that I went to interpret the following verse of Scripture and I found in what is written (Isa. lvii. 16): “for the spirit clothed itself before me, and the souls I have made” that (“for the spirit was clothed before me”) means the spirits that have been created in the chamber of creation of the righteous and that have returned before the Holy One, blessed be He; (and the words:) “and the souls I have made” refer to the spirits of the righteous that have not yet been created in the chamber (GUPH).

- Edition: odeberg-1928
- Source: https://archive.org/details/3enochorhebrewbo00unse