The four great princes...who are appointed over the four camps of THE FOUR CAMPS OF SHEKINA, they remove the crown(s) of glory from their head and fall on their faces. (5) And the four great princes, when they see Tac‘as, ®the prince, great and honoured with song (and) praise, at the head of all the 5-5 in aramaic. Shekina. In ch. xxxvii the four camps of Shekina are mentioned together with ‘the four chariots of Shekina. In ch. xxxv all the myriads of camps of angels are said to be arranged in four rows, at the head of each row there being ‘a prince of the army. Probably ‘the four great princes’ here are to be understood as identical with the princes of the army in ch. xxxv. 3. In this case the camps of Shekina are the four companies of ministering angels arranged by the Throne of Glory, especially in their aspect as performers of Oédushsha. In other writings ‘the four camps of Shekina’ is not an infrequent term and in later cabbalistic traditions a considerable amount of speculation centres round this conception. (Cf. here esp. Cf. Mass. Hek. vi: “four companies of ministering angels praise before the Lord; the first camp under Mikael to the right, the second camp under Gabriel to the left, the third under Uriel before Him and the fourth under Raphael from behind”, and it is added the Shekina is in the middle”. Acc, to Ma‘ase Merkaba (Add. 26922) ‘the princes of the four camps of Shekina’ are: Mikael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael, standing to the right, to the left, in front of and behind the Throne of Glory resp. In P. R. ' El. iv the four angels Mikael, Uriel, Gabriel and Raphael stand by the Throne of Glory as leaders of four camps of angels glorifying the Most High. A similar picture is drawn by the Widduy Yaphe (Add. 15299, fol. 113 b). The ‘three men’ visiting Abraham, Gen. xviii. 2 seqq. are in Szuni ad loc. once identified with the angels Mikael, Gabriel and Raphael, and again with Raphael, Uriel and Gabriel, “who are the camp of Shehina". The conception of the four princes in charge of the ‘uttering of the Song’ before the Holy One, is traceable as far back as 1 En. chh. xxxix. 12, 13 and xl, Ixxi, ix. 1, where there are mentioned ‘FOUR PRESENCES ON THE FOUR SIDES OF THE LORD OF SPIRITS. ..uttering praises before the Lord of Glory”. Their names are here: Mikael, Raphael, Gabriel and Phanuel. See also 2 En. xviii. 9, and CHARLES, 1 En. note on xl. 2. Towards the formation of the idea of ‘four princes of the four camps of Shekina, speculations on the '' four living creatures" of Ezek.1. 5, 10, and the traditions of the four princes Mikael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel have, presumably, combined. In later cabbalistic sources one actually finds that the ‘four camps of Shekina’ are referred to the ‘Eagle-Ox-Lion-Man’ vision, e.g. YR. i. 80 a (Meg. ‘Amuq.). (5) Tag‘as. (YYAN). Not included in Schwab, VA. The name occurs in the prayer attributed to R. Hamnuna ben Sabha (Or. 6577, fol. 13a, Add. 27187, fol. 67 b, Add. 27199, fol. 299 e.a.), and also in another, anonymous, prayer in Add. 15299, fol. 104 b. In these cases it is a Divine name (really a double temura) always followed by YYY and letters of the Tetragrammaton. 'The epithet ‘great children of heaven, they remove the crown of glory from their head and fall on their faces. (6) And 'Tag'as, *the great and honoured prince, when he sees BARATTIEL®, the great prince of three fingers in the height of ‘Araboth, the highest heaven, he removes the crown of glory from his head and falls on his face.