The Holy Scripture
Chapter IV
I asked Metatron and said to him: ‘‘!Why art thou called by the name of thy Creator, by seventy names? Thou art greater than all the princes, higher than all the angels, beloved more than all the servants, honoured above all the mighty ones in kingship, greatness and glory: why do they call thee ‘Youth’ in the high heavens?”
He answered and said to me: ‘‘*Because I am? Enoch, the son of Jared.
For when the generation of the flood sinned and were confounded in their deeds, saying unto God: ‘Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways (Job xxi. 14)’, then the Holy One, blessed be He, removed me from their midst to be a witness against them in the high heavens to all the inhabitants of the world, that ®they may not say: ‘The Merciful One is cruel.
ADEL: BC: What sinned all those multitudes, What sins had they com- their wives, their sons and their mitted, all those multitudes daughters, their horses, their mules Or, let it be they sinned, what and their cattle and their property, had their sons and their and all the birds of the world, all of daughters, their mules and which the Holy One, blessed be He, their cattle sinned? And like- destroyed from the world together ^ wise, all the animals, domestic with them in the waters of the flood and wild, and the birds in the