“... Order and regularity in nature are sometimes conceived as being bound to a secret oath. 1 Enoch 41, 5 mentions the astronomical order which is preserved “in accordance with an oath”. An oath, probably the same one, is later on men- tioned in connection with the creation of the world (Chapter 69). Although not everything said is as lucid as one could wish, it appears that Michael is in possession of the knowledge of a secret oath, and possibly also of a secret name—the two are not necessarily identical—which sustains the whole work of creation. That there was such a secret principle, which the ancients believed to be operative in the creation of the world and in its subsequent government, is neither new nor unique to the “Book of Similitudes” (1 Enoch 37–71). At any rate, the idea and its parallels are amply documented in post-biblical Jewish lit- erature. Thus, for instance, the major Hekhalot text, Hekhalot Rabbati (Synopse, § 166),16 contains a brief reference to the “. . . wondrous and strange and great secret; the name through which the heaven and the earth were created, and all the orders of the creation of the world (Hebrew: sidrey bereshit) . . . were sealed by it”.17 Presumably, the “secret name” and the “oath”, or the “great secret”, in these sources refer to the same cosmic principle. Indeed, the secret name, or names, of God played a great role in some of the ancient Jewish concepts of creation. Thus, we find in Jubilees 36, 7 that Isaac makes his sons swear “a great oath—for there is no oath which is greater than it—by the name glorious and honored and great and splendid and wonderful and mighty, which created the heavens and the earth and all things together . . .” Later on, in the third century C.E., we hear from Rav Yehudah in the name of Rav that “Beẓal’el (Exodus 31, 2) knew how to form the combinations (Hebrew: le-ẓaref) of the letters (of the Alphabet) through which the heaven and the earth had been created”.18 Again, 3 Enoch 41 refers to a series of letters by which several things were created. ...”