“... In Judaism also we find the belief that the souls of the righteous were under the altar in heaven. This in the Aboth R.N. xxvi, " Rabbi Akiba declares . . . that whoever was buried in the land of Israel was just as if he were buried under the altar, and whoever was buried under the altar was just as if he were buried under the throne ofglory? In Shabb. i52 b it is stated that "the souls of the righteous are preserved under the throne of glory," and in Debarim rabba, ii, God says to the soul of Moses: "Go forth, delay not, and I will bring thee up to the highest heaven, and cause thee to dwell under the throne of My glory amidst the Cherubim and Seraphim and heavenly hosts. ...”

“... Nathaniel Deutsch observes that both Metatron and Abathur are associated with the care of human souls in other ways. Metatron is characterized as the teacher of “all the souls of the dead that have died in their mothers’ wombs, and of the babies that have died at their mothers’ breasts, and of the schoolchildren that have died while studying the five books of the Torah.” Abathur’s watch house is depicted as the storage place for the pre-existent souls that have not yet descended to earth. Once again we observe the logic of the angelic vice regent: he is a guardian of the gate; a lord of mediation. Therefore, Metatron and Abathur are in charge of souls that are betwixt and between different modes of existence. In one case, the souls belong to those individuals who were never born or who died too young to receive a proper education; in the other case, the souls are waiting for their corresponding bodies to be born. Deutsch, Guardians of the Gate, 99. [...] Synopse §75 (3 Enoch 48C:12) attests to a similar tradition; it reads: Metatron sits for three hours every day in the heaven above, and assembles all the souls of the dead that have died in their mother’s wombs, and of the babes that have died at their mothers’ breasts, and of the schoolchildren beneath the throne of glory, and sits them down around him in classes, in companies, and in groups, and teaches them Torah, and wisdom, and haggadah, and tradition, and he completes for them their study of the scroll of the Law, as it is written, “To whom shall one teach knowledge, whom shall one instruct in the tradition? Them that are weaned from the milk, them that are taken from the breasts.” Alexander, “3 Enoch,” 1.313. ...”