When Moses went up into the Mount, a cloud received him, and bore him into heaven. On his way, he met the doorkeeper Kemuel, chief of twelve thousands of angels of destruction; they were angels of fire; and he would have prevented Moses from advancing: then Moses pronounced the Name in twelve letters, revealed to him by God from the Burning Bush, and the angel and his host recoiled before that word twelve thousand leagues. But some say that Moses smote the angel, and wounded him.
A little further, Moses met another angel; this was Hadarniel, who had a terrible voice, and every word he uttered split into twelve thousand lightnings; he reigned six hundred thousand leagues higher than Kemuel. Moses, in fear, wept at his voice, and would have fallen out of the cloud, had not God restrained him. Then the prophet pronounced the Name of seventy-two letters, and the angel fled.
Next he came to the fiery angel Sandalfon, and he would have fallen out of the cloud, but God held him up. Then he reached the river of flame, called Rigjon, which flows from the beasts which are beneath the Throne, and is filled with their sweat; across this God led him.[1]
It is asserted by the Rabbis that Moses learnt the whole law in the forty days that he was in the Mount, but as he descended from the immediate presence of God, he entered the region where stood the angels guarding the Mount, and when he saw the Angel of Fear, the Angel of Sweat, the Angel of Trembling, and the Angel of Cold Shuddering, he was so filled with consternation, that he forgot all that he had learnt.
Then God sent the Angel Jephipha, who brought back all to his remembrance; and, armed with the law, Moses passed the ranks of all the angels, and each gave him some secret or mystery; one the art of mixing simples, one that of reading in the stars, another that of compounding antidotes, a fourth the secret of name, or the Kabalistic mystery.[2]
It is said by the Mussulmans, that when the law was declared to the children of Israel by Moses, they refused to receive it; then Mount Sinai rose into the air, and moved above them, and they fled from it; but it followed them, and hung over their heads ready to crush them. And Moses said, "Accept the law, or the mountain will fall on you and destroy you."
