The narrative frame of Sefer Raziel HaMalakh traces an extraordinary chain of transmission—a single book passed from hand to hand across the entire span of biblical history, each recipient using its knowledge to accomplish something extraordinary.
It begins with Adam. After the angel Raziel gave him the book, the other angels grew jealous. They stole the book from Adam and hurled it into the sea. God did not punish the angels, but He did send Rahab (רהב)—the angel who rules the sea, not the Jericho figure—to retrieve the book from the depths and return it to Adam. From that point on, Adam studied it daily, learning the secrets of creation that he had lost when he left Eden.
Adam passed the book to his son Seth, and from Seth it traveled through the generations until it reached Enoch—who, according to rabbinic tradition, was transformed into the angel Metatron and taken bodily to heaven (Genesis 5:24). The book then came to Noah, who used its knowledge to build the ark. Some versions of the tradition say Noah learned from the book which species of animals to gather and how to arrange them inside the ark. Others say the book itself provided light inside the sealed vessel during the 40 days of the flood—the same function attributed to the Tzohar (צהר), the mysterious luminous stone mentioned in (Genesis 6:16).
From Noah, the book passed to Abraham, who used it to understand the stars and the workings of creation—knowledge that the Torah credits him with in (Genesis 15:5) when God tells him to count the stars. Abraham gave it to Isaac, Isaac to Jacob, and through the generations it eventually reached Moses, who incorporated its teachings into the hidden oral tradition alongside the Torah he received at Sinai.
The chain ends with King Solomon, the wisest of all humans, who used the book's knowledge of angelic names and divine forces to build the First Temple—and, according to later legend, to command demons and bend the forces of nature to his will. The transmission story serves a theological purpose: it establishes an unbroken line of mystical knowledge from creation to the Temple, legitimizing the text as ancient revelation rather than medieval invention.