In the Scriptures, clothing imagery is an outward sign of an inward reality. On this, see, for instance:
Such a theme is also found in the pseudepigrapha. For instance, discussing 2 Enoch, Martha Himmelfarb wrote:
Transformation by Investiture
After Michael lifts Enoch from his second prostration, God commands him, “Take Enoch, and take of his earthly garments, and anoint him with good oil, and clothe him in glorious garments . . . “ (19:17). Michael does as he is commanded, the wondrous nature of the oil is described in some detail, and then Enoch reports, “I looked at myself, and I was like one of the glorious ones, and there was no apparent difference” (9:19). Enoch has become an angel.
The combination of clothing and anointing suggests that the process by which Enoch becomes an angel is a heavenly version of a priestly investiture. The idea that there are special garments for the righteous after death is widespread in this period . . . When Paul speaks of a spiritual body (1 Cor. 15:42-40) for the righteous after death, he seems to have in mind something similar to these heavenly garments. What is distinctive about the glorious garments in 2 Enoch is their association with anointing and the ceremony of priestly consecration invoked. (Martha Himmelfarb, Ascent to Heaven: In Jewish & Christian Apocalypses [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], 40)
Elsewhere, on the transformation of Enoch into Metatron, Himmelfarb wrote:
It is, of course, Metatron’s robe and crown that are of most interest for us:
Out of the love which he had for me, more than for all the denizens of the heights, the Holy One, blessed be he, fashioned for me a majestic robe, in which all kinds of luminaries were set, and he clothed me in it. He fashioned for me a glorious cloak in which brightness, brilliance, splendor, and luster of every kind were fixed, and he wrapped me in it. He fashioned for me a kingly crown in which 49 refulgent stones were placed, each like the sun’s orb, and its brilliance shone into the four quarters of the heaven of ‘Arabot, into the seven heavens, and into the four quarters of the world. (12:1-4)
Elsewhere in rabbinic tradition Metatron is called the heavenly high priest. This function is not mentioned in 3 Enoch, although a chapter that appears in a single manuscript and is thus relegated by Alexander to the appendix may allude to it. Nonetheless, God completes Enoch’s transformation by dressing him in glorious garments. The crown is explicitly a crown of kingship, appropriate to Metatron’s function as vice-regent in heaven, and the garments well me royal garments . . . Finally, although the crown is called a crown of kingship, in the next chapter (13) we learn that God inscribed on it “the letters by which heaven and earth were created,” not unlike the golden diadem of the high priest, the ṣiṣ, inscribed, “Holy to the LORD” (Ex. 28:36-38). (Ibid., 45)
