“That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.” (Genesis 6:2)
Genesis 6 takes only four verses, and they are among the most enigmatic in the Bible. Heavenly beings unite with women; giants, the nᵉfilîm, appear on the earth; then comes the flood. Genesis says no more. But another book told this story in detail.
A forgotten book, yet quoted by the Bible
The Book of Enoch circulated under the name of the patriarch of Genesis 5, “the seventh from Adam,” who “walked with God: and he was not; for God took him” (Genesis 5:24). Its first part, called the Book of the Watchers, dates from at least the third century before Christ.
Three facts make it impossible to ignore:
- The New Testament quotes it. The Epistle of Jude takes up 1 Enoch 1:9 almost word for word: “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these…” (Jude 14-15).
- It was found at Qumran. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain several copies in Aramaic: devout Jews in the time of Jesus were reading it.
- An African Church has always kept it. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church has held it as canonical since the fourth century. It is thanks to that Church that we have the complete text, in Ge’ez. While the West forgot it, Africa kept it.
The point is not to place Enoch above the Bible. But Scripture itself refers to it: we cannot act as if it did not exist.
The oath of Hermon
The Book of the Watchers tells that angels, called “watchers,” saw the daughters of men and desired them (1 Enoch 6:1-2). The Aramaic word ʿîr, “watcher,” is the one Daniel uses for the heavenly beings: “a watcher and an holy one came down from heaven” (Daniel 4:13). Their name states their mission: they were guardians, placed to watch over men. Jude and Peter simply call them angels (Jude 6; 2 Peter 2:4).
Their leader, Shemihaza, fears he alone will bear so great a sin. So two hundred of them bind themselves by an oath, and they come down “in the days of Jared” on the summit of a mountain that takes its name from that oath: Hermon, from ḥērem, “the thing devoted, the curse” (1 Enoch 6:3-6).
Two details meet the Bible in a striking way. Jared, the father of Enoch (Genesis 5:18), bears a name that comes from the verb yārad, “to go down”: his generation is that of the descent. And Hermon is the region where Og king of Bashan reigned, for “only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants” (Deuteronomy 3:11).
What Jude and Peter say
The New Testament takes up this account with surprising precision:
“And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” (Jude 6)
Peter links the fall of these angels to the time of Noah, exactly as Enoch does (2 Peter 2:4-5). And elsewhere he speaks of “the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah” (1 Peter 3:19-20).
A man to carry the sentence
The Book of the Watchers contains a scene of immense significance. The condemned watchers no longer dare lift their eyes to heaven. They beg Enoch, a man, to carry their petition before God. Enoch is taken up to the throne, and he comes back down with the sentence (1 Enoch 13-16).
Angels placed to serve man, and a man taken from the dust who rises to the throne to carry their judgment: this is no small detail. It already announces the calling of man, placed in the midst of disorder to set it back in order.