If you are interested in reading 1 Enoch with us, you can find it on the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Recap

So far in 1 Enoch we’ve started with the opening of the first part of the book, the Book of the Watchers. This section opens with Enoch having a vision of God, who is returning to establish his kingship and authority over all the earth with 10,000,000 holy ones. 

As part of this, God is bringing judgement on all, resulting in blessings and life for the righteous and death and destruction for the wicked.

Enoch then challenges the wicked to look to the natural world and see the consistent faithfulness of nature in obeying God's commands. In contrast, the wicked are faithless and disobedient, leading to their ultimate punishment of perishing and their names becoming cursed.

The righteous, on the other hand, will be given long life, wisdom, and peace. This finished the introduction of this part. We now move to the second section within the Book of Watchers, the sin of the angels (Watchers) and birth of the nephilim.

1 Enoch 6-10

The Angels Rebel

We open with a group of angels looking down at human women and wanting to sleep with them to produce children of their own. This is a reference to Genesis 6:1-2.

At first, their leader, Semyaz is concerned that they’re all going to say this is a great idea, but he’s going to be the only one that actually does it and then gets in trouble.

In response they all bind themselves with an oath that they will all go along with this idea and all share the blame. The place they decide to swear this oath is Mount Hermon, which will continue to be significant throughout 1 Enoch.

In the Bible, God chooses Mount Sinai to be his holy mountain. In contrast, Mount Hermon will become the primary place of spiritual rebellion.

We then get a list of some of the names of the angels who are rebelling. Many of them end in ‘el’ which means God, and their names translate to things like ‘evening of God’, ‘star of God’, ‘thunder of God’, etc.

This suggests these were pretty senior angels rebelling.

The Birth of the Giants (nephilim)

And so these angels take human women and get them pregnant. According to 1 Enoch, the women then gave birth to giants who are 300 cubits tall. 

This is the equivalent of 450 feet or a little over 137 metres. It’s safe to say this is likely an exaggeration.

While the word isn’t mentioned here, in Genesis 6:1-2, the Bible refers to these giants as nephilim.

At first the humans try to feed these giants, but soon they run out of food so the giants start eating animals instead, and sometimes even humans. 

This is significant, because it wasn’t until later in the story in Genesis 9:3-4 that God gives humans permission to eat living animals, and even then he tells them not to consume their blood.

Here the giants are tearing apart animals and humans and drinking their blood. We’re meant to see them as corrupt and wicked beings.

Rebellious Angels Teach Humans Wickedness

The angels then start teaching the humans things that will ultimately lead to their destruction. There’s alchemy, magic, and astrology, as well as how to build weapons to fight and kill each other with.

We are then given the names of four good angels; Then Michael, Uriel, Raphael and Gabriel. These angels serve as God’s eyes and ears on earth, and quickly report to God everything that has been happening.

God Pronounces Judgement on the Rebels

And so God enters the scene. The first thing he does is tell ‘the son of Lamech’ to hide himself from what is going on and to prepare for ‘the deluge [that] is about to come upon all the earth’.

Jumping back to Genesis we can see in Genesis 5:28-29, that the son of Lamech is Noah, and we know from that story that God commissions Noah to make a boat because he’s going to flood the earth and wipe out its corruption.

Next, God tells his angel Raphael to find Azazel (also known as Azael), bind him and throw him into a pit in the desert to await judgement. 

We see this idea picked up in Leviticus. In Leviticus 16:8-10, we see one of the goats on the day of Atonement was dedicated to Azazel (sometimes referred to as a scapegoat). 

The idea was that the high priest would place all of the sins of God’s people onto this goat and send it to Azazel (Leviticus 16:20-22). Almost like a toxic waste bomb.

Then God commands Gabriel to hunt down the giants and their offspring, to separate them from the rest of humanity, and to cause them to fight amongst themselves so that they live short lives.

Finally, to the angel Michael, God gives the task of declaring judgement over Semiaza (Semyaza) and all the over fallen angels. There will come a time where they will be bound, tortured, and destroyed.

Included in this is a command to remove all pollution and injustice in the world. To cleanse the world of all defilement, oppression, sin, and iniquity.

Then the world will once again be a place of abundance and goodness.

Conclusion

In 1 Enoch 6-10 we get the telling of a spiritual rebellion from fallen angels that leads to giants (nephilim) who cause death and destruction. These fallen angels also teach the humans to practise wickedness and to fight each other.

This leads God to send his angels to defeat and capture these fallen angels, and speak forward to a time where all rebellion and corruption will be cleansed from the earth so that the human can once again live in abundance. 

Next, we will get Enoch’s visions of what will happen to these fallen angels. What will their punishment be?