As demonstrated earlier, it is possible to reconstruct with some confidence the historical circumstances that inform the prophetic oracles. Ezekiel had to deal with fellow Israelites in exile who thought their condition revealed an unjust God, and had to answer charges made by Israel’s neighbors that their God was weak. Zechariah had to deal with people who had to accept the leadership of a High Priest with a dubious reputation once their hopes for the restoration of the Davidic monarchy had become unrealizable. The hopes they had placed on Zerubbabel faded as their hero disappeared from the historical record. Rather than a kingdom ruled by a descendant of David, the people had to build the temple and be led by a High Priest. As will become evident in the next chapter, the editors of the book of Daniel had to deal with people who were tempted to adopt the lifestyle and the worship of a more cosmopolitan Greek culture and encourage those with a firm allegiance to the Law of Moses and their ancestral customs to remain faithful when facing severe punishments and even death. In contrast to these books, the author of The Book of the Watchers does not seem to be addressing a specific historical situation. His message does not seem to be linked to particular circumstances. He is concerned with an intellectual problem: Why do people act in ways that God does not approve? This had been a problem already faced by the prophets. This problem was to become the central concern of the authors of apocalypses. What causes people to rebel against God? Why do righteous people suffer without cause? To the apocalypticists these became big problems due to their belief that all human activity is determined by God. Facing these problems, Ezekiel taught that God is the source of both good and evil. But that solution was not accepted by all. Then, how is the presence of evil in God’s world to be accounted for? If God is not the source of evil, where does evil come from? This is the problem being addressed by the author of The Book of the Watchers. It is a problem especially for those who hold that God is in control of this world. As such, it is a problem that transcends specific circumstances.
To deal with this problem, the author of The Book of the Watchers, the first 36 chapters of First Enoch, resorts to accounts of the beginnings of human life. He is aware of the story of Adam and Eve’s disobedience. It brought about the opening of their eyes to realize their nakedness, and resulted in their expulsion from the garden of Eden. No canonical book of the Old Testament, besides Genesis, contains a reference to the sin of the first human pair in the garden of Eden. All the prophets consider the worship of the golden calf at Sinai the paradigmatic sin that stamped Israel as a rebellious people. Beside the sin of the first pair in the Garden, the author of The Book of the Watchers also knows that Noah was told ahead of time to prepare for the survival of his family and be saved from the coming destruction, and that Enoch is the father of Methuselah, who is the father of Lamech, who is the father of Noah. More than anything else, he knows that “when men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took to wife such of them as they chose” (Gen. 6:1-2). The Book of the Watchers is an expansion of this text in Genesis. Thus, the author does not claim to have received a Word of the Lord. Rather, as noticed already in Zechariah, guided by an angel, he delivers an interpretation of a previous word of the Lord. He calls “watchers” the angels who watched the daughters of men and desired them. His reaching back to ancestral pre-historic narratives is a most significant move in the direction later taken by apocalyptic authors.
The book opens with the blessings Enoch has for the elect and righteous who “will be living in the day of tribulation.” His use of Enoch as a pseudonym and the projection of his message to a time of trouble in the future anticipate practices that became common among the apocalypticists. The author, identifying himself as Enoch, is not writing for Enoch’s contemporaries, of course. He is writing “not for this generation, but for a remote one which is to come” (1 En. 1:1-2). In this way the author, while writing for the benefit of his contemporaries, accommodates his appeal to the authority of an antediluvian patriarch who was in heaven. The opening announces that “the eternal God will tread upon the earth, (even) on Mount Sinai … and all shall be smitten with fear, and the Watchers shall quake.” God will be coming with “ten thousands of His holy ones to execute judgment upon all” (1 En. 1:4-9). Without any introductory remarks, divine judgment is the center of attention. Then, the author shifts gears and follows the example of Jeremiah, wondering why while in nature everything acts according to the laws established to be followed by them, human beings do not follow theirs. The luminaries, the seasons, the sea, the rivers, they do not deviate from their appointed roles; among them, “according as God has ordained so it is done, … but you – you have not been steadfast, nor done the commandments of the Lord” (1 En. 2:1-4). Therefore, at the judgment there shall be a curse for the sinners, but for the righteous “there shall be forgiveness of sins, and every mercy and peace and forbearance: there shall be salvation unto them, a goodly light” (1 En. 3:6). This is the introduction that sets up the agenda: at the judgment the cause of evil shall be revealed and retributive justice will be applied.
The rest of the book explores the way in which evil entered the world, and how God, who still has full control of his creation, has already made arrangements to deal with those who do evil. As a consequence, at the news of a judgment the Watchers trembled. The Watchers are the sons of God, the angels, who lusted after the daughters of men. The entrance of evil into the world, however, is told by two contrasting stories. According to one version, Semjaza, who was the leader of the angels, convinces 200 angels to join him and have children with daughters of men. They are aware, of course, that the plan carries a penalty. Still, they come down to earth and take women for wives, knowing that by doing it they were defiling themselves. To their wives they taught “charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants. And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand ells” (1 En. 7:1-2). The description would indicate the introduction of magical healing arts by plants, roots and charms. The giants, for their part, soon consumed all the resources available and, when they could no longer find food for themselves, they devoured mankind. Not satisfied, they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another, and drink the blood. “Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones” (1 En. 7:3-6). That the earth accuses the wrongs being done on it reflects the story of Abel’s blood calling for justice from the ground on which it fell (Gen. 4:10).
According to the other version of the appearance of evil, Azazel “taught men to make swords, and knives, and shields, and breastplates, and made known to them the metals (of the earth) and the art of working with them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly and all coloring tinctures. And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led astray, and became corrupt in all their ways” (En. 8:1-2). In this account, the problem was the introduction of the tools for making women more beautiful and the tools for the warfare that resulted from men desiring them. One cannot avoid remembering Helen and the Trojan War. In this way, the Book of the Watchers assigns the origin of evil among human beings to angels who defiled themselves with the daughters of men, something alluded to in the story of the flood in Genesis. Now God has to deal with angels who have defiled themselves, and humans who have acquired arts that cause them to sin. The move in this direction sets up a theme that became a major concern of apocalyptic writings.
The last thing one should require of mythical stories is that they be consistent. Thus in the remainder of the The Book of the Watchers one finds inconsistencies, but that should not be surprising. Since the Watchers under the leadership of Semjaza have killed all human beings, Michael, Uriel, Rafael and Gabriel in heaven hear the cry of the souls of the dead saying, “Bring our cause before the Most