Enoch and the Book of Enoch
Enoch, a descendant of Seth, is taken by God (Genesis 5:24) and becomes a central figure in apocryphal texts like the Book of Enoch. In mystical traditions, he ascends to heaven, becomes Metatron, and receives cosmic secrets.
Enoch’s Ascension and Transformation into Metatron
Enoch ascends, becoming Metatron, a divine scribe. In high magic, he mediates cosmic knowledge, akin to Thoth in Egyptian myth.
Enoch's Heavenly Journeys and Transformation into Metatron
The Book of Enoch and 3 Enoch describe Enoch, seventh from Adam, as a righteous scribe who ascends through heavenly portals, witnesses cosmic secrets and punishments, intercedes for fallen angels, and is transformed into the angel Metatron, chief prince near God's throne, embodying human elevation to divinity.
"And Enoch walked with God, and he was not; for God took him". - Genesis 5-24
Enoch's Intercession for the Watchers
In the Book of Enoch, Enoch pleads with God for mercy on the fallen angels who corrupted his forebears' era, but receives their sentence of imprisonment until judgment, highlighting his mediatory role as a bridge between fallen humanity and divine justice.
Metatron's Role as Enoch Transformed
In 3 Enoch (Hekhalot mysticism), Enoch ascends, sheds his flesh for fiery angelic form as Metatron—"lesser YHWH"—and records heavenly deeds
Enoch the Scribe
Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah, walks through the pages of scripture as a mysterious figure. Genesis offers only the briefest sketch: "Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him" (Genesis 5:24). The Hebrew Bible mentions him in passing—365 years upon the earth before he vanished into eternity.
What the canonical scriptures omit, the Book of Enoch reveals in staggering detail—108 chapters that chronicle journeys beyond mortal comprehension, forbidden knowledge from fallen angels, and the true cause of the Deluge that would remake creation itself.
The Book of Enoch described Heaven not as a distant spiritual abstraction, but as a physical place—a city in the sky that could be visited, explored, and documented by mortal eyes. Enoch wrote down everything he saw: rooms covered in gems and blinking lights, godlike beings conducting their ineffable business, chambers of judgment, and the very throne room of the Almighty.
For millennia, this text vanished from history. The early Church fathers knew it well—Tertullian defended it, Clement of Alexandria cited it, and the Epistle of Jude quotes it directly. Yet as Christianity crystallized into orthodoxy, the Book of Enoch was quietly removed from the canon, suppressed, and nearly lost to time.
The Rediscovery
In 1947, near the ancient settlement of Qumran, a Bedouin shepherd boy searching for a lost goat tossed a stone into a cave. The sound that returned was not the bleat of his animal, but the crack of breaking pottery. Within that cave lay clay jars filled with ancient scrolls—nearly a thousand manuscripts that would become known as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Among the fragments of Genesis, Isaiah, and Psalms lay something unexpected: eleven copies of the Book of Enoch. Eleven separate manuscripts, intact and complete, perfectly matching the text preserved for centuries in the Ethiopian Bible. This was no fringe text, no marginal curiosity. In ancient times, the Book of Enoch was so widely read and regarded as authoritative that it survived in more copies than many books that made it into the biblical canon.
The discovery vindicated the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which had preserved the Book of Enoch as scripture for nearly two thousand years while the rest of Christendom forgot it existed. What the scholars of Europe had dismissed as apocryphal legend was, in fact, one of the most important documents of Second Temple Judaism.
The Abduction of Enoch
The Book of Enoch opens not with theological abstraction but with visceral, physical detail. One evening, as the sun dips below the horizon and Enoch's village settles into twilight, a strange sound fills the air. It is not thunder, though it rumbles. It is not wind, though it moves the very atmosphere. It is a sound that makes the earth vibrate, that can be felt in bone and blood—a frequency that speaks of power beyond human comprehension.
The villagers emerge from their homes cautiously, drawn by the otherworldly phenomenon. Above the trees hovers a bright orb of light, pulsing with radiance that seems to dim the stars themselves. Slowly, inexorably, the sphere of light descends upon the village. Terror grips the townspeople. They have never seen anything like this. Some fall to their knees. Others flee.
But Enoch hears a voice—clear, commanding, gentle—telling him not to be afraid. The text records his response with remarkable composure: he does not run. He does not hide. He submits to what is about to happen.
Then Enoch ascends. He is taken up, physically lifted from the earth, escorted by a luminous being who identifies himself as Uriel, one of the holy archangels who watches over the world. This is no dream, no vision, no out-of-body experience. Enoch's body goes with him. He is conscious, alert, and immediately begins to document everything he witnesses.
The parallel with Elijah is striking. In 2 Kings 2:11, the prophet Elijah is taken up to heaven in similar fashion: "As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind." Both men are physically transported. Both leave the earth behind without experiencing death. Both describe their vehicles of ascension in terms that strain the limits of ancient language—chariots of fire, wheels within wheels, spheres of light that move with impossible speed.
The Journey Through the Cosmos
As Enoch ascends, Uriel begins his education. The archangel does not speak in parables or mysteries. He teaches with the precision of a scientist, the patience of a scholar. Enoch describes seeing the earth from above—mountains stretching below him, every river visible in its winding course across the continents. He witnesses how winds are formed, how clouds gather and move according to invisible laws. Modern readers might call these meteorological phenomena; Enoch, lacking such vocabulary, describes them as the mechanisms of creation, the breath of God made manifest.
The Book of Enoch records with remarkable specificity: "And I saw the chambers of the sun and moon, whence they proceed and whither they return, and their glorious return, and how one is superior to the other" (Enoch 72:5). Uriel teaches him that an Earth year contains precisely 364 days—a solar calendar that predates later Jewish lunar reckonings. He learns the lunar cycle, the movements of stars and constellations, the paths of celestial bodies through the firmament.
This astronomical knowledge, recorded thousands of years before Galileo or Copernicus, raises profound questions. How did the author of Enoch know these things? The text describes the cosmos with an accuracy that should have been impossible for its time. Enoch witnesses the earth as a sphere, sees the curvature of the horizon, understands that celestial bodies follow predictable mathematical patterns.
"And I saw how the stars of heaven come forth, and I counted the portals out of which they proceed, and wrote down all their outlets, of each individual star by itself, according to their number and their names, their courses and their positions, and their times and their months, as Uriel the holy angel who was with me showed me" (Enoch 33:3-4).
The Book of Enoch describes Heaven as having a ceiling, what Enoch calls "a lofty roof" of crystal or ice, transparent yet solid. He sees twelve gates, each with a name and specific function. Beings move through these portals with obvious intent, going about tasks Enoch cannot fully comprehend. These are the angels—messengers and servants of the Most High—but they are not the ethereal spirits of later Christian imagination. They are physical, corporeal entities.
"And I proceeded to where things were chaotic. And I saw there something horrible: I saw neither a heaven above nor a firmly founded earth, but a place chaotic and horrible. And there I saw seven stars of the heaven bound together in it, like great mountains and burning with fire" (Enoch 21:1-3).
The angels appear as large humanoids. Some have wings, others do not. All radiate light so intense that Enoch finds it difficult to look directly at them, yet curiously, he can see through them—as though they are projections, holograms, beings of light rather than solid flesh. Later interpreters would suggest these beings might be holographic constructs, advanced technology appearing as divine manifestation to eyes that had never seen anything beyond firelight and bronze tools.
Uriel leads Enoch through chamber after chamber. He shows him a vast room filled with plants unlike any that grow on earth—strange vegetation, impossible flowers, trees bearing fruit Enoch cannot name. Uriel calls this "one of the storehouses of nature," as though Heaven maintains a library or archive of living things. The parallel to modern concepts of seed vaults and genetic repositories is impossible to ignore.
Another room contains what Enoch calls "the Book of Life"—an object inscribed with writing that records all the deeds of mankind. Every action, every word, every secret thought is catalogued here. It is a database of human behavior, a surveillance system that transcends time and space. "And I saw the place of the children of the holy angels and their resting-places; and their petitions" (Enoch 39:4).
Then Enoch is shown the place of punishment—a chamber he describes as a location of torture and mutilation, where the wicked endure agonies beyond description. Fire that does not consume, darkness visible, weeping and gnashing. Whether this is the traditional hell of eternal damnation or something else—perhaps a place where beings undergo procedures, experiments, transformations—the text leaves tantalizingly ambiguous.
"And I saw there a horrible thing: a great fire there which burnt and blazed, and the place was cleft as far as the abyss, being full of great descending columns of fire: neither its extent or magnitude could I see, nor could I conjecture" (Enoch 90:26-27).
The Throne of God
Finally, Uriel brings Enoch to the innermost chamber—the throne room of the Almighty. Here, Enoch's precise documentation falters. His careful astronomical observations, his detailed architectural descriptions, his scientific catalog of phenomena—all collapse into inadequacy. He writes that there is no way to describe or comprehend what he sees. The being seated upon the throne transcends language itself. Enoch averts his eyes, overcome.
Yet even in his awe, he records what he can: "And I looked and saw a lofty throne: its appearance was as crystal, and the wheels thereof as the shining sun, and there was the vision of cherubim. And from underneath the throne came streams of flaming fire so that I could not look thereon. And the Great Glory sat thereon, and His raiment shone more brightly than the sun and was whiter than any snow" (Enoch 14:18-20).
God speaks to Enoch directly. He reveals the secrets of the angels—their hierarchies, their functions, their names. He shows Enoch the nature of the universe, the structure of creation, dimensions of existence beyond mortal comprehension. Past, present, and future unfold before Enoch's eyes like scrolls being unrolled. He sees what was, what is, and what is to come.
And then God explains why Enoch has been summoned. The Most High needs a witness. He needs someone who can describe heaven and hell, who can document the mechanisms of divine justice, whose words will be passed down through generations so that mankind will have a written record—proof that there is more to existence than the brief span of earthly life. The afterlife is real. Judgment is real. Heaven is not metaphor but destination.
But there is a second, more urgent reason for Enoch's summons. God needs him to deliver a message to certain angels currently stationed on Earth. And that message is a pronouncement of doom.
The Watchers: Guardians Become Corrupters
"And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children'" (Enoch 6:1-2).
In the early days of the world, when Adam's descendants multiplied across the earth and cities first rose from the dust, God sent two hundred angels to serve as watchers over humanity. Their commission was clear: observe, guard, guide. Protect mankind from the dangers of a hostile world. Teach them the basics of survival—agriculture, animal husbandry, the healing properties of plants. But there were boundaries. Certain knowledge was forbidden. Certain secrets were to remain with heaven.
The Book of Enoch names their leader: Semjaza (also rendered as Shemhazai), who said to his fellows: "I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin" (Enoch 6:3). He was right to fear. What they were about to do would require them all to be complicit, all to share the guilt, so that none could claim innocence or betray the others.
The text records their names, preserved across millennia: Azazel, Araqiel, Rameel, Kokabiel, Tamiel, Asael, Baraqiel, and many others. They were called Watchers (egrḗgoroi in Greek, ʿīrīn in Aramaic)—those who remain vigilant, who do not sleep. In the Book of Daniel, the same term appears: "I saw in the visions of my head upon my bed, and, behold, a watcher and a holy one came down from heaven" (Daniel 4:13).
Ancient Sumerian texts, predating Enoch by centuries, tell parallel stories. Three hundred beings called "Observers" descended from palaces in the sky to help primitive humans develop civilization. The Mesopotamian myth of the Apkallu describes seven sages sent by the god Enki to teach humanity the arts of civilization before the flood. Across cultures separated by vast distances and centuries, the same story emerges: advanced beings came from above and accelerated human development.
At first, the Watchers fulfilled their mandate. They taught humans to cultivate crops—to plant grain, to irrigate fields, to harvest and store food so that populations could grow beyond nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes. They taught pottery, metalworking, the creation of tools. They revealed the properties of medicinal herbs, how to set broken bones, how to treat wounds and fevers. They instructed humans in astronomy—how to read the stars for navigation and calendar-keeping—and astrology, the belief that celestial movements influenced earthly events.
Humanity leaped forward. Villages became towns. Towns became cities. Civilization spread like wildfire across the ancient world. The Watchers had succeeded in their mission. Humanity was thriving.
But success bred pride. The Watchers began to see themselves not as servants but as gods. They were stronger than humans, more beautiful, more knowledgeable. When humans worshiped them, they accepted the adoration. When humans built altars to them, they did not correct the error. Vanity took root.
And then they looked upon the daughters of men and found them desirable.
The Forbidden Union
The attraction started subtly—perhaps a Watcher spending more time in one village than necessary, returning repeatedly to see a particular woman. Perhaps conversations that grew too intimate, glances that lingered too long. But subtlety gave way to obsession. The Watchers, beings of spirit given physical form, discovered they could experience physical desire. And they wanted what they should not have.
"And Semjaza, who was their leader, said unto them: 'I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.' And they all answered him and said: 'Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.' Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it" (Enoch 6:3-5).
They made a pact on Mount Hermon—the name itself means "forbidden place" or "place of the curse." All two hundred angels swore an oath that they would take human wives together, that none would betray the others, that they would share equally in the consequences. It was a conspiracy, deliberate and premeditated.
"And they took wives unto themselves, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants" (Enoch 7:1).
But the Watchers did not stop with forbidden marriage. They began revealing secrets that God had commanded them to withhold. The angel Azazel, in particular, became the great transgressor: "And 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 them, and bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all colouring tinctures" (Enoch 8:1).
Warfare. Azazel taught humans how to forge weapons of bronze and iron, how to craft armor and shields, how to wage organized war. Before this, human conflicts were primitive—clubs and stones, skirmishes between tribes. Now armies rose, equipped with swords and spears, capable of conquest and mass slaughter.
Other Watchers revealed their own forbidden knowledge:
"And Semjaza taught enchantments, and root-cuttings, Armaros the resolving of enchantments, Baraqijal taught astrology, Kokabel the constellations, Ezeqeel the knowledge of the clouds, Araqiel the signs of the earth, Shamsiel the signs of the sun, and Sariel the course of the moon" (Enoch 8:3).
They taught women witchcraft—the manipulation of spiritual forces, the brewing of potions, the casting of spells. They revealed the deep mysteries of the cosmos that were meant to remain hidden until humanity had the wisdom to use such knowledge responsibly. They showed humans how to read omens, to divine the future, to manipulate reality through ritual and incantation.
This was the original sin of the angels: not merely lust, but the unauthorized transfer of divine knowledge to beings unready to receive it. They violated what later science fiction would call the "prime directive"—the principle that advanced beings must not interfere with the natural development of less advanced civilizations.
The Nephilim: Children of Heaven and Earth
The union of angels and human women produced offspring. The Book of Enoch describes them with chilling precision:
"And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand ells: Who consumed all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood" (Enoch 7:2-5).
Three thousand ells—if an ell is approximately eighteen inches, these beings stood over four thousand feet tall. Even allowing for exaggeration or scribal error, the Nephilim were giants of extraordinary size. The Hebrew term נְפִילִים (nephilim) derives from the root נָפַל (naphal), meaning "to fall"—the fallen ones, or those who cause others to fall.
These hybrid beings, torn between celestial and terrestrial natures, possessed neither the restraint of angels nor the limitations of humans. They inherited angelic strength and longevity combined with human passions and appetites. The result was catastrophic.
At first, humans tried to sustain the Nephilim. They brought food, provided resources, attempted to coexist with these powerful beings. But the Nephilim's appetites were insatiable. They consumed everything humans could produce. They devoured the harvests, slaughtered the livestock, exhausted every resource. When human supplies ran out, the Nephilim turned to hunting animals—not for survival, but for sport and gluttony. And then, when animals became scarce, they turned on humans themselves.
The Book of Giants, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, expands on this horror: "The giants... began to devour the flesh of one another... and they drank blood." Cannibalism. Murder. Torture. The Nephilim, without a true home in heaven or earth, descended into madness. Some stories suggest they could not die naturally, that their hybrid bodies were nearly immortal, which only prolonged their spiral into depravity.
Genesis offers a terse summary of this period: "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown" (Genesis 6:4). Heroes. Men of renown. The phrase suggests that despite their evil, or perhaps because of it, the Nephilim became legendary figures—the basis for later mythological heroes and demigods.
Across ancient cultures, stories of giants persist. The Greek Titans and their offspring. The Norse Jotnar. The Hindu Daityas and Danavas. The Sumerian Anunnaki. Nearly every ancient civilization has legends of giant beings who once walked the earth, who possessed godlike powers, who interacted with humans before being destroyed or driven away. The Book of Enoch suggests these myths share a common origin.
The Nephilim enslaved humans, forcing them to build monuments and cities. Some scholars point to megalithic structures around the world—Baalbek, Göbekli Tepe, the pyramids—as possible evidence of Nephilim construction. How else, they ask, did ancient humans move stones weighing hundreds of tons without modern machinery? The answer, according to Enochian literature, is that they didn't. The giants did.
The Corruption of Humanity
But the greatest tragedy was not the Nephilim themselves. It was what they did to humanity.
Humans, witnessing the behavior of angels-turned-tyrants, drew a poisonous conclusion: If beings from heaven can torture, enslave, kill, and take whatever they desire, why shouldn't we? If the gods themselves have no morality, why should mortals restrain themselves?
Violence spread like contagion. Murder became commonplace. Rape and slavery proliferated. The knowledge the Watchers had provided—metallurgy, warfare, sorcery—was weaponized for evil. Cities warred against cities. Tribes slaughtered tribes. The earth became saturated with bloodshed.
"And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants. And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants... And lawlessness increased on the earth and all flesh corrupted its way, alike men and cattle and beasts and birds and everything that walks on the earth—all of them corrupted their ways and their orders, and they began to devour each other" (Enoch 7:1-6, 8:2).
Soon, God could no longer distinguish between the Nephilim and corrupted humans. The line between monster and man had blurred beyond recognition. Genesis records God's assessment: "The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled" (Genesis 6:5-6).
Enoch's Mission
This is the crisis that requires Enoch's intervention. God sends him back to Earth—not to his own time, but to the age of the Watchers—to deliver a message of judgment. Enoch must find the fallen angels and pronounce their doom. He must warn humanity: repent or perish.
Enoch confronts the Watchers directly. The Book of Enoch records his words:
"Enoch, scribe of righteousness, go, declare to the Watchers of the heaven who have left the high heaven, the holy eternal place, and have defiled themselves with women, and have done as the children of earth do, and have taken unto themselves wives: 'Ye have wrought great destruction on the earth: And ye shall have no peace nor forgiveness of sin... And go, say to the Watchers of heaven, who have sent thee to intercede for them: "You should intercede for men, and not men for you"'" (Enoch 10:3-4, 13:1).
The irony is bitter. The Watchers, who were sent to intercede for humanity, now need humanity to intercede for them. But there will be no intercession. Their crime is too great, their corruption too complete. They have broken the fundamental order of creation.
The Watchers plead with Enoch to petition God on their behalf. They are terrified, because they know what is coming. Enoch agrees to carry their petition, though he knows it will be rejected. He returns to heaven, bearing their desperate plea for mercy.
God's response is final: "Go, say to the Watchers of heaven... 'You have been in heaven, but all the mysteries had not yet been revealed to you, and you knew worthless ones, and these in the hardness of your hearts you have made known to women, and through these mysteries women and men work much evil on earth.' Say to them therefore: 'You have no peace'" (Enoch 16:2-4).
The sentence is pronounced. The Watchers will be bound in the earth until the day of judgment. Their children, the Nephilim, will be destroyed. And humanity—corrupted, violent, lost—will be cleansed from the face of the earth.
But God, in his mercy, will preserve one man and his family. One man who has not been corrupted, who walks in righteousness while the world descends into chaos. Enoch's great-grandson: Noah.
The Legacy of Enoch
The Book of Enoch concludes its flood narrative with a return to the patriarch himself. Enoch, who witnessed the heavens and walked with angels, who warned the Watchers and petitioned for the Nephilim, who lived 365 years before being taken by God—Enoch becomes a bridge figure between the antediluvian (pre-flood) world and the post-flood world.
Jewish tradition holds that Enoch did not die. Genesis 5:24 states simply: "Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him." The Hebrew phrase וְאֵינֶנּוּ (ve'einennu) literally means "and he was not." He vanished. He was removed. Translated into eternity without tasting death.
Only one other biblical figure receives this honor: Elijah, who ascended in a whirlwind. Both men bypassed death. Both were taken bodily into heaven. And both, according to Jewish eschatology, will return before the final judgment. Malachi 4:5 prophecies: "See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes." Some traditions include Enoch in this return, the two witnesses who will appear in the end times.
The Book of Hebrews, in its "Hall of Faith" chapter, honors Enoch: "By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: 'He could not be found, because God had taken him away.' For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God" (Hebrews 11:5).
What did Enoch do that pleased God so thoroughly? He wrote. He documented. He bore witness. In an age of universal corruption, he remained faithful. In a world where fallen angels walked openly and giants devoured humans, he maintained his integrity. He was a scribe of righteousness in an unrighteous age.
And his book—suppressed, hidden, dismissed as apocryphal—preserved knowledge that the mainstream biblical canon chose to obscure. It named the Watchers. It described their crimes. It detailed the origin of the Nephilim. It explained why the flood was necessary. It revealed that demons are not fallen angels but the disembodied spirits of dead giants. It taught that evil in this world has specific, traceable origins—that Satan and his forces include not just spiritual rebels but the genetic mistakes of an earlier age, the consequences of forbidden unions that should never have occurred.
The Book of Enoch was quoted by Jude, cited by early Church fathers, preserved in the Ethiopian canon, and found in multiple copies among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Its influence on Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity cannot be overstated. Concepts we take for granted—fallen angels, demons as distinct from Satan, the hierarchy of angels, the idea of a future judgment, the resurrection of the dead, the Messiah as both heavenly and human—many of these theological concepts appear first or most fully in Enochic literature.