Texts in Conversation
1 Enoch 108 and Psalms of Solomon 17 share a similar eschatological view where the removal of sinners marks the arrival of a just future. Both envision a decisive end to sin, including the erasure of names and destruction of descendants.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
1 Enoch 108:3
Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
2 You who have done good will wait for those days until an end is made of those who do evil and the power of the wrongdoers comes to an end. 3 You, however, wait until sin passes away; for their names will be erased from the book of life and from the books of the holy ones, and their offspring will be destroyed forever, and their spirits will be slain, and they will cry and lament in a place that is a chaotic wilderness, and they will burn in the fire; for there is no earth there. 4 I saw there something like an invisible cloud; because of its depth I could not look over it, and I saw a flame of fire blazing brightly, and things like shining mountains circling and sweeping to and fro.
Date: 300 BCE – 100 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
Psalms of Solomon 17:7
Pseudepigrapha, Wisdom and Poetry
6 They set a (worldly) monarchy in place of (that which was) their excellence; They destroyed the throne of David in turbulent arrogance. 7 But You, God, brought them down and removed their descendants from the earth, when a man from a foreign people rose up against them. 8 You repaid them according to their sins, God, so that what happened to them was according to their deeds.
Date: 65–30 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Psalms of Solomon 1, 4, and 7 do not contain references to identifiable historical events, although a number of suggestions and assumptions have been made concerning these texts as well. Psalms of Solomon 17 is complicated, on the one hand, the captives are now explicitly said to have been led “to the West,” which clearly points to a Roman conqueror, namely Pompey (Psalms of Solomon 17:12). On the other hand, that part of the psalm seems to have been originally separate from the first part, which mentions a “man that is alien from our house” whose actions, namely the extinction of a group of sinners, are described with approval (Psalms of Solomon 17:7) ..."
Benedikt Eckhardt, “The Psalms of Solomon as a Historical Source for the Late Hasmonean Period,” in The Psalms of Solomon: Language, History, Theology, ed. Eberhard Bons and Patrick Pouchelle, EJL 40 (Atlanta: SBL, 2015), 7–29.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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