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1 Enoch

About this book
Chapter 100

1 In those days, in one place, fathers together with their sons shall be struck down, and brothers will fall in death with one another until the streams flow with their blood. 2 For a man shall not spare his hand from slaying his sons and his sons' sons, and the sinner shall not spare his hand from his honored brother: from dawn till sunset they shall slay one another. 3 And the horse shall wade up to the breast in the blood of sinners, and the chariot shall be submerged to its height.⁠ 4 In those days, the angels shall descend into the secret places and gather together all those who brought down sin, and the Most High will arise on that day of judgment to execute great judgment among sinners. 5 And over all the righteous and holy, He will appoint guardians from among the holy angels⁠ to guard them as the apple of an eye, until He makes an end of all wickedness and all sin, and though the righteous sleep a long sleep, they have nothing to fear. 6 Then the children of the earth shall see the wise in security, and shall understand all the words of this book, and recognize that their riches shall not be able to save them in the overthrow of their sins. 7 Woe to you, Sinners, on the day of strong anguish, you who afflict the righteous and burn them with fire: you shall be repaid according to your works. 8 Woe to you, you obstinate of heart, who watch to devise wickedness: therefore, fear shall come upon you and there shall be none to help you. 9 Woe to you, sinners, because of the words of your mouth, and because of the deeds of your hands which your godlessness has done, you shall burn in blazing flames burning worse than fire. 10 And now, know that from the angels He will inquire as to your deeds in heaven, from the sun and from the moon and from the stars in reference to your sins because upon the earth you execute judgment on the righteous. 11 And He will summon to testify against you every cloud, mist, dew, and rain; for they shall all be withheld because of you from descending upon you, and they shall be mindful of your sins.⁠ 12 And now give presents to the rain so that it may not be withheld from descending upon you, nor the dew, when it has received gold and silver from you so that it may descend. 13 When the hoar-frost and snow with their cold, and all the snowstorms with all their plagues fall upon you, in those days you shall not be able to stand before them.

Texts in conversation

Compare 1 Enoch 100:3 and Revelation 14:20

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses · New Testament

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Summary

Revelation 14 describes blood rising as high as a horse’s bridle, imagery that resembles the language of judgment in 1 Enoch 100, where the horses walk through blood that is as high as their chest and high enough to completely cover the chariots.

Passages

1 Enoch 100:3

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
1 In those days, in one place, fathers together with their sons shall be struck down, and brothers will fall in death with one another until the streams flow with their blood. 2 For a man shall not spare his hand from slaying his sons and his sons' sons, and the sinner shall not spare his hand from his honored brother: from dawn till sunset they shall slay one another. 3 And the horse shall wade up to the breast in the blood of sinners, and the chariot shall be submerged to its height. 4 In those days, the angels shall descend into the secret places and gather together all those who brought down sin, and the Most High will arise on that day of judgment to execute great judgment among sinners. 5 And over all the righteous and holy, He will appoint guardians from among the holy angels to guard them as the apple of an eye, until He makes an end of all wickedness and all sin, and though the righteous sleep a long sleep, they have nothing to fear.
300 BCE – 100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 1 Enoch

Revelation 14:20

New Testament
15 Then another angel came out of the temple, shouting in a loud voice to the one seated on the cloud, “Use your sickle and start to reap, because the time to reap has come, since the earth’s harvest is ripe!” 16 So the one seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was reaped. 17 Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he, too, had a sharp sickle. 18 Another angel, who was in charge of the fire, came from the altar and called in a loud voice to the angel who had the sharp sickle, “Use your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes off the vine of the earth, because its grapes are now ripe.” 19 So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the grapes from the vineyard of the earth and tossed them into the great winepress of the wrath of God. 20 Then the winepress was stomped outside the city, and blood poured out of the winepress up to the height of horses’ bridles for a distance of almost 200 miles.
92–96 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Revelation

References

"... We begin with a collection of texts which are clearly related in some way (Revelation 14:20; 1 Enoch 100:3; 4 Ezra 15:35-36; Ginza; y. Ta'an 4:8; Lamentations Rabbah 2:24; b. Gittin 57a; Prayer of Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai 9) ... This collection of texts, ranging in date from the second or first century B.C. to the medieval period, from Jewish, Christian and (in one case) Mandean works, clearly shows that Revelation 14:20 makes use of a topos which was widely used to indicate slaughter, in war, of exceptional proportions. In most cases it occurs in the context of apocalyptic prophecy. Most appropriately it is used with reference to the last battle of history, in which sinners will destroy each other on an unprecedented scale, but in many of the later apocalypses it describes an earlier battle in the sequence of events which lead to the end of history. In some cases, the battle which, from the fictitious standpoint of the pseudepigraphal prophecy, is set in the future may be an event already in the past from the standpoint of the author and his readers ..."
Richard Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), 40–43.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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1 Enoch 100:3 and Revelation 14:20

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