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1 Enoch

About this book
Chapter 101

1 Observe the heavens, you children of heaven, and every work of the Most High, and fear Him and commit no evil in His presence. 2 If He closes the windows of heaven and withholds the rain and the dew from descending on the earth because of you, what will you do then? 3 And if He directs His anger against you because of your deeds, can you plead with Him when you have spoken arrogantly against His righteousness?⁠ Thus, you will have no peace. 4 Do you not see the ship captains, how their ships are tossed by the waves, rocked by the winds, and put in danger? 5 Therefore, they fear because all their valuable possessions are aboard, and they worry that the sea will swallow them and they will perish in it. 6 Are not the entire sea and all its waters, and all its movements, the work of the Most High? Has He not set limits to its actions and confined it throughout by the sand?⁠ 7 And at His reproof, it is afraid and dries up, and all its fish die and everything in it;⁠ yet you sinners on the earth do not fear Him. 8 Has He not made the heavens and the earth, and all that is within them?⁠ Who has given understanding and wisdom to everything that moves on the earth and in the sea? 9 Do not the sailors of the ships fear the sea? Yet sinners do not fear the Most High.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare Psalm 146:6 and 1 Enoch 101:8

Hebrew Bible · Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

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Summary

1 Enoch 101 quotes Psalm 146 about the creator of heaven, earth, and all that is in them. By incorporating this language, 1 Enoch positions itself in continuity with traditions that affirm divine authority through creation.

Passages

Psalm 146:6

Hebrew Bible
5 How blessed is the one whose helper is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God. 6 The one who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who remains forever faithful, 7 vindicates the oppressed, and gives food to the hungry. The Lord releases the imprisoned. 8 The Lord gives sight to the blind. The Lord lifts up all who are bent over. The Lord loves the godly.
600–201 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Psalms

1 Enoch 101:8

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
7 And at His reproof, it is afraid and dries up, and all its fish die and everything in it; yet you sinners on the earth do not fear Him. 8 Has He not made the heavens and the earth, and all that is within them? Who has given understanding and wisdom to everything that moves on the earth and in the sea? 9 Do not the sailors of the ships fear the sea? Yet sinners do not fear the Most High.
300 BCE – 100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 1 Enoch

References

"... Having portrayed the sea as God’s creation (verse 6), the writer now more broadly includes “heaven and earth and everything that is in them” (the italicized text being all that remains from the Greek). Except for the lack of a reference to “the sea”, the text draws on the language of Psalm 146:6 (“who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them”), in which the declaration of God as Creator of all is linked to God’s activity on behalf of those who inter alia are the righteous oppressed (verses 7–9; see also 4Q521 7+5 ii 2 and especially an allusion in 2 ii 1–2 and 5, 8) ..."
Loren T. Stuckenbruck, 1 Enoch 91–108 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 2007), 481.

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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Psalm 146:6 and 1 Enoch 101:8

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