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1 Enoch

About this book
Chapter 57

1 And it happened after that, I saw another group of chariots, with men riding them,⁠ arriving on the winds from the east, the west, and the south.⁠ 2 The sound of their chariots was heard, and when this disturbance occurred, the holy ones from heaven took notice, and the foundations of the earth shifted from their places,⁠ and the noise was heard from one end of the sky to the other, all in one day. 3 And everyone will fall down and worship the Lord of Spirits. And this marks the end of the second Parable.

Texts in conversation

Compare 1 Enoch 57:1 and Psalms of Solomon 11:2

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses · Pseudepigrapha, Wisdom and Poetry

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Summary

The Psalms of Solomon calls Jerusalem to stand on a height and watch the exiles gathered from east and west. 1 Enoch shares that same future hope, describing the exiles arriving on chariots carried in on the winds.

Passages

1 Enoch 57:1

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
1 And it happened after that, I saw another group of chariots, with men riding them, arriving on the winds from the east, the west, and the south. 2 The sound of their chariots was heard, and when this disturbance occurred, the holy ones from heaven took notice, and the foundations of the earth shifted from their places, and the noise was heard from one end of the sky to the other, all in one day. 3 And everyone will fall down and worship the Lord of Spirits. And this marks the end of the second Parable.
300 BCE – 100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 1 Enoch

Psalms of Solomon 11:2

Pseudepigrapha, Wisdom and Poetry
1 Blow the trumpet in Zion to summon (the) saints. Let Jerusalem hear the voice of the one who brings good news; For God has had pity on Israel by attending to them. 2 Stand on the height, Jerusalem, and look at your children, From the East and the West, gathered together by the Lord; 3 From the North they come in the gladness of their God, From the faraway islands God has gathered them.
65–30 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Psalms of Solomon

References

... Different from 56:5-8, which is given as a straightforward prediction, the contents of these verses are recounted as something that Enoch “saw” (verse 1). Unfortunately, there is no account of an interpreting angel explaining the less-than-clear vision, and we are left to choose among three possible interpretations of the chapter. (1) A majority of commentators see here a description of the return of the Israelite dispersion. (2) A few others understand it to refer to the arrival of another hostile army. (3) This may reflect prophetic predictions that the gentiles will flow to Jerusalem to pay tribute to the God of Israel. That the people riding in a host of chariots represent the returning Israelite dispersion is taken for granted by commentators who espouse the first interpretation. This is understandable, since such a return is a common topic in biblical and in later Jewish literature and this time. See, for example, Isaiah 27:12-13; 49:12; 60:4-9; 66:19-20; Zechariah 8:7-8; Tobit 13:9-18; 14:5; Baruch 4:21-5:9; Psalms of Solomon 8:28 (34); 11; 4 Ezra 13:39-50. ...
George W. E. Nickelsburg, A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch Chapters 37-82 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), 213.

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 57:1 and Psalms of Solomon 11:2

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