1 Enoch

About this book

Chapter 7

1 And all the others together with them took wives for themselves, each choosing one for himself, and they began to unite with them and defiled themselves with them.⁠ They taught them sorcery, spells, and the art of extracting medicinal substances from plants.⁠ 2 The women became pregnant and gave birth to enormous giants,⁠ whose height was three thousand ells.⁠ 3 These giants consumed everything humans produced. 4 And when humans could no longer support them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind.⁠ 5 They began to sin against birds, beasts, reptiles, and fish, eating each other’s flesh and drinking the blood.⁠ 6 Then the earth brought charges against these lawbreakers.⁠

Texts in conversation

Compare 1 Enoch 7:1 and Testament of Reuben 5:7

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses · Pseudepigrapha, Testaments

Summary

The Testament of Reuben represents a distinct evolution of the Watchers narrative from 1 Enoch by denying that the divine beings and women had sex, while still affirming their role in the birth of the giants.

Passages

1 Enoch 7:1

Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses

1 And all the others together with them took wives for themselves, each choosing one for himself, and they began to unite with them and defiled themselves with them. They taught them sorcery, spells, and the art of extracting medicinal substances from plants. 2 The women became pregnant and gave birth to enormous giants, whose height was three thousand ells. 3 These giants consumed everything humans produced.

300 BCE – 100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in 1 Enoch

Testament of Reuben 5:7

Pseudepigrapha, Testaments · Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs

4 A woman cannot overpower a man directly, but through seduction she lures him. 5 So flee from sexual immorality, my children, and tell your wives and daughters not to dress up their heads and faces to deceive, because every woman who uses these tricks has been set aside for eternal punishment. 6 This is how they seduced the Watchers before the flood. As the Watchers kept seeing them, they lusted after them and plotted the act in their minds. They transformed themselves into the shape of men and appeared to the women while they were with their husbands. 7 The women lusted in their minds after the appearance of the Watchers, and they gave birth to giants, for the Watchers had appeared to them as reaching all the way to heaven.

100 BCE – 100 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Testament of Reuben

References

"... to go into - This is a normative biblical expression for sexual intercourse. A later passage in Testament of Reuben 5:6–7 denies that there was actual intercourse between the Watchers and human women in an effort to explain the product being giants ..."

Michael S. Heiser, A Companion to the Book of Enoch: A Reader's Commentary (Crane, MO: Defender, 2019), 1:90.

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

1 Enoch108 chapters

Compare 1 Enoch 7:1 and Testament of Reuben 5:7

Summary

Passages

1 Enoch 7:1

Testament of Reuben 5:7

References

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