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In Exodus, an east wind brings the locusts into Egypt. In 3 Enoch, it has a place among the winds beneath the cherubim, connecting an earthly plague with the weather surrounding God's throne.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Exodus 10:13
Hebrew Bible
11 No! Go, you men only, and serve the Lord, for that is what you want.” Then Moses and Aaron were driven out of Pharaoh’s presence. 12 The Lord said to Moses, “Extend your hand over the land of Egypt for the locusts, that they may come up over the land of Egypt and eat everything that grows in the ground, everything that the hail has left.” 13 So Moses extended his staff over the land of Egypt, and then the Lord brought an east wind on the land all that day and all night. The morning came, and the east wind had brought up the locusts!
3 Enoch 23:3
Hebrew Book of Enoch
Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
R. Ishmael said: Metatron, the Angel, the Prince of the Presence, said to me: There are numerous winds blowing under the wings of the Kerubim. There blows "the Brooding Wind", as it is written (Gen. i. 2): "and the wind of God was brooding upon the face of the waters". There blows "the Strong Wind", as it is said (Ex. xiv. 21): "and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night". There blows "the East Wind" as it is written (Ex. x. 13): "the east wind brought the locusts". There blows "the Wind of Quails" as it is written (Num. xi. 31): "And there went forth a wind from the Lord and brought quails".
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Notes and References
“... Interestingly, too, the lengthy passage that describes the winds (3 Enoch
23, §35)59 does not make use of the metrological imagery that I noted to be sig-
nificant in the Parables; rather, it brings together an array of biblical texts that
speak of the winds and combines their imagery. In fact, there is only one point
in 3 Enoch where scales/balance imagery is used, in 18:20 (§27):
Why is his name called Šoqedḥozi? Because he weighs men’s merits in
scales in the presence of the Holy One, blessed be he.60
So, while there appears to be more entanglement with the content of Parables
of Enoch and 2 Enoch than is seen in the biblical material or even in b.Ḥagigah, ...”
Macaskill, Grant
The Entangled Enoch: 2 Enoch and the Cultures of Late Antiquity
(p. 138) Brill, 2024
* 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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