The Early Years of Chaos

Genesis 1 explains God’s creation, including humankind, man and woman. “God saw everything that [God] had made, and indeed, it was very good” Gen 1:31. Then all hell breaks loose. Why? Genesis 2 and 3, created by the so-called priestly group a thousand plus years later, offer an explanation with the serpent tempting disobedience and sin. But suppose we skip Genesis 2 and 3, and we jump to Genesis 4 when Adam and Eve create Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel because the Lord is unhappy with his offering. Where is Adam? Cain is driven off to begin his own line of descent. Now, if you have Genesis 2 and 3, you can understand the evil in Cain, but otherwise we are still left somewhat in the dark. Eve then gives birth to Seth who begins the ancestral line of Adam leading to Noah, Abraham, Judah, David and ultimately Jesus. The time line from Adam to Noah and the flood is 1,656 years in our Bible. That lengthy span is accomplished in two short chapters of Genesis. Chapter 5 records the lineage…Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah.

Chapter 6, comprising eight short verses, describes God’s heart breaking disappointment with humankind and God’s disgust with what God had created. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” Gen 6:5. “And the Lord was sorry that [God] had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved [God] to [God’s] heart” Gen. 6:6. So God said, “‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created…” Gen. 6:7. Really? What happened during those 1,600 odd years that was so awful? Wasn’t evil present from the beginning? (Gen. 2 and 3) God did not snap in a fit of rage. God is not mercurial. There must have been some very untoward developments in humankind that caused God to grieve to the point of heart brokenness.

All we have are four preceding verses (Gen. 6:1-4), seemingly unconnected, that offer only a clue. When people began to multiply and daughters were born to them, “the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose… The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown” Gen 6:2; 6:4. The word ‘Nephilim’ is a translation of the Hebrew, meaning ‘fallen ones’. Were they the heroes of old? What is significant about these verses, placed as they were in Chapter 6?

Well, as one might imagine, there is quite a story, imbedded in the Israelite culture and oral tradition of God’s people that survived to be written in its present form in the late third or early second century BC. It is called the Book of Enoch which was incorporated in the Ethiopic Bible of the Coptic Christians, preserved at Qumran in the Dead Sea Scrolls and lost for about 1,000 years to western Christendom.

In Adam’s ancestral lineage, Jared was born 622 years after Adam and lived for 962 years, dying just before the flood. Our Bible records that each man in the lineage was born, lived a very long life, and died…. except one. Enoch, son of Jared, lived 365 years, “walked with God,” and “then he was no more, because God took him” Gen 5: 23-24. The only three people I remember being raised (taken) by God in our Bible are Enoch, Elijah and Jesus. (Someone please tell me if I am mistaken).

The Book of Enoch relates Enoch’s visions while he was in the presence of God. During Enoch’s life, in the days of Jared, 200 male angel “watchers” of humans on earth came down to earth to take wives among humans, enjoying sexual pleasure with the “fair” women. The progeny of these sexual unions of spiritual beings and human flesh were giants, possessed of huge physical strength, eternal spirits, and mortal flesh. These fallen watchers would have been the ‘sons of God’ referenced in Genesis 6:2 and 6:4. The Nephilim would have been the progeny, the so-called giants. The priestly group that wrote evil into Genesis 2 and 3 is thought to have written Genesis 6 also. Perhaps having written evil into Genesis 2 and 3, no further elaboration was deemed advisable.

It is Enoch who tells the story of God’s wrath over the violation of God’s ordinances by the watcher angels who descended to earth to cavort with human women. God ordered God’s Holy Angels, among whom were Gabriel and Michael, to destroy these fallen watchers. The Nephilim were another problem. God determined not to abide their existence more than 120 years (Gen.6:3), and ordered their destruction (which was completed in the flood). In his vision, Enoch heard from the Lord, “And now, the giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh, shall be called evil spirits on the earth. They shall be evil spirits on earth, and evil spirits shall they be called spirits of the evil ones. As for the spirits of heaven, in heaven shall be their dwelling, but as for the spirits of the earth which were born on the earth, on the earth shall be their dwelling. And the spirits of the giants afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, war, destroy, and cause trouble on the earth.”¹

Enoch’s visions would seem to make more sense than the alternate story of creation in Genesis 2 and 3, introducing the sin of disobedience via the crafty serpent who tempted Eve. And Enoch’s visions provide a much more compelling reason for God to bring the flood, destroy life, and start over. We might be reminded that God’s view of humankind did not change from Genesis 6:5 pre-flood, “every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually,” to Genesis 8:21 post-flood, “‘I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth.” Nor did humankind change. What did change was God’s attitude and acceptance of humankind void of the disgusting mutations wrought by the fallen angels that God could not abide in God’s creation.

Now, Enoch’s visions of the origins and presence of evil spirits did not make the canon. Perhaps the effort to inculcate monotheism called for suppression of the saga that involved a small army of disobedient primordial spirits occupying heaven with the one omnipotent God. I don’t know. But whether one accepts or rejects Enoch’s visions as inspired by God, scripture records with some clarity that Enoch pleased God and was reckoned as righteous through his faith. And there is evidence in scripture that Enoch’s story had a material influence on the culture of Israel and early Christianity. More on this in my next post.

1. There is an original book of Enoch included in the Ethiopic Bible, from which I quote Chapter 15, vs. 8 and 10. This book, not unlike our Bible, is a composite of several manuscripts written over a period of several hundred years, BC. There are other books of Enoch, one Slavic and one Hebrew. A compilation together with parallels in scripture is presented by author Joseph Lumpkin under the title The Books of Enoch, 2011, ISBN: 9781936533077.