1 Enoch 101

CI. Exhortation to the Fear of God: all Nature fears Him but not the Sinners.

1Observe the heaven, ye children of heaven, and every work of the Most High, and fear ye Him and work no evil in His presence.*equivalent to 'sons of God' i.e. righteous Israelites. See Test. Lev. iv. 2 (note); Wisd. ii. 13,18. For 'children of heaven' cf. Pirke Aboth iii. 22.*The same subject continued, but verse 1 contains an aside to the righteous. 2If He closes the windows of heaven, and withholds the rain and the dew from descending on the earth on your account, what will ye do then?*Address to the wicked resumed, c. 11, 12. 3And if He sends His anger upon you because of your deeds, ye cannot petition Him; for ye spake proud and insolent words against His righteousness: therefore ye shall have no peace. 4And see ye not the sailors of the ships, how their ships are tossed to and fro by the waves, and are shaken by the winds, and are in sore trouble?*Sailors fear the sea: how much more should men fear God, of whom the sea is sore afraid. Cf. Ps. cvii. 23-27. 5And therefore do they fear because all their goodly possessions go upon the sea with them, and they have evil forebodings of heart that the sea will swallow them and they will perish therein. 6Are not the entire sea and all its waters, and all its movements, the work of the Most High, and has He not set limits to its doings, and confined it throughout by the sand?*6, 7. The sea is in the hand of God. Cf. Jer. v. 22; Job xxvi. 10, xxxviii. 8-11; Ps. lxxxix. 9, civ. g; Prov. viii. 29. 7And at His reproof it is afraid and dries up, and all its fish die and all that is in it; but ye sinners that are on the earth fear Him not. 8Has He not made the heaven and the earth, and all that is therein? Who has given understanding and wisdom to everything that moves on the earth and in the sea? 9Do not the sailors of the ships fear the sea? Yet sinners fear not the Most High.*A pregnant summing up.