1 Enoch 81

LXXXI. The Heavenly Tablets and the Mission of Enoch.

1And he said unto me: ‘Observe, Enoch, these heavenly tablets, And read what is written thereon, And mark every individual fact.’*Also an interpolation. is a sort of mosaic, and came probably from the editor of the complete Enoch. 'Those seven holy ones' in lxxxi. 5 are taken from lxxxvii. 3: 'the heavenly tablets' in lxxxi. 1, 2 from xciii. 2, ciii. 2: 'the books of judgement' from lxxxix. 61, 64: while lxxxi. 5, 6 refer to lxxxii. 1, 2 and xci. 1. 2And I observed the heavenly tablets, and read everything which was written (thereon) and understood everything, and read the book of all the deeds of mankind, and of all the children of flesh that shall be upon the earth to the remotest generations. 3And forthwith I blessed the great Lord the King of glory for ever, in that He has made all the works of the world, And I extolled the Lord because of His patience, And blessed Him because of the children of men. 4And after that I said: ‘Blessed is the man who dies in righteousness and goodness, Concerning whom there is no book of unrighteousness written, And against whom no day of judgement shall be found.’*Contrast the blessing of lxxii-lxxix and lxxxii. 4, which is for the man who knows the right reckoning of the years, 5And those seven holy ones brought me and placed me on the earth before the door of my house, and said to me: ‘Declare everything to thy son Methuselah, and show to all thy children that no flesh is righteous in the sight of the Lord, for He is their Creator.*5, 6. These verses are inserted to serve as an introduction to xci-civ. 6One year we will leave thee with thy son, till thou givest thy (last) commands, that thou mayst teach thy children and record (it) for them, and testify to all thy children; and in the second year they shall take thee from their midst. 7Let thy heart be strong, For the good shall announce righteousness to the good; The righteous with the righteous shall rejoice, And shall offer congratulation to one another. 8But the sinners shall die with the sinners, And the apostate go down with the apostate.*i.e. into Gehenna. 9And those who practise righteousness shall die on account of the deeds of men, And be taken away on account of the doings of the godless.’*The righteous die, yet they are taken away to the abodes of the blessed. The phrase is borrowed from Isa. lvii. 1, 'The righteous is taken away out of the way of (or 'because of) the evil.' Cf. 2 Kings xxii. 20; Wisdom iv. 7-14. The Hebrew word 'take away' occurs in e.g. Num. xx. 26; Ps. civ. 29. 10And in those days they ceased to speak to me, and I came to my people, blessing the Lord of the world.