1 Enoch 89:59

In 1 translation

1En-Charles

And He called seventy shepherds, and cast those sheep to them that they might pasture them, and He spake to the shepherds and their companions: ‘Let each individual of you pasture the sheep henceforward, and everything that I shall command you that do ye.β. 'seven' α. The 'seventy shepherds' raise the most vexed question in Enoch. They are certainly angels, for (1) they exist contemporaneously and receive their commission together, lxxxix. 59. (2) They are to protect the sheep, and only allow so many to be destroyed by the Gentiles. So they cannot be heathen rulers. (3) Men would have been symbolized by animals. (4) During the earlier period God was Israel's shepherd, now He withdraws and commits their pasturing to seventy of his angels. (5) The angel recorder of lxxxix. 61 is called 'another'. (6) In the judgement they are classed with the fallen angels, xc. 21-25. (7) God speaks directly to them. After the exile, Israel was not immediately shepherded by God but by His delegates. How was it that righteous Jews as well as apostates perished? Because of the faithlessness with which the seventy angels discharged their trust, and this faithlessness was to be punished in due time. The theory of the seventy shepherds is an extension of the conception of the seventy years of Jeremiah and the seventy periods of Daniel. The events between the fall of Jerusalem and the Messianic kingdom are divided into four periods (1) to the Return under Cyrus, {2) to the conquests of Alexander, (3) to the Seleucid conquests of Palestine, (4) to the Messiah's reign.