THE SECOND SECTION of the Book of 1 Enoch isn’t as well known as the part that deals with the fallen Watchers, but it’s at least as important from a theological perspective. 

The Book of Parables, chapters 37–71 of 1 Enoch, deals specifically with how the world will be purified from the sin introduced by the rebellious Watchers. To the author(s) of this section of 1 Enoch, which was probably written by Essenes in the Galilee between 25 BC and the end of the first century BC (in other words, just before the birth of Jesus), the world had been so corrupted by the fallen angels that only God’s direct intervention could put things right. 

This week, we share the historic backdrop of the Book of Parables: The return of Jews from Babylon who found a priesthood in Jerusalem that believed the age of prophecy was over, repeated invasions by Greeks, Armenians (yes, really), Parthians, and Romans, and civil war, which only intensified a belief among the group that came to be known as Essenes that the arrival of a Savior was imminent. 

When he didn’t come on schedule (sometime between 90 and 80 BC), the Essenes revised their timeline. After a period of civil war, followed by a Parthian invasion around 40 BC, Herod the Great, governor of Galilee, returned from Rome with the backing of the army of Mark Antony (yes, that one).  

When Herod drove the Parthians from Judea in 37 BC after a three-year war, many Essenes apparently thought Herod was the Anointed One—the Messiah! 

It didn’t take long for Herod to disabuse everyone of that notion.

That’s the back story of the Book of Parables. It was written at a time when many Jews believed Messiah’s arrival was imminent. The Book of Parables was a reminder that God’s promises would be fulfilled, and the agent of God’s imminent judgment was a figure called the Anointed One, the Chosen One, and, most frequently, the Son of Man. 

This would all be nothing more than historical interest except for an important fact: Jesus applied the title “the Son of Man” to himself 78 times in the New Testament, and that title doesn’t appear in any Jewish writing prior to the Book of Parables. 

This week’s question: Are there ranks of demons, some of which are more difficult than others to exorcise? We referenced the work of Restoration in Christ Ministries (rcm-usa.org). The study notes Derek mentioned by the founder of RCM, Dr. Tom Hawkins, are no longer available to download, but a study on the cosmic hierarchy is available here: https://rcm-usa.org/product/the-cosmic-hierarchy/

JONAH WAS a vindictive man who cared more about a plant than he did for the 120,000 people of Nineveh. 

Reading the short Book of Jonah aloud makes it clear that the story is as much about Jonah’s desire for the destruction of Nineveh as it is about God’s mercy and desire that all people would repent and return to Him. Not only did Jonah try to run away from God, but when he finally did proclaim God’s imminent judgment on the great city (reluctantly), he was so upset that God spared the city that Jonah asked God to kill him! 

This is one of those sections of the Bible that would surely have been rewritten to show Jonah in a better light if the text had been changed over the years—although we note that the time given the Ninevites to repent was changed from three days to forty between the time of the Septuagint translation (around 200 BC) and the Masoretic text on which our English Old Testament is based (about 900 AD). 

This week’s question: What do we make of Jeremiah 30:6 and the description of men of Israel in such distress they’re like women in childbirth?

KING AMAZIAH of Judah is a classic example of someone whose pride got the better of him. 

2 Kings 14 tells us that after Amaziah became king, he led a successful military campaign against Edom. He captured the stronghold of Sela, which was probably Petra in present-day Jordan, defeating an army of some 10,000 Edomites. 

This led him to provoke a war with the northern kingdom of Israel. Despite a warning from King Jehoash to “be content with your glory, and stay at home,” Amaziah wouldn’t listen, the two kingdoms went to war, Judah was defeated, and Amaziah, like his father, fell victim to a palace coup. 

The parallel chapter in 2 Chronicles 25 reveals that Amaziah brought idols representing the gods of Edom back to Jerusalem and began to worship them, and that this was the reason the king provoked a war with Israel—God used this war to humble Amaziah and those who followed him into pagan worship.

THE TEMPLE in Jerusalem fell into disrepair within a century of the death of Solomon. The king who repaired it was a good man—mostly. 

Joash (or Jehoash), son of Ahaziah, reigned in Judah 835–796 BC. He was made king at age seven by the high priest Jehoiada and is credited with restoring the Temple—even pushing the priests, who seemed rather slow to make repairs even after they were ordered to do so. 

However, the account in 2 Chronicles 24 records that after the death of Jehoiada, Joash fell away and returned to the pagan gods of the Canaanites. Worse, he had the son of Jehoiada, Zechariah, murdered for calling him out! As a consequence, God allowed Judah to be defeated by a relatively small army from the neighboring Aramean kingdom of Damascus, and Joash was assassinated in his bed by two of his servants. 

We also discuss the death of Elisha in the northern kingdom of Israel, and why King Joash (same name, different king) failed to completely defeat the Arameans.

THE FIRST SECTION of the Book of 1 Enoch concludes with Enoch’s travels to the ends of the earth, including a visit to Eden. 

We discuss the author’s description of the portals through which the stars and winds pass, noting that evil winds came from the north, the direction from which bad things always came in Jewish thought (physical and supernatural). We also note Enoch’s travels proceeded counterclockwise from east to north, west, south, and back to east, and compare that to other counterclockwise rituals from ancient times, on the summit of Mount Hermon, to the present day, at the Kaaba in Mecca. 

When we return to 1 Enoch at the end of November, since we’ll be in Israel next month at this time, we’ll begin the Book of Parables, a prophetic section that influenced New Testament theology. 

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THE END of Ahab’s line came within a span of seven years. 

Jehu, an Israelite military commander under Ahab’s son, King Jehoram (or Joram), was anointed king over the northern kingdom at the direction of the prophet Elisha. Jehu moved quickly to eliminate Jehoram and the rest of the sons of Ahab. We explain why Ahab didn’t literally have 70 sons (the number 70 in the ancient Near East was not a quantity; it was a symbol that represented “all of them”). 

Jehoram’s nephew, King Ahaziah of Judah, was also killed by Jehu as he fled in his chariot, finally dying at the city of Megiddo. 

Then Jehu went to Jezreel and found Jezebel, the queen mother, whose last act in this world was probably screaming after she was tossed out of a tower window by her eunuchs. 

That left only Athaliah, mother of King Ahaziah. Athaliah was the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel, the sister of King Jehoram of Israel. When she heard that Ahaziah was dead, she tried to kill all of her grandsons. Why? She—and really, it was the Fallen realm motivating her—tried to eliminate the line of David (her husband, King Jehoram of Judah, son of Jehoshaphat, was a descendant of David) and replace it with the line of Ahab. 

Unfortunately for Athaliah, she missed one—an infant boy named Joash. Jehoiada the priest had secretly saved and raised Joash in the Temple. At the age of seven, Jehoiada brought him out, proclaimed him king, and, at his command, had Athaliah put to death, thus putting an end to the house of Ahab.

A MIRACULOUS healing led to a Syrian warrior carrying mule loads of dirt from Israel back with him to Damascus. 

Why did Naaman the Syrian do that? In the ancient world, it was understood that every nation had a patron deity. For Syria, that was the storm-god Hadad, better known to us as Baal. For Israel, it was Yahweh—although Jezebel and her children tried hard to replace the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with Baal, Astarte, and the rest of the Canaanite pantheon. 

When the prophet Elisha instructed Naaman to wash in the Jordan to be healed of his leprosy, Naaman was angry, expecting something more elaborate—a ritual of some kind. But after following the prophet’s instructions and being restored to full health, Naaman realized the true God was Yahweh, not Baal, and Israel was His home. So, Naaman loaded two mules with dirt and carried it back to Syria—not because it held magical properties, but because it was a reminder of the one God with the power to heal. 

The concept of “holy ground” was established after the Tower of Babel, as described in Deuteronomy 32: 

When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,

    when he divided mankind,  

he fixed the borders of the peoples

    according to the number of the sons of God. 

But the LORD’s portion is his people,

    Jacob his allotted heritage. (Deut. 32:8–9, ESV) 

In other words, God allotted the people of Earth to angelic representatives who were tempted into receiving worship themselves, but He chose Israel as the conduit through which He would bring forth the Messiah to save the world from those fallen entities. 

We also discuss the way God delivered the northern kingdom of Israel from a prolonged siege of Samaria by the Syrians—despite the continued apostasy of Samaria.

THE KING of Moab sacrificed his oldest son on the wall of his capital city, causing the combined armies of Israel, Judah, and Edom to withdraw from their siege. How do we process this? 

Then he (King Mesha) took his oldest son who was to reign in his place and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall. And there came great wrath on Israel. And they withdrew from him and returned to their own land. (2 Kings 3:27, ESV)

On the surface, it appears the king of Moab’s sacrifice was successful. But that’s not how we read it. 

The wrath against Israel was God’s anger that they didn’t trust in His promise, through the prophet Elisha, to deliver Moab into the hands of kings Jehoram of Israel and Jehoshaphat of Judah. God does not honor or condone human sacrifice. 

We also discuss the miracles of the widow’s oil, the son of the Shunammite woman, whose birth was no less a miracle than Elisha raising him from the dead, and Elisha’s purification of poisoned stew. 

JERUSALEM IS the center of the world in the Book of 1 Enoch. That echoes Ezekiel 5:5 and 38:12, where Jerusalem is “the center [literally, “navel”] of the earth.” 

This is a concept probably best known from Greek religion, where the oracle of Delphi was at the site of the omphalos, the stone that was supposedly substituted for Zeus by his mother Rhea because Kronos was eating their children as soon as they were born. The omphalos represented the connection between Earth and Heaven—in other words, it was the center (or navel) of the world. Ezekiel, whose prophecies were well known to the authors of 1 Enoch, wrote that it was the city God desired for His eternal dwelling place (Psalm 132:13–14) that was the true center of all things. 

The description of Jerusalem in 1 Enoch chapters 26 and 27 also includes a description of a “cursed valley,” which is a reference to the Valley of Hinnom, where children were sacrificed to Molech at the Tophet. Although we didn’t make it explicit in our discussion, this is the origin of the idea that equates the place of eternal punishment with Gehenna (Hebrew ge = “valley”; henna = "Hinnom”), found in Matthew 5:22, 29, and 30 (sometimes rendered “hell”). 

Enoch was also taken to the mountain of God where he was shown the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The mountain of God is in the midst of “seven glorious mountains,” a sharp contrast to seven burning mountains described in 1 Enoch 18:13–16 and 21:3–6, which were angels being punished for transgressions. 

Finally, Enoch is transported to places that seem to be Petra and Arabia—interesting, since the only other locations that can be positively identified in 1 Enoch are Jerusalem and the areas around Mount Hermon.

THE PASSING of the mantle from Elijah to Elisha was spectacular: A fiery chariot pulled by horses of fire in a whirlwind carried the elder prophet to heaven.

The whirlwind was a theophany, an appearance by God Himself. The chariot, as Sharon noted, was believed to be the vehicle that carried human spirits to the netherworld—but in this case, Elijah was carried off to heaven. 

We discuss the location of the event, the plains of Moab across from Jericho, and why that has supernatural significance. For one thing, it’s where Moses was buried after his death, and it’s probably not coincidental that Moses and Elijah are the two who joined Jesus on Mount Hermon, the “Canaanite Olympus,” for the Transfiguration. 

The place from which Elijah was caught up was below the ruins of Sodom, at the southern end of the Jordan River called the Valley of the Travelers by Ezekiel. “Travelers” was a term used by the Canaanites for the spirits of the Rephaim, which were venerated by the pagan neighbors of the Israelites. It’s also the Valley of Siddim, where the armies of Sodom, Gomorrah and their allies fought the kings of Mesopotamia (Genesis 14). Siddim can also be rendered shedim, which is a Hebrew word meaning “demons.”

In other words, God carried off Elijah from a place that had been notorious for demonic activity for about a thousand years by the time of Elijah and Elisha.