1 Enoch 107
What Happens in This Chapter
Enoch reports what he saw written: that generation after generation will do wrong, until a generation of righteousness rises and wrongdoing and sin are gone from the earth and all kinds of good come to it. He tells Methuselah to go and tell Lamech that the child who has been born really is Lamech's son. Methuselah, who had been shown everything in secret, goes back and passes the words on, and the son is named Noah.
And I saw written on them that one generation after another will do wrong, until a generation of righteousness rises up, and wrongdoing is destroyed, and sin passes away from the earth, and every kind of good thing comes upon it.
1And I saw written on them that generation upon generation shall transgress, till a generation of righteousness arises, and transgression is destroyed and sin passes away from the earth, and all manner of good comes upon it.
"Them" are the heavenly tablets Enoch has been reading in the previous chapter: records said to be kept in heaven on which the whole future course of human generations is already written. Enoch is reporting to his son Methuselah what he saw there.
2And now, my son, go and tell your son Lamech that this son who has been born is truly his own son, and that this is not a lie.’
2And now, my son, go and make known to thy son Lamech that this son, which has been born, is in truth his son, and that (this) is no lie.’
Enoch is still speaking, and "my son" is Methuselah; Lamech is Methuselah's son, so Enoch's grandson, and the newborn is Enoch's great-grandson. The reassurance answers a specific worry from the previous chapter: the baby's strange appearance (white skin, wool-white hair, eyes that lit the room) had made Lamech suspect the child had been fathered not by him but by one of the fallen angels who, earlier in the book, took human wives. Enoch's word settles the question of who the father is. The closing quotation mark here ends Enoch's speech.
3And when Methuselah had heard the words of his father Enoch (for Enoch had shown him everything in secret) he went back and showed them to him, and he named that son Noah; for he will comfort the earth after all the destruction.
3And when Methuselah had heard the words of his father Enoch—for he had shown to him everything in secret—he returned and showed (them) to him and called the name of that son Noah; for he will comfort the earth after all the destruction.
"He went back and showed them to him": Methuselah returns to Lamech and repeats what Enoch said. The name explains itself in Hebrew: Noah sounds like the word for rest or relief, so "he will comfort" is a play on the name rather than a separate statement about him. Genesis 5:29 gives the same explanation of the name. "All the destruction" is the flood, which in this book is already fixed and coming.
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