1 Enoch 20

These are the names of the holy angels who watch.

1And these are the names of the holy angels who watch.

Note"Watch" here is the technical term of this book. Throughout 1 Enoch the angels are called Watchers, the ones who keep guard and stay awake; earlier chapters use the word of the rebel angels who came down to earth, while here it describes the loyal ones still at their posts. The Greek manuscripts head this list "the names of the seven holy angels who watch," and seven names follow, though the Ethiopic copies preserve only six and stop at verse 7. Every name in the list ends in the syllable "el," the ordinary Hebrew word for God, so each is a small sentence about God rather than a personal name in the modern sense.

2Uriel, one of the holy angels, who is set over the world and over Tartarus.

2Uriel, one of the holy angels, who is over the world and over Tartarus.

NoteUriel means something like "God is my light" or "my flame is God." Tartarus is a Greek word, not a Hebrew one: in Greek myth it is the pit far below the land of the dead where the defeated Titans were chained. Greek-speaking Jewish writers borrowed it for the deep prison where rebel angels are held, and 1 Enoch uses it that way.

3Raphael, one of the holy angels, who is set over the spirits of people.

3Raphael, one of the holy angels, who is over the spirits of men.

NoteRaphael means "God heals." "The spirits of men" means the spirits of the human dead, not living people; a later chapter of this book has Raphael showing Enoch the hollow places where the dead are kept until judgment.

4Raguel, one of the holy angels, who takes vengeance on the world of the lights in the sky.

4Raguel, one of the holy angels who †takes vengeance on† the world of the luminaries.

NoteRaguel means roughly "friend of God" or "God is a companion." In Charles's translation this phrase carries daggers, his printer's mark for wording he believed had been damaged in copying and could not be restored with confidence; the rendering here drops the marks, but the sense of the line remains uncertain. The "lights in the sky" are the sun, moon and stars, which this book treats as bodies with fixed courses assigned to them, so that a star can be punished for straying off its appointed track.

5Michael, one of the holy angels, that is, the one who is set over the best part of humankind and over chaos.

5Michael, one of the holy angels, to wit, he that is set over the best part of mankind and over chaos.

NoteMichael means "Who is like God?" The phrase translated "the best part of humankind" was traditionally understood as Israel, and one Greek copy reads simply "over the people" where the Ethiopic has "over chaos." The two readings are far enough apart that what Michael is said to be set over is genuinely disputed. "Chaos" is the Greek word for a yawning gap or abyss, not disorder in the modern sense.

6Saraqâêl, one of the holy angels, who is set over the spirits that sin in the spirit.

6Saraqâêl, one of the holy angels, who is set over the spirits, who sin in the spirit.

NoteThis name appears in the manuscripts in several forms, including Sariel, and probably means "command of God." "Spirits that sin in the spirit" is odd in any language; the Greek expands it to "the spirits of the children of men who sin in the spirit," which points to human souls rather than angelic ones.

7Gabriel, one of the holy angels, who is set over Paradise and the serpents and the Cherubim.

7Gabriel, one of the holy angels, who is over Paradise and the serpents and the Cherubim.

NoteGabriel means "God is my strength." "Paradise" comes through Greek from a Persian word for a walled garden or hunting park, and is the word the old Greek Bible uses for the garden in Genesis. The "serpents" are unexpected here, and one long-standing suggestion is that the word stands for the seraphim, since the Hebrew saraph means both a burning one and a kind of snake. Cherubim are winged composite creatures of Near Eastern art and temple decoration, part animal and part human, quite unlike the plump infants of later European painting.

8Remiel, one of the holy angels, whom God set over those who rise.

8Remiel, one of the holy angels, whom God set over those who rise.

NoteRemiel means something like "God thunders," though it is sometimes read as "mercy of God." "Those who rise" means those who rise from the dead. This verse is missing from the Ethiopic manuscripts, which end the list at Gabriel; Charles supplied it from a Greek copy, which is also where the count of seven angels comes from.