1 Enoch 23
What Happens in This Chapter
Enoch travels on to a place west of the ends of the earth. There he sees a fire that burns and runs without ever stopping, day or night, and he asks what it is. The angel Raguel tells him it is the fire in the west, which pursues all the lights of the sky.
From there I went on to another place, to the west of the ends of the earth.
1From thence I went to another place to the west of the ends of the earth.
These chapters describe a guided tour: an angel leads Enoch from place to place at the edges of the world, and each stop begins with a line like this one. "The ends of the earth" is meant literally here. The earth is pictured as a flat expanse with actual edges that a traveler could reach, and its western edge is where the sun and stars go down.
2And I saw a burning fire that ran without resting. It never stopped its course, by day or by night, but kept running steadily.
2And I saw a burning fire which ran without resting, and paused not from its course day or night but (ran) regularly.
A fire that runs a fixed course without pause, day or night, is described in the same terms the book uses elsewhere for the sun and the stars, which travel set tracks through fixed gates. The point of the description is that this fire behaves like one of the heavenly bodies rather than like an ordinary fire.
3And I asked, saying: "What is this thing that never rests?"
3And I asked saying: ‘What is this which rests not?’
4Then Raguel, one of the holy angels who was with me, answered me and said: "This running fire you have seen is the fire in the west, and it chases all the lights of the sky."
4Then Raguel, one of the holy angels who was with me, answered me and said unto me: ‘This course of fire which thou hast seen is the fire in the west which †persecutes† all the luminaries of heaven.’
Raguel is named in chapter 20 as one of the holy angels, the one assigned to the world of the lights of heaven. Names of this kind in 1 Enoch are Hebrew phrases: Raguel is usually understood as "friend of God" or "shepherd of God." "The lights of the sky" (Charles: "the luminaries of heaven") means the sun, the moon and the stars, which this book treats as moving bodies that keep appointed schedules. Charles printed the word he translated "persecutes" between two daggers, his mark for a place where the surviving Ethiopic manuscripts give a word he judged corrupt or untranslatable as it stands. Other translators render the same word "pursues," "drives" or "sets," so what exactly the fire does to the heavenly lights is uncertain in the text itself.
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