1 Enoch 30
What Happens in This Chapter
The traveler continues east past the places already described and comes to a valley full of water. In it stands a tree with the color of fragrant trees like the mastic, and along the sides of the valleys grows fragrant cinnamon. He then goes on farther east.
Beyond these places I went far away to the east, and I saw another place, a valley full of water.
1And beyond these, I went afar to the east, and I saw another place, a valley (full) of water.
This chapter continues a guided tour eastward that runs through several chapters: each short section records one more stage of the journey and one more thing seen, and "beyond these" points back to the places described just before. The east in these sections is a land of spice trees, and the repeated formula "and beyond these I proceeded to the east" works like a traveler's log entry rather than a story.
2In that valley there was a tree. It had the color of the sweet-smelling trees, such as the mastic.
2And therein there was a tree, the colour (?) of fragrant trees such as the mastic.
Charles printed "the colour (?)" with a question mark because the Ethiopic word here is uncertain: the manuscripts are unclear, and translators differ over whether the text says the tree had the color, the smell, or the appearance of the fragrant trees. The rendering keeps "color" because that is the reading Charles chose, but the ambiguity is in the text itself. Mastic is a small evergreen tree of the eastern Mediterranean. Cutting its bark yields a pale resin that hardens into brittle drops; it was chewed like gum, burned as incense, and used in medicine and varnish. Naming it is a way of saying the tree was of the aromatic, resin-producing kind, not just pleasant-smelling.
3And on the sides of those valleys I saw sweet-smelling cinnamon. Beyond these places I went on farther to the east.
3And on the sides of those valleys I saw fragrant cinnamon. And beyond these I proceeded to the east.
Cinnamon here means the tree, not the powder in a jar: the spice is the fragrant inner bark, stripped and dried until it curls. In the ancient Mediterranean it was an expensive import from far to the east, used in perfume and sacred anointing oil, and its true source was a matter of rumor. Seeing it growing on a hillside is the point of the verse. The shift from one "valley" in verse 1 to "those valleys" here is in the text as Charles translated it, and is usually taken as a sign that these short travel sections were compressed or copied unevenly rather than as a description of a different place.
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