1 Enoch 63

In those days the mighty ones and the kings who own the earth will beg him to give them a little rest from his angels of punishment, the ones they had been handed over to, so that they might fall down and worship before the Lord of Spirits and confess their sins in front of him.

1In those days shall the mighty and the kings who possess the earth implore (Him) to grant them a little respite from His angels of punishment to whom they were delivered, that they might fall down and worship before the Lord of Spirits, and confess their sins before Him.

NoteThe Lord of Spirits is this section's regular title for God, used over and over through chapters 37 to 71 where other parts of the book say the Holy Great One or the Most High; the spirits are the angelic host around him. The angels of punishment are a fixed class of angels in this book, assigned to hold and torment the condemned. The mighty and the kings who own the earth are named together again and again in these chapters: the rulers and the rich, the people with power over other people's lives.

2And they will bless and honor the Lord of Spirits, and say: 'Blessed is the Lord of Spirits and the Lord of kings, and the Lord of the mighty and the Lord of the rich, and the Lord of glory and the Lord of wisdom.

2And they shall bless and glorify the Lord of Spirits, and say: ‘Blessed is the Lord of Spirits and the Lord of kings, And the Lord of the mighty and the Lord of the rich, And the Lord of glory and the Lord of wisdom,

NoteTo bless God is not to give him something. Blessing aimed upward, from a person to God, means praise: saying aloud that he is the source of good. Blessing aimed downward, from God to a person, is the giving of the good itself.

3Your power is glorious in every hidden thing, from one generation to the next, and your glory lasts for ever and ever. All your secrets are deep and cannot be counted, and your righteousness is beyond measuring.

3And splendid in every secret thing is Thy power from generation to generation, And Thy glory for ever and ever: Deep are all Thy secrets and innumerable, And Thy righteousness is beyond reckoning.

NoteGod's secrets in this book are usually concrete rather than abstract: the storehouses of the winds, the courses of the stars, the fixed measures of judgment, the kinds of thing Enoch is shown on his journeys in earlier chapters.

4We have now learned that we ought to honor and bless the Lord of kings, the one who is king over all kings.'

4We have now learnt that we should glorify And bless the Lord of kings and Him who is king over all kings.’

5And they will say: 'If only we had rest, so we could give honor and thanks and declare our faith before his glory!

5And they shall say: ‘Would that we had rest to glorify and give thanks And confess our faith before His glory!

NoteConfess carries two older senses in this chapter. In verse 1 it means admitting wrongdoing, the modern sense. Here it means declaring openly what one holds to be true, the sense kept alive in a phrase like a confession of faith.

6And now we long for a little rest and do not find it. We chase after it hard and do not get it. Light has gone from in front of us, and darkness is where we live for ever and ever.

6And now we long for a little rest but find it not: We follow hard upon and obtain (it) not: And light has vanished from before us, And darkness is our dwelling-place for ever and ever:

7For we did not believe in him, and we did not honor the name of the Lord of Spirits, and we did not honor our Lord. Our hope was in the scepter of our kingdom and in our own glory.

7For we have not believed before Him Nor glorified the name of the Lord of Spirits, nor glorified our Lord But our hope was in the sceptre of our kingdom, And in our glory.

NoteA scepter is the ornamented rod a ruler held while giving judgment, the standard emblem of royal authority. To say their hope was in the scepter of their kingdom is to say they trusted their own power to rule and the position it gave them.

8And in the day of our suffering and trouble he does not save us, and we find no rest in which to confess that our Lord is true in everything he does, and in his judgments and his justice, and that his judgments show no favor to anyone.

8And in the day of our suffering and tribulation He saves us not, And we find no respite for confession That our Lord is true in all His works, and in His judgements and His justice, And His judgements have no respect of persons.

NoteCharles's phrase here is that God's judgments 'have no respect of persons.' That is an old legal idiom for taking a person's rank, wealth or connections into account when deciding a case. A judge with no respect of persons weighs the case and not the man.

9And we pass away from his presence because of the things we did, and all our sins are counted up in righteousness.'

9And we pass away from before His face on account of our works, And all our sins are reckoned up in righteousness.’

NoteReckoned up is an accounting word: the sins are added into a running total, the way entries in a ledger are. This book elsewhere pictures heavenly books in which every deed is written down and kept.

10Now they will say to themselves: 'Our souls are full of wealth gained unjustly, but it does not stop us from going down out of the middle of it into the burden of Sheol.'

10Now they shall say unto themselves: ‘Our souls are full of unrighteous gain, but it does not prevent us from descending from the midst thereof into the †burden† of Sheol.’

NoteSheol is the Hebrew name for the place of the dead beneath the earth. In older Israelite thought all the dead went there alike; in this book it has become a holding place where the wicked wait for judgment. The daggers Charles prints around the word burden mark a reading he judged damaged in the Ethiopic manuscripts, so what the text actually said at that point is uncertain.

11And after that their faces will be filled with darkness and shame before that Son of Man, and they will be driven away from his presence, and the sword will stay in front of his face, in the middle of them.

11And after that their faces shall be filled with darkness And shame before that Son of Man, And they shall be driven from his presence, And the sword shall abide before his face in their midst.

NoteThat Son of Man is the figure introduced earlier in these chapters, also called the Elect One and the Righteous One, who is seated on the throne of glory to judge. The wording is literally that son of man, pointing back to the one 'like a son of man' who comes on the clouds in Daniel 7. The closing line is obscure in the manuscripts; the picture seems to be a sword of judgment standing ready in their midst, and the rendering leaves the difficulty rather than smoothing it over.

12This is what the Lord of Spirits said: 'This is the ruling and the judgment concerning the mighty ones and the kings and the high ones and those who own the earth, before the Lord of Spirits.'

12Thus spake the Lord of Spirits: ‘This is the ordinance and judgement with respect to the mighty and the kings and the exalted and those who possess the earth before the Lord of Spirits.’

NoteOrdinance here means a fixed decree, a standing rule laid down once for all, not a decision made case by case. The four titles listed, the mighty, the kings, the exalted, and those who own the earth, are a set formula repeated throughout these chapters for the ruling and propertied classes of the world.