1 Enoch 7
What Happens in This Chapter
The rest of the watchers each take a wife, have sexual relations with them, and teach them charms, spells, root-cutting, and the knowledge of plants. The women give birth to giants, who eat up everything people have and then turn on people themselves, and go on to prey on birds, animals, reptiles, and fish, eating one another's flesh and drinking blood. The chapter closes with the earth bringing a charge against the lawless ones.
All the others with them also took wives for themselves. Each one chose a wife, and they began to have sexual relations with them and to make themselves unclean with them. They taught the women charms and spells, and the cutting of roots, and they showed them about plants.
1And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants.
"Charms and enchantments" are spoken words or objects believed to have magical power. "The cutting of roots" means cutting plant roots for use in such practices and in medicine.
2The women became pregnant, and they gave birth to great giants. The giants stood three thousand ells tall.
2And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand ells:
An "ell" is an old unit of length, about 45 inches, a little longer than a yard. Some copies of this text give the height as three hundred rather than three thousand.
3The giants used up everything that people had gotten for themselves.
3Who consumed all the acquisitions of men.
4When people could no longer feed them, the giants turned on the people and ate them.
4And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind.
5The giants began to sin against birds, animals, reptiles, and fish. They ate one another's flesh and drank the blood.
5And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood.
6Then the earth brought a charge against those who broke the law.
6Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.
"Laid accusation against" means brought a formal complaint or charge, the way someone would accuse a person in court.
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