The book of Enoch : translated from Professor Dillmann's Ethiopic ...

Sect. IV.] Chapter LXXXIII. i, 2. 223
is darkest, and the oppression at its worst, a righteous league
will be established in Israel, xc. 6; and in it there will be a
family from which will come forth the deliverer of Israel, i. e.
Judas Maccabaeus, xc. 9-16. The Syrians and other enemies
of Israel will put forth every effort to destroy him, but in vain
for a great sword will be given to him wherewith to destroy
his enemies, xc. 19. Then all the hostile Gentiles will assemble
for their final struggle against Israel, still led by Judas Maccabaeus,
xc. 16; but this, their crowning act of wickedness, will also be
the final act in their history and serve as the signal for their
immediate judgment. God will appear in person, and the earth
open its mouth and swallow them up, xc. 18. The wicked shep-
herds and the fallen watchers will then be judged, and cast into
an abyss of fire, xc. 20-25. With the condemnation of the
apostates to Gehenna the great assize will close. Then the New
Jerusalem will be set up by God Himself, xc. 28, 29; and the
surviving Gentiles will be converted and serve Israel, xc. 30 ; and
all the Jews dispersed abroad will be gathered together, and
all the righteous dead will be raised to take part in the kingdom.
Then the Messiah will appear amongst them, xc. 37; and all the
righteous will be gloriously transformed after his likeness, xc. 38 ;
and God will rejoice over them.
lxxxiii-xc were written by a Chasid in support of the Macca-
bean movement.
LXXXIII. i.
TRANSLATION.
f And now, my son Methuselah, I will show
thee all my visions which. I have seen, recounting (them) before
thee. a. Two visions I saw before I took a wife, and the
LXXXIII. 1. My visions. So GM. Other MSS. and Din.
The first Dream- vision, Ixxxiii, course with the angels, and is trans-
lxxxiv, deals with the Deluge or first lated bodily and therein admitted
world-judgment. to higher privileges than in mere
LXXXIII. 2. Before I took a visions. Yet if lxxxiii-xc came from
wife, i. e. before I was sixty-five the same hand as the other sections,
cf. Gen. v. 21. The name of this wife the converse should have been the case
was Edna, lxxxv. 3 : cf. Book of on ascetic grounds, and Enoch should
Jubilees iv. We should observe that have had his bodily translations to
lxxxiii-xc are only dreams or dream- heaven and his intercourse with the
visions ; whereas in the other sections angels during his unmarried years, and
of the book Enoch has open inter- his dream-visions after he had taken a