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

Sect, v.] Chapters XC VII 7 — XC VIII 6. 281
splendour, and in food they will be poured out as water.
3. Therefore they will be wanting in knowledge and wisdom,
and they will perish thereby together with their possessions
and with all their glory and their splendour, and in shame and
in slaughter and in great destitution will their spirits be cast
into the furnace of lire. 4. I have sworn unto you, ye
sinners, as a mountain does not become a slave and will not,
nor a hill the handmaid of a woman, even so sin has not been
sent upon the earth, but man of himself has created it, and into
great condemnation will those fall who commit it. 5. And
barrenness has not been given to the woman, but on account
of the deeds of her own hands she dies without children.
6. I have sworn unto you, ye sinners, by the Holy and Great
One that all your evil deeds are revealed in the heavens, and
that none of your deeds of oppression are covered or hidden.
out as water. But G omits the ft in every instance, and thus
we have, ' royalty and grandeur and power and silver . . . will be
poured out as water/ i.e. as plentifully as water, cf. xcvii. 9. G 1
serts the preposition before the first four, M before the first three,
nouns. N inserts it before all. Before ' in royalty ' all MSS. except
G G 1 M read ftl72v, which is not a possible word. This reading
is valuable in determining the various worth of the MSS. 4.
I have sworn. Wanting in G 1
. For Wh.wVC G reads (DVC ' As
a mountain does not become a slave and a hill will not become
the handmaid of a woman.' G 1 H I L M N O agree with Din. 6.
The foolish are addressed in xcviii-cii. the immoral view that sin is some-
3 ; the wise in cii. 4-civ. 2. Will thing original and unavoidable. Sin
be poured out as water. Their was of man's own devising : see lxix.
personality giving itself wholly to 11 (note). 5. And as a conse-
such external possessions will at last quence of their sin men are punished
lose itself in them, as water is lost in just because sin is a voluntary thing,
the earth : cf. Ps. xxii. 14. 3. The instance in the text is chosen as
In great destitution. In contrast an illustration of this general law
to their wealth in this world. Their cf. Hos. ix. 14. 6-8. The writer
spirits: cf. ver. 10; ciii. 8. As in- next deals with the view that God
corporeal spirits the wicked are cast does not concern Himself with the
into hell. This ' furnace of fire ' is world or the deeds of men, cf. Job
the final place of punishment. 4. xxii. 13, Ps. lxxiii. II, and declares
The writer now proceeds to attack that the deeds of men are recorded
in