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

306 The Book of Enoch. [Sect. V.
spirits will be slain, and they will cry and make lamentation
in a place that is a waste wilderness, and they will burn with
fire where there is no earth. 4. And I saw there something
like a viewless cloud ; for by reason of its depth I could not
look thereon, and I saw a flame of fire burning brightly, and
there circled (there things) like shining mountains and they
swept to and fro. 5. And I asked one of the holy angels
who was with me and said :
' What is this shining thing ? for
it is not a heaven but only the flame of a burning fire, and
the voice of crying and weeping and lamentation and strong
pain/ 6. And he said unto me :
' This place which thou
seest—here are cast the spirits of sinners and blasphemers and
of those who work wickedness and of those who pervert every
thing that God does through the mouth of the prophets
(even) the things that shall be. 7. For some of them are
written and inscribed above in the heaven, in order that
the angels may read them and know that which will befall
reads fa&ft; ' of the Holy One/ G 4»&A^\ In ... a waste wilder-
ness. G gives: (Un>*iii ££% H/uPfttC/t. 4- For by reason
of its depth. G reads: Jt7 D «0'H1; 0m>*: w. A flame of
fire. So GG 1
: 1fJ(l: Mfc Din. 'the flame of its fire/
5. This shining thing. G reads HQrth = immolatus. 6.
Does. So GG 1 7*1£. Other MSS. 'speaks/ Through the
mouth. G gives fl^A. 7. Bead them. G G 1 read ^IflCTtn* 4 .
members of the kingdom: cf. ciii. 2. cf. xviii. 13. 6. This hell which
Spirits will be slain : cf. xxii. 13 is outside the earth is the final place
xcix. 11 (note). Though the extreme of punishment of sinners and bias-
penalty of sin, it does not imply an- phemers and perverters of God's
nihilation, for the victims of it ' cry revelation and action through the
and make lamentation.' In a place, prophets. In verses 3-6 the writer
&o. This chaotic flaming hell beyond of this chapter has confounded places,
the limits of the earth is the place i. e. Gehenna and the hell of the dis-
of punishment of the angels in xviii. obedient stars, that are most carefully
12-16; xxi. 1-7. 4. This hell distinguished in i-xxxvi, and yet bor-
and its inhabitants further described, rowed the phraseology of that section.
in terms borrowed from xviii. 13; xxi. Blasphemers : cf. xci. 7. The pro-
3. 5. One of the holy angels, phets. Here only mentioned ex-
Ac. This phrase is borrowed from pressly in Enoch. 7. "Written
i-xxxvi : cf. xxvii. 2. Voice, &c. : and inscribed. This refers to the