The Watchers: The Angels Who Came Down on Mount Hermon

Anyone who has ever taken part in a questionable group decision knows the moment. Someone proposes a bold idea, everyone nods, and then one of the participants raises a hand and asks: and if something goes wrong, who will take the blame?

In the Book of Enoch this moment takes place in heaven. Two hundred angels look down, see the daughters of men and decide to go down to them. Their leader, Semyaza, is worried. He is not worried about the deed itself. He is worried that his companions will back out at the last minute, leaving him alone to pay the price. The solution they find will be familiar to anyone who has ever signed a partnership agreement:

Then they all swore together and made a pact among themselves. They were two hundred angels in all. They came down on Ardis, the summit of Mount Hermon, and they named the mountain Hermon, because there they swore under a ban and made their pact.

1 Enoch 6:5–6

This, according to the book, is how Mount Hermon got its name: from the Hebrew herem, the binding oath that tied the angels to one another. And this is how the story at the heart of the whole Book of Enoch begins.

Who the Watchers were

According to 1 Enoch, the Watchers are a group of two hundred angels who left heaven, came down to earth, took wives and taught humans things that were never meant for them. The book lists the names of their leaders, headed by Semyaza and Azazel.

In Aramaic, the language in which the book was most likely written, they are called ‘irin, the wakeful ones, those who do not sleep. The word appears in the same sense in the Bible itself, in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in the Book of Daniel, which the King James Version renders: “a watcher and an holy one came down from heaven.” The Greek translators rendered the word literally, and from that translation came the name Grigori, by which these angels are called in 2 Enoch. In English they are known as the Watchers. Lazarus Goldschmidt’s Hebrew translation calls them “the guardians.”

The name is no accident. The task of these angels was to keep watch. The whole story is about watchers who could not be content with watching.

Two sins

The Book of Enoch charges the Watchers with two sins, and the second is more interesting than the first.

The first sin is the marriages. The angels take wives, and the wives give birth to the Nephilim, giants who consume everything on the earth. The second sin is the teaching. The angels teach humans charms and spells, the powers of roots and plants, the lore of the stars and the signs. Azazel teaches them to make swords, shields and breastplates, and also jewelry, precious stones and paint for the eyes.

We usually assume that knowledge is always a good thing. The Book of Enoch thinks otherwise. There is knowledge, it says, that humankind received too early, from the wrong hands, without anyone asking whether it could bear it. The result, according to the book, was an earth full of blood.

The trial

When the cry of humankind rises up to heaven, four angels hear it and bring it before God. The verdict is detailed. Raphael is sent to bind Azazel and throw him into darkness, in a desert called Dudael. Michael is sent to Semyaza and his companions, to bind them beneath the hills of the earth for seventy generations, until the day of the great judgment. Their children, the giants, they are forced to watch as they kill one another.

This is where Enoch himself enters the story. The fallen angels turn to him, a human being, and ask him to write a plea for forgiveness on their behalf. Enoch writes it, sits by the waters of Dan at the foot of Hermon, reads the plea until he falls asleep, and receives the answer in a dream. It is no. It also contains one especially pointed line: it was the angels who should have prayed for humans, not humans for them.

It is hard to imagine a sharper reversal of roles. Heavenly beings go looking for a lawyer, and find one in a mortal scribe.

Not all the Watchers fell

It is easy to forget that in the Book of Enoch the word “watchers” is not an insult. Most of the Watchers stayed where they belonged. The book names the holy angels who keep watch, among them Uriel, Raphael, Michael and Gabriel, and describes what each of them is in charge of: one over the spirits of humankind, one over the best of humankind, one over paradise and the cherubim. They are the ones who hear the cry of the earth, they are the ones who bring it before God, and they are also the ones who accompany Enoch on his journeys and explain to him what he sees.

So the book draws a picture of two groups that started from the same place. Both had the same task and the same power. The only difference between them is what they chose to do with it.

Why Mount Hermon

Hermon is the highest mountain in the region, and its snowy summit can be seen from far away. If angels need a place to land, it is hard to find a more natural candidate. The book adds a play on words, Hermon and herem, and anchors the whole plot in a familiar landscape: the mountain, the waters of Dan at its foot, and the road from the north down to the settled land.

The Book of Jubilees, a work close to the Book of Enoch in date and in spirit, also knows the story. It ties the descent of the angels to the name of Jared, Enoch’s father, whose name sounds like the Hebrew word for “came down”: in his days, the angels came down to earth.

The Watchers after the Book of Enoch

The story did not stay between the pages of the Book of Enoch. It appears in the scrolls found at Qumran, and in the New Testament as well: the Epistle of Jude and the Second Epistle of Peter speak of angels who sinned and were held in chains of darkness until the day of judgment. In 2 Enoch, Enoch meets the Grigori in the fifth heaven, standing silent and downcast, and persuades them to sing before God once more. In later Jewish tradition mostly an echo of the story remained: legends about Shemhazai and Azael, angels who accused humankind, came down to earth, and failed at exactly what they had blamed others for.

Where evil comes from

Behind the plot hides a large question. Genesis tells that evil entered the world through a human choice: one tree, one fruit, two people. The Book of Enoch tells a different story. Evil, according to the book, came from above. It broke into the world when beings stronger than us decided to cross a line, and humans found themselves paying for a decision they had not made.

These two stories are still arguing with each other today, even if under other names. Are we responsible for our troubles, or are we the victims of forces greater than ourselves? The Book of Enoch does not let humans off the hook, but it reminds us that sometimes the greatest damage is done by the very ones whose job was to keep watch.