3 Enoch (Hebrew Enoch) 35
Each verse number opens that verse. The numbers follow Odeberg’s 1928 edition. 3 Enoch (Hebrew Enoch) has the history and the issues with this book.
- R. Ishmael said: Metatron, the Angel, the Prince of the Presence, said to me: 506 thousand myriads of camps has the Holy One, blessed be He, in the height of ‘Araboth Raqia‘. And each camp is (composed of) 496 thousand angels.
- And every single angel, the height of his stature is as the great sea; and the appearance of their countenance as the appearance of the lightning, and their eyes as lamps of fire, and their arms and their feet like in colour to polished brass and the roaring voice of their words like the voice of a multitude.
- And they are all standing before the Throne of Glory in four rows. And the princes of the army are standing at the head of each row.
- And some of them utter the “Holy” and others utter the “Blessed”, some of them run as messengers, others are standing in attendance, according as it is written (Dan. vii. 10): “Thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set and the books were opened”.
- And in the hour, when the time draws nigh for to say the “Holy”, (then) first there goes forth a whirlwind from before the Holy One, blessed be He, and bursts upon the camp of Shekina and there arises a great commotion among them, as it is written (Jer. xxx. 23): “Behold, the whirlwind of the Lord goeth forth with fury, a continuing commotion”.
- At that moment thousand thousands of them are changed into sparks, thousand thousands of them into firebrands, thousand thousands into flashes, thousand thousands into flames, thousand thousands into males, thousand thousands into females, thousand thousands into winds, thousand thousands into burning fires, thousand thousands into flames, thousand thousands into sparks, thousand thousands into chashmals of light; until they take upon themselves the yoke of the kingdom of heaven, the high and lifted up, of the Creator of them all with fear, dread, awe and trembling, with commotion, anguish, terror and trepidation. ‘Then they are changed again into their former shape to have the fear of their King before them alway, as they have set their hearts on saying the Song continually, as it is written (Is. vi. 3): “And one cried unto another and said (Holy, Holy, Holy, etc.)”.
Hugo Odeberg’s translation in 3 Enoch or The Hebrew Book of Enoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928). Public domain in the United States only, because the book was published in 1928. Odeberg died in 1973, so the translation is still under copyright in countries that count 70 years from the author’s death. The verses are transcribed from the Internet Archive scan 3enochorhebrewbo00unse (Princeton Theological Seminary Library); translation pages 22–23, missing from that scan, are from the scan ksigaxiienochorthehebrewbookofenoch_202012. Odeberg’s chapter summaries, critical apparatus, notes, and italics are left out, and the underdots in his transliterations are not reproduced. Where he prints parallel recensions in columns, the first column, which carries his base manuscript A, is used. His additional sections 15B, 22B, 22C, and 48B–48D are not included; chapter 48 is his 48A.