3 Enoch (Hebrew Enoch) 4:3
For when the generation of the flood sinned and were confounded in their deeds, saying unto God: ‘Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways (Job xxi. 14)’, then the Holy One, blessed be He, removed me from their midst to be a witness against them in the high heavens to all the inhabitants of the world, that they may not say: ‘The Merciful One is cruel’.
Background and history of 3 Enoch (Hebrew Enoch), and issues with this book.
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.