3 Enoch (Hebrew Enoch) 6:3
The Holy One, blessed be He, answered and spake unto them: “My servants, my hosts, my Kerubim, my ’Ophannim, my Seraphim! Be ye not displeased on account of this! Since all the children of men have denied me and my great Kingdom and are gone worshipping idols, I have removed my Shekina from among them and have lifted it up on high. But this one whom I have taken from among them is an ELECT ONE among (the inhabitants of) the world and he is equal to all of them in faith, righteousness and perfection of deed and I have taken him for (as) a tribute from my world under all the heavens”.
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.