Weird Stuff in the Bible

The Days of Noah, According to Enoch
Enoch 6 and Genesis 6

Introduction
And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.
You’ve probably heard those words before and thought, “Oh yeah, Genesis 6, the story of the Watchers- AKA the Sons of God- who came down and created the giants with human women.” If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you’ve heard those verses from Genesis 6 quoted countless times.
Only I wasn’t reading from Genesis 6 just now. I was reading from Enoch 6. And that portion of Enoch is not only almost word-for-word similar to how Genesis 6 begins, but then it goes off in another direction that informs us some of the details of the pre-flood world. Insights that will help us understand what was so bad about the days of Noah that caused God to want to wipe out virtually all life on the planet.
I mean, eradicating 99.9% of humanity? God doesn’t overreact. What was so bad about the world that required that degree of wiping it all away?
And remember: Enoch was Jesus’ history book. So could what we learn in Enoch 6 give us an idea of what Jesus meant when He said the end times would be as it was in the days of Noah?
I find Enoch 6 to be weird, and I’d like to explore what it helps us understand about our Bible.
Turn to Genesis 6, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]

The Desire of the Watchers
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about what we can learn when we pair Genesis 6 with Enoch 6.
So, there’s this word that we have for the pre-flood world. It’s called the “antediluvian" period. So if you ever heard the word “antediluvian,” that’s what it’s talking about. The prefix “ante-“ means before, and “diluvian” means flood. Not to be confused with a DeLorean, which can take you to the time of the flood, but after you listen to today’s episode, you may not want to go there.
So we’ll be talking about this antediluvian period today and sort of cracking the case wide open on what it was like. Because the Bible is actually kinda thin on the details. After the fall of man in Genesis 3, we have the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4, and then Cain kinda goes off on his own and it talks about some of the people who came after him. They don’t sound like great people.
Then in Genesis 5, we get a genealogy of the men who lived going from Adam all the way to Noah, 10 generations of guys that get us from Genesis 3 to the flood of Noah, a period lasting about 1600 years. And very soon we’ll have a whole episode about that genealogy actually, contextualizing it with what we learn today.
And then the flood comes in Genesis 7, so Genesis 6 is the chapter that gives us the reasons for the flood- and again, it’s kinda thin on the details. It tells us just what we need to know, but the details it does give can kinda leave us with more questions than answers- and there have been a lot of episodes of this podcast attempting to provide some of those answers.
And what am I talking about? Well, let’s review
Genesis 6:1-2
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.
The “sons of God” in this verse are supernatural beings. And make no mistake, when it says they saw that they found the daughters of men attractive, they didn’t just come down to look. They didn’t come down to hang out at the beach and then go watch some Netflix with them. They came down to Netflix and chill. And this created the giants- or the Nephilim- of the antediluvian world.
Genesis 6:4
The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.
That’s how Genesis puts it. And the phrase “mighty men” is gibborim, which is a word that can mean someone quite famous or perhaps even infamous. It is also used to describe other giants in Scripture, but it can also be used for ordinary humans who became well-known as well. These particular gibborim in Genesis 6:4 were famous in a bad way, hence the idea of infamy. Now let’s compare Genesis 6 with Enoch chapter 6’s opening lines.
Enoch 6:1-2 - And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.'
So very very similar. This is what I read at the start of the episode. One distinction is that the Genesis account, which was written in Hebrew, called the supernatural beings the “Sons of God.” The Book of Enoch right here- which is based on Greek manuscripts- calls them “angels, children of heaven.” That’s because the Greek is a lot more broad than the Hebrew; in Greek, the word “angel” can apply to any supernatural being- even the bad ones, such as right here. And there are other Enoch manuscripts that call these “the watchers,” a phrase well see more later.
Another detail it includes in Enoch’s account is this phrase “saw and lusted after them.” Michael Heiser’s commentary on this verse says, “The verb [epithymein] seems to have the pejorative meaning “to lust after.” Since this desire and its fulfillment are outlawed, as the context will indicate, the use of this verb introduces the motif of sin.”
And then a third minor difference from the biblical account is that the Enoch version gives a little more insight into what these fallen angels were thinking. Genesis said, “And they took as their wives any they chose.” In Enoch’s version, he writes that they “said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.’"
So we see in Enoch’s account that he implies that they desired not just the women, but to have kids, and that they would have families. So perhaps they had been watching humans marry and produce children and populate the world for generation after generation, and so they got kinda jealous and wanted kids of their own. And that’s wrong, but perhaps that’s the more sentimental interpretation of what was going on.
In my opinion, this was more about world domination. They didn’t just want families so they could have the Christmas photos with everybody having the matching pajamas. This was a plot to take over the world. If you listen to our episodes last year on spiritual legal rights, we talked a lot about the dominion mandate of man; how mankind was given authority to rule the world in Genesis 1, but how Satan has been trying to steal it ever since. So, since man had primary rule over the world, these Watchers decided to create half-man, half-angel hybrids who were able to exercise legal rights over this physical realm. Their Nephilim children could fulfill the dominion mandate granted to man, something the Watchers could never do up in heaven. If these Nephilim replaced humanity, then the Watchers could control both the physical and spiritual realms of earth.
And not only that- they could prevent the Messiah from coming. The Messiah had been prophesied to someday come from the seed of a human woman. But by corrupting the entire bloodline of planet earth, they could stop God’s plan to redeem this world.
In his commentary on Enoch, Timothy Alberino says, “…they planned to usurp dominion of the earth through the agency of their human-hybrid offspring.” [source: footnote 11 on page 31]
So when the Watchers say, “Let us choose wives…and beget us children,” they aren’t talking about wanting to have pancake breakfasts on Saturday mornings with the wife and kids. They want to corrupt the world.
If we jump to Enoch 19 for a minute, it’s a very short chapter- only 3 verses- and we’ll come to it again later, but I just want to read a couple of the verses.
Enoch 19:1-2 say, “And Uriel said to me: 'Here shall stand the angels who have connected themselves with women, and their spirits assuming many different forms are defiling mankind and shall lead them astray into sacrificing to demons ⌈⌈as gods⌉⌉, (here shall they stand,) till ⌈⌈the day of⌉⌉ the great judgement in which they shall be judged till they are made an end of. 2. And the women also of the angels who went astray shall become sirens.'
So a few notes on this: the Watchers who came down are able to assume many different forms. More on that in a few minutes. But it also said that they want to lead mankind astray by causing them to sacrifice to demons as gods. And we see this throughout the Bible: false gods being worshipped, and Paul even says in
I Corinthians 10:20
…I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God.
So Paul says that pagan worship is not just empty words spoken into nothingness, but that it’s an offering made to an evil supernatural entity. And that’s what the Watchers were trying to lead mankind into: they wanted themselves to be worshipped as gods.
Now, what does it mean if a spiritual being is worshipped as a god? What does that do for them? In the spiritual realm, this gives them legal rights. It gives them a spiritual legal right to visit and control territory on planet earth. And I did several episodes about this last year, looking at the function of pagan altars in the Bible and the battle over physical space in our world.
So by having demonic spawn walking around here, the Nephilim weren’t just physically oppressive, but they also had a role of inciting mankind to worship their fathers as deities. I believe the Nephilim themselves also desired to be worshipped. This gave them and the Watchers both a physical and spiritual domination of earth.

Were the Women Willing?
One more comment I’d like to make on these words: were the women that the Sons of God married willing participants in this arrangement, or were they forced to reproduce with the Watchers against their will?
Well, scholars differ on this point, so I’ll break it down. And by the way, the next couple minutes might not be suitable for young ears. I’ve tried to keep it as family-friendly as I can up to this point, but if you have kids around, this might be the part to skip ahead to the next section. And hopefully you didn’t already have to pause this podcast to explain what Netflix-and-Chill means.
So were the women happy to be taken as wives? The Genesis text says
(Genesis 6:2)
the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.
And again, the Enochian text says: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.'
So the Genesis text can be taken to mean that the women were quote-unquote “taken” or essentially raped and forced to bear these children against their will. The Hebrew word there is laqah (law-kakh) and it can- not always- but it can mean to seize or snatch, so it’s legitimate to translate it as these women were taken away captive as part of a breeding program like you might see in some kind of horror movie. For example, another verse that uses laqah and speaks of a rape is when Shechem has sexual relations with Dinah, one of Jacob’s daughters.
Genesis 34:2 says
Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the women of the land. 2 And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he seized her and lay with her and humiliated her.
So that word “seized” is once again laqah, and it’s clear that it means “rape” right here. So there are some who conclude- and quite reasonably- that these women certainly did not desire to have sexual relations with angels, and so they must have been forced to do so against their will.
On the other hand, the word laqah for “took as their wives” does not have to mean forced wives at all. There are lots of times that laqah can mean a woman is willingly taken as a wife. For example,
Deuteronomy 24:5
When a man is newly married, he shall not go out with the army or be liable for any other public duty. He shall be free at home one year to be happy with his wife whom he has taken.
Nothing inappropriate implied in that kind of marriage at all. Or also in:
Genesis 24:4, where Abraham tells his servant
go to my country and to my kindred, and take a wife for my son Isaac.
There’s nothing implied about Rebekah being taken against her will. She consented to marrying Isaac. If someone today said “I took so-and-so as my wife,” that might sound kinda weird. We might ask, “Well what did she have to say about it?” But in biblical language, it’s perfectly normal to say you took someone as your wife. Doesn’t imply that anything is amiss. It can, but it doesn’t have to.
So I tend to believe that the women were willing participants in this arrangement. I’m not saying their guilt was equal to that of the Watchers, but I don’t believe they were innocent, either.
Let me remind you again of those words in Enoch 19: And the women also of the angels who went astray shall become sirens.
There’s a lot of debate over this word “sirens” and what exactly it means. Whatever it means, it ain’t good. And so my point is, the women would not be punished if they were not morally culpable for what happened. So we’ll get to Enoch 19 down the road. But for today, I’ll just say, my conclusion on the matter is that the women willfully got with the angels.
Remember: it said of when the Watchers came down: quote “their spirits assuming many different forms.” So what do you imagine when you think of them coming down? Slimy reptilian creatures? Sparkly old men with beards? It’s possible, but I think it’s more likely they came down as attractive, gorgeous, muscular, chads. Something that the women would themselves lust after and find desirable. I don’t think it would serve their purpose to come down looking scary or repulsive at all. They didn’t just want a one-night stand. They wanted wives. So if they can assume many different forms, I would predict that they picked a good one. More like Chris Hemsworth than Danny DeVito.
Now let’s read the next verse of Enoch 6; we’ll meet one of the two main villains of this book.

Enter Semjaza
Enoch 6:3 - 3. And Semjâzâ, who was their leader, said unto them: 'I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.' 4. And they all answered him and said: 'Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.' 5. Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it.
Now who is Semjaza? He never gets a mention in the Bible, but he’s prominent here in Enoch as the leader of this heavenly rebellion. There are a few different spellings out there; the one I go by is spelled S-E-M-J-A-Z-A, so there’s a J in there but I believe the J is supposed to be pronounced like a Y. But others may spell it more like Shemihazah or Semhazah.
Semjaza is one of the Watchers. His name means “gazes from the heavens.” Remember what their job was: to “watch over” mankind from up in heaven. These are members of something called the Divine Council of God who assist Him in ruling the world. We’ll see later that the Watchers are distributed across the world to each have their own sector to supervise, but that might have just been after the Tower of Babel incident. I’ll share more findings on that later, but it’s not super relevant here. So I’m just recapping, though, the Watchers here are supposed to remain up in heaven. They had a job to do up there. It was wrong for them to go down to earth to physically interact with women in this way, and they knew it.
Jude 6 speaks of this moment and says
And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—
Now, the eternal chains part hasn’t come yet at this point in Enoch, of course, but just focus on that first part. Jude says "the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling.” Jude is reading the same book of Enoch that we are right here.
Semjaza recognizes his descending as sinful. So as he comes up with this plan to descend to the earth, he says to his fellow rebel Watchers, “I’m afraid I’m gonna go down there and when I do, you all are gonna desert me and get me in trouble with God.” So he demands that they all promise to stick to the plan with him. And not just promise; it says they “bind themselves by mutual imprecations.” There’s something cosmically going on here that I don’t quite understand, but there is some meaning to this language of binding and loosing that forces spiritual beings to obey. This is why Jesus taught us to pray prayers of binding and loosing in Matthew 16.
So these fallen angels bind themselves to carry out the plan. Verse 5 again: Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it.

The Plan of the Watchers
Now, let’s finish up chapter 6. It’s going to tell us how many Watchers came down to earth to enact this plan. It’ll tell us where they came down. And it will tell us the names of 20 of the leaders of this gang. So get ready to hear a list of angel names. This will be kind of interesting as the Bible is often pretty silent on angel names, but Enoch gives us a lot of them.
Enoch 6:6-8 - 6. And they were in all two hundred; who descended ⌈in the days⌉ of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. 7. And these are the names of their leaders: [Semjaza], their leader, Arâkîba, Râmêêl, Kôkabîêl, Tâmîêl, Râmîêl, Dânêl, Êzêqêêl, Barâqîjâl, Asâêl [also known as Azazel], Armârôs, Batârêl, Anânêl, Zaqîêl, Samsâpêêl, Satarêl, Tûrêl, Jômjâêl, Sariêl. 8. These are their chiefs of tens.
So there are a couple of these threads that we’ll pick up on in future episodes, probably later this month: specifically, the days of Jared, and the significance of Mount Hermon. So put a pin in that for now because I’m not skipping over it; I’m just not focusing there today.
But notice that it said 200 angels. That’s how many Watchers descended and did this plan. Now, how many Watchers were there to begin with? Were there 200 total, so all 200 of God’s Watchers rebelled here? Possibly, but I doubt it. Were there thousands or millions of Watchers? Again, possible, but I doubt it.
My best guess is that 1/3 of the Watchers rebelled. I’m gonna guess that there were 600 Watchers or Sons of God, and that 200 of them decided to rebel.
When I say that, you probably think I’m referring to that verse in
Revelation 12:3-4, where it says
3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.
That verse basically speaks about how Satan has been able to seduce one-third of God’s angels into following him in rebellion. And that could possibly be referring to the events of Genesis 6.
But I also guess 1/3 because that actually points to a pattern we see repeatedly throughout Scripture: Satan corrupts 1 in 3.
Adam and Eve had three sons: Cain, Abel and Seth. Satan corrupted Cain.
Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japheth. Satan corrupted Ham.
When Satan filled the land of Canaan with Nephilim in the Old Testament, they had 33 kings, and Moses and Joshua defeated them all. I believe this is because 33 is a number that represents 1/3, because you actually see the number 33 show up in a lot of paganism and Satanic rituals. And I could go down a rabbit hole of examples, but I don’t want anyone out there getting paranoid about the number 33 and thinking that it’s cursed or something. No, it’s just a number. I’m just saying, it’s a number often associated with Satan’s corruption.
Now, Jesus was 33 when He became a curse for us and died on the cross. Some count 33 miracles of Jesus recorded across the four gospels. Coincidence? Does it imply that Jesus is undoing Satan’s corruption? No idea. I’m not teaching a doctrine, just pointing out a pattern I’ve noticed, and I don’t mean to distract from the point today; I’m simply explaining why I’m gonna assume that 1/3 of the Watchers rebelled. Enoch’s book doesn’t outright mention Satan, but I have no doubt he was sneaking around behind the scenes planting some of these ideas or inciting some of this- but Satan was also cunning enough to stay out of it.

Next Time
Now guys, I was afraid this would happen: I had a lot more to share today about the antediluvian world, but I’m running out of time for this week. So this will end up having to be a part 1. The other thing I wanted to get into was the forbidden knowledge that the Watchers shared with mankind. This will be described in Enoch chapters 7 and 8, and it will help contextualize a lot of other things in Scripture, so I can’t wait to get into that, but unfortunately, we just can’t today.
Make sure you’re subscribed so you can get future episodes! I think I’ll call next week’s episode: “Forbidden Knowledge of the Watchers.” It’s too much to just stick in the newsletter, so we’ll do a whole episode on it.
I do plan to have a newsletter this week, though, and I want to answer this question: some people reject the understanding of Genesis 6 that I’ve laid out today- the supernatural view of it- by pointing to Jesus’ words in
Mark 12:25
For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.
So many Christians will say that this quote from Jesus would disprove the Book of Enoch’s account of the Watchers, since He said angels don’t marry. So I would like to answer that question and look at Jesus’ words very carefully, and so I will release a short newsletter doing that this Sunday. If you’d like to receive the newsletter, you can click the link in the show notes. And if you find this episode later on, you can use that same link in the show notes to find an archive of past newsletters as well.
Shout out to Danny who is an official weirdo! I used to say that if you listen to at least 25, you must be pretty weird; but he said he’s listened to all 107 up to this point!
Anyone else who’s a weirdo and hasn’t let me know, please send me an email and I’d love to tell the world how weird you are.

Closing Thoughts
In closing today- and again, we aren’t closing this whole subject because I want to keep rolling on through with it next week- but in closing, I would like to address this statement from Jesus:
Matthew 24:36-39
36 “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. 37 For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, 39 and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.
What is Jesus saying with these words? Well, the most obvious way is this: Jesus is saying that when He returns someday- and this is a very plain New Testament doctrine, that Jesus is coming back- that when He does, there are going to be a lot of people who simply believe life is going to go on forever. They don’t believe the judgment of God is about to fall. There will still be people getting up in the morning, eating breakfast, going to work, making long-term plans, and so on. It doesn’t mean that there won’t be awful things going on around planet earth. It just means there will be many people who ignore the signs of the times and are in denial that God’s judgement is about to fall.
And so “as in the days of Noah” can be taken to mean exactly that: when the flood came, it caught a lot of people off-guard because they had no warning. Well, they did have a warning, but they refused to listen to the warnings. And so that might be all Jesus meant by that phrase; and I have no problem with that interpretation. I think that interpretation is obvious.
But is that all that Jesus meant with those words? Or was Jesus implying that things that happened in Noah’s day would also be happening in the end times? Things like spiritual beings descending to the earth, taking on various forms, and deceiving mankind?
I believe that could certainly be possible. There are other places that Scripture speaks of great signs in the heavens. Jesus Himself said in
Luke 21:11
there will be terrors and great signs from heaven.
I did an episode last fall about this: that the signs from heaven is this Greek word Phobetron, which can mean “the boogeyman,” or the idea of mythological beings- or perhaps beings who we thought were myth- descending from the skies.
Well, there’s a lot of debate right now about aliens and whether they could be real. Whether they could be trying to communicate with mankind. And I don’t believe in aliens in the traditional sense, but if beings like the Watchers decided to descend to the earth once again, we would probably think of them as aliens. Or if they can assume many different forms, perhaps they could assume an alien form. And it might not necessarily be grotesque, scaly beings like you see in a monster movie. They might be seductive and beautiful beings. Doesn’t Satan himself masquerade as an angel of light?
And speaking of Satan, there’s a prophecy given about the devil in Genesis 3. After Adam and Eve sinned, God said these words:
Genesis 3:15
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
    and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
    and you shall bruise his heel.”
The word “offspring” there is seed, but it means the same thing: an offspring; a descendant; a child. We all know the seed of the woman who would bruise or crush Satan’s head- that was Jesus. That part of the prophecy is 100% clear; not even really disputed.
But what about the seed of the serpent? Who is the offspring of the devil? Some have said that the Genesis 6 account of the Watchers coming down and mating with women was creating the seed of the serpent. And, that’s possible; but neither the book of Enoch nor the Bible give Satan any direct credit for this plan of the Watchers. Again, I’m sure he was involved somewhere behind the scenes; but he wasn’t the one mating with the women. So he hasn’t actually produced a “seed” or offspring yet. But I wonder: could he do so in the end times? There is a world ruler said to come on the scene in the end times who tries to wipe out all the Christians and Jews during the tribulation- a man known as the Antichrist? Could the Antichrist be the seed of Satan? And could the Antichrist’s creation be due to an event like what happened in the Days of Noah, or could he have some kind of DNA that’s been tampered with?
This is all speculation, and I’m not claiming anything today. I’m just sharing possibilities. And I’d say this: there’s been a lot of alien stuff in the news the past few years. It’s quite interesting. But I encourage you to look at all of these stories through a biblical lens and not believe just whatever the media says it is.
Joe, a listener from North Carolina, shared some of these thoughts after my recent episode on the Sky Monsters of Luke 21:
It's no coincidence that Roswell, the first modern UFO incident, occurred in 1947. … There were many end-time things that popped up around that time. 

Nuclear weapons were deployed in 1945. 

ENIAC, the first general purpose computer was unveiled in 1946

1947 had the
Roswell UFO incident
1947 Flying Disc Craze
The CIA was formed

And, of course, Israel became a nation again in 1948. You could say that Israel was a major prophetic event that showed us we could be at the end times.
And I’ll mention one more thing that happened around that time: the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in Qumran in 1947- a collection of ancient writings including much of the Old Testament AND the Book of Enoch, which we studied here today.
The Book of Enoch was lost to the world for much of church history, and it’s only in the past 75 years or so that it’s really had a major comeback. And an interesting thing about that is that Enoch- though he lived in the antediluvian time at the beginning of the world, said he was writing to the generation who would see the end of the world. And that might just be us, as his book has really just been restored to the church here in our generation.
And if the world hasn’t ended by this time next week, we’ll be here again to study Enoch’s book some more. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.