The fourth heaven was a machine.
The angels carried Enoch upward and showed him the workings of the sun and moon — not as distant lights in the sky, but as colossal engines of fire and gold, driven by angels, running on wheels, passing through gates of enormous size.
The sun's light was greater than the moon's. Its wheel spun ceaselessly, fast as wind, and it never rested — not by day, not by night. Four great stars flanked it on the right, four more on the left, each commanding a thousand lesser stars beneath it. Eight thousand stars in total, issuing alongside the sun in an endless procession of light.
By day, fifteen myriads of angels attended the sun. By night, a thousand. Six-winged angels flew before the sun's wheel into fiery flames, and one hundred angels kindled the sun each morning and set it ablaze.
Then Enoch saw the creatures. The Phoenixes and the Chalkydri — marvellous beings with feet and tails like lions, heads like crocodiles, and skin that shimmered purple like the rainbow. Each was nine hundred measures in size, with twelve wings like an angel's wings. They attended the sun, bearing heat and dew as God commanded them.
The angels brought Enoch to the eastern gates — six gates through which the sun emerged each day, each gate sixty-one and a quarter stadia wide. He measured them himself. He watched the sun pass through according to the seasons, the months, the circuit of the year. Then the western gates, six more, where the sun descended and hid its brightness beneath the earth. Four hundred angels guarded the sun's crown while it traveled underground for seven hours each night.
At the eighth hour of the night, the sun returned to the east. The Phoenixes and Chalkydri burst into song. Every bird on earth fluttered its wings, rejoicing at the giver of light. Morning broke at God's command.
Then they showed him the moon — twelve great gates, crowned from west to east, through which it traveled on its own slower circuit. The solar year: three hundred sixty-five and a quarter days. The lunar year: three hundred fifty-four. Twelve days separated them — the lunar epacts that ancient astronomers would spend centuries trying to reconcile.
And in the midst of the heavens, Enoch heard armed angelic soldiers singing with instruments — drums and organs and voices so sweet, so layered, so unlike anything on earth, that he could not describe them. He could only listen, astonished, as the music of the fourth heaven washed over him.