It involves fallen angels, forbidden knowledge, and a whole lot of trouble.
This isn't just a story of two rogue angels, Shemhazai and Azazel. According to some accounts, like the one we find in the Book of Enoch, Shemhazai was actually the leader of a whole crew, a posse if you will, of two hundred angels known as the Watchers. These weren’t just any angels, mind you. They were a high order, beings who never even needed to sleep! Imagine the kind of heavenly secrets they held.
The story goes that these Watchers descended to the summit of Mount Hermon. There, they made a solemn oath, binding themselves together in their mission, whatever that was about to become. But something went wrong. Terribly wrong. As the angels fell from their holy state, they were diminished, lessened in both stature and strength. Their very essence changed; their fiery, ethereal forms became flesh, making them susceptible to earthly temptations.
At first, it seems, they had good intentions. The fallen angels initially aimed to instruct humanity in the ways of righteousness. But then, they saw the daughters of men. And, well, things took a turn. Lust took hold, and they chose wives from among these women. The result of these unions? Giants. Literal giants roamed the earth, born of angel and human.
But the transgressions didn't stop there. Each of these angels, not just Shemhazai and Azazel, began to reveal secrets of heaven. They taught humanity charms and enchantments, incantations, and the knowledge of how to cut roots for magical purposes. They divulged the secrets of astrology and how to read signs. As we find in the Book of Jubilees (5:1-13) and 1 Enoch (6-14), the world was changing, and not for the better.
They even taught men the art of working metal to make weapons, and, perhaps even more destructively, they taught women how to make themselves desirable to men. It was a complete and utter breakdown of the natural order. And these angels, they sinned with anyone they desired – men, women, beasts, it didn't matter. As a result, everything on earth became corrupted.
Think of it as a kind of ancient, celestial version of the story of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods. This legend of the fallen angels is, in many ways, the primary Promethean myth in Judaism. The angels weren't just divulging dark secrets of heaven; they were revealing secrets of the natural universe, things that God, for whatever reason, had never intended for humans to know!
The situation became so dire that God had to intervene. He ordered these fallen angels to be rooted out and bound in chains in the depths of the earth. According to the story, the archangels Uriel and Raphael went to God and reported the sins of the fallen ones. Then, God gave his orders: Raphael was instructed to bind Azazel hand and foot and cast him into a canyon in the desert of Dudael, covering him with darkness until the Day of Judgment, when he would be cast into the fire. And Michael was told to bind Shemhazai and his associates, holding them fast for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth until the Day of Judgment, when they would be led to the fiery abyss and tormented forever.
Now, there are different versions of this tale. Some say that Shemhazai and Azazel alone assumed human form when they descended, with the other fallen angels taking the form of he-goats as their mounts. But regardless, the end result is the same: they were all cast into an abyss, where they remain imprisoned until the end of time.
What about the women who went astray with these fallen angels? 1 Enoch (19:2) offers a chilling detail: they were transformed into sirens. It's a rare reference in a Jewish text to the sirens of Greek mythology, those alluring, dangerous creatures of the sea.
This whole episode, according to 1 Enoch (6:6), is said to have taken place in the days of Jared, the father of Enoch. So, this myth of the fallen angels is set in the generation just before Enoch, making it an integral part of his own story.
This story, with its themes of forbidden knowledge, lust, and divine punishment, continues to resonate. It makes you wonder about the nature of free will, the dangers of unchecked curiosity, and the price we pay for seeking knowledge that might be beyond our capacity to handle. What do you think? Are there some things humanity is better off not knowing?