Two angels told God not to create humanity. When the generation of the flood proved them right, Shemhazai and Azael stood before God and reminded Him: "Did we not say, 'Do not create man'?" God answered with a challenge. "If you lived on earth, the evil inclination would sway you just as it sways humans—and you would be even more stubborn." The angels insisted. "Let us descend, and You will see how we sanctify Your name." According to the Chronicles of Jerahmeel, a 12th-century Hebrew chronicle translated by undefined Gaster in 1899, God let them go.
They failed immediately. The moment Shemhazai and Azael beheld the daughters of men, they could not restrain themselves. But one woman outsmarted them. A girl named Estirah refused Shemhazai unless he taught her the Ineffable Name of God. He did. She spoke the Name and ascended straight to heaven. God said, "Since she has departed from sin, set her among the stars." She became the brightest star in the Pleiades.
After that humiliation, both angels took wives and fathered children. Shemhazai's sons, Heyya and Aheyya, were giants—each consumed a thousand camels, a thousand horses, and a thousand oxen daily. Azael became chief over all cosmetics and ornaments used to entice men to sin. When God sent Metatron to warn Shemhazai that a flood was coming, Shemhazai wept for his children.
His sons dreamed prophetic dreams. One saw a great stone tablet covered in writing, and an angel descended to erase everything except one line with four words. The other saw a garden of trees, and an angel chopped them all down except one tree with three branches. Shemhazai interpreted both: the world would be destroyed, leaving only one man and his three sons. He comforted his children with a strange promise—their names would live forever, because whenever people lift heavy burdens, they groan "Heyya! Aheyya!" Shemhazai himself repented and hung suspended between heaven and earth, head downward, too ashamed to face God. Azael never repented. He became the Azazel of the Day of Atonement—the one onto whom Israel's sins were cast.