3 Enoch

Odeberg1928 source English page 366

158 THE HEBREW BOOK OF ENOCH [CH. זזש זא‎ (A) Moses and Samuel stood before me” (Is. Ixiii. 5): ‘‘Mine own arm brought salvation unto me”. / (3) 12Said the Holy One, blessed be He in that hour: “‘ How long shall I wait for the children of men! to work salvation according to their righteousness “for my arm“? F or my own sake and for the sake of my merit and righteousness will I deliver my arm and 15 1015 redeem my children from among the nations of the world. As it is written (Is. xlviii. 11): ‘‘ For my own sake will I do it. For | how should my name be profaned”’. (9) In that moment will the Holy One, blessed be He, reveal His Great Arm and show it to the nations of the world: for its length is as the length of the world 1% and its breadth is as the width of the world, And the appearance of its splendour is like unto the splendour of the sunshine in its might, in the summer solstice. (10) Forthwith Israel will be saved from among ™the nations of the world!”. And Messiah will appear unto them and He 12-12 E: ‘The Holy One, blessed be He, will say (in that hour)’ 13-13 1: ‘my children’ 14-14 so E. A: ‘as my arm’ 15-15 2 om. 16 E adds: ‘from one end of the world to the other’ 17-17 ₪: ‘them’ (8) How long shall I wait for the children of men (Z: my children) to work = salvation according to their righteousness. The salvation was ideally to be brought about by the righteousness and merits of Israel (in particular by their proclaiming His sovereignty every day in their prayers), but in the present lack of righteousness in Israel God will depend only on His own merit and righteousness. The expression, ‘how long shall I wait for my children to work salvation’, shows that ‘the righteous and pious man’ (vs. 5) of whose total absence from within Israel the writer is conscious does not refer to a desired leader—in spite of the fact that Moses and Samuel are chosen as examples of righteous intercessors—but to a whole class of saintly men whose prayers and intercessions would have had the effect of drawing the Shekina and with it the Kingdom of Heaven down to earth again. ‘The symbolical expression, ‘the Right Hand’ of the Holy One, is in vss. 6-10 changed into that of ‘God’s Arm’. 'To the writer these two terms are apparently synonymous, since already, vs. 3, the ‘arm of the Lord’ in Is. li. 9 and ‘ His glorious arm’ in Is. lxili. 12, are made to refer to ‘the Great Right Hand’ of God. The variance of expressions is merely a reflection of the phraseology of the scriptural passages referred to in the fragment. / (9) In that moment will the Holy One, blessed be He, reveal His Great Arm and show it to the nations of the world. The scriptural basis for this statement 15 given at the end of the following verse (Is. lii. 10): “The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations”. The revelation of the Arm is the revelation of the Kingdom but at the same time the Arm is the instrument for the realization of the Kingdom on earth. its length is as the length of the world etc. Cf. ch. xxxii: God’s sword ‘like a lightning from one end of the world to the other’. _ (so), Forthwith Israel will be saved from among the nations of the world— 1.6. Israel’s dominion will be established. And Messiah will appear unto them and He will bring them up to Jerusalem. In contrast with ch. xlv. 5 this fragment apparently knows only one Messiah, the