Related tradition
Angels held for judgement
Enoch describes the binding of rebellious heavenly beings and their future judgement. Second Peter places sinful angels, the Flood and the rescue of the righteous in a sequence of examples about judgement and deliverance.
Read these as distinct passages with their own references. The columns compare a relationship between works; they do not align equivalent verses or highlight translation differences.
Ethiopian collection
R. H. Charles
1 Enoch 10:4–14
4 And again the Lord said to Raphael: ‘Bind Azâzêl hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness: and make an opening in the desert, which is in Dûdâêl, and cast him therein.
5 And place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there for ever, and cover his face that he may not see light.
6 And on the day of the great judgement he shall be cast into the fire.
7 And heal the earth which the angels have corrupted, and proclaim the healing of the earth, that they may heal the plague, and that all the children of men may not perish through all the secret things that the Watchers have disclosed and have taught their sons.
8 And the whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azâzêl: to him ascribe all sin.’
9 And to Gabriel said the Lord: ‘Proceed against the bastards and the reprobates, and against the children of fornication: and destroy [the children of fornication and] the children of the Watchers from amongst men: [and cause them to go forth]: send them one against the other that they may destroy each other in battle: for length of days shall they not have.
10 And no request that they (i. e. their fathers) make of thee shall be granted unto their fathers on their behalf; for they hope to live an eternal life, and that each one of them will live five hundred years.’
11 And the Lord said unto Michael: ‘Go, bind Semjâzâ and his associates who have united themselves with women so as to have defiled themselves with them in all their uncleanness.
12 And, when their sons have slain one another, and they have seen the destruction of their beloved ones, bind them fast for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth, till the day of their judgement and of their consummation, till the judgement that is for ever and ever is consummated.
13 In those days they shall be led off to the abyss of fire: ‹and› to the torment and the prison in which they shall be confined for ever.
14 And whosoever shall be condemned and destroyed will from thenceforth be bound together with them to the end of all generations.
Biblical passage
World English Bible
2 Peter 2:4–9
4 For if God didn't spare angels when they sinned, but cast them down to Tartarus, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved to judgment;
5 and didn't spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood on the world of the ungodly;
6 and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly;
7 and delivered righteous Lot, who was very distressed by the lustful life of the wicked
8 (for that righteous man dwelling among them, was tormented in his righteous soul from day to day with seeing and hearing lawless deeds):
9 the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment;
Editorial reading aids
Context for the comparison
This pairing identifies shared subject matter; it is not labelled a direct quotation. Read Jude 1:6 alongside it for another New Testament reference to angels kept for judgement.
Questions for close reading
- What is the relationship between present confinement and future judgement?
- How does Second Peter use the examples to address its readers?
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Text sources and editorial treatment
R. H. Charles's translation, reprinted in 1917 from his 1912 edition. Public-domain translation text, transcribed by Project Gutenberg. We retain his textual brackets and uncertainty marks, join poetry into verse paragraphs, omit editorial headings and footnotes, and arrange verses by their reference numbers. Where chapters 22, 27 and 32 print Ethiopic and Greek readings side by side, this reader uses the Ethiopic column. Lettered subverse portions are grouped under their verse number, with their labels retained. The misprinted second label 5 in chapter 60 is restored to 25, following Charles's 1913 edition. This historic scholarly edition is not an official English translation of the Ethiopian Church. See the source for the critical notes and typographic distinctions.
Charles's Enoch: edition and full source · About World English Bible and the other Bible editions
Each panel displays the stored source text without rewriting it to resemble the other passage. Verse labels belong to that edition. The observations above describe these selected passages; they are not ancient text or a claim that all scholarly interpretations agree.