The Book of Enoch answers an important question: Should we expect God to stop wrongs being done to the innocent? We might think God should always intervene when wrongdoing is about to happen. Or would that be oppressive? You might be kept in chains from birth. So might I. We could be prevented from doing wrong which in our cases could mean being pretty much prevented from doing anything. In extremes the Book of Enoch tells us that God does do that, such as with Azazel and other fallen angels, kept bound in chains for thousands of years because they had a record of abusing their powers as angels back around 3500 BC. God uses proportionate measures in dealing with things. This intervention involved sending angels to capture the angels who were abusing the trust they were given. An angel had led others into taking human girls as wives, against God’s purposes for angels. The fallen Azazel, the leader of the fall of angels, was bound under rocks. An immortal was buried alive, it seems, and has been kept like that for thousands of years. Should God resort to this all the time? With humans it would be different. Humans die. Wait a few decades and a human serious offender will be gone from the land of the living. Then they are kept in one of four different places depending how they lived and whether they already received justice. Heaven has only to wait. Yet the innocent suffer. So God lets things happen in some circumstances, but in His sovereign will may intervene if a limit of tolerability is reached and prayers of anguish reach God’s throne. Those suffering can be compensated in the appropriate place for it after death. There is of course an implicit requirement that the victims do not themselves become the wrongdoers, otherwise they would have the same end as those who did wrong to them.
Jesus has in more recent history confirmed this teaching of Enoch by first the testimonies given by Jesus about the importance of knowing Enoch’s teachings regarding angels, adding more clarity about the resurrection making humans like angels, but also Jesus spoke a similar teaching in the story of ‘the rich man and Lazarus’. The poor beggar Lazarus suffered neglect and indifference from a rich neighbour but after both died, Lazarus went to a place for comfort of his soul after death, while the rich man was tormented after death. Lazarus had suffered long in poverty and pain but had not himself become a doer of wrong like the selfish, neglectful rich man. So Jesus confirmed Enoch’s teachings we find in the Book of Enoch.
