Who are the "Watchers" in Jewish Literature?

Uncovering the Mystery of Fallen Angels

Photo by Gavin Allanwood on Unsplash

When you think of the origins of “evil” into the world, many scriptural texts and Jewish traditions refer to the disobedience of Adam and Eve, obviously rehearsing Genesis 3.

This is why you read in scriptural and extra-biblical texts stuff like:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned (Rom 5.12)

O Adam, what have you done? For though it was you who sinned, the fall was not yours alone, but ours also who are your descendants.  (4 Ezra 7.118).

For, although Adam sinned first and has brought death upon all who were not in his own time, yet each of them has been born from him has prepared for himself the coming torment.  (2 Baruch 54.15).

But for many Jewish authors, when they thought about the origins of evil, it was not Genesis 3 they had in mind, but Genesis 6!

When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair, and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the Lord said, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown. (Genesis 6.1-4).

This is why in Revelation 12, the chief problem that the church faces is not Adamic sin, but angelic rebellion! It is an evil angel, Satan, who is effectively the puppet master behind the Roman empire!

A whole tradition of interpretation, speculation, and imagination grew around these “sons of god” in Genesis 6, who are also called “Watchers,” Irin in Aramaic and egrēgoros in Greek.

So who are these “Watchers”?

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Angels, Good and Bad

In Jewish angelology, the "Watchers" refer to angels given such a name because they are perpetually vigilant, observing God and observing for God, and they never sleep.

They are also associated with fallen angels, fallen in the cosmological sense of descending from heaven to earth, but also morally falling in rejecting their place in heaven, for having sexual relations with women, or refusing to worship the divine image in Adam.

In many texts, it is these Watchers who are responsible for the intrusion of evil. When God is alerted by archangels as to what these fallen Watchers have done, had sexual relations with women etc., they are sentenced to divine judgment.

Precisely what is stated in Jude 6:

 And the angels who did not keep their own position but deserted their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains in deepest darkness for the judgment of the great day.

The most detailed description of the fallen Watchers comes in a composite text called 1 Enoch where there is the “Book of Watchers” (chapters 1-39). This Book, which Jude cited and may have influenced the angelology of the New Testament, begins with Enoch's prophecy of judgment on the wicked and blessings for the righteous. It then describes the fall of the Watchers, angelic beings who lusted after human women and descended to Earth. Following Genesis 6, these Watchers fathered giant offspring called Nephilim and taught humans forbidden knowledge. As a direct result, God sends the archangels to punish the Watchers and their children. The archangel Michael is instructed to bind the Watchers for 70 generations until the final judgment. The text then recounts Enoch's heavenly journeys, where he witnesses the punishments of fallen angels and explores various cosmic realms.

If Genesis 6 is about bad “Watchers,” then there are good “Watchers” elsewhere. One reads in Daniel:

I continued looking, in the visions of my head as I lay in bed, and there was a holy watcher, coming down from heaven. (Daniel 4.13).

The sentence is rendered by decree of the watchers, the decision is given by order of the holy ones, in order that all who live may know that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdom of mortals; he gives it to whom he will and sets over it the lowliest of human beings (Daniel 4.17).

Similarly, in the Book of Jubilees, the Watchers are angels sent to instruct the righteous, so the picture of them is not uniformly bad.

Where did the Watcher Tradition Come From?

Scholars see many parallels between the Watchers and angels, demons, and spirits found in ancient Near Eastern narratives and Hellenistic mythology. Debate occurs on whether the Watcher tradition grew organically from Genesis 6 or was spliced and supplemented with external influences.

I surmise that the Watchers reflect a broad ancient worldview, where divine beings had significant influence over earthly affairs, for good or for ill. The Watchers can be simply celestial beings, divine messengers, yet they are elsewhere portrayed as heavenly beings who, despite their original purpose, became corrupt and contributed to humanity's moral decline. Or else, they are divine beings overstepping their boundaries and are destined for a retribution which is bound up with divine justice and the eventual restoration of created order.

In a nutshell, the Watchers are celestial beings most notably associated with “theodicy,” explaining why God’s good world has been intruded upon by evil. The answer: the Watchers did it!

Further Reading

Loren Stuckenbruck, The Myth of Rebellious Angels: Studies in Second Temple Judaism and New Testament Texts.

Michael Heiser, Angels: What the Bible Really Says About God's Heavenly Host

George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation.