Watchers

NOTES:

Heiser, Michael S.. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. Lexham Press. Kindle Edition.

D aniel 4 is the only biblical passage to specifically use the term watcher to describe the divine “ holy ones” of Yahweh’s council.11 The geographical context of Daniel is of course Babylon (Dan 1:1 – 7), which is in Mesopotamia. The offspring of the Watchers (sons of God) in 1 Enoch were giants (1 Enoch 7).

T he most startling of these is known today by scholars as The Book of Giants. It exists only in fragments, but names of several giants, offspring of the Watchers, have survived. One of the names is Gilgamesh, the main character of the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh.

20 Mapped Links

↑ Heavenly Beings
→ Adversary of YHWH
→ Angel
→ Anti-Christ
→ Ashtaroth
→ Baal
→ Cheribum
→ Demon
→ Elohim
→ Luminaries
→ Messenger
→ Molech
→ Nephilim
→ Seraphim
→ Sons of God
→ Spiritual Beings
→ Stars
→ With YHWH

← W

↓ Azazel

3 Unlinked Mentions

• BP: Noah to Abraham Class
• For all this, see Michael Heiser, Reversing Hermon, ch. 3, and Amar Annus, “On the Origin of the Watchers: A Comparative Study of the Antedeluvian Wisdom in Meso potamian and Jewish Traditions,” in Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha (vol. 19.4, 2010), pp. 277-320.
  • The reason Genesis 6:1-4 is in the Bible is because the writer sought to target the deeply held religious beliefs of Mesopotamia, and, most pointed ly, the myth of Babylonian superiority … “These accounts of the [pre-flood] history in ancient Mesopotamian and Jewish sources should be regarded as results of ancient debates. Not only direct borrowings took place, but also creative interpretations, especially on the Jewish side... [T]hese were deliberate inversions of Mesopotamian traditions. The Jewish authors often inverted the Mesopotamian myths, with the intention of showing the superi ority of their own cultural foundations …” The point was to turn the Mesopo tamian belief system on its head, to make sure that Israelites and Jewish readers would know that what happened between the sons of God and the daughters of humankind was not something the bettered humanity. It was the opposite—a transgression of heaven and earth that would corrupt humankind and produce a lineage that would later become a threat to the very existence of Israel, Yahweh’s people and portion. — MICHAEL HEISER, REVERSING HERMON, PP. 49-51, WITH EMBEDDED QUOTE FROM AMAR ANNUS, “ON THE ORIGIN OF THE WATCHERS.”
• Heavenly Beings
• Watcher - Ir; watches what is going on or whatever they are tasked to watch. Daniel 4:24; member of the court, higher than an “angel”; term used to translate sons of god.