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The Book of Enoch · The Parables & the Dream Visions

Wisdom went lookingfor somewhere to live.

The second half of Enoch's journey: a courtroom where gold buys nothing, the two oldest animals in the world, a boy who dreamed the flood generations before it came, and the whole history of the world walking past as livestock. Every scene below is a real frame from our animated film.

Real film frames 1 Enoch 37–82 Scroll to begin
Scroll to begin
A face made only of light — and beside it, a man Enoch has no idea what he is looking at He is shown who this is, and what he is for And an old shepherd starts crying
Scene IThe One Beside the Ancient of Days

He is taken up again, and this time what he is shown is a person. Beside the Head of Days — the figure whose face is only light — there is someone with a face you could actually look at. The Chosen One. The Righteous One. The one, Enoch is told, who was named before the sun and the stars were made. And the old shepherd standing there looking up at him simply starts to cry. Daniel 7 : 9–14

A ring held out in a jewelled hand And a warlord finding out what it is worth
Scene IIWhat the Kings Bring

Then a courtroom, and the people brought into it are the ones who never expected to stand in one: the kings, the landowners, the men with private armies. One of them holds out a gold ring, because that has always worked before. Another — scarred, armoured, enormous — simply runs out of things to say. Nothing they are holding is currency here, and they can all feel it at the same moment. Daniel 7 : 26

And then the other half of the room An old woman, laughing, in the light
Scene IIIThe Ones Who Waited

And then, at the other end of the room — people who are not kings at all. An old woman in a plain white shawl comes up into the light with her arms out, and she is laughing — properly laughing, head back — because whatever she was told would happen has just happened. Nobody wrote her name down. She was right anyway. Daniel 7 : 27

Mountains of iron and steel, standing above the cloud And then running downhill, like wax off a candle
Scene IVThe Mountains Go Soft

There is an image here that has never left anyone who read it. Enoch is shown mountains of iron, copper, silver and gold — everything the world has ever measured itself in, standing up hard and cold above the cloud. And then they go soft. They run downhill in front of the Chosen One like wax off a candle, and there is nothing left to weigh anything against. Daniel 7 : 10

Something enormous, lit from inside, in deep water Leviathan — the female, who lives in the sea
Scene VLeviathan

And then, without much warning, the book goes somewhere else entirely and shows him the two oldest animals there are. Leviathan first: a vast blue thing lit from inside like deep water at night, coiling away into the dark with an eye the size of a doorway. She lives in the abysses of the ocean, Enoch is told, and she has been there since long before there were people to be frightened of her. Job 41 : 1

He turns round, and has to look up Behemoth — with pine trees growing on his back
Scene VIBehemoth

And Behemoth on the land: a creature so old that the hills have grown over him, standing on a clifftop above the cloud with whole pine forests on his back and moss hanging off his jaw. There is a human figure at the bottom of that shot and you have to hunt for it. This is the one moment in the book where Enoch is shown something enormous that is not there to judge anybody. It is just very, very old. Job 40 : 15

She goes down and knocks at a door One small light, moving through a sleeping village Something else comes out of a doorway instead And she goes back up, and the street stays dark
Scene VIIWisdom Could Not Find a House

Then the passage everybody remembers. Wisdom came down to live among people, and went from door to door looking for somewhere to stay — one small light moving through a village at night — and not one house would have her. So she went back up and took her seat among the angels. And out of a doorway behind her something dark came pouring along the ground, and found a home immediately. Proverbs 1 : 20–24

Wisdom found no place where she might dwell.

Interlude · Your turn

One small light is looking for somewhere to stay. Knock for her.

Tap each dark doorway in the sleeping village.

A black wall of water, standing over the hills He is a child when he sees it
Scene VIIIThe Boy Who Dreamed the Flood

And then the book does something unexpected: it goes backwards, to when Enoch was a boy who had not married yet, and shows the first thing he ever saw. Hills at night, and standing over them a wall of black water reaching the sky. He wakes up with his hands out in front of him. He is about nine years old and he has just dreamed the end of the world. Genesis 6 : 11–13

There is a hand on his shoulder before he is properly awake His grandfather does not tell him it was nothing So the boy goes outside, on his own And asks for it not to happen
Scene IXHis Grandfather Tells Him to Pray

His grandfather Mahalalel comes, and does the thing that makes this scene: he does not tell the child it was only a dream. He takes the boy's head in both hands and tells him it was real, and that he should go and pray that a remnant might be left. So a small boy walks out onto a dark hillside by himself, under a sky absolutely full of stars, and puts his arms up. Genesis 6 : 8

The second dream comes as a painting A white herd, a black one, and something red on the ground Every nation walks through it as an animal And most of them do not get up again
Scene XA White Bull, and a Red One

The second dream arrives in a completely different style — painted, not filmed — because it is all symbol. The whole history of the world walks past as livestock. A white bull, and out of him a herd; then a black one, and a small red shape left lying on the ground between them that anybody who has read Genesis will recognise immediately. Nobody has to explain it. Genesis 4 : 8

A white bull becomes a man, and makes a vessel And the painted sea takes everything else Afterwards there are sheep, and things watching the sheep And a sea that opens for them, in folded paint
Scene XIOne of Them Builds a Boat

One of the white bulls becomes a man and builds a vessel, and the flood comes through the painting as flat grey water with one boat on it. What is left afterwards is a flock of sheep — and wolves at the edges of the field, and a shepherd on a ridge a long way off. Then the sea stands open for the sheep in two curling walls, and you realise you are watching Exodus told in wool. Genesis 7 : 17–23

The whole vision is a book somebody is writing With a light at the middle of the page And at the end of it, a white bull is born And everything that was any other colour turns white
Scene XIIAnd They All Turn White

And the vision ends the way you would not expect a book this dark to end. A white bull is born, and the animals gather round it — black, grey, horned, wild, all of them — and one by one they change colour, until the whole field to the horizon is white. Everything that was ever driven off or hunted or lost is standing there. Not one of them is left out. Isaiah 11 : 6–9

All that had been scattered were made white.

He comes back to a lamplit room and his family The children have been waiting And he pushes a wooden chest across the table Methuselah understands what it means
Scene XIIIWrite It Down for the Far-Off Generation

Then he is back — in a low room, with a lamp, and a granddaughter holding his hands and looking at him carefully, and children sitting on the floor who have clearly been waiting a while. And he does the practical thing. He puts everything he has been shown into a wooden chest and pushes it across the table to his son, and tells him it is not for now. It is for people who have not been born. Jude 1 : 14

The whole family, at sunset, sitting round him Children who will tell this to their own children One hand on one bowed head And then everybody's
Scene XIVThe Blessing

And the last thing in this half of the book is not a vision at all. It is an old man sitting outside at sunset with his entire family round him — sons, daughters, grandchildren, neighbours — putting his hand on one bowed head after another. He has seen the throne, the prison of the stars, Behemoth and the end of the world. This is the part he seems most pleased about. Hebrews 11 : 5

After the story

One small light, going door to door. And every door shut.

1 Enoch 42 is four verses long and it is the passage nobody forgets. Wisdom came down to make her home among people, went looking for somewhere to stay, and found nothing — so she went back and sat down among the angels, and unrighteousness came out of its chambers and took the room she could not get. It is given no speech and no explanation at all. Just a village at night from above, one moving point of light, a series of closed doors, and then the light lifting away over the rooftops while a black shape spills out of a doorway along the ground and settles in. Four verses. Thirty seconds. It is the best thing in the book and it is over before you have braced for it.

An enormous stone creature with pine forests growing on its back standing on a clifftop above the clouds A glowing white bull in a painted style surrounded by cattle of many colours turning towards it
Behemoth, who is not there to judge anybody — and the white bull the whole vision was heading for.

Voices of the vision · hover or tap to turn

The Chosen One The Chosen One

"There came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days."

— Daniel 7:13
The Kings The Kings

"The judgment will be set, and they will take away his dominion."

— Daniel 7:26
Wisdom Wisdom

"Wisdom found no place where she might dwell; then a dwelling-place was assigned her in the heavens."

— 1 Enoch 42:1

The Book of Enoch

How closely were you watching?

1. What do the kings offer in the judgment scene?

2. What happens to the mountains of iron, gold and silver?

3. What does Wisdom do when no one will take her in?

4. How does the dream of the animals end?

What this story teaches

Gold stops working.

The kings and the mighty are shown holding out the one thing that has never failed them, and being quietly told it is not currency here. The old woman with nothing is the one laughing.

"The judgment was set. The books were opened." Daniel 7:10

Wisdom needs to be let in.

She does not force a door anywhere in the passage. She knocks, she is refused, and she leaves — and something else moves into the space she was offered and not given.

"Wisdom went forth to make her dwelling among the children of men, and found no dwelling-place." 1 Enoch 42:2

The vision ends in a field, not a courtroom.

After every judgment scene in the book, the last image of the dream is every animal that was ever hunted or scattered standing white in one field. Not one of them left out.

"The kingdom and the dominion… will be given to the people of the saints of the Most High." Daniel 7:27
Read the scripture itself. Daniel 7 and Jude · World English Bible

Daniel 7

1In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel had a dream and visions of his head on his bed. Then he wrote the dream and told the sum of the matters.

2Daniel spoke and said, “I saw in my vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the sky broke out on the great sea.

3Four great animals came up from the sea, different from one another.

4“The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings. I watched until its wings were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made to stand on two feet as a man. A man’s heart was given to it.

5“Behold, there was another animal, a second, like a bear. It was raised up on one side, and three ribs were in its mouth between its teeth. They said this to it: ‘Arise! Devour much flesh!’

6“After this I saw, and behold, another, like a leopard, which had on its back four wings of a bird. The animal also had four heads; and dominion was given to it.

7“After this I saw in the night visions, and, behold, there was a fourth animal, awesome and powerful, and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth. It devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped the residue with its feet. It was different than all the animals that were before it. It had ten horns.

8“I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another horn, a little one, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots: and behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things.

9“I watched until thrones were placed, and one who was ancient of days sat. His clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool. His throne was fiery flames, and its wheels burning fire.

10A fiery stream issued and came out from before him. Thousands of thousands ministered to him. Ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. The judgment was set. The books were opened.

11“I watched at that time because of the voice of the great words which the horn spoke. I watched even until the animal was slain, and its body destroyed, and it was given to be burned with fire.

12As for the rest of the animals, their dominion was taken away; yet their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.

13“I saw in the night visions, and behold, there came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man, and he came even to the ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.

14Dominion was given him, and glory, and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which will not pass away, and his kingdom that which will not be destroyed.

15“As for me, Daniel, my spirit was grieved within my body, and the visions of my head troubled me.

16I came near to one of those who stood by, and asked him the truth concerning all this. “So he told me, and made me know the interpretation of the things.

17‘These great animals, which are four, are four kings, who will arise out of the earth.

18But the saints of the Most High will receive the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever.’

19“Then I desired to know the truth concerning the fourth animal, which was different than all of them, exceedingly terrible, whose teeth were of iron, and its nails of brass; which devoured, broke in pieces, and stamped the residue with its feet;

20and concerning the ten horns that were on its head, and the other horn which came up, and before which three fell, even that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spoke great things, whose look was more stout than its fellows.

21I saw, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them,

22until the ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High, and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.

23“Thus he said, ‘The fourth animal will be a fourth kingdom on earth, which will be different than all the kingdoms, and will devour the whole earth, and will tread it down, and break it in pieces.

24As for the ten horns, ten kings will arise out of this kingdom. Another will arise after them; and he will be different than the former, and he will put down three kings.

25He will speak words against the Most High, and will wear out the saints of the Most High. He will plan to change the times and the law; and they will be given into his hand until a time and times and half a time.

26“‘But the judgment will be set, and they will take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it to the end.

27The kingdom and the dominion, and the greatness of the kingdoms under the whole sky, will be given to the people of the saints of the Most High. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions will serve and obey him.’

28“Here is the end of the matter. As for me, Daniel, my thoughts much troubled me, and my face was changed in me; but I kept the matter in my heart.”

Jude 1 : 14–25

14About these also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones,

15to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

16These are murmurers and complainers, walking after their lusts (and their mouth speaks proud things), showing respect of persons to gain advantage.

17But you, beloved, remember the words which have been spoken before by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.

18They said to you that “In the last time there will be mockers, walking after their own ungodly lusts.”

19These are they who cause divisions, and are sensual, not having the Spirit.

20But you, beloved, keep building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit.

21Keep yourselves in God’s love, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.

22On some have compassion, making a distinction,

23and some save, snatching them out of the fire with fear, hating even the clothing stained by the flesh.

24Now to him who is able to keep them from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory in great joy,

25to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.

World English Bible (WEB) — a public-domain modern English translation. Read it freely, share it freely.

NEXT IN THE BOOK OF ENOCH

He was walking, and then he wasn't.

A child born with white hair and eyes that light the room, a family who think something has gone terribly wrong, and a hilltop with nothing left on it but a staff and a bag.

Read the episode ›

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