Enoch and the Mosaic Torah- The Evidence of Jubilees

Eschatological Impulses in Jubilees

III. God's Message to Moses at Sinai (1:40-29)

Moses' sojourn of forty days and nights at Mount Sinai forms the scene of

the first eschatological passage. During this time the Lord showed to him all

that had happened before, and what would happen in the future; all these

events were related to the division of all the times, both of the law and of the

testimony (v. 4). God ordered Moses to pay careful attention to all the words

revealed to him on this holy mountain, so that he could write them all down

in a book. This record can be used to educate their offspring on this fact:

God has not abandoned them because of all their "straying from the cove

nant" between God and them. So the covenant they are making this very day

on Mount Sinai (v. 5) will not be a vehicle for their destruction but will help

them to see that the Lord is more faithful to them than they are to him; in

deed, the Lord has remained present to them (v. 6). The message follows a

typical pattern, known from Deuteronomic writings: sin, punishment, re

turning to God, saving acts of God.^15

Sin (17-u)

God already knew the people's stubbornness before he brought them into

the land of promise, a land of "milk and honey" (v. 7). But this people will

still commit sin. They will turn to strange gods who cannot deliver them

(v. 8) and they will forget all of God's commandments, follow the ways of

Gentiles, and serve the Gentiles' gods (v. 9).^16 As a result, they will suffer

greatly: many among this people will be taken captive and will perish be

cause they forsook their covenant with God. The message returns to Israel's

sins, that they forgot God's statutes, commandments, covenant festivals,

15. R. Werline, Penitential Prayer in Second Temple Judaism: The Development of a Re

ligious Institution, SBLEJL 13 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1998), 110-11. In his

study of these passages, J. Scott speaks of the scheme of "sin-exile-restoration (SER)"; cf.

J. Scott, On Earth as in Heaven: The Restoration of Sacred Time and Sacred Space in the Book

of Jubilees, JSJSup (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005), 77. This rich study of these topics in Jubi

lees provides a wide-ranging proposal for the chronology of the book, much of which "spec

ifies" the eschatological perspective. For reasons that will become apparent, I prefer to retain

the notion of "repentance" in the Deuteronomic scheme.

16. That these sins of the nations probably include sexual sins is argued by W. Loader,

Enoch, Levi, and Jubilees on Sexuality: Attitudes toward Sexuality in the Early Enoch Litera

ture, the Aramaic Levi Document, and the Book of Jubilees (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007),