Learn Torah With…
Howard Schwartz
Parashat Noah

THE SONS OF GOD AND THE DAUGHTERS OF MEN

Many of the best-known biblical episodes are found in the early portion of Genesis, prior to the story of Abraham. These include the accounts of the creation, of Adam and Eve, of Noah, and of the Tower of Babel. But one enigmatic episode that is consistently overlooked is Genesis 6:1-4, concerning the Sons of God (B’nai Elohim) and the daughters of men:

When men began to increase on earth and daughters were born to them, the Sons of God saw how beautiful the daughters of men were and took wives from among those that pleased them.

The Lord said, “My breath shall not abide in man forever, since he too is flesh; let the days allowed him be one hundred and twenty years.”

It was then, and later too, that the Nephilim appeared on earth when the Sons of God cohabited with the daughters of men, who bore them offspring. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown.

Like the account of the Tower of Babel, this mythic account of the mysterious Sons of God seems to appear from out of nowhere. Indeed, it may well be a mythic interpolation, added to explain why, a few verses later, the earth was corrupt before God (Gen. 6:11), much as the story of the Tower of Babel explains the origin of the many languages, as well as the dissemination of people over the earth.

The primary mystery of Genesis 6 is the identity of the Sons of God. Present-day commentators suggest that this may have been a tribe of exceptionally tall and handsome men who appeared and were irresistible to women. But the ancient rabbis were certain that the Sons of God were angels. (Although an alternate version in Aggadat Bereshit identifies them as the Sons of Cain.) As a model, the rabbis drew on the prologue to Job, where God and Satan agree to test Job to see if he is truly righteous. Here God has a dialogue in heaven with two angels, Shemhazai and Azazel, who condemn the corrupt ways of men. God argues that if they lived on earth they would behave the same way, because every one on earth is subject to the Yetzer ha-Ra, the evil inclination. The angels insist that they would remain righteous and convince God to let them descend to earth (in some versions, by Jacob’s ladder). When they do, they are immediately filled with lust over the beautiful daughters of men, and use their heavenly powers to satisfy their basest desires. And the offspring of these unions are described as the Nephilim, which has been interpreted to mean giants. Thus the account in Genesis 6 also provides the origin of giants.

There are many rabbinic variants of the story of the two angels from a wide range of sources, including The Book of Enoch (1 Enoch) and Yalkut Shimoni. The best-known of these stories concerns two maidens, Ishtahar and Na’amah, whom the two angels sought to seduce, as follows:

THE STAR MAIDEN

When the generation of the Flood went astray, God began to regret having created man. Then two angels, Shemhazai and Azazel, reminded God that they had opposed the creation of man, saying, What is man, that You should be mindful of him? (Ps. 8:5). God replied: “Those who dwell on earth are subject to the Evil Inclination. Even you would be overpowered by it.” But the angels protested, saying: “Let us descend to the world of men, and let us show You how we will sanctify your name.” And God said: “Go down and dwell among them.”

So the two angels descended to earth, where they were certain they could resist the power of the Evil Inclination. But as soon as they saw how were beautiful the daughters of men, they forgot their vows and took lovers from among them, even though they were defiling their own pure essence. So too did they teach them secrets of how to entice men, as well as the dark arts of sorcery, incantations, and the divining of roots.

Then the two angels decided to select brides for themselves from among the daughters of men. Azazel desired Na'amah, the sister of Tubal-Cain, the most beautiful woman on earth. But there was another beautiful maiden, Ishtahar, the last of the virgins, whom Shemhazai desired, and she refused him. This made him want her all that much more.

“I am an angel,” he revealed to her, “you cannot refuse me.”

“I will not give in to you,” Ishtahar replied, “unless you teach me God's Ineffable Name.”

“That I cannot do,” Shemhazai replied, “for it is a secret of heaven.”

“Why should I believe you?”" said Ishtahar. “Perhaps you don't know it at all. Perhaps you are not really an angel.”

“Of course I know it,” said Shemhazai, and he revealed God's Name.

Now as soon as she heard the holy Name, Ishtahar pronounced it herself and flew up into the heavens, escaping the angel. And when God saw this, He said: “Because she removed herself from sin, let Ishtahar be set among the stars.” And Ishtahar was transformed into a star, one of the brightest in the sky. And when Shemhazai saw this, he recognized God's rebuke of his sin and repented, hanging himself upside down between heaven and earth. But Azazel refused to repent, and God hung him upside down in a canyon, bound in chains, where he remains to this day. That is why a scapegoat is sent to Azazel on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, bearing the sins of Israel.

Others say that when the two angels, Shemhazai and Azazel, came down to earth, they were still innocent. But they were corrupted by the demonesses Na'amah and Lilith. The children they bore were the giants of old, known as the Nephilim, or Fallen Ones. They bore six children at each birth, and in that very hour they stood on their feet, spoke the holy language, and danced before them like sheep. These giants had such great appetites that God rained manna on them in many different flavors, so that they might not eat flesh. But the Fallen Ones rejected the manna, slaughtered animals, and even dined on human flesh. Shemhazai fathered two sons, Hiwa and Hiya, who consumed a thousand oxen, a thousand camels, and a thousand horses daily. Before long the air was foul with the smell of carcasses. That is when God decided to cleanse the earth with the Flood.

Still others say that the offspring of the fallen angels were tall and handsome, and had greater strength than all the children of men. Because of the heavenly origin of their fathers, they are referred to as “the children of heaven.”

Note that this story, with its fairy-tale quality, manages to explain who the Sons of God were, how they brought corruption to the earth, the origin of giants, and how the decision to bring on the Flood came about. The story also demonstrates that no one, not even angels, is immune to the Evil Impulse. Indeed, so corrupt did the angels become, that it is said that in the end they indiscriminately enjoyed virgins, married women, men and beasts. The Sons of God are also blamed for having invented the use of ornaments, rouge, and multi-colored garments to make women more enticing. The daughters of men are identified as the children of Seth, Adam's son, and therefore are human (Zohar Genesis 37a). The heroine of the story is, of course, Ishtahar, the virgin who resisted the advances of Shemhazai, and was turned into a star. It is presumed that Ishtahar is a variant name for the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar. As for Na’amah, the young woman who is said to have overwhelmed Azazel with her beauty, she is identified as the sister of Tubal-Cain. In later legends, Na'amah is also identified as a sister or daughter of Lilith.

In most versions of this myth, Ishtahar demands to be told God’s secret name, the Tetragrammaton (YHVH). But in one alternate version in Beit ha-Midrash 5:156, which might be described as a midrash for children, she demands that he let her try on his wings. At first he denies that his wings come off, but when she insists, he takes them off and lets her put them on and at that moment she flies off into heaven and is transformed into a star.

In later versions of this legend, such as The Midrash of Shemhazi and Azazel, the role of Shemhazi is diminished, while the role of Azazel is expanded, until Azazel is virtually identified with Satan. Ultimately, it is Shemhazai who repents and Azazel who does not. This leads to subsequent legends about the evil-doings of Azazel. According to Yalkut Shimoni, Ishtahar became a star set among the seven stars of the Pleiades, while Shemhazai, hung upside down between heaven and earth, became the constellation Orion.

While most versions of this myth of the Sons of God focus on two angels who descended from heaven, the version in The Book of Enoch states that they descended with an order of angels, as follows:

THE WATCHERS

There are those who say that Shemhazai and Azazel were not the only angels who descended to the face of the earth. Instead, Shemhazai was the leader of two hundred angels, known as the Watchers, a high order of angels who never slept. Before they descended, these angels swore an oath, binding themselves together. But when the angels fell from their holy estate, they were reduced in stature as well as in strength, and their fiery substance became flesh.

At first the fallen angels intended to instruct the people in the ways of righteousness. But when they saw the beautiful daughters of men, they lusted after them, and chose wives from among them. And the children born from this union were giants.

Each of the angels, not only Shemhazai and Azazel, revealed secrets of heaven, teaching incantations and the cutting of roots, astrology and the knowledge of signs. So too did these angels sin with anyone they desired, men as well as women, humans as well as beasts. Before long, everything on earth became corrupted, and God ordered these fallen angels to be rooted out and bound in chains in the depths of the earth.

Still others say that Shemhazai and Azazel, alone among the angels, assumed bodily form when they descended to this world. As for the other fallen angels, they took the form of he-goats, serving as mounts for Shemhazai and Azazel. Later they were all cast into an abyss, where they still remain, imprisoned, until the end of time.

The earliest embellishments of this biblical legend are found in The Book of Jubilees 5:1-13 and 1 Enoch: 6-14. The Book of Jubilees does not specify how many angels descended from heaven to earth. In 1 Enoch it says that there were two hundred angels, instead of only two, Shemhazai (also known as Aza) and Azazel. In 1 Enoch Shemhazai is described as the overall leader, along with sixteen other leaders among the angels. In addition to Shemhazai, the leaders of the rebellious angels were Rame'el, Tam'el, Ram'el, Dan'el, Ezekiel, Barakyal, As'el, Armaros, Batar'el, Anan'el, Zak'el, Sasomaspe'el, Kestar'el, Tur'el, Yamayol, and Azazel. In many ways, this legend of the fallen angels is the Promethean myth in Judaism, in that the angels reveal not only dark secrets of heaven, but also secrets of the natural universe, which God had never intended for man to know.

The myth of the Sons of God and the daughters of men also provides one more useful identification—that of the mysterious identity of Azazel. In Leviticus 16:8, 10 and 16 there are references to sending a scapegoat to Azazel on Yom Kippur: But the goat, on which the lot fell for Azazel, shall be set alive before the Lord, to make atonement over him, to send him away for Azazel into the wilderness (Lev 16:10). This Azazel is usually identified as another name for Satan. Even today, Israelis tell someone to “Go to Hell!” by saying “Lekh le-Azazel!” Thus the myths of the descent of the two angels provides an explanation as to the identity and punishment of Azazel, the angel who refused to repent and thus was chained upside-down in a canyon, where he continued to plot evil deeds, as in the following tale:

THE LAIR OF AZAZEL

The generation of the deluge learned the ways of evil from the fallen angel Azazel. He taught men how to make deadly weapons and women how to arouse the desires of men. They followed his teachings until the whole earth became corrupt. Therefore, at the time of the deluge, God commanded the angel Raphael to bind Azazel hand and foot and cast him into the darkness. Therefore Raphael made a hole in the desert Dudael, beyond the Mountains of Darkness, and cast Azazel there, chained upside down in the dark.

Even there, Azazel did not repent, but was consumed by thoughts of revenge. Using the power of dreams, he sought out an evil sorcerer, and commanded him to come to him. First this sorcerer had to find his way to the Mountains of Darkness. There he was met by a demon in the shape of a cat, with the head of a fiery serpent, and two tails. The magicians then took a bowl containing the ashes of a white cock, and cast the ashes at the cat-like demon. Then the demon leads him to the place where Azazel was chained. There he lit incense and stepped on the chain of Azazel three times. Then he closed his eyes, fell to his knees, and worshipped the fallen angel. That is when Azazel began to speak, revealing the darkest mysteries for fifty days. By then there was none among the living with a greater mastery of evil. Bowing farewell, the evil sorcerer was lead out of the Mountains of Darkness by the cat-like demon with the head of a fiery serpent. He, in turn, revealed the secret of where Azazel was hidden to other sorcerers, who sought out the fallen angel, and were tutored by him in the ways of evil. Thus did the black arts make their way into the world.

While 1 Enoch singles out Azazel for punishment in the desert Dudael, the version of this legend found in Emek ha-Melekh identifies both Aza (Shemhazai) and Azazel as being chained together there. This contradicts most versions of the legend, in which Shemhazai repents, and hangs himself (or is hung by God) upside down between heaven and earth, while it is Azazel alone who remains unrepentant, and takes on a role quite similar to that of Satan. Azazel can also linked to Lucifer, the angel who was cast out of heaven.

Some sources, such as Zohar 2:157b, interpret the references to “Azazel” in Leviticus as referring to a mountain called Azazel, not a fallen angel. This mountain was said to be a great and mighty one, and below it depths unimaginable, where no man has ever gone. There the Other Side has unshackled power. It is clear that the offering of the scapegoat in this ritual is the remnant of some kind of sacrifice to an evil god in order to satiate it.

All in all, the myth of the Sons of God and daughters of men is quite useful in the way it provides midrashic explanations for many problems: the identity of the Sons of God in Genesis 6, the reason for the corruption of the generation of the Flood, the origin of giants, an astrological explanations for the star that Ishtahar became and the constellation of Orion, linked to Shemhazi when he hung himself upside down, as well as the identity of Azazel. The original biblical myth only provided a few of these explanations, but the rabbinic embellishments added many others, as well as some memorable stories about lustful angels and the brave virgin Ishtahar.

SOURCES

The Star Maiden
Yalkut Shimoni, Gen. 44.
Midrash Abkir, in A. Jellenik, Beit ha-Midrash, 4:127-128.
The Book of Jubilees 4:15, 4:22, 5:1-3.
Midrash Tanhuma Buber 23-24, 45, 131.
1 Enoch 14.
Yalkut Shimoni, Gen 44.
Bereshit Rabbati 29-30.
Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer 22.
Oral version from the Israel Folktale Archives (IFA):
IFA 10856, collected by Ahuva Baner from Shmuel Nohi of Persian Kurdistan, published in Hodesh Hodesh ve-Sippuro 1976-1977, edited by Dov Noy (Jerusalem: 1979)

The Watchers
The Book of Jubilees 4:15, 5:1-3, 5:5-7.
1 Enoch 6:7.
Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer 12.

The Lair of Azazel
1 Enoch 8-10.
Emek ha-Melech 108b.
 

Learn Torah With…
Rabbi David L. Kline
Parashat Noah

INTO SOMETHING RICH AND STRANGE

Death and destruction by flood are the reverse of the life-supporting element, water. I shall never forget the heavy rainy season of 1991 that flooded hundreds of houses in Monroe, Louisiana. An emergency sandbag dyke saved my home. Our local river, the Ouachita, rose to within two feet of the top of the levee, and people have told me of the flood of ‘27, before the levees, when water covered the hundred mile wide delta from Ouachita to Mississippi. That’s what lawyers and insurance people speak of as “an act of God.”

Long, long ago, in the Land Between the Rivers—Mesopotamia—folks must have compared their floods with far worse floods of popular memory. The Sumerians, earliest of writers in Bavel, had a legend that hints at our Parashat Noah. The Akkadians who lived there later embellished the story in the direction of Torah: One of the gods betrays to his favorite mortal the intention of the other gods to inundate all human life. Forewarned, the favored one builds a great box of a boat, provisions it, takes on board the seed of all living things, and is ready when the rains blight the face of the earth. Following six days of storm, a period of stillness, he opens a hatch to confront landscape level as a flat roof, mountains visible in the distance. The boat comes to rest on one of these, Mt. Nisir. Seven days later he releases a dove that returns for want of a resting-place. Next a swallow that also returns. Next, a raven that eats, circles, caws, and turns not round. He sends forth the animals and then prepares a thanksgiving sacrifice and “The gods smelled the sweet savor. The gods crowded like flies around the sacrificer.” Babylonian imagination supplies dialogue between furious Enlil, who had demanded the flood, and compassionate Ea, who had thwarted the decree. Ea: “Thou wisest of gods, thou hero, how couldst thou, unreasoning, bring on the deluge? On the sinner impose his sin, on the transgressor impose his transgression! Yet be lenient lest he be cut off. Be patient, lest he be dislodged. Instead of thy bringing on the deluge, would that a lion had risen up to diminish mankind! Would that a wolf...Would that a famine... Would that pestilence...” Enlil relents and blesses the human and his wife with immortality.

Torah brings together two similar tellings of the ancient story. One teller refers to God by name: YHVH—Yah, as some of us pronounce it today. The other simply uses the generic: God, Elohim. E.g. “Yah saw that human evil was great...Yah regretted having made humanity…But Noah found favor in Yah’s eyes” (Gen 6:5,6,8). “The earth was corrupt before God, filled with violence... Noah was a tzadik for his time, he walked with God” (6:11,9). The editor saved both, alternating them into a single agreeable story, unconcerned with the repetitions and the near repetitions. Later storytellers find midrash in the difference, for example, between one pair of each animal (“God” version, 6:13, 19), and seven pairs of clean animals and one pair of unclean (“Yah” version, 7:1,8. Cf. Lev 11:47). But for our purpose, this week, let’s stick to the p’shat, the “simple” surface meaning, which turns out to be not so pashut (simple).

Yah’s regrets over creating people were not His first reconsideration of His own acts. Early on He had to admit, “It is not good that the adam, “human,” should be alone.” Yah had none to blame for that thoughtless piece of work but, being optimistic and ready to learn from error, He set out to correct the miscreation by forming a companion for the dirt-made creature. How about a furry four-footed model with a wagging tail? “Dog?” “No go.” What frustration Yah must have muttered, offering the adam one animal after another to see how he would respond, getting only a name for each. How many tries, how many lessons learned before getting her right! Whoever wrote that story figured Yah has good intentions, but human companionship is more complicated than one might think.

At the start of our parshah, Yah sees humanity as a work in process, a genetic experiment that is turning out bad. The psychic design called for balance between good and evil inclinations but in this hominid, the yetzer ha-ra (“evil inclination”) drove the yetzer ha-tov (“good inclination”) off the screen, resulting in unacceptable corruption and violence. But here was an exception, a relatively good individual, Noah. How did such a tzadik survive in such miserable environment? A good question, but what occurred to Yah was: why not dispose of the bad strain and give the good specimen a chance to be fruitful and multiply into an improved humanity? Pre-Darwinian selection!

So He did. Apart from a eugenics motif replacing a divine conflict theme, the plot of the Torah story pretty much follows the plot of the Akkadian Gilgamesh epic. Both boats are boxy in design: that’s why we call ours “ark”, teva. Neither looked much like a cruise ship. The Babylonian boat was made of reeds, ours of gopher wood, whatever that is. Their storm took six days, ours went on for forty. They end up on Mt. Nisir, we on Mt. Ararat. Their captain sends out a dove, a swallow, and a raven. Our captain sends out first the raven and then the dove twice. Both survivors build an altar and make a burnt offering, and offering is readily accepted. What do you think of that line about the Babylonian gods crowding around like flies?! That was one chutspadig storyteller, the best kind. Our storyteller was just as good!

We read the Babylonian Flood Story from the well preserved eleventh tablet of the Gilgamesh epic as found in the great library of Ashurbanipal, seventh century king of Assyria. Scholars of Akkadian and Sumerian have found traces of the story from at least 2000 BCE. Whoever (and whenever) it was who rewrote the story for Torah did it with a sea change in consciousness of God that hits us at the end of the story. The key to the plot for the Babylonians is the struggle between Enlil and Ea or between Anu and Enki in the earlier Sumerian version. Polytheists have families and communities of gods, each with his or her own character and specialty. Just as earthlings compete and clash with one another, heavenly beings constantly scheme. Gilgamesh, sort of a Sumerian Ulysses searching for immortality, hears the flood story from the single human being who had achieved it. He fails to repeat the feat and accepts his mortality. Not bad for a 3000-year-old pagan yarn.

Now Torah: Yah is our One, the One. The only heavenly conflict is within the One: regret. First Yah regrets having made humanity. Then Yah regrets having destroyed humanity and swears never to do it again. (Some say that the “God” version bans flooding but leaves other options for destruction. 9:15) The Noah effort fails: present day human behavior is unchanged from antediluvian human behavior. Stories are all about change, and in particular, character development. Our Flood Story is not about human development. Torah here tells us about God: How Yah develops conscience! None of the stories describe the desolate scene that must follow the receding waters, the corpses, the mud and the ruin. Our writers were gutsy but such a picture of horror would, for them, be obscene, to be left to the imagination rather than illustrated for shock value. The moral of the story is that God becomes aware of what it means to destroy life only by doing so and then seeing, hearing, and smelling the result. Conscience does not come easily, even to God.

The rainbow, God’s (Jupiter’s?) bow bent away from earth, is to remind God of what happened when He had no qualm. God disarms Himself rather than risk a repeat cataclysm. Conscience alone does not suffice.

See ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN TEXTS Relating to the Old Testament, James B. Pritchard, Princeton University Press

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