The earth’s cry of distress, the subject of Painting 4, The Earth Cries Out (1 Enoch 7:6), reached the gates of heaven, where Michael, Sariel, Raphael and Gabriel, heard it and also the souls of human beings raising their petition:

Bring in our judgment to the Most High, and our destruction before the glory of the majesty, before the Lord of all lords in majesty (9:3).

These four archangels responded by reminding God of what was happening on earth, caused by the Watchers taking human wives who produced Giants who ravaged the earth and by the revelation of secret knowledge by Shemihazah and Asael that caused iniquity everywhere (9:4-10). At the end of their address they actually complain that, although God knows all of this, he has not given them instructions to do something about it (9:11)! Perhaps stung by this rebuke, God issues instructions in turn to each of the four archangels: he sends Sariel to Noah with instructions on preparing for the coming flood (10:1-3); he orders Raphael to deal with Asael, with a subsidiary injunction to heal the earth (10:4-8); he directs Gabriel to kill the sons of the Watchers, presumably meaning the Giants (10:9-10); he tells Michael what to do in relation to binding Shemihazah and the other Watchers, as well as killing the Giants (10:11-15); and, finally, he gives Michael another commission, that of renovating the earth (10:16-22).

The dramatic date for this narrative is shortly before the events of the flood and its aftermath (Genesis 6-9). In the biblical chronology, the survival of Noah and his family would lead to another period of human history, in which wickedness would again become rampant and which would end with the Last Judgment when God will finally deal with evil.⁵⁹ This broad timetable of salvation, to which the author(s) of 1 Enoch fully subscribed, determined the punishment God prescribed for the rebellious Watchers, who were immortal, since it meant providing for the two relevant periods, between the flood and the Last Judgment and then from the Last Judgment onwards. The means chosen by God was to constrain them under the earth until the Judgment and then to consign them to the eternal fire of punishment.

Asael is singled out for special treatment. Although he shared in the Watchers’ common enterprise of descending to earth to take human wives, which led to the birth of giants who ravaged the earth, he compounded his sin by teaching humanity forbidden technology, which comprised ‘eternal mysteries that are in heaven’ (9:5) (see Painting no. 3, ‘Asael Teaching Metalwork (1 Enoch 8:1’). Raphael was instructed to bind him, cast him into darkness and put him under⁶⁰ sharp rocks in the wilderness of Dudael until the final judgment when he would be led away to the burning conflagration. Just as the Enochic scribes had inherited astronomical law from Babylonia gained during the period of Israel’s exile there in the sixth century BCE, the details of Asael’s punishment may ultimately derive from punishment prescribed for witches in Babylon.⁶¹ Immediately after these instructions concerning Asael, God instructed Raphael to ‘heal the earth, which the Watchers have devastated’, an instruction without particulars yet given in such close proximity to the detailed punishment of Asael as to raise the question of whether the two events are to be seen as connected.⁶² As for Shemihazah and the other Watchers, God tells Michael that when they have seen their sons perish, he is to bind them in the valleys of the earth, until the day of judgment when they will be led away to the fiery abyss, to imprisonment and eternal torture.