Enoch’s Prayer before the Flood

The first book of Enoch explains how Enoch was taken up, or transfigured, by God, entrusted with esoteric divine knowledge, and shown visions of what would be in the future. In its current form, the book is quite lengthy and comprises many diverse sections, so that it is more correct to speak of Enochic literature rather than of a single book. The basic text dates to the second century BCE, in the time of the Maccabean revolt.

The following passage comes from the fourth part of the book, in which Enoch sees visions of the future. Enoch’s first vision is of God’s destruction of the earth in the flood. When he awakes, Enoch praises God and prays that a generation of righteous people survive so that humanity will not be wiped out.