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Audio podcast of the Interpreter Foundation


Essay #26: Enoch’s Grand Vision: The Complaining Voice of the Earth (Moses 7:48–49, 54, 61, 64)

October 24, 2020

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In a previous Essay,[2] we observed that three distinct parties weep for the wickedness of mankind: God,[3] the heavens,[4] and Enoch himself.[5] In addition, a fourth party, the earth, complains and mourns—though she doesn’t specifically “weep”—for her children.[6] In the present article, we discuss affinities in the ancient Enoch literature and in the laments of Jeremiah to the complaint of the earth in Moses 7:48–49.
Valuable articles by Andrew Skinner[7] and Daniel Peterson,[8] following Hugh Nibley’s lead,[9] discuss interesting parallels to these verses in ancient sources. Peterson follows J. J. M. Roberts in citing examples of Sumerian laments of the mother goddess and showing how a similar motif appears in Jeremiah in the guise of the personified city as the mother of her people[10] by way of analogy to the role of the mourning earth as “the mother of men”[11] in the Book of Moses. Roberts illustrates this by citing Jeremiah 10:19–21:[12]

Woe is me because my hurt!My wound is grievous.But I said, “Truly this is my punishment,and I must bear it.My tent is plundered and all my cords are broken;my children have gone out from me, and they are no more;there is no one to spread my tent again,and to set up my curtains.For the shepherds were stupid,And did not inquire of Yahweh;Therefore they did not prosper,And all their flock is scattered.”

Emphasizing the appropriateness of a Sumerian-Akkadian milieu for this concept in Moses 7, Skinner[13] cites S. H. Langdon as follows:[14]

The Sumerian Earth-mother is repeatedly referred to in Sumerian and Babylonian names as the mother of mankind … This mythological doctrine is thoroughly accepted in Babylonian religion. … In early Akkadian, this mythology is already firmly established among the Semites.

Although the motif of a complaining earth is not found anywhere in the Bible, it does turn up in 1 Enoch and in the Qumran Book of Giants.[15] In 1 Enoch we find the following references:
1 Enoch 7:4–6; 8:4:[16] And the giants began to kill men and to devour them.