Semjâzâ (Shemihazah) — leader of the descended Watchers
Semjâzâ (Shemihazah)
He was an angel, and he was afraid to do this alone.
That is the part of Semjâzâ's story most readers miss. In 1 Enoch 6, two hundred angels stand on the slopes of Mount Hermon, looking down at the daughters of men and arguing about what to do. Semjâzâ is the chief, but in the moment he hesitates. "I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed," he tells the others, "and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin." He demands an oath. He wants the punishment, when it comes, to belong to everyone.
So they swear. Two hundred Watchers, bound by mutual curse, walk down the mountain together. The Hebrew word for that curse is ḥerem — a vow that cannot be unmade — and the author of 1 Enoch chose the setting to make the wordplay obvious: they swore a ḥerem on Mount Ḥermon. Even the geography is a confession.
What the texts actually call him
Semjâzâ is the same figure under a stack of different names, depending on which manuscript and which translator you read. The Ethiopic tradition (preserved by Charles 1917) writes Sêmîazâz or Semjâzâ. Laurence 1821 calls him Samyaza. The Aramaic Qumran fragment 4Q201 — the oldest copy of this story we have, dating to about 200 BCE — uses Shemihazah (שמיחזה), which most likely means something like "(my) name has seen" or, if you favor a darker reading, "the burning of (my) name." Later Rabbinic literature (Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Gen 6:4, the Midrash Abkir, Yalqut Shimoni) names him Shemhazai and gives him an extended afterlife in Jewish legend.
| Source | Form |
|---|---|
| 4Q201 (Aramaic Qumran, c. 200 BCE) | Shemihazah |
| Greek Akhmim / Syncellus fragments | Semiazas, Semiaza |
| Ethiopic → Charles 1917 | Sêmîazâz, Semjâzâ |
| Laurence 1821 | Samyaza |
| Schodde 1882 | Semjaza |
| Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Gen 6:4 | Shemhazai |
| 3 Enoch / Hekhalot literature | Shemhazai (with Azza, Azzael) |
What he did
Semjâzâ leads the descent. He proposes the plan, demands the binding oath, takes a wife. In the canonical version of the story (1 En 6:7), he is the first name on the list of chiefs of tens — each Watcher commanded roughly ten subordinates, and Semjâzâ commanded all twenty chiefs. Two hundred Watchers is the total count the text gives.
The catastrophe that follows is told in chapters 7–9. The Watchers take wives, the wives bear giants, the giants devour everything humans can grow, then turn on the humans themselves and start eating them. Meanwhile the Watchers — and here Semjâzâ recedes a little while Azazel takes over — teach humanity how to forge weapons, paint their eyes, cast spells, read the stars. The earth becomes unlivable. The four archangels look down and hear humanity's cry, and the petition reaches God.
The sentence comes in 1 En 10. The archangel Michael is sent to find Semjâzâ specifically. The instruction is the most specific of any of the punishments: "Bind them fast for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth, till the day of their judgement and of their consummation, till the judgement that is for ever and ever is consummated." (1 En 10:11–12). Seventy generations underground. Then the lake of fire.
The two-strand problem (academic critical reading)
Modern critical scholarship — Nickelsburg in the Hermeneia commentary, Stuckenbruck in The Myth of Rebellious Angels — sees 1 Enoch 6–11 as two older stories an editor stitched together. The Shemihazah strand is older and sexier in the sin: Semjâzâ leads two hundred angels into intermarriage with humans, the sin is the trespass of category. The Asael / Azazel strand is more about secrets and crafts: a single rebel teaches humanity what was supposed to stay in heaven. The redactor merged both, leaving us with two protagonists, two sins, two binding scenes. Semjâzâ is the protagonist of the first strand, and the older one.
The 19 names he led
1 Enoch 6:7 — these are the leaders Semjâzâ swore the oath with. The same list survives partially in Aramaic at Qumran (4Q201 col II ll. 24–29), confirming the Ethiopic tradition preserves it accurately:
| # | Name (Charles 1917) | Notable meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arâkîba (Araqiel) | "Earth of God" or "ground of God" |
| 2 | Râmêêl (Ramiel) | "thunder of God" |
| 3 | Kôkabîêl | "Star of God" |
| 4 | Tâmîêl | "perfection of God" |
| 5 | Râmîêl | "thunder of God" (doublet) |
| 6 | Dânêl | "judge of God" |
| 7 | Êzêqêêl | "strength of God" |
| 8 | Barâqîjâl | "lightning of God" |
| 9 | Asâêl | likely the same figure as Azazel — see Azazel |
| 10 | Armârôs | "the cursed one" |
| 11 | Batârêl | "valley of God" |
| 12 | Anânêl | "cloud of God" |
| 13 | Zaqîêl | "purity of God" |
| 14 | Samsâpêêl | "Sun of God" |
| 15 | Satarêl | "the hidden one" |
| 16 | Tûrêl | "mountain of God" |
| 17 | Jômjâêl | "day of God" |
| 18 | Sariêl | "command of God"; later listed among the seven archangels in 1 En 20 |
| 19 | (Semjâzâ himself, counted separately) | "(my) name has seen" |
Look at the pattern: nature elements (thunder, lightning, mountain, cloud, day), divine titles (judge, strength, command, purity), celestial bodies (star, sun). These are not random demonic names — they read like a roster of cosmic functionaries, beings whose names describe their original job. The story is a fall from office.
After the story ended — what Jewish tradition did with him
The Watchers narrative was buried in mainstream Rabbinic Judaism after the 2nd century CE, but Semjâzâ — now Shemhazai — survives in two surprising places:
- Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Gen 6:4 names him explicitly, alongside Azael, as the angels who fell.
- Midrash Abkir preserves a long folktale (also in Yalqut Shimoni §44) in which Shemhazai repents before falling, refuses to come down, and is "hung between heaven and earth" with his feet up and his head down — identified in some versions of the legend with the constellation Orion. His brother Azael does not repent and remains the corrupter of cosmetics and witchcraft (the same role assigned to Asael/Azazel in 1 Enoch).
So in the only Jewish reception that kept the story alive, Semjâzâ became the angel who almost saved himself. The ringleader who got cold feet at the end. The same hesitation the original text gave him in 1 Enoch 6:3 — the one who feared paying the penalty alone — becomes, a thousand years later, the one who tries not to pay it at all.
Cross-references
- 1 Enoch 6 — the oath
- 1 Enoch 9 — the archangels' appeal
- 1 Enoch 10 — Semjâzâ bound for seventy generations
- 4Q201 — Aramaic fragments naming Shemihazah
- Jubilees 5 — parallel retelling
- Gen 6:1–4 — the source verse 1 Enoch expands
- Azazel — the second strand's protagonist
- Mount Hermon — where it happened
- Michael — the archangel sent to bind him
- watchers descent
Scholarship pointers
- G. W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch 1 (Hermeneia, Fortress, 2001), comm. on chs 6–11 — the standard critical reading; lays out the two-strand source theory.
- L. T. Stuckenbruck, The Myth of Rebellious Angels (Mohr Siebeck, 2014) — full treatment of the reception across Second Temple Judaism, the New Testament, and early Christianity.
- A. Y. Reed, Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity (Cambridge, 2005), ch. 1 — narrative analysis of the descent.
- J. C. VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition (CBQMS, 1984).
- A. Annus, "On the Origin of the Watchers," Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 19.4 (2010) — argues for the Mesopotamian Apkallu tradition as background.