Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer 22 and 27

A medieval midrashic retelling of the Watchers narrative — and the source of the story about Shemhazai's last-minute repentance.

Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer is an aggadic compilation, probably composed in the late 8th or early 9th century CE, attributed to (but not actually written by) the 1st-century sage Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus. It is one of the rare places where a Watcher-tradition narrative survives in mainstream Jewish religious literature, centuries after the official canon-makers had set 1 Enoch aside.

Chapter 22 — the fall of the angels Shemhazai and Azael

PRE 22 narrates the descent in compressed form. The two angels Shemhazai and Azael behold the daughters of men, descend, take wives, and beget giants. The wickedness of the giants brings the flood.

The two-name version (Shemhazai and Azael) is the same naming convention as Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Gen 6:4. Compared to 1 Enoch's larger cast of twenty named Watcher leaders, the medieval Jewish tradition reduces to two — apparently the two figures whose names had stuck most stubbornly in oral transmission.

Chapter 27 — Shemhazai's repentance and Orion

This is the more famous passage. Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer 27 (drawing on the older Midrash Abkir tradition preserved in Yalqut Shimoni §44) gives an extended account in which Shemhazai repents before falling. The story:

Two angels, Shemhazai and Azael, approach God and request permission to descend to demonstrate their righteousness in the world below.
God permits this.
They descend. They see human women. They want them.
Shemhazai hesitates. He attempts to keep his oath but ultimately falls.
Before God's judgment comes, Shemhazai repents. He suspends himself between heaven and earth, head down, feet up, with a quiver-load of arrows hanging beside him. This is his self-imposed punishment.
In some versions, the suspended figure becomes the constellation Orion — the Hebrew name for which is Kesil ("fool"), and which is associated with a giant suspended in the sky.
Azael, by contrast, does not repent. He continues to corrupt humanity — and is sometimes identified with the azazel figure of Lev 16's scapegoat ritual.

Why this matters

Three observations:

The Watchers narrative survived in mainstream Jewish religious literature centuries after its official suppression. Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer was a popular text, used in synagogue teaching and devotional reading. The story stayed alive there.
Shemhazai gets a redemption arc that 1 Enoch never gave him. The 1 Enoch Semjâzâ is bound for seventy generations and then thrown into fire. The PRE Shemhazai repents and becomes a constellation. The Watchers narrative softens over the centuries.
The Orion identification is striking. The Hebrew Kesil / Greek Orion is described in Job 38:31 and other ancient sources as a giant constellation. The midrash binds the Watcher to the visible cosmos: anyone who looks at the winter sky is looking at Shemhazai paying for his sin.

Critical attribution and scholarship

Earliest sources: The longest version of the Shemhazai-repents story is in the Midrash Abkir, a (now mostly lost) collection from late antiquity, preserved in citation in Yalqut Shimoni.
Standard scholarly treatments:
- L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (JPS, 1909–38), vol. 1 — collected versions of the Shemhazai-and-Azael story.
- A. Y. Reed, Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity (Cambridge, 2005), ch. 6 — analysis of why this tradition persisted in Jewish reception.
- M. Friedlander, Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer (1916; reprinted 1973) — the standard English translation.

Cross-references

Semjâzâ (Shemhazai) — the Enochic figure whose Jewish reception this is
Azazel / Azael — the unrepentant partner
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Gen 6:4 — the other place these names survive
BT Yoma 67b — Talmudic acknowledgment of the names Uzza and Azael
Rabbinic Jewish overview
watchers descent