Watchers
WATCHERS
In Daniel 4:7ff., Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, relates a strange dream of his and its interpretation by the Jewish savant, Daniel. A baleful message is delivered by a heavenly being, referred to as an ʿir we-qaddish, the so-called "Holy Watcher" (4:10). The exact interpretation of the name of this being is somewhat problematic. Rashi explains it to mean an angel, deriving the word from the Hebrew ʿr "to be awake," and explains that an angel is always awake. The Greek versions of Aquila and Symmachus translate the term, "Wakeful One," a translation which is the source of our English, "Watcher" (Fitzmyer, in bibl., p. 72), an archaic word for one who is awake. However, the Septuagint has simply angel. That the term means angel can be shown from the Genesis Apocryphon of the Dead Sea Scrolls, where the word ʿir is in clear parallelism with "sons of heaven" (2:1). Also in the Zadokite Documents, the "Watchers" are associated with the legend of angelic intercourse with women (a 2:17–18). In Daniel itself, they seem to be some sort of heavenly council (4:14). The "Watchers" figured prominently in pseudepigraphic and later mystical literature.
bibliography:
J. Montgomery, Daniel (icc, 1927), 234ff.; Ch. Rabin, The Zadokite Documents (1958), col. ii 1:17–18; J. Fitzmyer, The Genesis Apocryphon of Qumran Cave One (1966), 72.
[Daniel Boyarin]