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14 Eliezer 22). "You destroyed men for their wicked deeds in the past, among them giants relying on their own strength and self-confidence, upon whom you brought an immeasurable flood of water" (3 Maccabees 2:4). "There were born the giants, famous of old, tall in stature, expert in war, God did not choose them or give them the way of knowledge. So they perished, because they had no understanding; they perished through their own folly" (Baruch 3:26-28). "The interpretation [pesher] concerning Azazel and the angels who went in to the daughters of men and bore them giants, and concerning Azazel [who turned them astray to deceit, to the love of] evil and to pass along wickedness . . ." (Pesher of the Periods 7-9, from 4Q180, quoted in The Bible As It Was, by James L. Kugel, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997, p.111). In the ancient world of the Hebrews, it was common knowledge that in the dim recesses of history, angels had come down from heaven, leaving their proper abode, and cohabited with women, producing a race of giants before the Flood. A great deal more insight is provided into the subject of angels mating with women in the book of Enoch. The apostle Jude himself, in the New Testament epistle which bears his name, quotes from this ancient book. Enoch was the man of God who "walked with God" "after he became the father of Methuselah for three hundred years" (see Gen.5:21-24). This implies that he did not walk with God before the birth of his son Methuselah. In the Wisdom of Sirah, we are told of Enoch, "Enoch pleased the Lord and was taken up from the earth, a pattern of repentance for all generations" (Sirach 44:16). Apparently, Enoch came to conversion at the time surrounding the birth of his son. Jude, inspired by the Spirit of God, quotes from the book of Enoch, "And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him" (Jude 14-15). In another book of the Apocrypha, the Wisdom of Sirach, we also read of the offspring of the angels and women: "He did not forgive the giants of old, who rebelled in their strength" (Sirach 16:7). The same message is found in the book known as 3 Maccabees, where we read: Similarly, in the apocryphal book of Baruch, we read the following: Another ancient Jewish source declares: The Book of Enoch