Basic Information
A class of angel mentioned in the Bible in the Book of Daniel and described in the apocryphal Book of Enoch.
In Daniel chapter 4, King Nebuchadnezzar has a dream involving a gigantic tree which is chopped down. A being, whom the King refers to as "a Watcher, a holy one from heaven," explains the other Watchers have decreed that he is going to be punished for his lack of humility and stricken with madness. And yeah, that's what happens. For seven years, Nebuchadnezzar thinks he's a cow and goes about on all fours eating grass and saying "Moo!" (Speculating on that last part). He gets better eventually, and confesses the Glory of God.
The First Book of Enoch goes into more detail about the Watchers. They are sort of middle management administrators in the Heavenly hierarchy. Most interestingly, Enoch says that some of the Watchers who had been assigned as observers to watch over humanity overstepped their Prime Directive and teaching men forbidden knowledge like astrology and weapon-making and writing with ink on paper. They also were the "Sons of Heaven" mentioned in Genesis ch. 6 who started fooling around with the Daughters of Men and begetting the Nephilim
Jack Kirby and Stan Lee introduced a race of cosmic beings called "The Watchers" in The Fantastic Four, who resembled the Watchers of Enoch in that they had a cosmic mandate to observe everything that happens in the universe, but never to interfere. ( Except for Uatu, who is a buttinski.) Coincidence?
Sources
Game and Story Use
- Worth noting that the first human accounted as a weaponsmith (or indeed any kind of smith) was Tubal Cain … an interesting genealogy for an angel to stray from the reservation in the company of.
- If you're a Von Daniken fan - or otherwise running an ancient-astronauts campaign, the watchers - or at least the "fallen" ones - are those visitors that belong to the interventionist faction.
- Also note that, if there's a watcher on duty to rebuke Nebuchadnezzar, clearly not all of them fell.
- If you have a guardian angel … is it a watcher? Is that what watchers were meant to do, and did angels from another order have to take over?