Gadreel: The Fallen Angel Blamed for Eve and for War
The Watcher said to have shown humanity 'the weapons of death' and to have led Eve astray in Eden.
Gadreel is named once, in 1 Enoch 69, as the fallen angel who "led astray Eve" and showed humanity "the weapons of death": the shield, the coat of mail and the sword for battle.
Gadreel appears only once, in 1 Enoch 69, in a list of fallen angels and the harms each one caused. "The third was named Gadreel: he it is who showed the children of men all the blows of death, and he led astray Eve, and showed the weapons of death to the sons of men, the shield and the coat of mail, and the sword for battle, and all the weapons of death to the children of men."
The passage is in the Similitudes, or Parables, of Enoch (chapters 37–71), the only part of 1 Enoch that has not turned up among the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is usually dated to around the turn of the era, later than the Book of the Watchers. That matters, because it shows the Enoch tradition growing over time: by this stage, the teachers of forbidden knowledge were being connected with the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
Earlier in 1 Enoch, weapon-making is credited to Azazel. Gadreel's entry either duplicates that role or reflects a separate list. Either way, it merges two stories that Genesis keeps apart: the deception of Eve and the arrival of warfare. The name is often explained as "God is my helper" or "wall of God." For readers drawn to the idea of outside knowledge, Gadreel is the sharpest example: a single figure blamed both for humanity's first moral fall and for its first arms race.
Gadreel is the only Watcher credited with seducing Eve, which makes him both the serpent of Eden and the inventor of armor in one sentence.
The list in 1 Enoch 69 is late and partly garbled in the Ethiopic manuscripts; scholars treat it as an expansion of the older Watcher story, not an independent tradition.
