2 Enoch 49

Related ancient text — scholarly reference

Extra-canonical text — not LDS scripture and not in the KJV Apocrypha. Provided as scholarly reference for parallel literature of the Second Temple period and the early Christian era. Read with discernment; the Apostle Jude quotes 1 Enoch and Paul knew this material, but inclusion here is for study, not doctrine.

1I swear to you, my children, but I swear not by any oath, neither by heaven nor by earth, nor by any other creature which God created.

2The Lord said: There is no oath in me, nor injustice, but truth.

3If there is no truth in men, let them swear by the words, Yea, yea, or else, Nay, nay.

4And I swear to you, yea, yea, that there has been no man in his mother's womb, (but that) already before, even to each one there is a place prepared for the repose of that soul, and a measure fixed how much it is intended that a man be tried in this world.

5Yea, children, deceive not yourselves, for there has been previously prepared a place for every soul of man.

Public-domain text (R.H. Charles 1913 and equivalents). These works are not canonical, but several were widely read in antiquity and one (1 Enoch) is quoted by name in Jude 1:14–15. Useful for understanding the doctrinal landscape from which the apostles and earliest saints taught.