Samyaza

In the Enochic account Samyaza is one of the heavenly Watchers assigned to oversee humanity who persuades two hundred fellow angels to swear an oath to descend, take human wives, and 'consummate with human women.' Their union produces the Nephilim (giants), whose violence and appetite devastate human society and provoke divine retribution. God commands the archangel Gabriel to bind Samyaza and the transgressing Watchers; they are held 'for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth' until judgment and ultimately consigned to the abyss of fire. Variant traditions (e.g., the Book of Giants and Manichaean fragments) expand the narrative—Samyaza (Šahmīzād) appears as a progenitor whose offspring fight cosmic enemies such as Leviathan and in some versions are slain—while rabbinic and later legends adapt the figure (often conflating names such as Azza/Uzza) into other symbolic motifs.

Primary Enochic material emphasizes role and fate rather than detailed corporeal description. Later rabbinic legend (which sometimes uses Azza/Azzael as a variant) portrays a symbolic suspended figure: 'suspended between Heaven and Earth ... constantly falling, with one eye shut and the other open,' and identified in some tellings with the constellation Orion, hanging head-down. Apart from these visionary or symbolic portrayals, the supplied sources do not provide a consistent anthropomorphic or standardized physical description.

Samyaza’s principal capacities in the sources are leadership and persuasion (he organizes and secures an oath from two hundred angels), transmission of forbidden knowledge (teaching 'secret' or heavenly arts and names to humans), and sexual union with mortal women producing the Nephilim. His instruction of humans is presented as the imparting of dangerous knowledge — including names and arcana in later legendary strands — that transforms human society for the worse. Following the transgression, divine power is exercised against him: Gabriel is commanded to bind and imprison Samyaza, and some related traditions (Book of Giants) depict death or destruction of him and his offspring.