According to the apocryphal Book of Enoch, Azazel was a leader of the grigori (also known as "watchers"), a group of fallen angels who mated with mortal women, giving rise to a race of giants known as the Nephilim. Azazel is particularly noteworthy among the grigori because it was he who taught men how to make weapons of war as well as teaching women how to make and wear cosmetics. Eventually, Azazel's teachings created such iniquity that God decided to destroy all life on Earth with a great flood, sparing only Noah, Noah's family, and seven pairs of each species of "clean" animals, and one pair of each "unclean" species, all of whom escaped destruction by living for one year on an ark that God instructed Noah to build.

"Azazel" is found in the Bible in Leviticus 16:8, 10, and 26, but is not listed as an entity or spirit. The word is translated "scapegoat" and simply means "the goat of removal." The scapegoat is sent to wander in the desert in conjunction with another goat which is sacrificed to God, the "azazel" is led out into the desert and set free as proof that there is no longer any unexpiated guilt in the community.

In modern fiction

Azazel is mentioned in Milton's Paradise Lost as Satan's standard-bearer.

Azazel was the main antagonist opposite Denzel Washington's character in the film, Fallen, where Azazel is a body-hopping demon spirit. He also makes an appereance in the DC Comics/Vertigo series "The Sandman", written by Neil Gaiman. Recently, a character of this description was shown in the Marvel comics universe to be the father of the X-Man Nightcrawler by the shape-shifter Mystique.

Azazel was also the name of an unrelated main character in the Isaac Asimov series of short stories by that name. He was a small supernatural being who meddled in the affairs of humans.

Azazel is also the main character of the Sky One series HEX.

Azazel also appears in Bulgakov's 20th century novel The Master and Margarita under the slightly different name Azazello.