by Brian Godawa
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Cherubim hair as binding the angels: The concept is entirely fictional. But it is based on some mythopoeic research. “Through the entire Chronicles of the Nephilim series, I have used a concept called “binding” of angels, demons, and Watchers. This binding is accomplished through imprisonment in the earth or Tartarus.
“This binding notion originates theologically from the binding of Satan in the ministry of Christ as noted above in Matthew 12, as well as the binding of angels in “chains of gloomy darkness” in Tartarus in Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4. And these New Testament Scriptures are paraphrases of the Enochian narrative of the antediluvian Watchers who at the Flood were “bound” “for seventy generations underneath the rocks of the ground until the day of their judgment” (1 Enoch 10:12).
“The idea of binding spirits is a common one in ancient religion and magic. Michael Fishbane notes that in the ancient Near East, incantations and spells were used by sorcerers and enchanters to bind people and spirits in spiritual “traps, pits, snares, and nets,” using venomous curses from their lips like serpents. In response to some of these verbal sorceries, the Psalmist himself calls upon Yahweh in similar utterances to reverse the spells upon his enemies that they would be trapped, ensnared and bound by their own magical devices (Psalm 140; 64; 57:4-6). Exorcists of the first century used incantations to cast out demons in Jesus’ name (Acts 16:18), the same incantation used by Demons against Jesus before being cast out (Mk 1:27).
“Ezekiel 13:18 refers to a specific form of hunting and binding spirits in a practice of women “who sew magic bands upon all wrists…in the hunt for souls!” I reversed this pagan version of using magical armbands by creating a heavenly version of the archangels with armbands of indestructible Cherubim hair for their hunting and binding of evil spirits. The hair is wrapped as bands around the arms of archangels and used like a rope to bind the Watchers’ hands and feet.” Brian Godawa, When Giants Were Upon the Earth: The Watchers, the Nephilim, and the Biblical Cosmic War of the Seed (Embedded Pictures, 2014), 285-286.
For the story of the angels being bound at the Flood, see: Brian Godawa, Noah Primeval (Los Angeles, CA: Embedded Pictures Publishing, 2011).
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Watchers weakened by water: This is creative license that is based on theological possibilities. Jesus speaks of demons traveling over waterless places when cast out of humans.
Matthew 12:43
When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none.
Most commentaries have no idea what this means. But there is connection between demons and the desert that suggest that the desert is a metaphor for chaos in contrast with the orderliness of his Promised Land of milk and honey. Thus, the desert is the habitation of demons without human hosts.
The notion of Azazel in the Leviticus law of scapegoating carries this meaning. In Leviticus 16, the high priest Aaron is instructed in sin offerings for the people of Israel. One of those offerings is to be a scapegoat.
Leviticus 16:7–10
Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the LORD at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the LORD and the other lot for Azazel. And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the LORD and use it as a sin offering, but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the LORD to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.
The name Azazel is not explained anywhere in the Old Testament, but we’ve heard that name before in the book of 1Enoch. Azazel was one of the lead Watchers who led the rebellion of 200 Watchers to mate with the daughters of men. And that Watcher was considered bound in the desert of Dudael.
The natural question arises whether this is the same sacrifice to goat demons that Yahweh condemns in the very Leviticus and Isaiah passages we already looked at. But a closer look dispels such concerns.
The first goat was “for Yahweh” and the second “for Azazel” (v. 8). But whereas the first goat was a sacrifice, the second was not. As commentator Jacob Milgrom claims, “In pre-Israelite practice [Azazel] was surely a true demon, perhaps a satyr, who ruled in the wilderness – in the Priestly ritual he is no longer a personality but just a name, designating the place to which impurities and sins are banished.”
Milgrom then explains that in the ancient world, purgation and elimination rites went together. The sending out of the scapegoat to Azazel in the wilderness was a way of banishing evil to its place of origin which was described as the netherworld of chaos, where its malevolent powers could no longer do harm to the sender. This wilderness of “tohu and wabohu” or emptiness and wasteland was precisely the chaos that Yahweh pushed back to establish his covenantal order of the heavens and earth, so it was where all demonic entities were considered to reside.
From this connection of demons with desert and “waterless” places, I speculated that maybe demons were afraid of water in light of their desert habitations. And since the Enochian interpretation of demons defines them as spirits of the dead Nephilim, and since the Nephilim were destroyed in the Flood, along with the binding of the Watchers into the earth, then I added speculation that water might have made it easier for the angels to bind the Watchers into the earth during the Flood. Again, this is purely creative theological speculation that seeks to give meaning to the text by using the imagination.
I think the important point is that I didn’t make it up out of whole cloth, but rather stitched together pieces of the Scriptural tapestry.
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CHAPTER 21
Mount Hermon is the Mountain of Bashan, the spiritual opponent of Yahweh in the Bible:
In Matthew 16:13-20 is the famous story of Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ, who then responds, “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell [Hades] shall not prevail against it” (v. 18). Shortly after, Jesus leads them up to a high mountain where he is transfigured.
In order to understand the spiritual reality of what is going on in this polemical sequence and its relevance to the cosmic War of the Seed, we must first understand where it is going on.
Verse 13 says that Peter’s confession takes place in the district of Caesarea Philippi. This city was in the heart of Bashan on a rocky terrace in the foothills of Mount Hermon. This was the celebrated location of the grotto of Banias or Panias, where the satyr goat god Pan was worshipped and from where the mouth of the Jordan river flowed. This very location was what was known as the “gates of Hades,” the underworld abode of dead souls.
The Jewish historian Josephus wrote of this sacred grotto during his time, “a dark cave opens itself; within which there is a horrible precipice, that descends abruptly to a vast depth; it contains a mighty quantity of water, which is immovable; and when anybody lets down anything to measure the depth of the earth beneath the water, no length of cord is sufficient to reach it.”
As scholar Judd Burton points out, this is a kind of ground zero for the gods against whom Jesus was fighting his cosmic spiritual war. Mount Hermon was the location where the Watchers came to earth, led their rebellion and miscegenation, which birthed the Nephilim (1 Enoch 13:7-10). It was their headquarters, in Bashan, the place of the Serpent, where Azazel may have been worshipped before Pan as a desert goat idol.
When Jesus speaks of building his church upon a rock, it is as much a polemical contrast with the pagan city upon the rock, as it may have been a word play off of Peter’s name, meaning “stone.” In the ancient world, mountains were not only a gateway between heaven, earth, and the underworld, but also the habitations of the gods that represented their heavenly power and authority. The mountain before them, Hermon, was considered the heavenly habitation of Canaanite gods as well as the very Watchers before whose gates of Hades Jesus now stood. The polemics become clearer when one realizes that gates are not offensive weapons, but defensive me
ans. Christ’s kingship is storming the very gates of Hades/Sheol in the heart of darkness and he will build his cosmic holy mountain upon its ruins.
But the battle is only beginning. Because the very next incident that occurs is the transfiguration (Matt. 17:1-13). The text says that Jesus led three disciples up a high mountain. But it doesn’t say which mountain. Though tradition has often concluded it was Mount Tabor, a more likely candidate is Mount Hermon itself. The reasons are because Tabor is not a high mountain at only 1800 feet compared to Hermon’s 9000 feet height, and Tabor was a well traveled location which would not allow Jesus to be alone with his disciples (17:1).
Then the text says, that Jesus “was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him” (Matthew 17:2–3). When Peter offers to put up three tabernacles for each of his heroes, he hears a voice from the cloud say, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased, listen to him” (vs. 4-5). The theological point of this being that Moses and Elijah are the representatives of the Old Covenant, summed up as the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah), but Jesus is the anointed King (Messiah) that both Law and Prophets pointed toward.
So God is anointing Jesus and transferring all covenantal authority to him as God’s own Son. And for what purpose? To become king upon the new cosmic mountain that God was establishing: Mount Zion in the city of God. In the Mosaic Covenant, Mount Sinai was considered the cosmic mountain of God where God had his assembly of divine holy ones (Deut. 33:2-3). But now, as pronounced by the prophets, that mountain was being transferred out of the wilderness wandering into a new home in the Promised Land as Mount Zion (ultimately in Jerusalem). And that new mountain was the displacement and replacement of the previous divine occupants of Mount Hermon. Of course, just like David the messianic type, Jesus was anointed as king, but there would be a delay of time before he would take that rightful throne because he had some Goliaths yet to conquer (1 Sam. 16:13; 2 Sam. 5:3).
Take a look at this Psalm and see how the language of cosmic war against the anointed Messiah is portrayed as a victory of God establishing his new cosmic mountain. We see a repeat of the language of Jesus’ transfiguration at Hermon.
Psalm 2:1–8 (NASB95)
1 Why are the nations in an uproar And the peoples devising a vain thing? 2 The kings of the earth take their stand And the rulers [heavenly as well?] take counsel together Against the LORD and against His Anointed [Messiah], saying, 3 “Let us tear their fetters apart And cast away their cords from us!” 4 He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord scoffs at them. 5 Then He will speak to them in His anger And terrify them in His fury, saying, 6 “But as for Me, I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain.” 7 “I will surely tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to Me, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You. 8 ‘Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, And the very ends of the earth as Your possession.
Like Moses’ transfiguration in Exodus 34:29, Jesus’ body was transformed by his anointing to shine with the glory of those who surround God’s throne (Dan. 10:6; Ezek 1:14-16, 21ff.; 10:9). But that description is no where near the ending of this spiritual parade of triumph being previewed in God’s Word. One last passage illustrates the conquering change of ownership of the cosmic mountain in Bashan. Notice the ironic language used of Bashan as God’s mountain, and the spiritual warfare imagery of its replacement.
Psalm 68:15–22
15O mountain of God, mountain of Bashan; O many-peaked mountain, mountain of Bashan! 16 Why do you look with hatred, O many-peaked mountain, at the mount that God desired for his abode, yes, where the LORD will dwell forever? 17 The chariots of God are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands; the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary. 18 You ascended on high, leading a host of captives in your train and receiving gifts among men, even among the rebellious, that the LORD God may dwell there… 21 But God will strike the heads of his enemies, the hairy crown of him who walks in his guilty ways. 22 The Lord said, “I will bring them back from Bashan, I will bring them back from the depths of the sea.
In this Psalm, God takes ownership of Bashan with his heavenly host of warriors, but then replaces it and refers to Sinai (soon to be Zion). It is not that God is making Bashan his mountain literally, but conquering its divinities and theologically replacing it with his new cosmic mountain elsewhere. In verse 18 we see a foreshadowing of Christ’s own victorious heavenly ascension, where he leads captives in triumphal procession and receives tribute from them as spoils of war (v. 18). He will own and live where once the rebellious ruled (v. 18). He strikes the “hairy crown” (seir) of the people of that area (v. 21), the descendants of the cursed hairy Esau/Seir, who worshipped the goat demons (as depicted in Joshua Valiant and Caleb Vigilant). He will bring them all out from the sea of chaos, that wilderness where Leviathan symbolically reigns.
This is taken from: Brian Godawa, When Giants Were Upon the Earth: The Watchers, the Nephilim, and the Biblical Cosmic War of the Seed (Los Angeles, CA: Embedded Pictures Publishing, 2014), 292-295.
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The high mountain as Mount Zion:
Perhaps there is a dual image going on here, much like the seven heads of the dragon in Revelation 17 represent both the mountains of Rome and the Caesars who ruled it. Here is the passage where Mount Bashan is shown in antagonist toward Zion as cosmic mountains:
Psalm 68:15–16
15 O mountain of God, mountain of Bashan; O many-peaked mountain, mountain of Bashan! 16 Why do you look with hatred, O many-peaked mountain, at the mount that God desired for his abode, yes, where the LORD will dwell forever?
Here is the spiritual Mount Zion described as the highest of mountains:
Isaiah 2:2
2 It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the LORD shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it,
“The mountain John sees in his vision is probably Mount Zion, the location of the Lamb and his followers (14:1; cp. Ps 2:6), because it is associated with the heavenly Jerusalem in Scripture (Heb 12:22) just as historical Zion was related to historical Jerusalem.238 Zion is the center of the messianic kingdom (Corsini 394). In that God makes his residence there to dwell among men (21:3), this reflects Zechariah 8:3: “Thus says the Lord, ‘I will return to Zion and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. Then Jerusalem will be called the City of Truth, and the mountain of the Lord of hosts will be called the Holy Mountain.’” There they “will be My people and I will be their God” (Zec 8:8; cp. Rev 21:3).”
Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Divorce of Israel: A Redemptive-Historical Interpretation of Revelation Vol. 2 (Dallas, GA: Tolle Lege Press, 2016), 772.
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Revelation 21:3-6.
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The New Covenant as new creation:
“As stated above the new creation begins flowing into and impacting history in the first century long before the consummate order. Once again John picks up on Old Testament imagery. Let us compare John’s statement with Isaiah’s Old Testament prophecy to see that Isaiah is the evident source of his description:
Isaiah 65:17 – 19
For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I create; For behold, I create Jerusalem for rejoicing, and her people for gladness. I will also rejoice in Jerusalem, and be glad in My people; and there will no longer be heard in her the voice of weeping and the sound of crying.
Revelation 21:1-4
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea…. And He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed
away.
“Given John’s predilection for Old Testament source material, I find it impossible to deny that these very similar statements refer to the same phenomenon.
“A first look at either passage inclines the reader to surmise that the writer is speaking of the eternal, perfected, consummate order. However, looks are deceiving – for no orthodox Christian believes that in the eternal order anyone will give birth to children, experience sin, grow old, die, and endure the curse. Yet Isaiah’s very next verse reads:
No longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his days; for the youth will die at the age of one hundred and the one who does not reach the age of one hundred shall be thought accursed.” (Isa. 65:20)
“How shall we understand Isaiah’s poetic description of the new creation? Isaiah is prophesying the coming of Christ’s new covenant kingdom, the gospel era, the church age. John is expanding on that theme. After all, Paul himself likens salvation to a new creation – even using Isaiah’s language: