by Brian Godawa
Moses turned to Joshua and said, “Take me up to Mount Nebo again, to the heights of Pisgah. I would like to see the land that you will enter one last time.”
• • • • •
Joshua, Eleazer, and Caleb stood at the peak of Mount Nebo. Moses was dead. An era was gone. The people would mourn for weeks. There had never been a prophet like Moses, who spoke with Yahweh face to face. And these men suspected there never would be another like him to come.
They would bury him in the valley in the land of Moab. But now, they looked out upon the land before them: Gilead to the north, the land west of the Jordan, past Jericho all the way to the sea, and the Negeb to the south.
Not a word passed between them. But the moment was filled with holiness. The spirit of the Lord came upon them.
And they knew that before them was the future of their people, their land of conquest.
Before them was the next battle in the War of the Seed: Jericho.
Epilogue
The body of Moses lay in a secret tomb somewhere in the valley of Moab. But it was not a secret to the unearthly Watcher and adversary of Yahweh, Mastema. He had been waiting for this moment for many years.
He had been planning for it.
He moved the large two-ton boulder at the entrance of the cave. The resting places of important figures in this part of the land would normally have megalithic markers over them, gargantuan rocks stood on end, or balanced in precarious ways to signify their presence.
But there were no megaliths on this unmarked grave. It was intended to protect against this very thing, the theft of a corpse.
Mastema stooped to avoid hitting the ceiling as he found his way down the catacomb to the body. His eight-foot height and sinewy musculature provided the image of him as a portrait of death itself.
And there it was, resting peacefully on a stone slab, the body of the mighty leader of Israel. The stench of death was a pleasing aroma to Mastema’s nostrils. He breathed it in with eyes deliriously closed to focus his attention on his olfactory sense.
He breathed out with a sigh of delight, and lifted the body in his arms like cradling an old man. But this was no ordinary old man.
Moses had spoken face to face with Yahweh. When he was on Mount Sinai in the desert of exodus, something had changed in his physical being.
When Moses came down from the mountain carrying the tablets, he had no idea that the skin of his face was shining with light like burnished bronze. The Israelites were afraid at first, but Moses put a veil over his face to calm their fears. Whenever he would go into the Tent of Meeting before Yahweh, he would remove the veil, and then he would stand before the congregation and tell all Israel what Yahweh had commanded, whereupon he would return the veil over his shining face.
It was a fading glory. As time passed, so would the shining of his skin. But it did signify a transformation of his body that no one really understood. No one, that is, except for the Shining Ones in Yahweh’s presence, the Bene Elohim, or Sons of God.
Yahweh was light and dwelt in light, and the beings that surrounded his throne radiated light as well. Even the fallen Watchers who rebelled against heaven were still shining beings whose divine essence emitted from their bodies.
What had actually occurred was that Moses’ body had been changed by the presence of Yahweh. His very genetic structure had been altered, transfigured by Yahweh himself into a hybrid being of heaven and earth.
Mastema wanted that transfigured flesh for his own purposes.
The corpse was very human and would eventually return to the dust from which it came. But because it had been transfigured, it contained the Edenic regenerative properties that, if nurtured with occultic sciences, might allow Mastema to create a new chimeric organism.
The Watchers had originally begun their program of miscegenation in antediluvian days, when the Sons of God mated with the daughters of men and bred the Nephilim. The Nephilim were the giant hybrid of human and angelic flesh that violated Yahweh’s separated creation order. But the Great Flood had put a stop to that plan of corrupting the Seed of Eve.
Now that very Seed, in the form of the nation Israel, was about to enter Canaan and seek to wrest it from the Seed of the Serpent Nachash, or Mastema. If Mastema could revitalize that flesh and inhabit it with some of his sheddim, or demons, he hoped he could create a kind of “god puppet” of Moses that the Israelites would surely follow because of their naïve propensity to worship any god that could produce lights, bells, and whistles.
But he had to move fast before the body would become too decayed to be able to house the controlling spirit.
But Mikael the archangel was not about to let Mastema walk away with that body.
As Mastema stepped outside into the night, he was immediately surrounded by not four but all seven of the archangels. Mikael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Saraqael, Raguel, and Remiel.
He had never seen this before. All seven of them together, and in his way.
Mikael stepped forward and announced, “Adversary, by what legal right do you desecrate this honorable grave and lay claim to the body of Moses?”
Mastema looked around at the seven mighty ones encircling him. He would not stand a chance against these highest of Yahweh’s guardian archons—even if Ba’al were by his side.
Mastema simply stated, “I have a writ of Habeas Corpus.”
Habeas Corpus was the legal demand to bring forth the body of the accused to face his charges. It was intended to keep criminals from being unjustly held from trial.
Mikael said, “That is ridiculous. What are you up to, you devil? This is a righteous grave. There are no criminal charges on Moses.”
Mastema said, “I beg to differ, princely one. This lawbreaker never paid for the crime of murdering an Egyptian and hiding his body in the sand. He is under my jurisdiction to do with as I please.”
“May Yahweh Elohim rebuke you,” said Mikael. “He is atoned for. Yahweh will not allow your blasphemous designs upon his Chosen One. Hand the body over to us.”
Gabriel and Raphael stepped forward to take the body from him.
Mastema thought of using a ruse to draw them down upon himself, suffer their beatings, and then cry victim and file charges of angel brutality in the heavenly court.
But today was not a day for games.
He muttered to Raphael, “I see you are not crawling around anymore.”
He was making an insulting reference to the fact that Raphael had been cut in half by Ashtart’s scythe and had his lower half tossed into the Abyss.
Fortunately, Mikael and Gabriel had recovered his lower part after they had imprisoned Ashtart in Tartarus.
Raphael showed no reaction. He and Gabriel received the body in their arms and backed away.
Mastema spit out at Mikael before leaving, “I will see you soon in court, Prince of Israel.”
Mikael was not sure what that meant. He knew Mastema was always trying to manipulate the law in order to achieve injustice, but he had no idea about his latest machinations.
He would know soon enough.
The story is continued in the companion volume, Caleb Vigilant.
Appendix
Mythical Monsters in the Bible
Perhaps one of the most unique creative elements of the Chronicles of the Nephilim series is its ability to interact with pagan mythologies within the context of retelling Biblical stories in such a way as to bring out universal and shared meanings. But it does so within the context of a Biblical worldview. So famous and infamous giants, monsters, and other creatures from pagan myths show up in the stories of Enoch, Noah, Abraham and others: The sea dragon of chaos, Gilgamesh the ancient Babylonian hero, the chimeric mushussu lion dragon, The demoness Lilith, and others all make their appearances in this theological Biblical fantasy.
Rather than being a syncretistic blending of all religions into heretical oneness, this technique more accurately is described in Narnian terms as a subversive submission of all stories under the
lordship of Aslan.
But this is not a new phenomenon created by innovative Christian geniuses like Lewis and Tolkien; it is in fact a storytelling technique common to much ancient literature of imagination—including the Bible!
Leviathan and Behemoth
I have already written much about Leviathan and Behemoth as monsters of chaos in the Bible in appendices of previous Chronicles.[3] In those essays, I exegeted the Biblical texts where these monsters occurred. I debunked the notions that they are ancient descriptions of dinosaurs or other naturally occurring creatures, only to conclude that they bear the same characteristics of other ancient Near Eastern chaos monsters such as the Canaanite Leviathan and the Babylonian Tiamat. In passages such as Psalm 74 and Psalm 89, the historical event of the Exodus is mythopoeically presented as Yahweh fighting the waters and crushing the multiple heads of Leviathan or Rahab (another name for the same creature) in order to establish a new heavens and earth, his covenant order with Israel.
It is not that the Jews “copied” or “borrowed” such imagery from their pagan neighbors; but rather that, just as today, everyone of that time period used a common vocabulary of imagination to describe their worldviews. The Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Canaanites, Jews, and other ancient Near Easterners all described their gods’ supremacy in terms of battling and overcoming the sea dragon of chaos so they could create order out of the chaos.
But this is just the tip of the ziggurat of other examples of Biblical authors poetically incorporating mythical elements into their writings about real people, places, and times of history.
Now things start to get hairy.
Satyrs and Centaurs and Demons, Oh My!
In my novels, Joshua Valiant and Caleb Vigilant, I write about a tribe called the Seirim people of Banias at Mount Hermon. They live in caves at the foot of the mountains and are led by satyrs; chimeric beings with the lower body of a goat and the upper body of a human. But this mythopoeic imagery is not a mere assimilation of ancient Greek myths about Pan, the satyr deity of nature and shepherding. The notion of satyrs or goat deities predates Greek myth and finds a place in Canaanite lore, and therefore, in the Bible as well.
Take a look at these prophecies of Isaiah referencing the destruction of Babylon and Edom.
Isaiah 34:11–15 (The destruction of Edom)
11But the hawk and the porcupine shall possess it, the owl and the raven shall dwell in it… 13Thorns shall grow over its strongholds, nettles and thistles in its fortresses. It shall be the haunt of jackals, an abode for ostriches. 14And wild animals shall meet with hyenas; the wild goat (seirim) shall cry to his fellow; indeed, there the night bird settles and finds for herself a resting place. 15There the owl nests and lays and hatches and gathers her young in her shadow; indeed, there the hawks are gathered, each one with her mate.
Isaiah 13:21–22 (The destruction of Babylon)
21But wild animals will lie down there, and their houses will be full of howling creatures; there ostriches will dwell, and there wild goats (seirim) will dance. 22Hyenas will cry in its towers, and jackals in the pleasant palaces; its time is close at hand and its days will not be prolonged.
The passages above speak of God’s judgment upon the nations of Babylon and Edom (symbols of all that is against Israel and Yahweh). A cursory reading of the texts seem to indicate a common word picture of Yahweh destroying these nations so thoroughly that they end up a desert wasteland with wild animals and birds inhabiting them because the evil people will be no more.
Nothing about mythical monsters like satyrs there, right?
Wrong. Because the English translation of the Hebrew word seirim as “wild goats,” obscures the full ancient meaning. If we look closer into the original Hebrew, we find a more expanded mythopoeic reference to pagan deities.
A look at the Septuagint (LXX) translation into Greek made by ancient Jews in the second century before Christ, reveals the hint of that different picture.
Isaiah 34:13-14 (LXX)
11 and for a long time birds and hedgehogs, and ibises and ravens shall dwell in it: and the measuring line of desolation shall be cast over it, and satyrs shall dwell in it…13 And thorns shall spring up in their cities, and in her strong holds: and they shall be habitations of monsters, and a court for ostriches. 14 And devils shall meet with satyrs, and they shall cry one to the other: there shall satyrs rest, having found for themselves a place of rest.[4]
Isaiah 13:21-22 (LXX)
But wild beasts shall rest there; and the houses shall be filled with howling; and monsters shall rest there, and devils shall dance there, 22 and satyrs shall dwell there.[5]
Wow, what a dramatic difference, huh? Of course, the LXX passages above are not in Greek, but are English translations, which adds a layer of complication that we will unravel shortly to reveal even more mythopoeic elements. But the point is made that ancient translators understood those words within their ancient context much differently than the modern bias of more recent interpreters. Of course, this does not necessarily make the ancient translators right all the time, but it warrants a closer look at our own blinding biases.
The LXX translates the word for “satyrs” that appears in these Isaiah passages as onokentaurois or “donkey-centaurs,” from which we get our word “centaur.” The Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint defines this word as “donkey-centaur, mythic creature (a centaur resembling a donkey rather than a horse).”[6]
In Isaiah 34:14 of the ESV we read of “the wild goat crying to his fellow,” and in 13:21, “there wild goats will dance.” But the underlying Hebrew (seirim) is not about wild goats, but satyrs, that were prevalent in Canaanite religion. Scholar Judd Burton points out that Banias or Panias at the base of Mount Hermon in Bashan was a key worship site for the Greek goat-god Pan as early as the third century B.C. and earlier connections to the goat-idol Azazel (see Azazel below).[7]
Satyrs were well known for their satyrical dance, the Sikinnis, consisting of music, lascivious dance, licentious poetry and sarcastic critique of culture.[8] This reflects the mockery of the “goats” dancing on the ruins of Edom and Babylon in Isaiah, and the Sikinnis finds its way also into Joshua Valiant of the Chronicles.
The Bible writers considered these pagan seirim deities to be demons and thus called them “goat demons.” So prevalent and influential were these satyr gods that Yahweh would have trouble with Israel worshipping them as idols.
Leviticus 17:7
7 So they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to goat demons (seirim), after whom they whore. This shall be a statute forever for them throughout their generations.
2 Chronicles 11:15
15 [Jeroboam] appointed his own priests for the high places and for the goat idols (seirim) and for the calves that he had made.
Not only did Israel fall into worshipping the seirim in Canaan, they were even committing spiritual adultery with them while in the wilderness! It is no wonder Yahweh considered them demons, a declaration reiterated in Moses’ own prophecy that after Israel would be brought into Canaan by the hand of God, she would betray Yahweh by turning aside to other gods, redefined as demons.
Deuteronomy 32:17
17 They sacrificed to demons that were no gods, to gods they had never known, to new gods that had come recently, whom your fathers had never dreaded.[9]
Demons and Goblins
Moving back to the prophecies of Isaiah 13 and 34 we find additional spiritual creatures of chaos that are connected to the satyrs. We read of hawks, ostriches, owls, and ravens was well as other unknown animals. But the English translations make it look like they are just more natural animals.
Not so in the Hebrew.
Let’s take a closer look at the Hebrew words behind two more of these strange creatures, “wild animals” and “hyenas.”
Isaiah 13:21–22
21 But wild animals (siyyim) will lie down there, and their houses will be full of howling creatures; there ostriches will dwell, and there wild goats will
dance. 22 Hyenas (iyyim) will cry in its towers, and jackals in the pleasant palaces; its time is close at hand and its days will not be prolonged.
Isaiah 34:14
14 And wild animals (siyyim) shall meet with hyenas; (iyyim) the wild goat shall cry to his fellow; indeed, there the night bird settles and finds for herself a resting place.
The Hebrew for the words “wild animals” and “hyenas” are not readily identifiable,[10] so the ESV translators simply guessed according to their anti-mythical bias and filled in their translations with naturalistic words like “wild animals” and “hyenas.” But of these words, Bible commentator Hans Wildberger says,
“Whereas (jackals) and (ostriches), mentioned in v. 13, are certainly well-known animals, the creatures that are mentioned in v. 14 cannot be identified zoologically, not because we are not provided with enough information, but because they refer to fairy tale and mythical beings. Siyyim are demons, the kind that do their mischief by the ruins of Babylon, according to [Isaiah] 13:21. They are mentioned along with the iyyim (goblins) in this passage.[11]
The demons and goblins that Wildberger makes reference to in Isaiah 13:21-22 and 34:14 are the Hebrew words siyyim and iyyim, a phonetic play on words that is echoed in Jeremiah’s prophecy against Babylon as well:
Jeremiah 50:39 (ESV)
39 “Therefore wild beasts (siyyim) shall dwell with hyenas (iyyim) in Babylon, and ostriches shall dwell in her. She shall never again have people, nor be inhabited for all generations.