Joshua Valiant

by Brian Godawa

  The Dictionary of Biblical Languages (DBL) admits that another interpretation of iyyim other than howling desert animals is “spirit, ghost, goblin, i.e., a night demon or dead spirit (Isa. 13:22; 34:14; Jer. 50:39), note: this would be one from the distant lands, i.e., referring to the nether worlds.”[12] One could say that siyyim and iyyim are similar to our own play on words, “ghosts and goblins.”

  The proof of this demon interpretation is in the Apostle John’s inspired reuse of the same exact language when pronouncing judgment upon first century Israel as a symbolic “Mystery Babylon.”

  Revelation 18:2

  2“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast.”[13]

  Because of the exile under the Babylonians, Jews would use Babylon as the ultimate symbol of evil. So when John attacks his contemporaries in Israel for rejecting Messiah, he describes them as demonic Babylon worthy of the same judgment as that ultimate evil nation.

  But regardless of one’s eschatological interpretation, the “wild beasts” or “monsters” and “hyenas” of Isaiah and Jeremiah are interpreted as demons, unclean spirits and detestable beasts, along with the unclean animals that will scavenge over the ruins of the judged nation. The Old Testament “haunt of jackals” is the New Testament equivalent of the “haunt of demons.” The “dwelling of hyenas and ostriches” is the “dwelling of demons.”

  In fact, even the Hebrew for “ostriches” is a word that is not all it seems. The actual Hebrew is benot yaanah, “daughters of ostriches,” not merely “ostriches.” Of course, this odd adjective did not make the translators comfortable because it pointed to something that may be other than ostriches, so they left it out.

  The DBL says this Hebrew word phrase is “formally, daughter of greed, or daughter of wilderness… a kind of owl.”[14] So they are not even sure it means an ostrich. Owls are connected to the underworld and spirits through all of ancient literature. But since there is no conclusive scholarship available on what this term really means, we will leave it as another possible reference to a strange creature of the demonic wilderness in a passage of much debated strange demonic references.

  Lilith

  Another strange creature that occurs in Isaiah 34:14 is the “night hag,” or “night bird” that “settles and finds for herself a resting place.” The Hebrew word is actually Lilith, which the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible explains is a Mesopotamian demoness residing in a tree that reaches back to the third millennium BC.

  Here we find Inanna (Ishtar) who plants a tree later hoping to cut from its wood a throne and a bed for herself. But as the tree grows, a snake makes its nest at its roots, Anzu settled in the top and in the trunk the demon ki-sikil-líl-lá [Lilith] makes her lair.[15]

  I’ve already written about Lilith in the appendix of Enoch Primordial,[16] but it is important that she shows up in this Biblical context connected with the satyrs and Azazel. The very next verse (Isa. 34:15) talks about the owl that nests and lays and hatches her young in its shadow. But lexicons such as the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament and Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew Lexicon contest this Hebrew word for owl (qippoz) with more ancient interpretations of an “arrow snake.”[17] If they are correct, then the poetry of the passage would be more complete as the NASB indicates.

  Isaiah 34:14–15 (NASB95)

  14 Yes, the night monster (Lilith) will settle there And will find herself a resting place. 15 The tree snake (qippoz) will make its nest and lay eggs there, And it will hatch and gather them under its protection.

  The snake of verse 15 would match the Lilith myth (v. 14) with the snake in the roots making its nest. The correlation is too close to deny that this is another Biblical reference to a popular mythic creature that the Bible writers refer to in demonic terms.

  Lion Men of Moab

  As a side note, one other possible chimeric creature appears in the story of David’s mighty men in 2Sam. 23:20. There it says that Benaiah, a valiant warrior, “struck down two ariels of Moab.” The word “ariel” is a transliteration because scholars are not sure what it means. Lexicons explain the most likely meaning as “lion of god,”[18] which is why the King James and Young’s Bibles translate these opponents of Benaiah as “lion-like men of Moab.”

  The ancient understanding of ariel as a lion-like hybrid humanoid finds support in a later Nag Hammadi text that speaks of a gnostic deity, Yaldabaoth, who was an ariel (spelled slightly different): “Ariael is what the perfect call him, for he was like a lion.”[19]

  The Lion Men of Moab will make their entrance in the coming Chronicle, David Ascendant.

  But there is still more behind this hybrid creature concept of goat demons or satyrs than meets a cursory reading of the text. And it is something that ties in with Chronicles of the Nephilim with peculiar interest.

  Azazel

  In Leviticus 16, we read of the sacrificial offering on the Day of Atonement. Among other sacrifices, the high priest would take two goats for atonement of the people. One, he would kill as blood sacrifice on the altar, and the other, he would transfer the sins of the people onto the goat by confession and the laying on of his hands. This action of transferring the bloodguilt onto the “other” is where we got the concept of “scapegoat.”

  But that is not the most fascinating piece of this puzzle. For in verses 8–10 and 26, the priest is told to send the goat “away into the wilderness to Azazel” (v. 10)! You read that right: Azazel.

  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.[20] 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.”[21]

  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.[22] 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.

  So Azazel could very well have been considered the father or leader of the goat demons. In the book of 1Enoch, Azazel is imprisoned in an opening in the desert of Dudael (1Enoch 13:4–8). But scholar Judd Burton argues that this unknown location might very well be connected to Mount Hermon, the original home of the Watchers when they came down to the earth (1Enoch 6:6). He points out that a very important “opening” existed near Hermon in the Grotto of Pan at the site called Banias. In the Hellenistic period (200 B.C.) the Greeks established a shrine to Pan, the satyr god of nature and shepherding,
that became quite influential in the worship of Pan in the Greco-Roman period.

  Judd then speculates that the shrine was originally to Azazel in antediluvian days because of the close similarities between Azazel and Pan. Firstly, both deities were associated with the goat. Secondly, Pan was driven by primal sexual lusts, just as Azazel lusted after human women and led the Watchers to mate with them. Thirdly, both Pan and Azazel were adept at war craft. The victory at Marathon in 490 BC was attributed to Pan, just as the art of making weapons and waging war was attributed to Azazel. And lastly, “with regard to the mystical, Pan and Azazel are also kindred spirits. The Greeks associated Pan with divination and prophecy, and Azazel himself took an active role in revealing the mystical knowledge of heaven to humanity.”[23]

  It was this cave grotto at Banias near Hermon that may be the mysterious Dudael location or the memorial to Azazel’s imprisonment. The Seirim clan of Banias in Joshua Valiant and Caleb Vigilant embodies this spiritual and theological reality. And this is how I appropriated Azazel’s original binding at the Flood in Noah Primeval, by having him bound in a desert called Dudael, but his final binding occurred at Mount Hermon in Joshua Valiant. It was a both/and theological unity.

  The Serpent Clan of Gilgal Rephaim

  Throughout the Chronicles of the Nephilim, Bashan, “the place of the serpent,” plays an important part of the storyline of the Watchers because it seems to have an important role in the spiritual history of the region. Bashan is where Mount Hermon, the touch point for the Watchers, resides (1Enoch 6:6), as well as the Seirim tribe of satyrs at Banias. The very land of Canaan around Mount Hermon that was called Bashan was described as the “land of the Rephaim” (Deut. 3:13), whose inhabitants were described as tall giants like the Anakim (Deut. 2:11, 20) and were related to Goliath the giant (1Chron. 20:4–8). It was also the domain of the mighty giant, Og of Bashan, the “last of the Rephaim” (Josh. 12:4; Deut. 3:11), who was Joshua’s last impediment to entering the Promised Land. The ancient Jewish book of Jubilees adds some more details about these giant Rephaim (“Raphaim”) and their territory to corroborate the Biblical record:

  Jubilees 29:9–10

  9 But formerly the land of Gilead was called “the land of Raphaim” because it was the land of the Raphaim. And the Raphaim were born as giants whose height was ten cubits (15 ft.), nine cubits (13.5 ft.), eight cubits (12 ft.), or down to seven cubits (10.5 ft.). 10 And their dwelling was from the land of the Ammonites to Mount Hermon and their royal palaces were in Qarnaim, and Ashtaroth, and Edrei, and Misur, and Beon.[24]

  But there is more to this region that has been unearthed in recent decades. The Hivites, one of the seven Canaanite peoples marked out for annihilation (Ex. 23:23), resided “under Hermon” (Josh. 11:3) “on Mount Lebanon, from Mount Baal-hermon as far as Lebo-hamath (Jdg. 3:3). Though the Bible tells us no particulars about these people, there are some interesting factoids that illuminate some possibilities.

  The Hebrew word for Hivite has the same consonants as another common word for snake,[25] and they are descendants of the cursed line of Canaan, son of Ham (Gen. 10:17; 1Chron. 1:15).

  About 20 miles south of Mount Hermon is a serpentine ravine about a mile long bearing the marks of manmade engraving that do not match its surrounding natural formations. It’s like a huge snake cut into the earth. And then about seven miles southwest of there lies a large serpentine mound that may date back to ancient days.[26]

  And right near that serpentine mound lays Gilgal Rephaim.

  Gilgal Rephaim is a large monument of megalithic stones set in concentric circles with a tomb (“tumulus”) at the center and an outer diameter of about 520 feet. The ruins are anywhere between eight and fifteen feet tall and amount to forty thousand tons of stone. The name means, “Circle of Giants,” and it lays 25 miles northwest of Edrei, the city of Og of Bashan, in the land of the Rephaim, the territory ruled by Og. Scholars have conjectured that this site, much like other circular megalithic sites around the world, was used for religious astronomical/astrological purposes.[27] Other sites like it include the famous Stonehenge, as well as the newly discovered ancient Gobleki Tepe in Turkey, the world’s oldest known religious monument, dating as far back as 9000 B.C.

  Aerial view of Gilgal Rephaim

  But the connections are all there between a cult of the serpent in the land of the Rephaim and Bashan, the place of the serpent. Thus, the Serpent Clan of Gilgal Rephaim, from which Rahab the prostitute originates in Joshua Valiant.

  Winged Fiery Serpents

  In Joshua Valiant I tell the infamous story of Nehushtan, the bronze serpent, from Numbers 21. As Moses leads the people of Israel through the Negeb desert on their way to enter the Transjordan, the Israelites grumble and complain yet again about their lack of food and water. Yahweh responds by sending serpents to punish them.

  Numbers 21:6–9

  Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

  The Hebrew word for “fiery serpents” used in this text is seraph, which is the same word used for the winged serpentine guardians of Yahweh’s throne in passages like Isaiah 6:2.[28] There are several different Hebrew words that can be used for serpents, so the choice of this word here should clue us into the deliberations of the writer. While the notion of “fiery” can refer to the venomous sting of a desert snake such as a viper or cobra, there may be more going on here than a mere poetic description of snake bites.

  The picture of seraph snakes having wings shows up in two other passages from Isaiah.

  Isaiah 14:29

  29 Rejoice not, O Philistia, all of you, that the rod that struck you is broken, for from the serpent’s root will come forth an adder, and its fruit will be a flying fiery serpent.

  Isaiah 30:6–7

  6 An oracle on the beasts of the Negeb. Through a land of trouble and anguish, from where come the lioness and the lion, the adder and the flying fiery serpent…7 Egypt’s help is worthless and empty; therefore I have called her “Rahab who sits still.”

  Both of these prophecies against Philistia and Egypt respectively use the idea of a “flying fiery serpent” as a poetic description of the evil or dangerous nature of those nations. Though they are not required to be literal existing creatures for the prophecy to be legitimate, they nevertheless use the same Hebrew reference to fiery serpents that was used in the more historical passage of Numbers describing the “fiery serpents.”

  Additionally, the Isaiah 30 passage describes these flying fiery serpents as the beasts of the Negeb, the same location for the fiery serpents of Numbers 21.

  Jacob Milgrom argues that the bronze or copper snake that Moses put on the pole was a winged serpent. He concludes this from the link of the Hebrew seraph to the Egyptian uraeus serpent.

  Egypt is the home for images of winged serpents. For example, the arms on the throne of Tutankhamen consist of two wings of a four-winged snake (uraeus), which rise vertically from the back of the seat. Indeed, the erect cobra, or uraeus, standing on its coil is the symbol of royalty for the pharaoh and the gods throughout Egyptian history. Winged uraei dating from the Canaanite period have been found, proving that the image of the winged serpent was well known in ancient Israel.[29]

  Scholar Karen Randolph Joines adds more to the Egyptian origin of this motif, by explaining that the usage of serpent images to defend against snakes was also an exclusively Egyptian notion without evidence in Canaan or Mesopotamia.[30] And Moses came out of Egypt.

  But the important element of these snakes being flying se
rpents or even dragons with mythical background is reaffirmed in highly respected lexicons such as the Brown, Driver, Briggs Hebrew Lexicon.[31]

  The final clause in Isaiah 30:7 likening Egypt’s punishment to the sea dragon Rahab lying dead in the desert is a further mythical serpentine connection.[32]

  But the Bible and Egypt are not the only places where we read of flying serpents in the desert. Hans Wildberger points out Assyrian king Esarhaddon’s description of flying serpents in his tenth campaign to Egypt in the seventh century B.C.

  “A distance of 4 double-hours I marched over a territory… (there were) two-headed serpents [whose attack] (spelled) death—but I trampled (upon them) and marched on. A distance of 4 double-hours in a journey of 2 days (there were) green [animals] [Tr.: Borger: “serpents”] whose wings were batting.”[33]

  The Greek historian Herodotus wrote of “sacred” winged serpents and their connection to Egypt in his Histories:

  There is a place in Arabia not far from the town of Buto where I went to learn about the winged serpents. When I arrived there, I saw innumerable bones and backbones of serpents... This place… adjoins the plain of Egypt. Winged serpents are said to fly from Arabia at the beginning of spring, making for Egypt... The serpents are like water-snakes. Their wings are not feathered but very like the wings of a bat. I have now said enough concerning creatures that are sacred.[34]

  The notion of flying serpents as mythical versus real creatures appearing in the Bible is certainly debated among scholars, but this debate gives certain warrant to the imaginative usage of winged flying serpents appearing in Chronicles of the Nephilim.[35]