by Brian Godawa
“We are not killing the innocent,” said Mikael.
It struck Lot that Mikael just implied that there was not a single other righteous person in the city but him and his family. And he was not even sure of his family.
“You have wasted too much time,” said Mikael. “Destroyer, grab them.”
The Destroyer picked up Lot and Ado; Mikael picked up Ishtar and Gaia, and went for the door.
The girls started kicking and screaming until Mikael squeezed them so tight, they passed out.
Lot saw it and could not help but give a smile of approval.
Mikael backed up, and the Destroyer gave a swift kick that exploded the door outward with a blast that slew the twenty closest blind criminals and laid a hundred others out flat on their backs.
The angels led the family through the confused blind crowd and out of the city.
The morning was dawning over the mountains now.
Someone had informed the gods about the commotion at Lot’s home, and that there were angels in the city.
Ba’al and Ashtart were raving mad that angels had sought such subterfuge, and they were on their way to capture the offenders when they saw the angels carrying Lot’s family toward the gates.
Ba’al stopped in his tracks and held back Ashtart.
“What are you doing?” complained Ashtart. “They are getting away.”
Ba’al’s skin went pale as the blood left his scales. He knew who that huge angelic hulk creature was.
“The Destroyer,” said Ba’al.
Ashtart was startled. She knew who the Destroyer was, but had never seen him. She knew they would not stand a chance against the Destroyer. No one stood a chance against that Angel of mass destruction.
“We need to leave now,” said Ba’al.
They turned tails and ran back to their temple. But Ashtart had one last punch she wanted to throw.
Outside the gates of the city, Mikael told Lot, “Do not look back or stop anywhere in the valley. Escape to the hills, lest you be swept away.”
But Lot stopped him, “My lords, you have shown me great kindness in saving my life, but I cannot make it to the hills in time. I will be overtaken. May I flee to Zoar? Would that be far enough?”
Mikael looked at the Destroyer, who nodded. Mikael turned back to him, “Okay, I will grant you this favor. Go to Zoar but do not stop until you get there. I will hold off until you arrive.”
Lot and his wife and two daughters then set off on their horses toward Zoar a few miles away.
Mikael and the Destroyer reentered the city. But as they stepped through the gates, they heard a heinous screeching bellow come from the main street leading to the temple. It was not human; it was more like the sound of many humans full of furious rage.
Then the ground trembled beneath their feet and they saw the thing come at them from the street.
It was the Meat Puppet, the creature from the Pit of Ashtart’s experimentation. It was about twenty feet tall, a mass of muscle and flesh and bone coming at them. It had appendages that worked as two arms and two legs, but they were not very human looking. It was made of humans that had become melded together in a singular consolidated creature of fury. Ashtart’s spell had worked; it had united the minds of the individuals who made it up into one hive mind in service to Ashtart. That mind was inhabited by Nephilim demons, and Ashtart had commanded it to kill.
It ran full speed at the angels. It had no eyes, for it had two hundred eyes all over its body, the eyes of its composite human bodies merged into one.
It was grotesque. It was hideous.
It swiped one of its mutant hands and hit the angels, launching them a hundred feet and slamming them into the wall of the city. They hit and dissolved the rock into a pile of rubble. Mikael had the wind knocked out of him, but the Destroyer was only angry.
He stood up and brushed himself off.
The Meat Puppet reached them and tried to crush Mikael with a pummeling fist of flesh and bone. Mikael rolled out of the way.
The Destroyer grabbed one of the legs and ripped it off. The Blob shrieked in pain and it fell to the ground in a bloody mess.
But then it reshaped itself with a new leg, like a mutating organism.
“This is not going to be easy,” said Mikael.
The Meat Puppet swung and hit Mikael again. He slammed into another wall and this time was knocked unconscious.
The Destroyer would not go down so easily though. He drew a sword from his sheath. It was a hefty sword to match the angel’s powerful arms and large size. He wielded it with a mighty arc, and cut off the Meat Puppet’s left hand.
The titan screamed again, all ninety of its voices in painful unison, as it reshaped its hand, which the Destroyer promptly cut off again, bringing the thing down in size with each chop.
The Meat Puppet backed off. It did not see that Mikael had feigned unconsciousness so he could sneak up behind it and jump its back, plunging his own sword deep and ripping out a dozen of the human bodies.
The Blob fell to the ground and Mikael rolled off.
Mikael and the Destroyer then ran into the midst of the city to lose the thing in the labyrinth of streets. The Meat Puppet followed them limping with its bloody mass of seventy bodies still held together by magic and villainy.
• • • • •
By the time, Lot and his family made it to Zoar, they were exhausted. He found a place to stay and he dropped off to sleep.
But Ado could not sleep. She had been upset by the way things had gone. Her soul was in Sodom. She had never left the city her entire life and now she was forced to leave by a mean pair of judging angels who had no compassion for the people of her city who had become her family. She thought of being alone with Lot and her girls and how they would have to start a new life together in a new world of frightening uncertainty.
She could not stand it. She could not stand to follow this cruel, vindictive and capricious god El Shaddai who put them through so much pain and misery. At least Ba’al had cared for them. He provided them with everything they needed to live and thrive in the city. He brought rain for the crops, and bitumen from the fields, and copper from the mines. The city was her heart.
So after Lot and their daughters were fast asleep, Ado got on one of the horses and made her way back to Sodom. She was not going anywhere. She would stay with her city, come hell or high water.
It was hell that came.
Chapter 60
Mikael and the Destroyer led the Meat Puppet monstrosity into the center of the city where the riot of blinded Sodomites had occurred.
The occult spell that Ashtart had used was loosening its grip on the creature as it stumbled into the open square near Lot’s old home.
But the angels were not running away. They were drawing everyone to the epicenter of their plan.
As they reached their destination, they turned and faced the Meat Puppet and the few stragglers still stumbling around in the aftermath of the blinding. They were crying for mercy. Their eyes had been burned out of their sockets and they were flailing for anything to grab onto for security.
Mikael and the Destroyer stood in the center of the yard. Mikael looked up and prayed, “El Shaddai, God Almighty, the Most High God, El Elyon, possessor of the heavens and earth, bring down your wrath!”
With that prayer, the Destroyer lifted his massive sword and plunged it into the ground all the way up to the hilt.
The earth trembled and shook.
The Meat Puppet lost its footing and fell to the ground.
Up above, a large storm cloud had gathered. Thunder cracked the sky.
The Sodomites were circling the angels.
But suddenly, a light from heaven burned down upon the two angels and they were gone, taken away.
All along the Valley of Siddim, the long gigantic rift began to spasm. Large fractures opened in the crust. Massive amounts of heat and gas escaped into the air.
The land was rolling like a tsunami wave of earth.
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Up above, lightning now joined the thunder in the black heap of cumulus storm clouds.
Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim were at the very epicenter of the catastrophic conflagration. Their buildings crumbled in the wake. The sounds of a population in chaos could be heard in each city as their citizens sought refuge and could find none.
The storm front created a pressurized system that caused a huge uprush of wind from the ground to the sky.
Outside the city, the bitumen pits were exploding with black pitch spewing out like a field of small gushing volcanoes of black vomit. The earth was in upheaval. It was belching forth gasses, solids, and liquids into the sky. The hurricane like winds sucked the volatile materials up into the whirlwinds high above the entire valley.
And then the lightning struck.
A massive display of multiple lightning strikes painted the sky with a frightening brush that lit the combustible elements in the whirlwind.
The effect was a rainstorm of fire and brimstone from heaven that engulfed the four cities of the plain in a furnace of sulfurous flames.
Nothing survived.
Ado had made it back to the city gates by the time it had all started. She was turned into a pillar of salt. Everything was turned to salt and embers.
But the finale was yet to come.
One last seismic convulsion ripped through the plain and the entire valley dropped three hundred feet in five seconds. It was like the earth had been sucked downward.
The sudden surface change created a runoff of the Salt Sea that now rushed in to fill the newly lowered plain. A wall of water washed over the cities of the plain, putting out the fires and burying the inhabitants and their ruins under a blanket of salt water. A new shoreline washed up all the way to the town of Zoar where Lot had stayed.
Black steam billowed and mixed with the smoke of the burning bitumen.
The plans of Ba’al and Ashtart had been thwarted. Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, were now under the deadly brine waters of the Salt Sea.
Thirty miles away at Mamre, Abraham stood in awe of the huge black pillars of smoke that poured into the sky like the smoke of a furnace. The cities of the plain were gone from the face of the earth, buried in the judgment of El Shaddai.
Epilogue
Lot had been so traumatized by the devastation of Sodom and Gomorrah that he took his daughters up out of Zoar and lived in a cave in the hills away from all human contact.
It caused his daughters to fret that they would never be in the presence of civilization again and become two old unmarried maids. So they acted out of desperation to preserve their family seed in honor of their mother.
One evening, they got their father drunk, which was not hard to do, since he had lapsed into depression from his lifetime of failure to honor his god El Shaddai.
The eldest, Ishtar, then slept with him to get pregnant. Because Lot had been so inebriated, he had no recollection of the incestuous deed, just a phantom memory of having a shameful dream that made him even more depressed.
The second evening, the daughters got him drunk again and Gaia, the youngest slept with him and got pregnant as well.
The fruit of their incestuous intercourse would one day prove to be a thorn in the side of Abraham’s seed to come, as the firstborn bore a son and called him Moab. The younger one bore a son and called him Ben-ammi. These two would be the fathers of the Moabites and the Ammonites.
• • • • •
True to his word, El Shaddai did visit Sarah one year after the incident of laughing. This time, it was to oversee a birth. Sarah did conceive as El Shaddai promised and she bore a son for Abraham, whose name was Isaac. This time Sarah laughed with happiness instead of doubt and said, “God has made laughter for me. I have borne a son for Abraham in his old age.”
• • • • •
Somewhere out in the Negeb desert, not too far from the ruins of Kiriath-Arba, a young fifteen year old giant named Anak finished his fighting practice for the day and was sitting before a fire. His long muscular neck pulsated with rage as he listened to an old witch tell him again the story of his birth and the annihilation of his entire giant clan by the armies of Abraham who came from the oaks of Mamre.
One day, he thought, I will spawn a people and destroy the entire seed of this Abraham. And my seed will rule Canaan.
Chronicles of the Nephilim continues with the next book, Joshua Valiant.
Appendix
Between the Lines: In Defense of Ancient Traditions
There is a danger for any author who shares the research behind his fictionalized storytelling. If he reveals “what really happened” as different from his story, then readers may have their story spoiled much like a child who is told the true story behind Santa Claus. If he shares the choices he makes of which evidence he chose over others, then the magic and mystery is ruined for those who prefer their imagination to the “historic details.” But since I have established a kind of tradition by providing appendices in each of the books of the Chronicles of the Nephilim, I have decided to continue that dangerous tradition with the hopes of inspiring readers to go deeper in their study of the Bible than daily devotions and inspirational readings.
Retelling the story of the Tower of Babel and the life of Abraham is a particularly difficult task. The problem is that the further back in history one goes, the murkier are the waters, and anything in the fourth millennium B.C. Mesopotamia is complete guesswork. Biblically speaking, anything before the Davidic monarchy around 1000 B.C. is being increasingly contested by archaeological interpretations of the Near East.
The biblical scholarly consensus is that Abraham lived around 2000 B.C. in Mesopotamia. But the evidence for this is thin and largely anecdotal. The best that can be offered is that there are some customs discovered in second millennium archives like Ebla and Mari that are similar to some customs in the Patriarchal narratives. Famous Egyptologist Kenneth Kitchen elucidates these similar customs such as treaty types, patriarchal proper names, patriarchal religion, slave prices, the use of camels, and other cultural customs.[i]
But David Noel Freedman points out that such cultural connections are not very reliable in establishing dates because “The Middle Bronze pattern of social custom and practice survived basically unchanged for centuries in certain localities in the Near East.”[ii]
Of all the events that occur in the Abraham narrative, none of them correspond with any known external historical or archaeological sources we have. This is not to say Abraham was made up, but merely to point out that scholars simply do not know for sure when Abraham’s story took place in history because they do not have corroboration.
With the release of Centuries of Darkness in 1991 by Peter James, a dirty little secret of historiography was let out of the bag: There is a period of several centuries of historical “darkness” at the end of the Late Bronze Age in the received historical chronology of the ancient world. James argued that this period of darkness was an artifact of improper chronological accounting of the texts. A chronological revolution was established that began to rewrite ancient world chronology with a three hundred year shift.
Much of ancient history is anchored in Egyptian chronology that is notoriously ambiguous and imprecise and creates problems for all kinds of historical anchoring of events. Donovan Courville in the 1970s, and more recently David Rohl, has explored the Egyptian problems to offer a “New Chronology” of the ancient world that roots Biblical history in new contexts significantly different from the conventional chronology.[iii] They too have shaken up the establishment by uncovering the significant chronological problems of the conventional view.
In more recent years, Gerald Aardsma, has offered the biblical theory that the Exodus occurred in 2450 B.C., nearly one thousand years earlier than the conventional dates of 1445 B.C. or 1225 B.C.[iv] This would place Abraham in Mesopotamia around 3000 B.C. instead of 2000 B.C. A radical reconsideration. But the reason why this is all so important is because the sta
ndard interpretation of Biblical archaeology is increasingly that the events of the Bible did not happen because they do not line up with the artifactual evidence of archaeology. There is simply no evidence of a crushing defeat of Egypt or the resultant wandering of the Jews in the desert around the traditional date of 1445 - 1400 B.C. (or the more critical late date of 1275 B.C.) There is no evidence of the cities of Ai or Jericho being inhabited, much less destroyed around the dates that biblical scholars say they must have happened. Aardsma shows that there is however archaeological evidence of all of the above occurring about one thousand years earlier than normally attested by Bible scholars. With a thousand year shift backwards, all the Biblical history falls into place with known external evidence.
I write this because in my fictionalized novel, Abraham Allegiant, I used the interpretation of ancient Jewish texts and legends as my paradigm to place Abraham back during the time of the Tower of Babel, an event that would be considered about a thousand years before Abraham under the conventional chronology. While this supposition is largely rejected now, it has a long venerable tradition in 2nd Temple Jewish literature and Talmudic interpretation and shows up in Ginzberg’s famous Legends of the Jews.[v] It is that interpretation that I found interesting enough to present within the pages of the novel because I have used these ancient Jewish sources throughout the entire series of Chronicles of the Nephilim to bring to life such characters as Enoch, Noah, Adam, Cain, the archangels Mikael, Gabriel and Uriel, and others.
The Book of Jasher
One of the dominant references I used in retelling this tale of Abraham and the Tower of Babel was the ancient Book of Jasher. Jasher is said to be one of the historical sources used by the Bible writers for their own texts (Josh 10:13; 2Sam 1:18). The only copy we have of this text is a medieval manuscript that most believe is a forgery. But Bible researcher Ken Johnson has argued for its authenticity based on the caliber of its writing, its possible transmission, its inclusion of the Biblically quoted material, as well as other missing details. Johnson fearlessly confronts some of the strange things in the book as indications of why it is not Scripture, while maintaining it as a solid historical reference used by the Bible writers. He argues that it was one of the texts brought from Jerusalem to Spain at the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.