David Ascendant (Chronicles of the Nephilim Book 7) (44 page)

So Saul is likened to the giants of Israel’s enemies. This is not to say that he was a Nephilim, but certainly the writer is making a theological comparison with Saul to Israel’s enemies. But with Saul at close to 7 feet of height, no doubt some Israelites gossiped to one another about the possibility of such a thing. A double irony occurs in that Saul, the giant’s equal, does not kill Israel’s perpetual enemy the Amalekite king (a giant?), but David, the ruddy and small youth, does kill Goliath the Rephaim giant who embodied the last of the Serpentine Seed in the Promised Land.

What this all means is that Israel’s first encounter with giants may have been when they battled the Amalekites in the exodus (Ex. 17:8-16); Saul may have defiantly failed to kill the Serpentine Seed of Amalek, which resulted in his cursing by God; and David may have faced those giants when he all but wiped them out at Ziklag in 1 Samuel 30, resulting in their ultimate decline.

Yet One More Giant

But there’s one more giant hiding out between the lines of sacred writ. The Septuagint (LXX), an earlier Greek translation of the Old Testament that Jesus and the apostles quoted as authoritative, contains additional information about one other giant that was left out in the Masoretic text, or later Hebrew version of the Old Testament.
[16]

In 2 Samuel 21, the Gibeonites demand that David release to them all of Saul’s sons as justice for their oppression by Saul. David hands over six of them to be hanged by the Gibeonites. But David spared Mephibosheth, because of his oath of loyalty to the crippled son of Saul. One of the mothers, Rizpah, asks for the remains of the victims and spreads out a sackcloth to mourn over them and protect them from the vultures.

The LXX then adds this gloss:

2 Samuel 21:11 (LXX)

11 
And it was told David what Rizpah the daughter of Aia the concubine of Saul had done, and they were faint and Dan the son of Joah of the descendant of the giants overtook them.
[17]

Apparently, Dan ben Joah, was a giant. The text is not clear as to who was faint or what it means that Dan “overtook them.” Overtook who or what? The
bones
, or the
scavengers
that Rizpah was keeping from the bones? It would not make sense for Dan to overtake the scavengers of the bones, because giants are always in a negative disposition toward Israel in the Bible. Dan would not care to protect Israelite bones. If it was the bones that Dan overtook or “captured” as other translations have it, then David would have had to fight the giant to get them back because in verse 21, David gathers those bones with the bones of Saul and Jonathan to bury them all.
[18]

Interestingly, the name Dan has a nefarious heritage in Biblical tradition. He was described in Genesis 49:17 as “a serpent in the way, a viper by the path, that bites the horse’s heels so that the rider falls backward.” This serpentine connection rings ominously familiar with the Genesis 3:15 prophetic curse on the Serpent’s Seed biting the heels of Eve’s Seed. And is it mere coincidence that the tribe of Dan lost their apportioned land in Canaan (Josh. 19:47), leading them to take the territory of the city Laish (Judg. 18) in the far north of Bashan, “place of the serpent,” in the foothills of Mount Hermon, the location of the Watchers’ fall and the pagan community of Banias that worshipped Azazel?
[19]

The text also says that this giant Dan was from the “descendants of the giants.” The Greek for this phrase in the LXX is
apoganon ton giganton
, the same Greek translation of the
Yalid ha Rapha
warrior cult of the other four giants in 2 Samuel 21:22 (LXX): “These four were descended from the giants (
apoganoi ton giganton
) in Gath.”
[20]

Like the other five giants spoken of in 1 and 2 Samuel, we have no personal details spelled out for us beyond the statements of fact. So the storyline of these giants in
David Ascendant
is speculative conjecture, but surely consistent with the explicit facts and implicit connections of the text
.

Giant Weapons

Goliath’s armor is among the most studied in the Old Testament. The reason for this is because it is the most descriptive of all passages about a soldier’s armor anywhere in the entire corpus. It reads like a Homeric description of the heroic warrior in Greece.

1 Samuel 17:5–7

5
He had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze [126 pounds].
6
And he had bronze armor on his legs, and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders.
7
The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron [16 pounds]. And his shield-bearer went before him
.

Though the Philistines most likely consisted of Mycenaean and other Sea Peoples who had migrated to Canaan from the Aegean, they nevertheless were highly adaptive and built their own culture through assimilation of others. Thus, scholars indicate that Goliath’s armor was not distinctly Mycenaean Greek or even uniquely Philistine but rather a kind of conglomeration of different styles.

His helmet was not the typical feathered headdress of the Philistines, but rather a bronze covering more akin to Greek or Assyrian protection.
[21]
His bronze cuirass of armored scales was also unlike Aegean style armor, but more like Egyptian styled scales like that seen on Pharaoh Shishak’s tenth century engravings.
[22]
His bronze shin greaves were Greek and his shield bearer before him apparently was carrying a full-bodied shield rather than the small round one of the Philistines and other Sea Peoples. Goliath was a Philistine, but his Rephaim background and his distinct armor indicates he was most likely indigenous to the region, making him either a Canaanite convert or conscript of his Philistine rulers.

In the English translation it says that Goliath had a “javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders.” Citing similar language in the War Scroll at Qumran’s Dead Sea Scrolls, recent scholars have more accurately translated that phrase as referring to a bronze scimitar sword (curved blade), not the javelin.
[23]

Another translation clarified by many scholars is that the shaft of Goliath’s spear being “like a weaver’s beam” is more accurately a likeness of the shape rather than the size of his dart. A well known form of javelin used in both Egypt and Greece included a loop or leash attached to the missile that could be flung by the fingers of the soldier to facilitate a throw of up to three times the normal velocity and distance.
[24]
This looped leash is very similar to what the heddle rod on a weaver’s beam looks like, thus indicating it as a new weapon in the eyes of the Israelites.

And that “weaver’s beam” javelin is the exact same description used of the weapon of another giant, the unnamed Egyptian Rapha (1 Chron. 20:5, 11:23). These giants are linked together by their elite guild connection as well as the weapons they use
.

Goliath’s iron spearhead weighed 16 pounds. Ishbi-benob’s bronze spearhead weighed 7.5 pounds, since bronze is a lighter metal. Ishbi-benob is also described as carrying a “new sword,” in 2 Sam. 21:16. But as commentator Robert Bergren points out, the Hebrew word for “sword” is not actually in the text, making the phrase a reference to an unnamed weapon unknown to the writer. Translators assumed it was a sword, but we don’t know for sure.
[25]
Thus, the strange new weapon Ishbi-benob carries in
David Ascendant
. Strange for the Israelites, but not for readers of previous
Chronicles of the Nephilim

Lastly, the unnamed giant killed by Jonathan in 2 Sam. 21:20 and 1 Chron. 20:6 is described as having six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. This is the only place in the Bible where a giant is described with polydactylism, but its genetic connection to the other giants is a strong possibility. While some may not think extra digits on hands and feet are a weapon, they certainly increase the gripping power extent of hands while adding wider balancing skill for feet that are no doubt advantageous in battle. This is the origin of the polydactylism of the giants as read in
Chronicles of the Nephilim
.

The descriptions of the giants and their weapons mentioned in Chronicles and Samuel indicates obvious ties between Goliath and the elite members of the giant warrior guild, the
yalid ha rapha
. And these giants are strongly implied to be part of a deliberate plan on the part of the Seed of the Serpent at war with the Seed of Eve: God’s people, king, and messiah.

Lion Men of Moab

Another strange warrior breed shows up in
David Ascendant
: Lion Men of Moab called Ariels. They are effectively werewolves – but more like werelions.

In 2 Sam. 23:20 Benaiah, a valiant warrior, strikes down “two
ariels
of Moab.” The word “ariel” is a transliteration because scholars are not sure what it means. The King James and Young’s Bibles translate these opponents of Benaiah as “lion-like men of Moab,” which captures the strangeness of the creatures but fails to express the religious or supernatural connotation of the word.

Some translators translate the phrase “
ariels
of Moab” as “sons of Ariel of Moab” after the unlikely LXX Greek translation,
[26]
or “lion-like heroes of Moab.” But there is no Hebrew word for “sons of” in the sentence, no indication of
ariel
being a personal name, and no Hebrew word for warrior used in the sentence. The Hebrew word for mighty warrior,
gibborim
, is used frequently throughout David’s narrative and that word is not here. The text says “two
ariels
of Moab.”

Some suggest it may be a reference to killing two lions. But the very next sentence states that Benaiah, the killer of the
ariels
, then killed a lion in a pit.

2 Samuel 23:20

And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada was a valiant man of Kabzeel, a doer of great deeds. He
struck down two ariels of Moab
. He also went down and struck down a lion in a pit on a day when snow had fallen.

The Hebrew word for “lion” is not
ariel
, but
aryeh
. Adding the suffix “el” to the word adds a religious dimension of meaning that transcends mere lions. This is why Hebrew lexicons explain the most likely meaning as “lion of god.”
[27]
El was not merely a name used of Yahweh in the Bible, it was the name of the figurehead deity of the Canaanite pantheon as well as a general reference to deity in Mesopotamia.
[28]

In 1 Chronicles, some additional warriors from Gad join David when he is at Ziklag, and they are described exactly like
ariels
as “lion-faced warriors” with preternatural skills:

1 Chronicles 12:8

From the Gadites there went over to David at the stronghold in the wilderness mighty and experienced warriors, expert with shield and spear,
whose faces were like the faces of lions and who were swift as gazelles upon the mountains
:

Though animal-like skills is a common metaphor used to describe extraordinary warrior skills, having faces like the faces of lions could mean more in light of the existence of these a
riels,
or Lion Men of Moab. Since the tribal location of Gad was precisely all the land of Moab across the Jordan, I decided to make the Gadite lion-faced men be those very Lion Men of Moab who converted to Israel and joined David. Two of these hybrid warriors then become the two traitors who face down Benaiah.

Psalm 57 was written when David was on the run and hiding out in a cave from Saul’s bounty hunters. Verse 4 says, “My soul is in the midst of lions; I lie down amid fiery beasts— the children of man, whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords.” Though a surface reading of this text appears to be an obvious figurative expression of David’s enemies, scholar B. Mazar suggests it may be a reference to a mercenary military corps of archers whose emblem was the lion-goddess.
[29]
Could they have come from Moab?

So what if these
ariels
are hybrid creatures reminiscent of the Watchers’ miscegenation in Genesis 6? What if they are elite warriors with hairy bodies and lion-like faces that only one of David’s own
gibborim
Mighty Men could slay? After all, the exploits of those Mighty Men in the passages we have been looking at are supernatural slayings of giants and hundreds of soldiers by single warriors. If these
ariels
were mere warriors, then the feat accomplished by Benaiah in slaying them would be the only one in the entire passage that was banal and without significance.

These
ariels
were something more than men, something supernatural.