Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (22 page)

“A strutting cock-a-doodle-doo,” added Uriel.

Enoch’s spirit dropped. His own pride, the worst sin of all, had just blindsided him. He had completely failed his God and had not even known it. Had he lost the case already?

Methuselah found some straight saplings, cut them down and whittled a series of spears with his knife. The aim and accuracy of a spear required a finely balanced weight, which was not easy to attain with such primitive instruments. But he did his best with what he had.

S
o did the others. Betenos worked hard to create a bow and some arrows using one of the other knives. She used some durable and string-like casings of a wild vegetable for the string. Lamech, who was at a loss without Rahab, created a sling and filled a pouch with perfect stones from a nearby brook. Edna took the knives when they were done and created a makeshift three blade staff weapon, an adaptation of the angelic blade she had mastered over the years. They could not kill giants with these handmade weapons, but they would not be at the mercy of lesser predators, which described most everything else.

They
searched along the western wall for quite some time. They decided to make camp for the night, when Edna yelled out that she had found something.

Everyone
ran to where she was. Or rather had been. She was nowhere to be found in the rocky area.

“Edna?”
called Methuselah. “Edna, where are you?”

He began to get worried when she gave no response. They
shouted for her urgently.

Methuselah came to a portion of the rock wall
covered with hanging vines and other foliage. He stopped and looked back out into the forest, searching for any sign of Edna. Suddenly, a pair of hands flashed out from the hanging vines and grabbed him. They pulled him into the wall of green, as if to dissolve into the mountain face.

It was Edna. The vegetation hid a ravine just three or four cubits wide
. Edna hid within it.

“Gotcha, Poozelahpooneypoo,”
laughed Edna. She gave him a big fat sloppy and probing kiss. Methuselah pulled back.

“
Do not start something you do not expect to finish, Pednaplumperfect,” he warned.

“Well, with how long
it has been, I figure we could probably be done before they find us,” she said with an impish smirk.

He had to laugh
. He was hungry for her and she was thirsty for him. They had been in such danger for so long that they had not had time to reunite in God-given oneness. When they waited too long, the desire grew so strong that their lovemaking was difficult to extend as they enjoyed doing. In this case, that hot passion would be to their advantage. When love has lived long, the connection gets deeper and richer than young lovers have any idea of.

They went for it. Passion unleashed.

They could not keep quiet. Lamech and Betenos soon heard them and where they were and what they were doing.

Lamech looked at Betenos like a wolf looking at a lamb.

“Oh, there you go again, getting ideas,” she said. “Like father, like son.”

“I bet we can drown them out,” he said.

“I am
not
going to compete.”

“Oh, yes you are
.”

“We should respect our elders,” she teased.

“I will give you some respect you will not soon forget,” he retorted, eyes narrowing in on his prey.

“I thought you
did not have Rahab with you,” she said, looking down at his tunic.

“
It is time we dive into the Abyss, and see what the dragon can do,” he chortled.

She bolted, giggling back at him, “
You will have to catch me first you slippery eel!”

He dropped his weapons and ran after her.

Lamech and Betenos
lay cuddling on the bank of the brook, having spent their time swimming in the current of love together. They felt rested and at peace for the first time in a long time. He kissed her and traced his hand down her curves in adoration. She loved the way he would consume her beauty. He would say she was a feast for all his senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. He proved it by engaging all those senses to their height when he was with her. He made her feel so beautiful. Only Elohim could create such a harmonious artistry of physical and spiritual unity between man and wife.

The sound of a monstrous bellowing roar brought them to their feet. It
came from the direction of the vine-covered crevice where Methuselah and Edna had been. They threw on their clothes and ran as one to the spot. They grabbed up their weapons, leaping through the vegetation into the ravine. It was a passageway through the mountain wall. They followed it.

Methuselah scream
ed at the top of his lungs. The roar burst over them again. It was so loud, it shook their insides.

How big was this thing?
thought Lamech as they ran toward the sound. They knew their patriarch was in trouble.

They burst through
the other side and found themselves in the mountain territory just outside the secret valley.

Methuselah
knelt on the ground, cradling Edna, covered in blood, weeping.

Mere cubits away, a gigantic creature the height of a huge temple building
staggered around. It tried to shake a javelin from its eye. It stood upright on its hind legs, though Lamech was not sure that was its natural posture. It had a tail the size of a cedar tree, bulging muscle on bones of iron, and teeth like iron swords. Its head looked like a hideous reptilian bull. It was some kind of amphibious dragon. It roared again and came down on all fours, revealing a deformed hump on its back. It turned to lunge at Methuselah and Edna.

“Father!” screamed Lamech.

Methuselah did nothing. He just held his beloved in his arms.

Immediately, Lamech and Betenos raised their weapons. Betenos launched an arrow at the great beast. Her makeshift arrow hit it in the face near the javelin. Lamech’s stone broke one of its teeth with a loud cracking sound.

It roared again
. They realized they were only making it angrier.

Lamech and Betenos ran to Methuselah
. They dragged the patriarch and Edna’s limp, bleeding body back into the covered ravine opening.

The colossus shook the javelin loose and launched after them
. It snapped at their feet as they cleared the entrance into the ravine. But it was too large to fit through the opening.

Betenos launched one last arrow into the dragon’s mouth
. It buried itself in the creature’s tongue. It roared with rage and actually tried to force its way through the crack of the mountain.

Lamech
felt the very mountain shake. Rocks fell loose and the earth quaked. But the dragon could not get through.

They carried Edna back into the safety of the crater basin. Betenos ran to get
whatever healing roots she could find. Edna had been bitten by the monster. Her life was bleeding out of her.

Lamech tried to compress the wounds where the teeth
had penetrated Edna’s body, but there were too many punctures and they were too deep.

Methuselah knew it was time. She
gazed up into his eyes. She managed a slight smile of love. She was in more pain than he could imagine, and she could still smile in the face of the only man she ever knew. She tried to say something. Her lungs were punctured. He leaned in close, putting his ear to her lips.

“I — will — see you in time, my be-beloved.” Every word was painful and prophetic. “Enoch’s m-mantle is now — yours. Our son — m-must live.”

And Edna breathed her last.

Methuselah wailed. It echoed across the valley like a ghostly hound. It
made Lamech think of the very beast they just escaped.

Betenos came back from the forest in resignation. She knew it was over.

The three of them lay over Edna’s body and wept. Wife, mother, servant of Elohim, she was now with her Creator.

They buried her body near a large terebinth tree by the brook. Terebinth were sacred trees that were considered places of communion with deity. Edna had been a conduit of communion with Elohim for Methuselah. She was the most powerful proof of God’s presence and goodness to him. Through her he came to understand grace, goodness, strength, perseverance, and a faith that he did not have in himself. She had been both submissive wife and godly inspiration to him, his perfect
ezer
. He would never have known happiness but for her. He would never know happiness again without her.

They laid the stones upon the resting place as a memorial, and prayed to Elohim, and wept and sang songs of hope.
Then they ate a meal together.

L
ate night drew over them. And still they sat in silent memories.

Betenos looked up at the full moon
. She sat close to Lamech with silent empathy. He labored to fix the triple blade weapon his mother had made. It had been damaged in the attack. Lamech’s eyes were red from hours of painful recollections of his mother. The joys, the happiness, the hard work and discipline of family. He could not understand why Elohim would allow such a seemingly random thing as her death, after all they had been through. He had started to think they were invincible, God’s chosen ones. That nothing would stop their righteous cause. Now, his pride crashed down in humble brokenness. He did not know what he believed.
Would Elohim allow us to get this far, only to snatch our lives one by one, never to be found or remembered in this uninhabited godforsaken mockery of paradise?

Methuselah stared into the fire with dead eyes. He could not feel anymore. His soul was gone. He wanted to run out and attack the cyclopean dragon without concern for his survival. Suicide. But Edna’s words haunted him. He was to take over Enoch’s mantle
, now that Enoch was gone? Lamech was to be Elohim’s chosen lineage for the One who would end the rule of the gods? What was all that to him now? He just did not care. He did not want to live.

But how to end it?
he thought.

A twig snapped.

Instinct flooded back into them all. They were on their feet in seconds, with weapons drawn.

A single man walked out of the darkness into the flickering light of the fire.
Tall, muscular, and young-looking, his eyes betrayed a great age. Beside him trod a large black she-wolf.

“I see
you have met Behemoth outside the valley walls. I think your wailing was about as loud as his. Made it easy to find you.”

Methuselah gripped a spear, ready to lunge. Betenos pulled on the string of her bow with
nocked arrow ready. Lamech gripped the triple blade Edna had made.

The black she-wolf snarled at them.

“Is that any way to treat family?” said the stranger. “I let you bury your dead and get your bellies full.” His delivery was ominous. He had a darkness in him that reminded Methuselah of Inanna.

“Who are you?” demanded Methuselah. “What do you mean, ‘family’?”

Twenty large wolves stepped out from the bush surrounding them. They appeared to be a pack of predators controlled by this stranger before them.

When the stranger spoke
again, Methuselah’s blood ran cold.

“I am Cain, son of Adam.”

The trial
reconvened before the Supreme Judge of the Universe. The satan took his place, to mount his next attack on the Covenant.

“In your historical prologue, there is
prattling on and on about the ‘generations of the heavens and the earth,’ etcetera, etcetera. And then we come to your creation of Man, ‘in the image of God you did create him, both male and female.’ I would like to address two aspects of this ‘image’: First, authority and hierarchy, and then this imperialist mandate of ‘dominion.’”

Semjaza approached the satan and whispered in his ear.

He was updating the accuser on the progress of Inanna’s forces. Enoch knew this already. Everyone on the defense knew it. Yahweh Elohim was not some kind of idiot finite deity who did not know what was going on in his creation. The mere fact that he chose to accomplish his purposes through such secondary means as the divine council and the freedom of his creatures did not bother Enoch anymore.

There were many mysteries of the infinite eternal Creator that faded away
in the minds of finite mortal creations in his immediate presence. Enoch smiled to himself at all the energy he had spent on earth fretting as an apkallu sage, seeking the ever elusive dream of absolute knowledge and wisdom. It was an endless pursuit of always getting closer and never arriving. No matter how wise he could be, no matter how much knowledge he possessed, the universe and everything in it was so far beyond the limits of his understanding as a tiny little object embedded within that creation that he could not hope to achieve god-like status of observation and understanding. It was certainly not a waste of life to pursue such wisdom, he thought, but perhaps it was a sign of the true fallenness of our nature that we would twist our calling as Yahweh Elohim’s images into an intent to
become
Elohim, demanding all truths be made sufficiently understandable to our puny finite faulty understanding.

The satan’s rant brought Enoch back into the present.

“This notion of authority and hierarchy in the covenant is quite incoherent to me. On the one hand, Elohim tells us both male and female are created alike to be his imagers or representations of his rulership on earth. And then on the other, he contradicts himself when he gives the vocation to the Man to work and keep the Garden before he even creates the woman! Imagine that! A ‘men’s only’ club. No women allowed. How sexist can you be? Then Elohim creates the Woman out of the Man’s side and tells her she is to be man’s ‘helper fit for him,’ like some kind of slave. The Man ‘names’ the woman, and we all know what that means: The namer has the power over the object being named. My dear Creator, this is all about power. Not truth, not justice, and not love. But I will speak the truth to power! I would think that if one were a loving god, one would make everyone equal in race, class, and gender; not this misogynist Patriarchal justification of male domination over women.”

Enoch
thought of the “truth, justice, and love” that the Watchers had been giving to the women they were using to breed the Nephilim. It was not the first time the satan used his own wicked behavior as an argument against his Creator.

“But I will make one concession to your majestic power,” said the satan. “You are consistent. That is, your sexist gender worship of the male is a reflection of your own sexist identity as male and your sexist creation of angels as males. It is quite clear to me, ‘
father,’ that you and all your ‘Sons of God’ are afraid of women. You oppress the female gender and enslave them to be breeders and deny them their rightful place in this world. I think you are secretly suppressing the fact that the true creator of this world is not the male Sky God, but the Great Earth Goddess!”

The myriads of holy ones broke out in shocked murmuring. Whispers of “blasphemy” abounded.
The grace of Yahweh Elohim in not smiting the satan on the spot amazed Enoch. Elohim had his greater purposes.

“And that brings me to my second point,” said the satan. “Your covenant charge to Man to take dominion over all creation and to subdue it to his interests is just another facet of your suppression of the Great Goddess. You would have man trample, burn, and destroy the environment that the Earth Mother gives him as an expression of your macho excess!”

He quoted the words of Elohim back to him with incredulity, “‘Elohim made the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night? And the stars in the firmament for signs and seasons and for days and years’? Where is the sun god and the moon god? And are not the stars a heavenly host of deities? You want to divest the universe of spirits and gods so that you can reign supreme as a jealous autocratic Emperor! You want to turn the cosmos into some ‘soulless’ natural order so that your little male minions can trample the environment, spoil the creation, and engage in cruelty to animals!”

The satan turned to the heavenly host with excessive theatrics, “Elohim is not fair and equal in his dealings with his creatures, he is a sexist and a speciesist!”

Enoch almost laughed out loud. The absurd lengths to which the satan would go to construct an entire paradigm of delusion to suit his purposes amazed the human. He wondered if anyone would ever actually believe this combination of insanity and iniquity. Ironically, he could see where the satan was going with it, and it was truly evil. He would make sure to address it in his rebuttal.

The satan
ended with a rising plea. “Does your unfair favoritism and partiality know no bounds, Elohim? You choose who rules over whom, who is forgiven and who is not, you elect one man over another to carry your purposes forward. These are not the actions of a fair and impartial Creator, these are the actions of — dare I say it again — a tyrant and puppet master! But of course, if the sandal fits, wear it. Your honor. Amen.” The satan bowed and went back to his team of Watchers.

Enoch stood and approached the throne. “Your honor.” He turned to the heavenly host, “divine witnesses of the court. I want to apologize for my previous display of hubris. It was unworthy and unbefitting an ambassador of Yahweh Elohim and a defender of the throne. I hope to address the satan’s further accusations with a more respectful demeanor. So be it.”

Enoch began his formal presentation. “In the first place, regarding the Accuser’s complaint of the imago dei and authority, I think this gets to the heart of the argument. The satan does not seem to like the order of things, the hierarchy of one over another, the notion of authority. He wants everything to be ‘equal.’ But I must ask this question, ‘By what standard?’ Whose definition of equal? If by the standard of the Creator, then that begs the question. The Creator has the right to define authority and justice in any way he deems
proper. If by the satan’s standard, why? Why should anyone listen to the satan’s definition of what is just and what is not? I would prefer my own definition over the satan’s, and you would prefer your own definition over mine. It is an endless trap of infinite definitions and authorities that cancel out the satan’s own accusations.”

Enoch took a breath. He let it sink in. This time, he would make his arguments with more concern for the hearers. “I would like to address each one of his accusations to show that they are straw men that do not even apply to Yahweh
Elohim. But I do not even have to, because his claims are simply pitting his own finite ignorant authority against the self-authorized infinite Creator of all authority. The satan pronounces, ‘sexism, imperialism, misogyny, speciesism’ and a plethora of other ‘isms.’ But by the Creator’s standards the satan is sexist, imperialist, misandrist, and speciesist because he is seeking to define the created order from his own subjective, arbitrary, and finite viewpoint. This is sheer bigotry and hubris on the satan’s part. A creature is trying to subject the Creator to his own authority.”

Enoch shook his head and continued, “Since the satan seems to want to claim to be the creator of the standards of truth and justice, and not be beholden to a standard outside himself, then I would like a few answers from him. I would like him to gird up his loins and
make known to us where he was when Yahweh Elohim laid the foundations of the earth. I wonder if he might tell us who determined its measurements and who laid its cornerstone. It would please the court if the satan would tell us who poured the sea, who commands the morning and evening, who crafted the gates of Sheol, who created thunder and lightning and rain, who bound the chains of the stars of the Seven Sisters or loosed the star-cords of the Shepherd of Anu? Perhaps the satan might show us how he gave the horse his strength or the hawk his wings. Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? He who argues with God, let him answer it. Otherwise, may he forever hold his peace.”

Enoch
almost sat down, but he reconsidered. “If it please the court, I said I did not need to address the satan’s straw men accusations. But I just wanted to get something on the record. Abuse of authority does not disprove proper use of that authority. Man was not called by Yahweh Elohim to be a slave master over woman, as the satan argued, but to be her loving sacrificial leader. Yahweh Elohim never told man to ‘trample, burn and destroy’ his environment. To exercise dominion over nature, yes. And if man fails to harness the forces of nature, all life on the earth will succumb to decay, disease, and destruction. But man was also commissioned to ‘care for and keep’ that nature with responsible stewardship. It is not the ‘
undeifying’
of nature that leads to exploitation and hurt, it is the
deifying
of nature that does. For when the sun, moon, stars, lightning, storm and disease are gods, that is when man worships the creation in place of the Creator and death reigns.”

That
felt more satisfying to Enoch. He had to get that off his chest, even if it was not technically necessary. He concluded, “But there are some things I think we should all trample, burn, and destroy, and those are the satan’s straw man arguments.”

Enoch sat down.