The Assembly of the Rephaim

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The Assembly of the Rephaim

Proverbs 21

August 11, 2024 • Proverbs 21

THE SPIRITS of the giants destroyed by the Flood were venerated by the Amorites who dominated the culture around ancient Israel. The Hebrew prophets and psalmists condemned the cult of the dead, but you have to know what you’re looking for to find those scriptures.

We find one of them in Proverbs 21:

The man that wandereth out of the way of wisdom shall abide in the congregation of the dead. (KJV) One who wanders from the way of good sense will rest in the assembly of the dead. (ESV)

The word translated “dead” is Rephaim. These were not spirits of the human dead, but those of the monstrous Nephilim who died in the Flood. Further, it was believed by the pagan Amorites (and later by the Greeks and Romans) that the spirits of those hybrids—demigods like Perseus and Heracles—would intercede for the living as long as you offered them sacrifices and worship.

This is confirmed by religious texts from the Amorite kingdom of Ugarit, where the last king of that city-state, Ammurapi III (a name that means “my fathers are Rephaim”), was inaugurated with a necromantic ritual that summoned the Rephaim, calling some of them by name, and the “council of Ditanu”—a name from which the Greeks got the name of their old gods, the Titans.

In short, the Ditanu/Titans and the Rephaim/demigod heroes of the Amorites and Greeks were the sons of God and the Nephilim from Genesis 6:1–4, and Proverbs 21:6 is a warning that wanting to join the assembly of the Rephaim after death, like the Amorites, is stupid.

That echoes the additional calls for wisdom in Proverbs 21, which we’ve seen throughout the Proverbs to this point. This week, however, Proverbs 21:30 reminds us that despite the critical importance of wisdom, no human understanding can prevail against the Lord.

The Lord Appears to Solomon a Second Time

November 3, 2024 • 1 Kings 9, 2 Chronicles 8

YOU’D THINK an appearance by God Himself would be enough to keep even a king on the straight and narrow for the rest of his life. After completing the Temple, God revealed to Solomon the blessings and consequences for obeying His Law or turning aside to worship other gods—which, sadly, we will learn is exactly what Solomon did as an older man. We also discuss the significance of 1 Kings 9:3, where God tells Solomon, “I have consecrated this house that you have built, by putting my name there forever.” We’ve discussed “Name theology” in previous episodes, and we encourage you to read Dr. Michael Heiser’s article at the Faithlife Study Bible, “The Name Theology in the Old Testament”: http://www.bit.ly/name-ot

And They Were, All of Them, Two Hundred

October 27, 2024

THE SINS of the “sons of God” mentioned in Genesis 6:1–4 are listed in detail in chapters 6 through 8 of the Book of 1 Enoch. Specifically, the rebellious Watchers “defile[d] themselves” by commingling with women and taught humanity things we weren’t supposed to know—the making of weapons, sorcery, beguilement, enticement, and venerating the sun, moon, and the host of heaven. The monstrous offspring produced by these unholy unions became an existential threat to humankind, eating the produce of human labor and, when that was gone, eating humans. Not content to contaminate the human genome, “they began to sin against the birds and beasts and creeping things and the fish, and to devour one another’s flesh. And they drank the blood.” (1 Enoch 7:3–5) In short, the Nephilim were consummate evil. Next month, we’ll discuss the intercession of the archangels Michael, Sariel (or Uriel), Raphael, and Gabriel on behalf of humanity.

Put Not Your Trust in Princes

October 20, 2024 • Psalm 148, Psalm 149, Psalm 134, Psalm 146, Psalm 147

TRUSTING IN other people will usually disappoint. This week’s reading in Psalms is timely, giving that we’re less than three weeks away from electing a new president in the United States. Americans, remember this verse: Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. Ps. 146:3 (ESV) “A son of man” in this context refers to a human, not to the New Testament “Son of Man,” a messianic title Jesus applied to himself nearly 80 times. The point is that we need to remember, amidst all the distractions of life, that there is only One who “keeps faith forever,” and that is God. Our questions of the week: How do we apply scripture to our lives, given the way scripture has been “desupernaturalized” since the time of Augustine 1,600 years ago, and do our ancestors become angels when they die, watching over us in our day-to-day lives? Sharon’s niece, Sarah Sachleben, was recently diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer, and the medical bills are piling up. If you are led to help, please go to http://gilberthouse.org/hopeforsarah.