Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (18 page)

By the time the Watchers inside the mountain realized that the satan was not with them, Enoch and the four archangels had found their way to the far side of the black lake. Across the water, they could see the Watchers congregated around Anu and Inanna on their thrones. They heard the Watchers discussing some way to capture Rahab for their nefarious purposes and then announcing their plan to bring a lawsuit before the throne of Elohim. Enoch had no idea what that was all about. He just knew what he was supposed to do: prophesy and die.

Though Mikael, Gabriel, Raphael
, and Uriel were the highest of archangels, and could no doubt take out a good number of these Watchers, they would eventually succumb to the sheer force of enemy numbers. There were just too many of them. The loyalty of his guardian escort impressed Enoch. They did not even question their duty. They told jokes and argued amongst themselves on the way to this spot, as if they were just going to march right into this nest of vipers and prance right out, job accomplished.

He could not imagine facing their possible fate.
Unless they knew something they were not telling him.

T
he four archangels surrounded Enoch, with weapons drawn and ready. He bellowed out, his voice amplifying as it carried over the pitch black waters of the Abyss.

“Praise the Most High, the Great and Holy One!”

The entire army of Watchers fell silent. All heads turned to stare straight at Enoch and his four puny guardians on the other side of the lake. It simply did not enter their minds that these insignificant fools would ever do such a moronic thing as to enter their very cosmic mountain.

Inanna
reacted first. “Well, well, well, what have we here? A silly loud-mouthed meat puppet and four yipping lapdogs on a leash?”

Enlil
recognized Enoch. “Utuabzu? What brings you into our lair uninvited?”

Anu thought,
This little insect has gall.
Where did he come from and how did he get these archangels?

“I am Enoch, a servant and prophet of Elohim, the living God, and I have come to pronounce judgment upon the Watchers and upon their progeny the Nephilim!”

The chamber held silence for a moment. Then Inanna howled with laughter, followed by a hundred other Watchers.

Anu and Enlil
played along with this farce. It seemed absurdly amusing to them.

“Well, then, by all means, pronounce thy judgment, little man. We wait with baited breath,” said Anu.

Enoch looked straight at Anu. He raised his hand, pointing his finger at the Watcher. “Semjaza, you and your associates have united yourselves with women so as to defile yourselves in all your uncleanness!” Enoch called Semjaza out by his true name. “And when your unholy sons are slain, you will be bound fast for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth, till the day of judgment.”

“My, oh my, we are quaking in our sandals,” mocked Inanna. “F
ear and trembling has seized us! We beseech thee to draw up a petition for us that we might find forgiveness in the presence of the Lord of heaven.”

Enoch ignored the vitriolic mockery
. He next prophesied directly to Inanna by true name. “Azazel, thou shalt have no peace. A severe sentence has gone forth against thee to put thee in bonds. And thou shalt not have toleration nor request granted to thee, because of the unrighteousness which thou hast taught, and because of all the works of godlessness and unrighteousness and sin which thou hast shown to men.”

Inanna muttered to Anu, “My humor is taxed. Let us be done with this pathetic gnat.”

“Wait,” Anu held up his hand.

As Enoch
prophesied, the Watchers circled slowly around the lake, to enclose Enoch and his guardians. Anu had not been simply entertaining the absurd prophecy for the sake of amusement. He was stalling for time. But something in the human’s words sent a chill down Anu’s back, setting his teeth on edge. He wanted to hear the final words.

Enoch continued, “The
decree has gone forth to bind you in the earth for all the days of the world. And you shall see the destruction of your beloved sons. For a Chosen Seed is coming to bring an end to the reign of the gods and bring rest from the curse of the land!”

That last line struck them all.
In that moment, they knew Enoch was indeed a prophet of Elohim, and they had been cursed.

“Eliminate them, immediately!” commanded Anu.

• • • • •

Ohyah walked behind his four captives, Methuselah, Edna, Lamech, and Betenos. They held their hands behind their heads in submission
. Ohyah even pushed Lamech, to look impatiently hostile. Lamech fell to his knees from the force.

“Hey, take it easy,” muttered Lamech. “
You are enjoying this a bit too much for my comfort.” Ohyah smirked.

They were about half way
across the vast clearing when the two Nephilim guards noticed the captive visitors. They trotted toward them to meet Ohyah’s arrival.

Methuselah whispered, “
I will take the one on the left. Ohyah, take the right. They will not see it coming.”

B
efore they could carry out their plan, they stopped dead in their tracks. A line of Nephilim stepped from the foliage into the clearing. Methuselah turned and saw masses of other armed Nephilim appearing
all around them
. A horde of over one hundred Nephilim surrounded them. They had never imagined this horror happening.

• • • • •

Anu
gave the command to eliminate Enoch and the angels on the shoreline of the cavernous Abyss.

Gabriel lifted his cloak and pulled out his trumpet. He raised it to his lips and blew. The mighty sound penetrated the diabolical cave and resounded right up to heaven itself.

The percussion of the horn’s note was supernatural. Its sound waves washed over the Watchers, felling many of them in its wake. An earthquake rattled the cave to its core.

A
beam of intense burning fire cut through the rock ceiling above Enoch and the angels’ heads and enveloped them in its blinding light. But it did not consume their flesh. It was as if they stood in the midst of a flaming furnace and remained unsinged by the heat or flames.

It dumbfounded
Anu and Inanna.

Before their eyes,
Enoch and the four angels were translated up through the ceiling and into heaven. In an instant, they were gone, and the beam of blazing light followed them.

A
shroud of darkness fell in the cavern. The drastic change from intense brightness to intense darkness temporarily blinded the Watchers. After a moment, their eyes adjusted. They looked to the throne for their commands from Anu and Inanna.

The two of them were shaken to the core.

Anu, who had never shown weakness as leader of this rebellion, for the first time was pale and sweating. Inanna stood speechless for her first time. Their behavior had been uncovered by Elohim and judgment was coming. Their time was cut short. They had to act on their plan or risk utter failure and imprisonment in Tartarus.

“Unleash the wolves of war,” commanded Anu.

Methuselah’s
team was not quite as blessed as Enoch’s.

The horde of Nephilim surrounded Ohyah and his “captives
.” They stood fearfully awaiting their end at the hands of the horde. An officer adorned in golden armor stepped out from the horde. He approached Ohyah. He studied the captives, then looked back at Ohyah with suspicion. He thoughtfully considered the bulging pus-filled black and blue eye of Ohyah.

The Naphil leader spoke with a gravelly voice, “I am General Mahawai of Baalbek. Who are you, soldier?”

A general?
thought Methuselah.
What do they have out here, an army of Nephilim? How could that be?

“I am Ohyah, son of Semjaza,” blurted Ohyah.

Methuselah’s team tried to hold back their surprise at this revelation. Semjaza? Semjaza was the infamous leader of the Watchers, now known as the father sky god Anu.

What new trick is Ohyah attempting?
thought Methuselah. Sure, it might protect them from immediate execution, but it only delayed their demise until the Nephilim got word from Semjaza. Still, any amount of time was helpful, if they could only devise an escape.

Thanks a lot, Ohyah,
Lamech thought.
You just added prolonged torture for us when they discover you lied. Well, at least he will suffer more for being a traitor.

Ohyah continued, “I am a lone voyager from the east. I found this regiment because I wanted to join your forces. These giant killers took us all by surprise.”

Mahawai glanced at the two Guards from the camp. They nodded slightly in approval. But it was not approval enough for Mahawai.

“These soldiers merely parrot what you told them earlier
! How do I not know whether you brought these vermin on your tail? How is it that you alone survived the slaughter of thirteen of my soldiers? Why should I believe you?”

Ohyah felt his hands tremble. He became short of breath. He had no answer.

Then a voice came from out of the horde, “General Mahawai, I will vouch for this Naphil’s word.”

Everyone turned
toward the voice. One of the soldiers stepped out from the crowded regiment. He came straight up to Mahawai. He saluted and stood at attention.

Mahawai looked at him expectantly.

“I am Hahyah, son of Semjaza. This Naphil is my twin brother.”

Methuselah felt a sickening pit
open in his stomach. His whole world came crashing in on him. Everyone on the team glanced at each other with shock. Only Betenos kept staring at Ohyah.

T
his Hahyah did indeed look just like Ohyah, save for his warrior-shaved head.

The general’s next declaration
caught them off guard. “We are done with our training exercise. Bring these captives back to Baalbek. Let Thamaq and Yahipan deal with them.”

Well,
thought Methuselah,
at last I will face the Rephaim who killed our parents and the rest of my city. Unfortunately, they will have the blade in their hands.

The distant sound of a war horn interrupted
his stupefied thoughts. The Nephilim stood at attention. Mahawai peered to the south and said to himself, “That is the battle call of Inanna.” He turned to his troops and yelled, “ALL SOLDIERS TO ARMS! DOUBLE TIME TO BAALBEK!”

• • • • •

Baalbek
lay about ten leagues north of where Methuselah and his team were caught. All night long they marched through the Sirion mountain pass. Eventually, they entered a broad river basin called the Beqa Valley, just before the sun rose. They followed the Orontes River through a vast cedar forest to its springs in the heart of the city.

As they came up from the south, they
passed a huge quarry used for the stone of the city. The morning quarry shift had not yet begun, leaving the stone pit empty. It struck Methuselah how large the stones seemed to be. He thought his eyes were playing tricks on him in the moonlight, with the distance and his perception.

Yet
when they reached the city gates, he realized that the size of the stones was not an optical illusion. They were huge beyond belief. Stones the size of four men tall, thirty cubits long and thousands of tons apiece. He had never seen hewn rock so large or so finely crafted with precision. How did they cut, transport, and position such mammoth stones? It was inconceivable to him.

Until they entered the city gates.

Baalbek was a city of giants, vast and thriving, alive with industry and labor. And all of its inhabitants were Nephilim —
thousands
of them
. All around them, everywhere, humongous architectural edifices crafted from cyclopean blocks of stone rose tall, some of the buildings a hundred cubits or higher. The team of giant killers felt like fleas in a nest of wasps. The giants they saw going about their business towered six to ten cubits high, and most of them wore strange foreign looking armor or carried foreign looking weapons. Baalbek looked like a military occupation of invading forces.

T
hey were paraded through the city streets toward the palace. The staggering implications of what they saw overwhelmed Methuselah, Edna, Lamech, and Betenos. It meant that everything they believed about the gigantomachy was a lie. The giants were not reduced to outlaws and wandering vagrants hunted by the gods, they were an organized civilization. The general Mahawai had submitted to the call of Inanna as if they were her own army. How could this be? The gods had outlawed the giants in the East, only to create a secret city and army of Nephilim in the West?

These and many other questions filled Methuselah’s head.
He feared the answers. A deathly dread overcame him.

Lamech stumbled closer to Methuselah as they approached the steps of the palace. “Ohyah planned this all along. He betrayed us from the beginning,” he whispered.

Methuselah nodded his head. He glanced at Edna to make certain she was well. Both Edna and Betenos had barely kept up with the rigorous march. The rapid journey had exhausted them all. They could have fallen asleep standing up, were it not for the fact that they would have been executed had they done so.

Before
the palace, they passed a series of giant chariots, four-wheeled war carts drawn by teams of horses. The giants did not usually use beasts of burden, except in royal processions or in a military capacity for their leaders. This gathering obviously included a dozen different chariots from a dozen different tribes.

Baalbek was not the only city and army of giants? How much worse could these revelations possibly get? How much more shocking
?
thought Methuselah.