Biblical Limericks: How Tall Was He?

In the LXX he’s six foot nine,
but the Masoretic drew the line
of Goliath’s true height
three foot taller – that’s right -
how can we make these versions align?

1 Samuel 17: 4   - compare the Hebrew MT text to the Greek LXX translation

Anomalies A – Z: Gibborim

There are few among us who can still recall the exploits of the Gibborim, David’s Mighty men.  It is already largely forgotten that it Ehanan who killed Goliath, the Giant of Gath, not the upstart Bethlehemite, David.  And who today remembers Eleazer, the Son of Dodo, who once wrestled a bear that had stolen his mead?  Or Beniah, he who killed a lion in a pit on a snowy day, and attacked and killed Ahmose the Egyptian, who stood seven and one half feet tall?  Who among this generation can recite the tale of Bani the Gadite?  His name was sung from Dan to Beersheba and rightly so; who else has encountered the satyrs of the desert and survived? 

David is remembered but his men languish in obscurity.  They fought giants and ghouls.  They crossed vast wildernesses seeking danger and treasure and glory. But who remembers them now?  The dangers are subdued, the treasure is spent, and their glory has faded.

Be sure to check out the rest of the Anomalies:

More Anomalies A – Z: Zamzummim

That too was considered a land of the Rephaim, who used to live there; but the Ammonites called them Zamzummim.  They were a people strong and numerous, and as tall as the Anakim. The Lord destroyed them from before the Ammonites, who drove them out and settled in their place. – Deuteronomy 2: 20 – 21

This land was inhabited by giants
once, long ago, near the beginning,
from Arabella to Aqaba.

Excavators occasionally bring their bones to the surface;
grossly oversized in limb and length,
how they must have towered over the land,

straddling the geological rift
and shaking the earth with their strides.

They were bold and strong.

But that was long ago,
before the waters came
and they were destroyed.

Four hundred and nine thousand all,
drowned, or crushed in the crash of waves
against stone peaks.
Tall as they were, they were not tall enough.

The giants are gone,
but their enfeebled spirits linger -
those few who escaped the chains of Tartarus;
you can hear them buzzing in the heat
of long summer nights,

the last mummers of their dying speech.

This is my third completed pass through the alphabet with these anomalies.  You can read through them all here, if you like. 

Eschatonophobia

It's the fear of the end times, a phobia of the last days, an irrational terror of the end of the world. It's also paranoia and conspiracy theories and crackpot interpretation of biblical myths and legends. It's Eschatonophobia.



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Tracks #1 and #3 were previously published on this blog.   Those posts have been updated...

Track Information and Credits:

01 John Hagee Describes the Naked Merciless Power of the Illuminati

More Light 

Asia-8 

Bleep Pong Noise 

Feedback 

 “Beneath the Planet of the Apes”

02 Jack Van Impe Has 10,853 Verses to Prove His Point

Choralies 2013 – Scie Choeur

Bleepy Tone Sweep 

Flame 

 “Pump Up the Volume”

03 The Computer Is the Image of the Beast

Computer 

Computer Noise 

“Image of the Beast”

04 Perry Stone Makes it Clear that Demons are the Spirits of Giants

SS Boom 01

Saw Riser 

Sinus 0001 
 “Reading that Science Fiction Garbage” - ?

“Get off my phone” Glenn Beck

“Planet of the Apes”
“12 Angry Men”
"Barbarella"

April Anomalies A-Z: Og

It isn’t discussed very often; preachers don't like to talk about it, for obvious reasons, but the flood, Noah’s Flood (though that is an altogether inaccurate title) wasn't entirely successful.  The plan was that the deluge would kill every living thing on the face of the earth – with the exception of Noah and his family.  But there was one other unexpected survivor:  King Og.

Gigantic King Og watched with bemused indifference as Noah and his boys built their “toy” boat and he laughed as they herded the various animals below deck.  But he stopped laughing when they pulled the doors shut.  And when the rain started to fall, King Og began growling and snarling.

He was tall, enormous really.  So when the waters began to rise, he wasn't immediately concerned. He was still standing in front of the ark starring up at the skies when the waters were ankle deep (which was waist deep for everyone else.) When the waters reached his knees (and the rest of humanity was either treading water or running for the hills) King Og began to pound on the sides of the ark. 

He watched as mothers struggled to hold their infant children above the rising waters.  He watched as desperate men attacked the ark with pikes and swords attempting to get on board.  Their blows were turned away by the pitch covered wood; their attack was futile and came too late.  They too were drowned by the flood waters.

The rain continued to fall; the waters continued to rise, and soon the rising waters lifted the ark.  As it began to float away, brave King Og grabbed the stern with his enormous hands and, hand over hand, he climbed aboard, squeezing the boat between his thighs to stay in place.  The vessel rocked with his added weight, but it was a stable craft, well designed to ride out the swelling waves. There, atop the ark, he rode through the angry fury of the storm.  He howled with the winds.  He shook his fist at the sky and he cursed the lightning.  The ark was rolled and tossed about on the waves, but Og kept his grip. 

Day after day he clung to Noah’s ark (though it was difficult to determine days and nights because of the impenetrable cover of storm clouds that covered the sky).   Once, after what must have been weeks, when King Og was very hungry, he punched a hole in the roof of the vessel and grabbed an ox.   He ate it raw and bloody and bellowing as he clung to the boat with his other hand.  When he reached in again for more, Noah and his family beat at his fingers with rods and clubs and he almost lost his balance. 

When the rains finally stopped and the waters began to recede, King Og, exhausted from the ordeal, slipped from atop the ark and floated on the waters himself.  It wasn't long, however, before he felt the bump of solid land beneath him.  He’d come to rest on a small island, what was once a mountain peak.  He could see in the distance that Noah’s floating zoo had also been grounded on one of the island peaks.  Noah, observing the giant through his spyglass  watched King Og climbing carefully down the mountain side, but never saw him again after that.

Many years later – hundreds of years later – when he was very old and very tired, when he'd reached the point in life when he spent most of his days asleep in his famous giant iron framed bed, King Og made one last valiant march to battle.  He rode out with his generals and his assembled armies to meet the Israelites as they invaded his land, but that was a flood he would not survive.

This is part of April Anomalies A-Z, a creative writing exercise and not intended to be an altogether accurate picture of the creature described above. 

April Anomalies A-Z: Gogmagog!

“Gogmagog! is at work in the middle-east.”  President George W. Bush

How many stories could be told about Gogmagog!, that fearsome giant of forgotten days, how many tales of wonder and of woe?  How many fortified cities has he leveled?  How many castles has he pulled down?  How many nations has he plundered? How many nations has he pillaged?  He towers over all the ancient terrors, standing over them as a tree stands over a man. He pulls up oak trees as you or I might pull up daisies.  He is Gogmagog!

Gogmagog!, who was struck by lightning on five different occasions. Gogmagog!, who was sealed within a cave for 30 days. Gogmagog!, who fought the Wyrm beneath Albion. Gogmagog!, who wrestled Hell-Hounds at Crooked Creek. Gogmagog!

And now he is on the move.  Gogmagog! is on the march.  Awakened from his slumber he now lumbers eastward, towards the plains of Shinar, where he will battle once more.  The ground shakes beneath his feet.  His stride is unyielding, his pace unrelenting. He will not rest. He will not sleep now that he has been roused to anger. He will have battle once more.  He will take on all foes, oppose all armies.  He will tear down walls and towers. He will smash tanks and chariots.  He will sweep aircraft from the sky and sink battleships in the sea. None can stop him, he is Gogmagog!.

This is part of April Anomalies A-Z, a creative writing exercise and not intended to be an altogether accurate picture of the creature described above, and I may have paraphrased something President George W. Bush actually said…

April Anomalies A –Z: Emim

The earliest inhabitants of the country were the Emim, a great race of warriors, so tall in stature that they might have come of Enac’s family; and indeed men held them to be giants of Enac’s breed, but the Moabite name for them is Emim. Deuteronomy 2: 10-11

We craned our necks far back, our chins into the air
to see them there, the Emim, giants,
warriors tall in stature,
great in size.

Dark wine dripped down from their faces
as they drank from barrel sized bowls;
we stood beneath that wretched flood
huddled, drenched below.

                                                                          

These dreaded ones,
these buzzing zamzummim,
who dwell in iron age castles
and disappear in a cloud of disowning,
they, they are the ones responsible
for sixteen thousand pigs
floating dead upon the river;
they, they are the ones to blame
for fear of fire and of sun.

Go back. Go back
to whence you came;
go back beneath the shadows,
to the netherworld.
The Emim are not wanted here.

While this is part of April Anomalies A-Z, a creative writing exercise and not intended to be an altogether accurate picture of the creature described above, the thing about 16,000 dead pigs in the river is far too real.  

FDR, the CCC, and the Alien Conspiracy

It is an established point of history that FDR established the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) with secret and nefarious purposes known only to himself and his trusted advisors.  To the public the CCC provided public works and jobs.  But the hidden agenda of the CCC, its true raison d’être was to eliminate all evidence of inter-dimensional visitors as recorded by Native Americans in the petroglyphs of the American southwest as part of a vast governmental conspiracy to cover up the existence of non-human intelligent life forms.

Carved into the rocks and cliff walls near Phoenix, Arizona are countless images of strange desert creatures and bizarre travelers of the air – but how many more were destroyed in the dynamiting and blasting done by the CCC?  What messages have been lost?  What precious records were destroyed?  What was being covered up by the CCC’s systematic destruction of these ancient and sacred documents?  

It is difficult to classify these visitors.  They do not appear to be biological – and so cannot be grouped together with other accounts of Extraterrestrial Biological Entities (EBEs).   Instead they appear to be holographic life forms, manifesting themselves in orbs of blinking and shimmering light, holographic entities intruding into the night sky of this physical realm.  They don’t have any mass.  They make no noise. And my intuitive sense is that they are evil.

The native tribes that lived in the American southwest carved pictures of these trans-dimensional beings into the rocks of the desert.  They drew pictures of spiraling balls of light, of tailless lizard men rising from the desert sands, and of winged bird men imparting sacred teachings to humans.  They also carved doorways into the stones for these alien beings.  These sacred mountains are the home of alien spirits when they visit this tangible world.

We also find in these petroglyphs a great many pictures of the seafaring Phoenician giants that once lived on this continent.  The name Phoenix, Arizona does not derive, after all, from the mythical bird that is consumed by fire only to rise from its ashes.  It is named in honor of the Phoenician giants.  They were very powerful entities, and the tribes that lived here feared them, almost as much as they feared the dark star, holographic creatures in the night skies.

Nimrod 3

"Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power.

-Josephus