The prophet Isaiah delivered God’s final verdict on the rebel from Eden, who we now believe to be the Watcher chief Shemihazah:
You will not be joined with them in burial,
because you have destroyed your land,
you have slain your people.“May the offspring of evildoers
nevermore be named!Prepare slaughter for his sons
Isaiah 14:20–21 (ESV, modified)
because of the guilt of their fathers,
lest they rise and possess the earth,
and fill the face of the world with [Watchers].”
These verses come into clearer focus when they’re read with the worldview of the prophet in mind. Associating the rebel from Eden with the dead in Sheol wasn’t symbolic; Shemihazah was ejected from God’s holy mountain, Eden, the same way the spirits of the Nephilim had been condemned to wander the earth until the judgment.[1] The place of this unclean, dead god would forevermore be with the spirits of the dead, the “leaders of the earth” and “kings of the nations”—in other words, the “mighty men who were of old.” That’s who the Amorites believed were their ancestors, the Rephaim and the council of the Didanu—the Titans of Greek and Roman religion, who are the “sons of God” of Genesis 6.
Isaiah 14 is a record not just of the fall and judgment of Shemihazah; it prophesies the ultimate slaughter of the demonic Rephaim/Nephilim, “lest they rise and possess the earth.”
But wait—there’s more!
We need to reexamine a prophecy mentioned earlier, one that was interpreted in the second century AD as heralding the would-be mashiach, Simon bar Kokhba. It’s been interpreted as a messianic prophecy, at least by Jewish scholars, for more than two thousand years.
What scholars have missed is that it foretells not only the coming of Messiah, but of His final victory over the rebel gods and their offspring.
I see him, but not now;
I behold him, but not near:
a star shall come out of Jacob,
and a scepter shall rise out of Israel;it shall crush the forehead of Moab
and break down all the sons of Sheth.Edom shall be dispossessed;
Numbers 24:17–18 (ESV)
Seir also, his enemies, shall be dispossessed.
Israel is doing valiantly.
Scholars have argued for thousands of years about the exact meaning of this passage. Some reject a messianic application of Balaam’s prophecy. For example, Martin Luther couldn’t accept that God would use a devious pagan like Balaam that way. But since Numbers 24:2 tells us that “the Spirit of God came upon him,” we assume that Balaam was, in fact, speaking truth.
Moab and Edom, we understand. They were ancient enemies of Israel. Seir is another reference to Edom, taken from the Shara mountains in southern Jordan, which belonged to Edom through most of the Old Testament period.[2] But who, exactly, are the sons of Sheth?
Some translations render the name “Seth,” and a few read “sons of tumult” instead of Seth or Sheth. Which Seth are we talking about here? Seth, the son of Adam? Seth (also called Set or Sutekh), the Egyptian god of chaos?
Allow us to put forward a possibility you probably haven’t heard before.
Scholar Amar Annus has linked the name Sheth/Seth to an Amorite tribe called the Suteans. They were notorious in ancient Mesopotamia, considered violent, dangerous, and a threat to civilized society. The word “Sutean” eventually became a Mesopotamian synonym for a witch.[3]
Annus notes that the Egyptian term for the Suteans, Šwtw (“Shutu”), a form of the Akkadian name for the tribe, appears in one of the Execration Texts from the nineteenth or eighteenth centuries BC, about the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.[4]
The Ruler of Shutu, Ayyabum, and all the retainers who are with him; the Ruler of Shutu, Kushar, and all the retainers who are with him; the Ruler of Shutu, Zabulanu, and all the retainers who are with him.[5]
The important detail is that “Sheth,” “Shutu,” and “Sutean” are the same name processed through different languages and types of writing.[6] Other Egyptian texts place the Shutu/Suteans/Sheth in the central and northern Transjordan, which is precisely where the Bible puts the Rephaim.[7]
Here’s the link: An Akkadian lexical list, which is like an ancient clay tablet version of Google Translate, specifically equates su-tu-u and ti-id-nu—Sutean and Tidanu. Remember, Tidanu (or Ditanu) was the tribe from which the kings of the Amorites traced their bloodline, and it was the origin of the name of the elder gods of the Greeks, the Titans.
We also find this connection in texts from the Amorite kingdom of Ugarit.
In Ugaritic literature Suteans are mentioned in the epic of Aqhatu, where the antagonist of the mt rpi [“man of the Rephaim”] Dnil is a nomadic Ytpn, mhr št—“warrior of the Sutû, Sutean warrior.” … In the epic of Keret Suteans are mentioned as dtn, spelled also as ddn, and it “must be understood as the Di/Tidanu tribe, a part of common Amorite stock. It is even likely that this term was used in Mesopotamia at the end of the 3rd millennium to designate tribes later known as Suteans.[8]
The bottom line: Texts from various places across the ancient Near East, from Egypt and Canaan in the west to Akkad (modern Iraq) in the east, and from the time of Abraham down to the days of the judges, connect the Suteans, the Egyptian Shutu, and the biblical “sons of Sheth” with the ancient Tidanu—the Titans.
As the Israelites prepared to invade Canaan, the prophet Balaam foresaw a messianic figure, “a star,” who would come out of Jacob to “break down all the sons of Sheth.” These were the Suteans, Amorite nomads living in Rephaim country east of the Jordan. The Suteans were known in former days throughout Mesopotamia as the Ditanu/Didanu or Tidanu, dead kings of old who were linked to the Rephaim. And the Dit/Did/Tidanu was the tribe from which the Greeks got the name of their old gods, the Titans.
Here’s the short equation: Sheth = Shutu = Suteans = Ditanu/Tidanu = Titans.
Since the Greek Titans were the angels God imprisoned in Tartarus for their sin at Mount Hermon, they were the Watchers of Hebrew Scripture. The sons of Sheth were the Nephilim—the Rephaim spirits venerated and summoned through rituals by the pagan Canaanites of Moses’ day.
So, the pagan prophet Balaam didn’t just prophesy the conquest of Israel’s old enemies, Edom and Moab; he foretold the Messiah’s ultimate destruction of the sons of the Titans—the Nephilim, also called the “warriors of Baal,” and the Travelers of Ezekiel 39.
But it gets better. Read a little more of Balaam’s prophecy:
And one from Jacob shall exercise dominion
Numbers 24:19 (ESV)
and destroy the survivors of cities!”
You already see where this is going. Remember, the Hebrew root behind the word translated “cities” is exactly the same one rendered “Watchers” in Daniel 4, and it’s the word we suggest should read “Watchers” in Isaiah 14:21 and Isaiah 33:8.
In the context of this prophecy, which is so clearly messianic that it may have inspired the ill-starred Jewish rebellion against Rome in the second century AD, it’s logical to read it as a prophecy of the Messiah’s final victory over the rebel gods.
And one from Jacob shall exercise dominion
Numbers 24:19 (ESV, modified)
and destroy the survivors of [the Watchers]!”
Balaam, the pagan prophet for hire, foretold the Messiah’s destruction of the Fallen, the sons of God He judged and sentenced in Psalm 82. Judgment comes on the Day of the Lord, when God Himself takes the field to defend His har môʿēd, Zion, at the Battle of Armageddon.
The army of the Antichrist, a demonic force from all the nations of the world, will be destroyed in what Ezekiel called the Valley of the Travelers, a reference to the Rephaim spirits worshiped by the pagan neighbors of ancient Israel. They are the demons who will possess the soldiers who fight against the Most High on that day. It will be the end of the spirits behind Allah, Inc.
The road ahead for planet earth is not an easy one. To paraphrase our friend, the late and sorely missed Patrick Heron: The bad news is we’re all riding on the planetary equivalent of the Titanic. The good news is it’s easy to get a seat on a lifeboat. All you need to do is believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins and was raised again on the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures.[9]
It really is that simple, and that profound.
[1] 1 Enoch 16:1.
[2] This leads to another line of speculation: If Seir—i.e., Petra—is the true origin of the Ka’ba, could this prophecy apply to Islam?
[3] Amar Annus, “Sons of Seth and the South Wind,” Mesopotamian Medicine and Magic. Studies in Honor of Markham J. Geller, edited by S. Panayotov and L. Vacin. Ancient Magic and Divination, Vol. 14 (Boston; Leiden: Brill, 2018), 11.
[4] Amar Annus, “Are There Greek Rephaim? On the Etymology of Greek Meropes and Titanes.” Ugarit-Forschungen 31 (1999), 19.
[5] J. B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts: Relating to the Old Testament (Ann Arbor, Mich: Pro Quest, 2005), 329.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Genesis 14:5; Deuteronomy 2:10, 2:20–21.
[8] Amar Annus, “Are There Greek Rephaim? On the Etymology of Greek Meropes and Titanes.” Ugarit-Forschungen 31 (1999), 19. Annus cited Michael Heltzer, The Suteans (Naples: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1981), 52.
[9] 1 Corinthians 15:1–4.