Troublesome Topic: THE PURPOSE OF THE CONQUEST OF THE PROMISED LAND

In Genesis 15:16 God told Abram that after a long wait his descendants would return to the land where Abram was living. The reason for the long wait was that “the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” Heiser does not take Amorites for its simple meaning but sees it as code language for the giants.

About the conquest Heiser also says that the “other people living in those regions … were in the wrong place at the wrong time” (page 209).  No, they were all wicked and deserved punishment. Deuteronomy 9:4-6 makes clear that God did not give the promised land to the Israelites because of their own righteousness, but because of the sin of the nations living there. Genesis 15:16 was being fulfilled. To say that “other people living in those regions (ones who were not giants) were in the wrong place at the wrong time” makes God an unjust God. The whole reason God told Abram that his descendants would have to wait over 400 years before taking possession of the land was so that God would be just and right in removing them.

Heiser’s chapter on Og of Bashan and the connections to Mesopotamia and Babel relies heavily on pagan literature. He does not let the Bible stand on its own but always brings in foreign ideas. This chapter is not crucial in my mind, but he uses it to set up the war against the giants in the time of Joshua.

On page 209 Heiser says “the target of Kherem was the Anakim” (Kherem means “devoted to destruction”).

On page 210 Heiser writes, “the rationale for Kherem annihilation was the specific elimination of the descendants of the Nephilim. Ridding the land of these bloodlines was the motivation.”  No, that was not the only motivation. That was only part of the picture and that is mentioned because they were one of the biggest obstacles in that process.

“Anak” is used 5 times in the book of Joshua.

“Anakim” is used 4 times in Joshua. That makes a total of 9 times in 24 chapters. If the defeat of the giants was the major purpose of the conquest, we would expect it to be mentioned multiple times each chapter.

“Rephaim” is not used at all in Joshua. Neither is “Nephilim”.

If the Nephilim are such a big deal in the Bible, why is the word only used 3 times in the whole Bible, and two of them are in the same verse?

Much of the section found on pages 198 to 211 focuses on the king of Bashan named Og. Heiser sees in the dimensions of Og’s bed a throwback to the marriage bed of Marduk, a Babylonian god. However, the most natural reading of Deuteronomy 3:11 is that the size of his bed (or sarcophagus) gives us the idea that he was a very big man. It is quite possible that his body was not measured after he was killed by the Israelites, but his bed or sarcophagus was measured (the word used in that verse can mean bed or sarcophagus). He was killed in battle and so were all his people. There was no one left to bury him. But it is possible that he had his sarcophagus prepared ahead of time, one that he never got to use. Of course, it is also quite possible that it was indeed his bed that was very large – about 13 feet long in our measurements. I believe this is intended to give us an idea of how large he was. Of course there had to be a bit of extra space on each end, therefore, he was not 13 feet tall, but possibly 11 or 12 feet tall. Heiser preferred the pagan myth over a simple reading of the Bible.

The next lesson in this series is REGARDING THE RULE OF THE NEPHILIM OVER THE NATIONS.