David Ascendant (Chronicles of the Nephilim Book 7) (3 page)

The Philistine forces lined up in the valley between Aphek and Ebenezer, where the Israelites were encamped. In the morning, the mysterious golden box that housed their malevolent divinities was paraded before the Israelite front line. The entire army gave a war shout that sent chills down the spines of the watching Philistines. They thought that the Hebrews were possessed by evil spirits let loose from the box. There were even murmurings among the ranks that these demonic gods had struck Egypt with plagues and that they might do the same to them.

The box was returned to the back of the army to be cared for by a cadre of their priests. The Philistine captains enjoined their men to take courage lest they become slaves to their barbaric enemies.

The Israelites could see that the Philistines’ were planning on overwhelming them with a massive blitz of their entire armed forces, including additional reinforcements. It was a total of nearly three thousand men. So, in response, Israel called up every man in reserve to counter that blitz with close to three thousand of their own
.

In doing so, the Israelites called away the entire garrison that guarded the golden box in its own tent, leaving it and its company of fifty priests completely unprotected at the rear of the horde. Goliath and Ishbi had found a hiding place near there the night before, when they reconnoitered the troop movements.

As soon as the armies engaged in battle, all attention focused on the skirmish at the front line. The action left Goliath and Ishbi completely free to attack the priests. Goliath led and Ishbi stayed back to catch any priests trying to escape. They cut down the ones with ram’s horns first, so no alarm could be sounded. A few had arms with them, but the giants swung their swords in great arcs with such speed and power that they decapitated, disemboweled and dismembered all fifty of the holy men in mere moments. One Levite was able to get out of the tent and sprinted to tell the camp. An arrow from Ishbi’s bow took him down.

Inside the tent, they saw two remaining priests standing guard before the golden box, the one they heard the priests call the “ark of the covenant.” The two Israelites appeared to be important with their special blue colored robes and head miters on. When they saw Goliath and Ishbi approach them, the priests dropped their weapons, fell to their knees in fearful tears, and bowed low before the giants.

Ishbi’s familiar spirits told him these Israelite priests were actually worshippers of Belial, one of their own.
Traitors to their god
, he thought with curious amusement. But then the spirits left him in a frenzy.

One of the priests cried out, “Please don’t kill us. We are the sons of the high priest, Eli. We are Hophni and Phi…”

Goliath’s sword cut them both in half before he could finish his pleading.

They kicked the body parts aside and stood before the gold box. It was small for such an important relic, only about four feet long and three feet wide and high. It was carried with two long poles that passed through rings on the bottom of the ark.

It was a curious artifact that sported two cast sphinx-like Cherubim images on the top. Goliath knew that Cherubim were the symbolic hybrid guardians of royal thrones as their own lord Achish had such images at the base of his throne. It seemed like a portable throne chariot to them.

Ishbi approached the gleaming box and reached out to touch one of the two winged guardians on its lid.

“Stop!” shouted Goliath. “You may release the deity inside.”

Ishbi stopped inches short of the object.

Goliath concluded, “These carrying poles are obviously safe enough for us to grab hold. Quickly.”

Ishbi wiped his slippery, bloody hands on his battle skirt to get a good grip. They hoisted the ark up. It was a featherweight to their muscular Rephaim arms.

They left the tent. But before they ran, Goliath grabbed hold of the large tent fabric and pulled with all his might. The entire structure came down like a death shroud onto the corpses. He wanted to take the opportunity to leave an insulting statement to complement their theft of this most holy and precious idol.

Within moments, they were sprinting back out into the forest that surrounded the valley. They made a wide arc away from the battle, circling back to their camp.

It had been so easy. The weakness of resistance they had encountered surprised Goliath. This Hebrew deity was pathetic if this was all he would muster to protect his little throne, his meager magic box of residence.

By the time the Israelites noticed that their camp had been ransacked and the ark stolen, Goliath and Ishbi were already safely behind their own lines.

The Israelites sounded a horn. Word spread that their precious idol had been taken. It caused such despair that their unity broke down and their forces melted away in cowardice. It was as if the absconding of the ark had been the bursting of a lung that sucked them all away like a rushing wind.

By the time the Philistines had secured the valley and the city of Ebenezer, thirty military units of close to five hundred Israelite warriors had been slain. The Philistines chased the fleeing Israelites twenty miles back to Shiloh where the tabernacle of Yahweh resided. They destroyed the city and burned the sacred tent to the ground, slaughtering the Levite priests who lived there.

The Israelites had lost the central symbols of their faith and their hope of unity.

Goliath was right. No one had anticipated such a bold and risky move. But he and Ishbi had changed history.

They were heralded as gibborim, and given a hero’s feast and reward ceremony. They were allowed the pleasure of raping a dozen captured Israelites in a frenzied orgy of violence, and were given the glorious honor of accompanying their golden booty back to the chief city of Ashdod. But through all the celebration, Goliath was haunted by the memory of how easy it had been to capture the magic box of deity. The thought occurred to him that this may have been a set-up.

Lahmi and Ittai were inseparable comrades. They worked together assisting metal smiths, worshipped together in the temple of Dagon, played together in the fields, and trained together in the gymnasium every moment they could find.

This was one of those moments. The two ten-year olds were coming home from battle practice at the end of the day. Ever the competitors, they began quarreling over who was a better swordsman. Before long, they were sparring against each other in the street with their wooden swords and shields.

Though Ittai was smaller, he handled a weapon better. They were both exhausted from a long practice, but Ittai seemed to find a new reserve of energy to mount an attack of blows that pushed Lahmi back against a wall.

Suddenly, a rock hit the back of Ittai’s head, stunning him. Lahmi promptly knocked Ittai to the ground with a well-placed hack to his rib cage.

They both turned to see the source of the projectile. A group of three other young kids had followed them home from their workout.

The children were a bit older, maybe twelve or so. They approached Lahmi and the prone Ittai. The lead bully, a Rephaim himself, led the children in a chant, “Ittai the Gittite! Ittai the Gittite! Fingers, toes, but no height!”
Gittite
was the word for citizens of Gath.

The cruelty of children found and exploited every abnormality in their peers with unrelenting ruthlessness. Extra digits were not usually mocked in Rephaim because of the imposing size of their possessors. In Ittai’s case however, his small height turned his polydactyl link with the giants into an opportunity for mockery.

He was used to being picked on. It inspired him to overcome his handicap with skilled fighting. He had a will of iron that drove him to practice battle exercises longer and harder than anyone else.

But he would not need to defend himself today. Lahmi would. Lahmi stepped up to the bully, who stood a full six inches taller than him. He looked up into the bully’s eyes with fierce determination to protect the honor of his best friend in the world.

The bully grinned maliciously and glanced at his two comrades by his side. “I bet his puny loins match his puny size.”

The other two chuckled at the insult.

“Take it back,” growled Lahmi, “or you will be sorry.”

“No. You take back your little runt and get out of my sight or you will be sorry you ever chose him as your boy love.”

Ittai rose to his feet and gripped his wooden sword tightly.

“He is not my boy love,” Lahmi fumed. “But now that you say it, I think I would like to make you my boy love, weakling.”

The bully’s eyes went wide with anger.

Without warning, Lahmi thrust the handle of his wooden sword upward into the bully’s jaw. It made contact with a sickening crunch of shattering teeth. The bully fell back to the ground in a daze.

Lahmi used the flat side of his weapon to crack one of the comrades in the head and the other one in the stomach. Both went down, one stunned, the other retching.

Lahmi dropped the sword and jumped on top of the big bully and began to pummel his face with a flurry of blows.

The bully’s face broke. Blood began to splatter everywhere.

The other two perpetrators came to their senses and ran away crying.

The bully was unconscious. Lahmi would not stop beating him. His victim’s nose was a pulp, his cheeks shattered, his jaw broken and his skull was about to be pulverized. Lahmi had been overcome by his fury. It was one of the things he had picked up from his big brother Goliath; a temper that would overtake him.

Ittai grabbed Lahmi before he would kill the bully.

“Lahmi, enough!”

Lahmi stopped. It energized him. He felt release and could finally think straight again.

The sound of a trumpet at the city gates interrupted them. The armed forces had arrived in the grand procession celebrating their victory.

Ittai said, “Let us get out of here.”

They left the bloody, beaten body of the bully in the alley and ran to see the triumphal parade.

The citizens of Gath lined up along the main thoroughfare of the city to receive the triumphal procession of their returning warriors. It had been some weeks in the coming. They had originally taken the ark to Ashdod on the coast. Gath was the second city in its tour of Philistia.

Lahmi and Ittai pressed their way through the crowd to get a better view of the military parade. When they got to the front of the line, they could see the long array of soldiers, followed by their captives.

Normally, a triumphal procession consisted of captured kings, soldiers and booty, dead or alive, paraded in victorious display on carts or dragged in the dirt. But this procession consisted of a sole object of conquest: the golden box called an “ark” that held the Israelite deity trapped in its confines.

It was unimpressive to Lahmi, small and unbefitting the glory of a powerful god. He was glad he worshipped Dagon the storm god, father of Ba’al, and ruler of Philistia.

The Philistines were a syncretistic people that adapted the best wisdom and culture from those they conquered or with whom they traded. The Mesopotamian god Dagon was one of those borrowings, from the region around Mari in the northwest.

As storm god, he of course brought fertility and power to Philistia. But as father of Ba’al, the most high god of the Canaanite pantheon, he had a distinguished status coupled with the Philistine hegemony at this moment in history. Ba’al had faded in influence when the Hebrews had originally conquered the Canaanite territory
.

Dagon was an amphibious divinity. He had the upper muscular body of a humanoid and the lower body of a fish, an appropriate incarnation for coastal Sea Peoples. But he could manifest humanoid legs as needed. This little golden ark looked like nothing more than a fish bait container for Dagon.

Ittai, however, felt overwhelmed with curiosity about the ark. He couldn’t stand the stench of fish and always considered Dagon to be a rather capricious and conniving deity. But he was Ittai’s deity, so he genuflected and worshipped as required. But something about this golden box drew his curiosity. Was it the understated size and unadorned simplicity? Or was it the beautiful winged sphinxes on the cover? He could not tell.

And what was inside it? The gods? He wanted so badly to open up the mysterious lid with Cherubim on it and peek inside its sacred confines.

Ittai and Lahmi might have differing views about the ark, but both could agree about the expression on the faces of Goliath and Ishbi, as well as all the soldiers, as they passed. It was not the bright look of triumphal, celebrative victors. It was more the gloomy look of defeated, dismayed survivors.

What could cause such consternation? Was this not a long-awaited victory over a foe with whom they had been quarreling for generations? Was this not payback for the tragic destruction of so many innocent loved ones in the temple collapse caused by the Israelite monster Samson? Was this not the capture and humiliation of the god of the Hebrews called Yahweh?

Goliath and Ishbi sat before the fire warming their hands. The family had finished a meal, the servants had cleaned up. Warati, Lahmi and Ittai sat in rapt attention as the two newly honored gibborim warriors told of their mighty exploit in capturing the magical ark of Israel.

Then a dark pall came over the storytellers.

Goliath said, “When we brought the ark back to Ashdod, we had a feast unlike any we have ever had. But it only served to blind us to what happened next.”

A shiver went through Ittai and Lahmi.

Goliath continued, “The ark was brought into the house of Dagon and placed beside his image.”

Temples were houses of the gods, and the temple of Dagon housed a fifteen foot tall image of the storm god carved out of diorite. Diorite was one of the hardest stones available in Canaan, and the Philistines copied the Mesopotamian technique of carving important artifacts and images out of the dark grey mineral for the sake of everlasting permanence.

Goliath went on. “The lords rightly considered the Hebrew god captive to Dagon.”

Ishbi interjected, “They call their deity ‘Yahweh.’”

“What does it mean?” asked Ittai.

“Perfect existence, or something of the sort,” answered Ishbi.

Goliath said with somber voice, “Since it is our custom to grant defeated deities some amount of vassal-like privilege, the Lord of Ashdod, Mutallu, thought it only gracious to allow this Yahweh an audience in Dagon’s presence. But the next morning when the priests opened the temple, the image of Dagon was on the floor, face down before the Israelite ark.”

Lahmi and Ittai gasped. Warati sighed.

Ishbi said, “That is only the beginning of the pranks that malevolent deity has pulled.”

Goliath said, “They returned Dagon to his position, but the very next morning, he was prostrate before the ark yet again. Only this time, Dagon’s head and hands had been cut off lying on the threshold.”

“Holy father of Ba’al,” whispered Warati. The cutting off of heads and hands of enemy combatants was a peculiar tactic of victory in war. It was a denigration of one’s conquered foes into complete powerlessness.

Warati continued, “It would take great strength to cut through that diorite. No one was seen in or near the temple?”

“It was locked and guarded,” said Goliath. “The guards never even heard the sound of the fall or the breaking.”

Ishbi added, “That abomination was followed by an infestation of rats as well as a plague of boils, tumors, and hemorrhoids.”

Warati winced at the thought of it.

“What are hemorrhoids?” asked Ittai and Lahmi simultaneously.

Warati explained. “They are tumors that hang out of your anus and burn like hell.”

The boys giggled at the image in their minds.

“Hemorrhoids are no laughing matter,” said Warati.

It seemed to Ittai that these strange curses of magic appeared to be a kind of mockery of Dagon’s power and those who worshipped him. But how could this Yahweh be trapped in a little golden box, subjected to Dagon, and yet display such acts of power?

Goliath interrupted Ittai’s thoughts, “The lords of the Philistines conferred and decided to take the ark away and bring it to Gath.”

“Wonderful,” said Warati. “Push the curse off to us. What was going on in the flea-sized mind of Lord Achish to agree to such lunacy?”

“Worse yet,” added Ishbi, “since we were the ones who captured the bastard god and his box, we were told to lead the procession. So everyone is starting to give us the evil eye as if we are to blame.”

Warati said, “You are not the only ones. Imagine the respect that Dagon has to recover. This does not bode well for our god to be one-upped by his own prisoner.”

“Parlor tricks” barked Goliath. “It may even be traitor priests in our midst who faked it all and caused the plague with their own sorcery.”

“But why?” said Warati. “That would only discredit their own office of authority.”

“I do not know,” said Goliath. “But let us keep a wary eye for any sign of the curse following us.”

Goliath did not reveal that he suspected in his heart that this was the reason why it had been so easy for them to capture the damned infernal gold box. That maybe it had been a trap all along, a way for the deity to get inside the enemy camp and engage in such treacherous antics.

              • • • • •

That night, as Lahmi fell asleep, he heard scratching in the corner of his sleeping quarters. At first he thought it might be a night demon, like Lamashtu, come to taunt him. But it was only a rat
.