Weird Stuff in the Bible

Bashan: The Place of the Serpent
Psalm 22, Psalm 68, Ephesians 4

Introduction
One of the most head-scratching verses to me in the entire Bible is Ephesians 4:8.
In this verse, Paul quotes Psalm 68. And Paul is known to quote various passages from the Old Testament; that’s not weird.
What’s weird is that Paul quotes it wrong. As in, he quotes one line saying the exact opposite of what the David originally wrote in this Psalm.
Psalm 68 says
You ascended on high,
    leading a host of captives in your train
    and receiving gifts among men,
But in Ephesians 4:8 Paul applies this to Christ, saying
“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
    and he gave gifts to men.”
One version says “receiving gifts.” The other says “he gave gifts.” Those are two opposite ideas.
And that might seem like a tiny mistake in the grand scheme of things, but it bothers me because I always say my bible ain’t got no mistakes. So I had to look more deeply into this one.
And as I did, I learned something that brought yet another dimension to these words: the quotation in Psalm 68 is in a context of addressing Bashan.
Bashan, as in, the spiritually dark region that was a stronghold of giants and demons in the Bible.
Bashan, a location whose name means “the place of the serpent.”
Bashan which contains Mount Hermon, the location where the Watchers touched down on planet earth in their great rebellion, as detailed in the Book of Enoch.
So in this episode, we’re going to investigate Bashan, what it means in the Bible, what Psalm 68 is saying, and hopefully we’ll understand why Paul quotes it backwards in Ephesians 4.
Because I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why a potential error like this is in the Bible.
Turn to Psalm 68, and let’s get weird.
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(Continued)
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and we are currently in a series on the Book of Enoch and the ways it intersects with Scripture.
And so last week, we were reading about the significance of Mount Hermon in the Scripture. We were looking at that because Enoch’s sixth chapter says that a group of fallen angels, called the Watchers, descended to the earth and rebelled against God in the pre-flood world, and that the location where they touched down was Mount Hermon.
Enoch’s sixth chapter says: And they were in all two hundred; who descended ⌈in the days⌉ of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it.
These are the exact same fallen angels that Jude describes in
Jude 6
And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—
And so we studied Mount Hermon; it comes up like 10 times in Scripture. Not a whole lot to me, but it does come up as this place of darkness; however, we also talked about how Hermon is up in the northern part of Israel where the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel all come together.
By the way, I kept mispronouncing “Lebanon” last week. I can explain about that: I’m from Missouri. We don’t know how to say things right in Missouri. No, I’m just kidding. But for real: in Missouri, we have a city called Lebanon. Which is a few hours from where I live but I’ve gone through it, like, a few dozen times in my life. And so my brain is constantly having to switch when I’m talking about Lebanon the city vs Lebanon the country on the other side of the world.
If you think that’s bad, we have another city even closer to where I live called Nevada, and it’s spelled just like the state- Nevada- and it’s confusing as heck to keep straight every time. I’m constantly referring to Nevada as Nevada, which is gonna sound stupid to anyone who isn’t from where I live. So yes, in Missouri, we don’t know how to say things right.
But what’s Paul’s excuse- he’s not from Missouri? Why couldn’t he quote Psalm 68 the right way? That’s something we’ll try to understand today.

Bashan: The Place of the Serpent
So let’s start by exploring Bashan. If you remember from last week, this is a region in the northernmost part of Israel called the Golan Heights today. Bashan is right where Israel, Lebanon, Syria and also Jordan come together.
Bashan’s name means “The Place of the Serpent” in Hebrew, which obviously seems to relate it to the devil or demonic imagery. Bashan first comes up in Genesis 14, where there is a war amongst giant kings. Genesis 14 is after the flood; I’ve never felt that this chapter gets the attention it deserves; maybe we’ll explore it sometime on this podcast. I’ve barely talked about it before. But there’s a war amongst some giant tribes, which includes the Rephaim and the Zuzim and the Emim and others.
Genesis 14:5 says
In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him came and defeated the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim, the Zuzim in Ham, the Emim in Shaveh-kiriathaim
So, that chapter doesn’t call this region Bashan; however, this city where the giant clans fought, Ashteroth- comes up again in Deuteronomy as a place where the Israelites encountered some giants.
Deuteronomy 1:3-4 say
3 In the fortieth year, on the first day of the eleventh month, Moses spoke to the people of Israel according to all that the Lord had given him in commandment to them, 4 after he had defeated Sihon the king of the Amorites, who lived in Heshbon, and Og the king of Bashan, who lived in Ashtaroth and in Edrei.
Og, King of Bashan, lived in Ashtaroth. And Og was totally a giant. Moses later says in
Chapter 3, verse 11
(For only Og the king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bed was a bed of iron. Is it not in Rabbah of the Ammonites? Nine cubits was its length, and four cubits its breadth, according to the common cubit.)
And this means Og was probably about 13 feet tall, confirming that he was a giant- called a Rephaim right here. There were other clans of giants, like we mentioned before, but Deuteronomy 1-3 focus a lot on how the Israelites wiped out the giants in Bashan.
However, even though Israel killed the giants, the land appears to continue to be cursed, as it’s a place of great darkness and foreboding in the Bible. Why? I would assume that some of the idols or pagan altars or temples of worship to false gods were never quite destroyed, and so the enemy continued to have legal rights there, and then later generations of Israelites fell into idolatry in these places.
And it was a region associated with the underworld; the undead. This was the land of the Rephaim, which- once these giants were wiped out- were considered to be demon spirits that continued to plague the land.
Isaiah 26:14
They are dead, they will not live;
    they are shades [or rephaim], they will not arise;
to that end you have visited them with destruction
    and wiped out all remembrance of them.
Rephaim are thought of as shades, or ghosts, who haunt Bashan. When Amos wants to insult some of the idolatrous Israelites, he calls them a phrase that meant demons. Here’s what he calls them:
Amos 4:1
Hear this word, you cows of Bashan,
    who are on the mountain of Samaria,
who oppress the poor, who crush the needy,
    who say to your husbands, ‘Bring, that we may drink!’
You know, if a pastor started calling his congregants “cows,” we’d probably say we weren’t going to that church anymore. That’s just mean, right? That’s offensive. But that’s how Amos talked.
And it’s worse than that; when he calls these women cows, he isn’t telling them they need to get on ozempic. He’s calling them demons. “Cows of Bashan” is biblical terminology for spiritual beings. For more on how the Bible does this, look at episode 80. It’s called “Beasts of the Field and other Biblical Vocabulary for Demons.” Bashan is the abode of the spirits of the giants, ghosts of the underworld, demons like what you see in the New Testament. And the cows or bulls of Bashan are terms for these spiritual entities.
And cow is very appropriate because Hermon was also associated heavily with Baal. I Chronicles 5 called it “Baal-Hermon.” Baal is a name for Satan. And Baal is most often depicted in ancient images as a cow or a bull. And this was a common idolatrous image; that’s why there are a few instances of golden calves that Israel would worship in the Old Testament. It was a picture of Satan, who was also called Baal-zebub in the New Testament.
And speaking of the New Testament, let’s look at what’s going on with Bashan in that era. I already mentioned last week, but when Jesus went to Caesarea Philippi to make his proclamation that “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it,” this was right in the heart of Bashan at the southwestern base of Mount Hermon.
Michael Heiser, a scholar that many of my listeners are probably familiar with by now, has a theory that the Transfiguration took place on Mount Hermon. I’m not going to take time to go into that today, but I’ll share his reasons that he believes that in my newsletter this weekend. Because it’s very theoretical and it would kind of take me down a rabbit trail, so I’ll put his thoughts in my newsletter.
There’s also a strong possibility that the story of the demoniac of the Gadarenes in Mark 5 takes place in Bashan. It’s kind of debatable and a borderline case, but the Gadarenes are right there by Bashan land. And if you remember, the demons in that story (quote) “…begged him [which is Jesus] earnestly not to send them out of the country.”
Why did they not want to leave that country? They were territorial spirits. They didn’t want to leave their territory, which was probably Bashan.

Psalm 68 and Ephesians 4
And now I want to talk about a couple places where Bashan references in the Old Testament intersect with theology in the New Testament. To start, let’s look at Psalm 68.
This psalm was written by King David and is believed to be about a victory march when he returned from battle. But David doesn’t report this as a personal victory, but as God’s victory, and as kind of a cosmic victory over the forces of darkness. And here’s what he says in
Psalm 68:15-18
(I’ll read it all in one chunk, and then I’ll break it down for you)
15 O mountain of God, mountain of Bashan;
    O many-peaked mountain, mountain of Bashan!
16 Why do you look with hatred, O many-peaked mountain,
    at the mount that God desired for his abode,
    yes, where the Lord will dwell forever?
17 The chariots of God are twice ten thousand,
    thousands upon thousands;
    the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary.
18 You ascended on high,
    leading a host of captives in your train
    and receiving gifts among men,
even among the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell there.
So let’s review this text and then we’ll get into what I really want to talk about: why Paul seems to misquote this in Ephesians 4.
Verse 15
15 O mountain of God, mountain of Bashan;
    O many-peaked mountain, mountain of Bashan!
What is the many-peaked mountain of Bashan? That’s referring to Mount Hermon itself. The place the Watchers descended in the Days of Jared, detailed in the Book of Enoch and also referenced in Genesis 6 and Jude 6 and other parts of the Bible. It’s called “Mountain of God” in this translation, but the Hebrew says the mountain of elohim; elohim can mean multiple gods, which would make more sense based on how these fallen angels presented themselves, so it should probably call it the mountain of gods.
Verse 16
Why do you look with hatred, O many-peaked mountain,
    at the mount that God desired for his abode,
    yes, where the Lord will dwell forever?
David is saying to Hermon, “you jealous, bro? You jealous of Mount Zion, the mountain where God wanted His temple?”
If you remember, last week, I spoke about the height difference in Hermon and other mountains in the region of Israel. Most of Israel’s mountains aren’t that mountainy. If you were to think of a mountain of God, you’d think of a majestic mountain that reaches up into the clouds; something like Mount Olympus in Greek mythology. And Hermon looks like that kind of mountain, at 9,000 feet in height. But Mount Zion is quite small in comparison; about 2,500 feet in height.
Why did God pick such a small- some may say unimpressive- mountain on which to make His earthly home? I think of it like when Moses bowed on his face while the people of Korah’s rebellion rose up in pride. I think of it like when the Pharisees wanted to stone the adulterous woman and Jesus got down and drew in the dirt. God is willing to lower Himself to shame the audacity of those who want to exalt themselves. God uses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.
And God doesn’t care if a mountain is 2,000 or 20,000 feet tall; God lives in heaven. The earth is His footstool. He isn’t impressed by a mountain’s size. If the Watchers want Hermon, they can have it. God’s got Mount Everest over here in His back pocket anytime He needs a bigger mountain. That’s not a problem for God. God didn’t choose Zion because Zion was special. Zion was special because God chose it.
A lesson here is that if God chooses to work through you, that’s a privilege; whether you’re big or small, it’s a privilege; and it’s God’s prerogative who and what He uses. So before you get a little high on the hog and exalt yourself because you think you’re something special and you know how to pronounce Lebanon correctly, let me just point out: God can correct that attitude. He who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
Verse 17
The chariots of God are twice ten thousand,
    thousands upon thousands;
    the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary.
The angel armies and the presence of God that once dwelt on Sinai is now in Jerusalem on Mount Zion.
Verse 18
You ascended on high,
    leading a host of captives in your train
    and receiving gifts among men,
even among the rebellious, that the Lord God may dwell there.
As David returns from battle, he speaks about how this is God’s victory. When a king in those days returned from battle victorious, there would be a parade in his honor. The king would be leading a procession of his captured foes behind them. The crowd would cheer the king and jeer the enemies who were now captured. It was a way to hype up the leader and mock or humiliate their enemy. And so this is what the “host of captives in your train” refers to.
It also says he receives gifts among men. The people would give gifts to the king as a reward, but more likely, this refers to the spoils of war. A king would demand payment or tribute from his vanquished foes, so this is to “receive gifts among men, even among the rebellious.”
David could take this as applying to himself as he returned victorious from battle. But David’s really applying it to God in a spiritual sense. David recognizes that his victory in the physical realm is because God was victorious in the spiritual realm. When two people groups had a battle in Old Testament times, they often saw that as “our god has defeated your god.” And that’s what David is saying; “my God has defeated the forces of darkness, the evil spirits of Bashan.” David is mocking Bashan and exalting God and saying God has plundered the enemy. So this all makes sense, but it’s important to remember the spiritual geography and terminology being addressed in this psalm. That’s why David will say a few verses later
In verse 22
The Lord said,
    “I will bring them back from Bashan,
I will bring them back from the depths of the sea…”
And then in verse 30
Rebuke the beasts that dwell among the reeds,
    the herd of bulls with the calves of the peoples.
But let’s go back to verse 18- in this context of plundering the forces of hell. David had written that God will receive gifts among men. Paul quotes it this way in
Ephesians 4:8-12
8 Therefore it says,
“When he ascended on high he led a host of captives,
    and he gave gifts to men.”
9 (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? 10 He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.) 11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…
Alright, so Paul starts quoting Psalm 68, then he starts talking about spiritual gifts- what do these two things have to do with each other? We’re gonna dust off some Trinitarian theology for you here. Jesus is God; that means Jesus is part of the Trinity- God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
In the Old Testament, when they read the 68th psalm, they probably just had God the Father in view. He was the victorious king. He was the one who could defeat Bashan and parade His captives in full view of the spiritual realm.
Paul is quoting this Psalm and applying it to Jesus not to misapply Psalm 68, but to show how Jesus is like God the Father. Because God the Father is God, and God the Son is God. Paul is not saying, “Jesus fulfills this Psalm and this was actually just about Jesus the whole time.” Paul isn’t changing the original context; the original context is still there; Paul is saying that Jesus acted like God the Father because the Son is like God the Father.
When a victorious king received the tribute or plundered his enemies, he didn’t necessarily keep it all to himself; he redistributed his prize amongst his people. His victory was their victory.
Scholar Michael Vlach has a book called The Old in the New. This book has a whole chapter just on Ephesians 4’s quotation of Psalm 68. He says, “The One who receives gifts is also positioned to give gifts as He shares the spoils of victory with His people. In this case, Jesus shares gifted men such as apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers within His church.”
And one more note so we can understand Paul’s point in Psalm 68. Paul made the comment that
In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? 10 He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.
What is Paul talking about there? Most people think that when it says that Jesus descended into the lower regions, it was talking about that time that Jesus was in the grave; and Jesus did ascend into Sheol during that time.
But that’s not what this verse is talking about, because (1) as it says correctly in the ESV, the lower regions are not in the earth, the lower regions are the earth, and (2) people get the order wrong. If you read it carefully, you’ll see that the ascension came first; then He descended and gave gifts to men. The ascension came before the descension. So Paul is talking about something else: when Jesus ascended, this was after the resurrection, and Jesus went to heaven. When did Jesus descend back down to the earth with gifts for the church?
Now it’s talking about the Day of Pentecost (Acts chapter 2). This is when the Holy Spirit- the third part of the Trinity- descended to the earth and fell upon the church. This is when the church was inaugurated for service. And the gifts of the Spirit were poured out on the church.
So let’s put all this together. The connection between Psalm 68 and Ephesians 4 is that in both cases, it’s talking about how God defeated the devil. In the Old Testament, God and His mountain are mightier than Bashan and its mountain. In the New Testament, Jesus went to the foot of Mount Hermon in Bashan and established the church. He said, “On this rock I will build my church- and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Then He ascended to heaven and then came back to earth with gifts for that church so that we could defeat Bashan, too.
In the Old Testament, God took. In the New Testament, Jesus and the Holy Spirit gave. Because of Jesus’ victory on the cross, after He ascended to heaven, Jesus turned around and blessed us again by giving us gifts: pastors, teachers, apostles, evangelists, and prophets. Jesus’ victory is our victory.
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Next Time
I’ve really enjoyed this journey to Mount Hermon- metaphorically, of course. I have no interest in visiting the real one. The closest I want to get to Lebanon is Lebanon, Missouri.
But anyway, we have crisscrossed Enoch 6 six ways from Sunday and I think it’s finally time to move on in the story of the Book of Enoch. We’ve also already covered chapters 7 and 8. So next week, we’re going to read what is probably my favorite chapter in the Book of Enoch: chapter 9.
I can’t wait to share it with you; make sure you’re subscribed so you can get it!
And again, sign yourself up for the newsletter if you’d like to hear Dr. Michael Heiser’s theory as to why the transfiguration took place on Mount Hermon. Because the New Testament never actually tells us where the transfiguration took place. It simply says Jesus took them up on the mountain. What mountain? There’s good reason to think it was Mount Hermon.
Maybe it should just be a whole episode? I just hate to do that because I would basically be regurgitating someone else’s study. That’s not what I want to do; so I’ll share it in a quick newsletter update this weekend. And if you want more, pick up his legendary book The Unseen Realm, or his later book Reversing Hermon.

Closing Thoughts
In closing today, I’d like to share one more way in which Jesus was victorious over Bashan. Earlier, I said I wanted to talk about a couple of ways that Bashan references in the Old Testament intersect with New Testament theology. And here’s the second one I wanted to cover.
Most Bible readers who have looked carefully at Psalm 22 recognize that this is a prophetic passage about Jesus on the cross. I mean, it was written by David 1,000 years before the crucifixion happened- in fact, before crucifixion had even been invented. And yet, Psalm 22 seems to portray the crucifixion perfectly.
I’m not sure exactly what David was going through when he penned these words, but as you read them, they literally sound like what someone might be saying if they were hanging on a cross. If you read it, you’ll recognize a lot of statements in this psalm, as Jesus quoted it while He was hanging on the cross.
Psalm 22:1
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Verses 6-8 also say
6 But I am a worm and not a man,
    scorned by mankind and despised by the people.
7 All who see me mock me;
    they make mouths at me; they wag their heads;
8 “He trusts in the Lord; let him deliver him;
    let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”
Words that were literally said to Jesus as He was on the cross.
Verses 16-18
16 For dogs encompass me;
    a company of evildoers encircles me;
they have pierced my hands and feet—
17 I can count all my bones—
they stare and gloat over me;
18 they divide my garments among them,
    and for my clothing they cast lots.
Psalm 22 is so prophetic. Read it all. The things it talks about literally happened as Jesus hung suspended between heaven and earth. Both the physiological and psychological torments He would have experienced. It’s like it’s written in first person from Jesus’ perspective.
And there’s a comment in Psalm 22 that refers to a spiritual torment as well- a mysterious phrase that may not have made sense if you read it before listening to today’s episode.
Psalm 22:12 & 13
12 Many bulls encompass me;
    strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
13 they open wide their mouths at me,
    like a ravening and roaring lion.
This is what was going on in the spiritual realm as Jesus was hanging on the cross. In fact, I believe Jesus saw this as He was being crucified.
Bulls of Bashan. Biblical vocabulary for spiritual beings. Demons. Fallen angels. Offspring of the Watchers. As Jesus hung there, they stood around Him and laughed. I don’t think Psalm 22 was just speaking of Jesus’ imagination. I believe He could see and hear them.
If you’ve ever seen The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when Aslan is stabbed to death on the stone table, and all of the White Witch’s creepy ugly creatures cheer and jeer and mock and laugh- I imagine that Jesus went through something kind of like that. That He was literally surrounded by fiends in the spiritual realm and listening to their taunts.
And this would be kind of a downer note to use as a closing thought- if that was the end of the story. But you know the rest of the story. The crucifixion- something Satan thought was a great victory over God, something Satan thought was a total derailment of God’s plans- ended up being a fulfillment of prophecy and accomplishing God’s true plan all along.
Colossians 2:15
He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.
Rulers and authorities are the Greek words Arche and Exousia- those of you who were listening to my spiritual warfare series last summer might recognize those as the words for the demonic hierarchy in Ephesians 6:12. Jesus defeated the devil, his minions, and all the evil spirits who proceeded from that rebellion at Mount Hermon.
He put them to open shame by triumphing over them. The Bulls of Bashan had no idea they were sealing their defeat when they nailed Jesus to the cross. He ascended to heaven, and then returned with spiritual gifts for His church- that’s you and me- so that we can be victorious over the demonic world, too.
I Corinthians 2:8
None of the rulers of this age [again, Arche…none of them] understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
Jesus won the victory on the cross. And His victory is our victory.
And I hope you feel a lot more victorious today, too.
Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.