Weird Stuff in the Bible

The Mystery of Mount Hermon
Genesis 6 & Enoch 6 (& Psalm 29)

Introduction
I’ve mentioned this a few times before: I’m a newspaper guy. Or, I was. I got degrees in journalism and in mass communication when I was in college. And I briefly worked for a few area papers around that time.
And then I got into radio so I haven’t really done the reporter thing much since then. But I have taken those newspaper guy skills and applied them to how I study the Bible. You see, when you need to break a story, you have to establish the who, the what, the when, the where, and the why.
And that’s what I’ve been doing with this story of the angelic Watchers who descended to the earth in the antediluvian era. All year long on this podcast, we’ve been breaking this story.
WHO were the Watchers? In Genesis 6, they’re called the Sons of God. They’re angelic or spiritual beings who had a job of watching over humanity.
WHAT did they do?
Genesis 6 says
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.
WHY did they do it? The Book of Enoch’s sixth chapter told us it was because they lusted after the women and wanted to create children with them. However, these children were the giants, or Nephilim, of the primordial world.
WHEN did they do this? Enoch shed some light on that as well: the days of Jared, Enoch’s father, approximately 1000-1200 years before the flood.
And that brings us now to one question about this transgression of the Watchers that we haven’t really answered yet: the WHERE.
The Book of Enoch tells us where this took place: a location known as Mount Hermon. And Hermon is part of the Bashan region of mountains in the northern part of Israel. A dark and demonic area called The Place of the Serpent. A place known to cause trouble for Israel throughout the rest of the Bible, right up to the time of Jesus.

I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore the significance of Mount Hermon in the Bible.
Turn to Genesis 6, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]

The Backstory to the Bible
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’re in a series where we’re looking at where the Book of Enoch intersects with Scripture.
And the past few weeks we’ve been looking at chapters 6, 7 and 8 of Enoch. We’ve really been taking our time with it because it’s truly the meat of the book. It sets up so much of not only what’s going on in the rest of the book of Enoch, but also what’s going on throughout the whole Bible.
And I’m not even kidding; today’s lesson will take us from Genesis 6 right up to the time of Jesus. So if you’re new here, this is probably not the best place to jump into the story. I would go back to the beginning of the year where we started the book of Enoch, and that will explain why I believe the Book of Enoch is reliable history and why I give it any credibility.
So we read from Genesis 6 in the intro. This mentioned when the Watchers- called the Sons of God in Genesis 6- came down to earth to literally marry human women and procreate with them. This was the initial creation of the giants, the Nephilim, who would become a thorn in humanity’s side for the rest of their existence. The Sons of God would later become known as the Watchers; I think because once they rebelled against God, it became weird to keep referring to them as Sons of God. The Bible later starts calling them The Watchers in the Book of Daniel and also other Second Temple literature, and the first 36 chapters of the Book of Enoch are often called The Book of the Watchers, which is what we’re studying this year on the podcast. It won’t take us all year, but it will take the next few months.
Now, Genesis 6 didn’t tell us where the Watchers came down when they came down.
Here’s what Genesis 6:1-2 said again
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.
Now, the Book of Enoch- also, coincidentally, in chapter 6- gives a bit more information on this incursion.
It states: 1. And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. 2. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and beget us children.'
These Watchers had a leader named Semjaza. He was concerned that if they came down to earth with the intention of mating with women and then they got caught, that the other Watchers might not follow through with the plan and just leave Semjaza holding the bag. So he makes them promise that they will all stick together on this plot.
Enoch 6 continues: 3. And Semjâzâ, who was their leader, said unto them: 'I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.' 4. And they all answered him and said: 'Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.' Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it.
We will talk more about this on a later episode, but it seems that spiritual beings can be bound or forced to do certain things. We see this in the New Testament with the language of binding and loosing. So the fallen angels made this spiritual pinkie promise, and now they had to see it through to the end. Those are the rules.
As I said on a previous episode, I believe the purpose of this plan was to create man-like beings who could fulfill the dominion mandate of mankind but with the spiritual authority of the Watchers, not God. This was a rebellion against God.
And then comes a quotation from this chapter that gives us a lot of valuable information about the whole incident: 6. 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.
So we’ve talked about the 200. We’ve talked about the days of Jared. But today let’s talk about the place: Mount Hermon.

The Geography
Even though this story took place in the pre-flood world and some of the world’s geography was changed a bit during the deluge, Mount Hermon is still there. You can visit it today. And many people do. Hermon is located just north of Israel. We’ll talk about where you can find it in a minute. For comparison, let me talk about another famous mountain in the Bible.
Mount Zion, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, has a height of about 2500 feet above sea level. Some of Israel’s mountains are not so mountain-y compared to what a lot of us think of when we think of mountains. Mount Carmel, Mount Moriah, the Mount of Olives, these might look more like huge hills to me as a Missourian. If you’re from Kansas, maybe you’d think anything more than a hundred feet tall is a mountain. But to me, 2500 feet is an impressive hill. Like, I’ve been to Colorado a few times in my life; those mountains are huge. Pike’s Peak is 14000 feet. The elevation in the Rocky Mountains out there are between 10 or 11000 feet. A lot higher than what you see in the Biblical area.
I talked to someone out in Colorado this week who has also been to Israel; I asked what the “mountains” of Israel are like to her, compared to here in America. She said they weren’t that impressive. This isn’t meant to run down Israel; I’m just trying to help you get a proper visual of what the Bible means when it talks about mountains.
Now back to the Middle East: Mount Hermon is over 9,000 feet in height. That is pretty high for the region of Israel. That’s a mountain. This one stands out.
Now, I can’t show you a picture of it or where it is on a map because this is a podcast, but let me explain where you can find it. I’ll keep this quick because most people don’t want a geography lesson without a map. As you move north in Israel, you do start coming to higher and higher elevations. There’s a section of Israel that is right on the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan called the Golan Heights. If you look at this on a map, it’s right where Israel and those other three countries all come together. Israel has occupied this territory ever since the 6-Day War of 1967. The Golan Heights were known as Bashan in the Old Testament; that’s very important, and we’ll come back to that later.
In the Northern Part of the Golan Heights, there’s a mountain range called the Anti-Lebanon Mountains in modern times. They continue north and make the border between Lebanon and Syria. And that’s where Mount Hermon is. It is the tallest mountain in this range, and it stands out because it’s a snow-capped mountain basically year-round. It’s so high that the snow rarely melts. And Mount Hermon is so large, it straddles that border of Israel, Lebanon and Syria; all three of these countries have part of Hermon in their territory, though the peak is in Lebanon.
There’s actually a ski resort up on Mount Hermon today. Which kind of blows my mind to think about; that this location of such a historically significant supernatural touchdown is a place people go to ski today. It’s also got some ancient temples up and down it.
OK, I know that’s a lot of geography to take in through audio. Therefore, in this week’s newsletter, I’m going to share a series of pictures and maps for those of you who would like to see it with your own eyes. If you’d like to receive that, simply sign up in the show notes. There’s a link where you can sign yourself up for the newsletter. Or just email me if you need any help at all with that.

How Hermon Got its Name
Now let’s talk about how Hermon got its name. And this will take us back to the Book of Enoch narrative. The word Hermon means “oath” in Aramaic and “devoted” in Hebrew. Both of those understandings fit with the Enoch narrative, as here is what it said:
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.
So they had sworn- that goes with the idea of oath. But also, it’s where they devoted themselves to this plan to marry the women and produce the giant offspring.
Ironically, or interestingly, this word “devoted” is used throughout the rest of the Old Testament to talk about what Israel should do with the giant clans; it would say they are “devoted” to destruction. That’s interesting to me because this location was the genesis of the giants (pun intended, by the way).
Here’s something else interesting I found in Timothy Alberino’s commentary on the Book of Enoch: “In 1869, Sir Charles Warren discovered a hewn stone structure on the summit of Mount Hermon, which is today recognized by archeologists as the highest temple in the ancient world. Known as Qsar Antar, the temple once contained a limestone stele [and a stele, btw, is an ancient historical record] with a Greek inscription that read: ‘According to the command of the greatest and holy god, those who take an oath proceed from here.’ The inscription is believed to commemorate the arrival of the Watchers at Hermon, which has been known since time immemorial as ‘The Mountain of Oath.’”
So whether it means “oath” or “devoted,” I think it fits either way, and it’s probably meant to be both; it fits in either language of the ancient biblical world- apparently in Greek as well; all three languages of the Bible.

Hermon Throughout the Bible
So how do we see Hermon used in Scripture? It’s not a super frequent word, to be quite honest. Despite the significance of this mountain in the Book of Enoch, you don’t see it come up a whole lot in the Bible, but it is mentioned in a few stories.
The first place in the Bible that you see it is Deuteronomy 3. The context is, Moses is speaking in Deuteronomy 3 about some of the post-flood giants they had killed, including King Og. And remember what I was saying before: Mount Hermon is located in a region that today is called the Golan Heights, but in Old Testament times, this region was known as Bashan. And King Og was one of the giants known as the Rephaim. This is the giant of whom they said his bed was 13 feet long.
Deuteronomy 3:1-3
Then we turned and went up the way to Bashan. And Og the king of Bashan came out against us, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei. 2 But the Lord said to me, ‘Do not fear him, for I have given him and all his people and his land into your hand. And you shall do to him as you did to Sihon the king of the Amorites, who lived at Heshbon.’ 3 So the Lord our God gave into our hand Og also, the king of Bashan, and all his people, and we struck him down until he had no survivor left.
Because that is what you do with the giants. You leave no survivors, or they’ll just grow in numbers again and come back later.
Deuteronomy 3:8-9
8 So we took the land at that time out of the hand of the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, from the Valley of the Arnon to Mount Hermon 9 [and the Verse 9 contains this parenthetical comment] (the Sidonians call Hermon Sirion, while the Amorites call it Senir),
And so Moses said when we conquered Og’s land, we took it from the Valley of Arnon to Mount Hermon. That’s the first time Hermon comes up in Scripture, somewhat as just a landmark in Og’s kingdom.
I find that kind of strange, since it’s the location of this really significant oath in the book of Enoch. It’s the place where everything went bad in the pre-flood narrative, other than Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden. You’d think that the location would come up in that story, but it doesn’t.
Now, why not? Well, let me give my explanation: the Bible is only giving the details that we need to know. Moses also wrote Genesis; if he wanted to, he probably could have expanded on any number of points in those early chapters. But they weren’t essential to the story he was wanting to tell in Genesis 6, so he left a lot of them out. And if the book of Enoch existed in Moses’ days- and I’m sure it did, in some form- then Moses probably thought: if they want the whole backstory, they can read Enoch’s book.
I think of it kind of like Lord of the Rings’ relationship to The Hobbit. The Lord of the Rings movies came out first. When you watch them, and Bilbo is this character who initially has the ring in the first book. The ring that’s the main plot device of the entire story. And there’s kind of a summary of Bilbo’s life given in the opening monologue, but it’s just to get the story going. It doesn’t give you all the details. It doesn’t tell you about how Bilbo fought a dragon in the Hobbit storyline and how he went to Mount Erebor and how he went on a quest with 12 dwarves led by a guy named Thorin and there were 11 other dwarves named Dwalin and Balin and Fili and Kili and Ori and Nori and Dori, and on and on. All that stuff happened- in the context of the Middle Earth movies- but it’s not essential to know all those details to understand the story that Lord of the Rings is trying to tell. It might enrich your understanding and appreciation of the Lord of the Rings universe if you want to go back and read The Hobbit or watch those movies, but again, you don’t have to to understand Lord of the Rings.
Similarly, the Bible could always go into more details on some of these things in Genesis 6. It could tell us the who, what, where, when and why, but Moses wasn’t a newspaper reporter. He was telling a different kind of story. And he may have thought: if they want the details about Enoch’s life and the Mount Hermon and how there were 20 chiefs of the Watchers named Sariel and Ramiel and Baraquial and Kokabiel and Tamiel and Azazel- if they want those details, they can go read the whole backstory in Enoch’s book. But knowing all those names and places weren’t essential to the story Moses was telling. He basically alludes to Enoch’s narrative by nearly quoting it word-for-word in Genesis 6, and then Moses goes on to talk more about the flood.
So anyway, that’s the best I can say as far as why Enoch mentions Hermon, but the Bible itself doesn’t make a huge deal out of it. Although it does come up in the Bible a few times, just not many.
We see it again in the book of Joshua as places where the Canaanite kings came from- and many or all of these Canaanites were infested with Nephilim blood, especially the ones up in Bashan. Hermon is mentioned in Joshua 11, 12, 13, all in a giant-killing context. In I Chronicles as a land that the tribe of Manasseh inhabited. It comes up once in Song of Solomon, calling it a den of lions and peak of leopards. I think that’s spiritual language for evil spirits.
And then it comes up a few times in the Psalms- and every time it mentions Hermon in the Psalms, it mentions water right alongside it. Which I find intriguing because Hermon is so significant to the flood narrative.
Psalm 42:6-7
6 My soul is cast down within me;
    therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
    from Mount Mizar.
7 Deep calls to deep
    at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
    have gone over me.
And we also see Hermon mentioned in Psalm 89 and 133. But it’s in a positive context, that God is victorious over Hermon. We also see it mentioned in Psalm 29, which I believe is a Psalm that is addressed to the Divine Council, the Sons of God, about the flood of Noah. Your study Bibles and commentaries won’t tell you this; they’ll tell you that Psalm 29 is about comparing the Lord to a thunderstorm. I’m telling you: this was written directly to the Watchers who descended on Mount Hermon in the pre-flood world- and their children.
Psalm 29:1
Ascribe to the Lord, O heavenly beings,
    ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
When it says “O Heavenly Beings,” in the Hebrew, this is Bene Elim. In Genesis 6, the Sons of God are called Bene Elohim. Elim is just a generic word for God, so this is probably the same group. It can be translated “Sons of God” or “Sons of the gods.” Perhaps it’s not just addressed to the Watchers, but also the giants who perished in the flood; in one sense, they would be the sons of the gods.
Psalm 29:2-3
2 Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
    worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.
3 The voice of the Lord is over the waters;
    the God of glory thunders,
    the Lord, over many waters.
See, this is not about a thunderstorm. This is about a flood. This is speaking to those who caused the flood and were killed by the flood.
Psalm 29:4-6
4 The voice of the Lord is powerful;
    the voice of the Lord is full of majesty.
5 The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars;
    the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon.
6 He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf,
    and Sirion like a young wild ox.
Sirion- does that sound familiar? We read about it earlier in Deuteronomy 3:9 - “the Sidonians call Hermon Sirion.” This is Hermon, just by another name. Psalm 29 wraps up with these words
In verse 10
10 The Lord sits enthroned over the flood;
    the Lord sits enthroned as king forever.
The Hebrew word for “flood” right there is the word mabûl, which is only used in relation to the flood of Noah.
So I think Psalm 29 is totally written to the fallen sons of God and their offspring who perished in the flood. And we’ll read more about how these fallen sons of God were imprisoned by God later in the Book of Enoch.

Next Time
And that’s probably where I’ll put a pin in things for today. However, that’s not the end of my journey up Mount Hermon. Because even though Hermon isn’t mentioned in Scripture as much as I would have expected- again, considering how important it is as the place where the Watchers descended- it definitely has a presence in Scripture- especially this region called Bashan. And so we’re going to continue this exploration next time, and we’ll talk about Bashan and all the evil things that are associated with it throughout the Bible.
Because Hermon is the mountain peak of Bashan, and Bashan is kind of like an outpost of Satan throughout the rest of the Bible. In fact, Bashan actually means “The Place of the Serpent.” So much evil proceeds from Bashan- but also, God shows His supremacy over that evil, and will ultimately defeat it at His Second Coming.
Again, sign yourself up for the newsletter if you’d like to see some pictures and images of this mountain between now and the next episode.

Closing Thoughts: Hermon Today
Hermon, Senir, Sirion- also called Baal-Hermon in the Bible, and remember that Baal is Satan- this mountain is a place of evil. I know Israel fights over the right to own these Golan Heights. I’ll leave their geopolitical opinions to themselves, but frankly, I’m not sure if I’d even want to own the Golan Heights, considering what has happened there.
Those who live there get corrupted. It was originally a stronghold of giants. I mentioned Hermon as a place that Manasseh settled after the Canaanite conquest. They- along with the tribes of Gad and Reuben- decided to settle outside of the main land of Israel in this mountain region of the giants. But let me read how that turned out for them:
I Chronicles 23:23-26
23 The members of the half-tribe of Manasseh lived in the land. They were very numerous from Bashan to Baal-hermon, Senir, and Mount Hermon. 24 These were the heads of their fathers' houses: Epher, Ishi, Eliel, Azriel, Jeremiah, Hodaviah, and Jahdiel, mighty warriors, famous men, heads of their fathers' houses. 25 But they broke faith with the God of their fathers, and whored after the gods of the peoples of the land, whom God had destroyed before them. 26 So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, the spirit of Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and he took them into exile, namely, the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and brought them to Halah, Habor, Hara, and the river Gozan, to this day.
Why did this happen? I would propose that you can kill the giants, but as we’ll study later on this podcast, their demon spirits live on. And these demon spirits had legal rights in that territory, and they corrupted the people who settled there.
And Mount Hermon continues to be relevant today. Listen to this: The United Nations has a presence today on Mount Hermon. This is not a conspiracy theory; it’s a fact. Listen to this (from the Wikipedia page on Mount Hermon):
On the top, in the United Nations buffer zone between Syrian and Israeli-occupied territories, is the highest permanently manned UN position in the world, known as "Hermon Hotel",[4] located at 2,814 metres (9,232 ft).[5]
Wow! I don’t know about you, but that blows my mind. Why does the United Nations want to create a base on the exact same mountain that the book of Enoch says was the location that the Watchers descended to this earth? In the Old Testament, the people always went up into the hills and the mountains to try to meet with the gods. These locations were called the high places. And the United Nations’ highest place is the exact same mountain peak where the Watchers descended in the Days of Jared, in a region known in the Bible as the place of the serpent. I’m sure all that’s just a coincidence, guys.
And I’m not even claiming to know what that means. Idk why they’d want to be there. But I’ll just tell you, if I ever get the privilege of visiting Israel for myself someday, I’m not planning on doing any skiing.
And by the way, Jesus visited Mount Hermon Himself in the Gospels, in case you didn’t know. At the base of Mount Hermon was a town called Caesarea Philippi. And it’s at this location that Jesus and His disciples had that famous conversation, where He asked them “Who do men say that I am?” Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” And then Jesus gave this response
In Matthew 16:18
And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
The church was established right at the base of Mount Hermon. This mighty mountain was Satan’s base, and today it’s the United Nations’ base, but Jesus went to that mountain’s base to set up His own base. Is that not brilliant?
In his book Reversing Hermon, scholar Michael Heiser says, “…the scene take place on geography considered the gates of hell in Old Testament times, the domain of Baal, the lord of the dead, and at the mountain where the plot of the Watchers was hatched.” He adds, “Jesus goes to ground zero in biblical demonic geography to announce that Bashan will be defeated.” (Pages 95-96).
And now you know the rest of the story.
But I gotta share just one more thing real quick. Because I opened by comparing Mount Hermon- at more than 9000-feet tall- with Mount Zion, God’s Temple Mount, a mere 2,500 feet in comparison. And doesn’t that sound surprising- that God’s mountain is so much smaller than the devil’s mountain.
But you gotta read how the Bible ends. When Jesus comes back, He reshapes the topography of the Middle East. Whatever geography books you have on the Middle East will become history books after Jesus returns and the antichrist is destroyed. In fact, the whole world’s elevation will be different; listen to what
Revelation 16:18 and 20 says
a great earthquake such as there had never been since man was on the earth, so great was that earthquake….(verse 20) And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found.
So every mountain the world will come crashing down. Pike’s Peak, Kilimanjaro, Mount Hermon. But one mountain will be elevated.
Isaiah 2:2
It shall come to pass in the latter days
    that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
And now you really know the rest of the story.
But I will have more to share next week in part 2.
This has been Luke Taylor. 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.