Did you know that nephilim giants helped Solomon build the temple of God in Jerusalem?
Oh no, not one of those posts again, from Life.* Well, either you believe what the Bible says, or not. It's just plain reading from the texts, nothing added from extrabiblical sources or out of modern speculations. Here it is:
"And all the people that were left of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, which were not of the children of Israel, Their children that were left after them in the land, whom the children of Israel also were not able utterly to destroy, upon those did Solomon levy a tribute of bondservice unto this day." (1 Kings 9:20-21)
"And David commanded to gather together the strangers that were in the land of Israel; and he set masons to hew wrought stones to build the house of God. And David prepared iron in abundance for the nails for the doors of the gates, and for the joinings; and brass in abundance without weight; Also cedar trees in abundance: for the Zidonians and they of Tyre brought much cedar wood to David." (1 Chron. 22:2-4)
"And Solomon numbered all the strangers that were in the land of Israel, after the numbering wherewith David his father had numbered them; and they were found an hundred and fifty thousand and three thousand and six hundred. And he set threescore and ten thousand of them to be bearers of burdens, and fourscore thousand to be hewers in the mountain, and three thousand and six hundred overseers to set the people a work. " (2 Chron. 2:17-18)
"And the LORD gave Solomon wisdom, as he promised him: and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and they two made a league together. And king Solomon raised a levy out of all Israel; and the levy was thirty thousand men. And he sent them to Lebanon ten thousand a month by courses: a month they were in Lebanon, and two months at home: and Adoniram was over the levy. And Solomon had threescore and ten thousand that bare burdens, and fourscore thousand hewers in the mountains; Beside the chief of Solomon's officers which were over the work, three thousand and three hundred, which ruled over the people that wrought in the work. And the king commanded, and they brought great stones, costly stones, and hewed stones, to lay the foundation of the house. And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did hew them, and the stonesquarers: so they prepared timber and stones to build the house." (1 Kings 5:12-18)...
From the Sarcophagus of Ahiram at Beirut National Museum, Lebanon.
So, to summarise: Of those nephilim tribes that God had commanded Joshua to exterminate, more than 150.000 remained in Israel, in Solomon's days. Instead of killing them, for different reasons, they were made workers - bearers, stone cutters, and other hard duties. When he built the temple of God, he mainly used these descendants of the nephilim. He also contracted nephilim workers from Lebanon and Phoenicia. If the peoples remaining in Israel were nephilim to a large extent, the peoples north of them were it even more. No one had commanded anyone to kill the giants in Lebanon and Syria. So they came, ordered by Hiram the king of Tyre, to help Solomon build the temple of God.
I won't go into why I think this was possible, for now. I'll just leave it here, for the reader to consider, and add to the knowledge we have of the nephilim. It isn't that easy as some will have it, that all the giants either were killed, or driven out of Israel. Many thousands of them remained in the country, and there were of course intermingling between them and the israelites, which also is stated in Judg. 3:5-7:
"And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites: And they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and forgat the LORD their God, and served Baalim and the groves."
This is in the period between Joshua and Solomon. Many hebrew children thus were born with nephilim dna in their bodies. So, not only were there many thousands of fullblood nephilim remaining in the country, but the Israelites themselves were to some extent mingled with the nephilim.
Even the original people in Jerusalem, the Jebusites, were of the nephilim, and were allowed to remain in the city. They lived in peace with the hebrews for hundreds of years, and probably finally became assimilated with them.
So what am I saying here? That nephilim can convert? That they can be made jews? That they can be saved? Absolutely not. A fullblood nephilim hasn't got a human spirit, and is therefore not a part of the salvation work of Jesus. But notice what the text in Judges said: The Israelites and the different nephilim tribes had married their daughters to each other, therebye created a semi-nephilim race, or if you prefer, a giant human race. It seems, and this must be the answer to why it was possible for this to happen, that when the two races mix, the human spirit subdues the nephilim spirit, and the offspring becomes human. This either happens in the first, or the second generation, and after that, the nephilim, angelic spirit is gone, and only the bodily traits remain, for some generations.
If we look at what God told his people considering mingling with the amorites and the other tribes, it doesn't seem to have been the dna question that was the real problem, but the idolatry of those people. (Compare with what Jesus said: It is not what makes your body unclean that matters, but what makes your heart unclean.)
___
* This article was originally posted as a blog comment elsewhere on the net.
___