OG, KING OF BASHAN - PART ONE

History, like art, should provide an understanding which makes it possible to explore the world.

 And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of 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.’ 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.’ And they all answered him and said: ‘Let us 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 imprecation upon it. 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.

The Book of Enoch

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives, whomsoever they chose. And the Lord said: 'My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for that he also is flesh; therefore shall his days be a hundred and twenty years.' The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.

Genesis 6: 1 - 4

King Og, ben-Hiya, ben-Semjâzâ was the ruler of Mt. Hermon long, long ago when it was part of the Kingdom of Bashan. (The Land of Rephaim). Og was one of the “giants” or Nephilim. He was the son of Hiya, who was one of the sons Semjâzâ (the Angel) and was begat with one of the comely daughters of man.   

For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the giants.

Deuteronomy 3: 11

Og survived the flood because Noah was a kind man. The flood came so suddenly that Noah forgot to pull up the ladder hanging over the side of the ark. When the worst of the storm was over the portholes were opened to get fresh air and Noah found Og hanging onto the ladder outside a porthole. Noah took pity on Og, and after getting him to agree not be bad anymore (Og wasn’t in any position to refuse) he fed him through the porthole. Og survived the trip hanging onto the ladder and in all the excitement after the beaching on Ararat he ran away and went to live on Mt. Hermon. Being what he was, he promptly went back to being a bad giant. 

Many bulls have surrounded me; Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me.

Psalm 22:12 

The Bashan, later known as Gaulanitis/Jaulan/Golan) is the plateau east of the Jordan River, north of the Yarmuk River to Mount Hermon. It is an agriculturally important area as the western part gets Mediterranean winter rains with mist in summer and it has fertile red-brown loam volcanic soil with a good drainage bed of ash. Being just far enough from the ocean to dry out properly, cattle do well in this area making it suitable for permanent settlement. Because nutrients are easily leached from the soil and there is no replenishing from flooding rivers, the soil has to be managed correctly. This has never been the case. Populations come and go depending on the vitality of the soil.

The depletion is made worse by erosion due to overgrazing by sheep and goats and deforestation. The forests of the Golan have been cut down since Roman times but they survived until the Turks came with their railway line. They had no coal and burned wood in their trains - and the ancient forest of the Golan disappeared. As did the farmers - who early in the 20th century, became displaced persons and moved to Jaffa. This was long, long ago - and definitely before 1967, so nobody can blame Israel.

Even before this happened, the Hebrews took possession of the land:

• And they took possession of his land and the land of Og king of Bashan, two kings of the Amorites, who were on this side of the Jordan, towards the rising of the sun. (Deuteronomy 4:47)
• And they turned and went up by the way of Bashan. So Og king of Bashan went out against them, he and all his people, to battle at Edrei. (Numbers 21: 11)
• The rest of Gilead, and all Bashan, the kingdom of Og, I gave to half the tribe of Manasseh. (All the region of Argob, with all Bashan, was called the land of the giants. Jair the son of Manasseh took all the region of Argob, as far as the border of the Geshurites and the Maachathites, and called Bashan after his own name, Havoth Jair, to this day.) (Deuteronomy 3: 13 - 14)

The Assyrians took many of the Hebrews into exile, as did the Babylonians, and the beef of the Bashan became part of the myths in exile:

Let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old. (Micah 7:14)

And it wasn't long before the Hebrews did go back to the Golan.

After the conquests by Alexander the Great (332 BCE), Greek immigrants flooded the Philistine and Phoenician cities along the coast and as these cities were overwhelmingly Greek they quickly assimilated. East of the Jordan they established themselves along the major trade routes in large numbers. Here they lived amongst the Hebrews without mixing - sometimes in the same cities, sometimes in their own but always in positions of control.

During his 84 - 81 BCE campaign Alexander Janneus took the Golan from the Greeks and brought it under Hebrew control. It was soon lost to the Romans under Pompey in 64 BCE who restored the Greek cities to their former owners but abandoned the bulk of the country to Arabs who once a year drove massive flocks of goats and camels across any greenery on the land. The rest of the year, they robbed all who moved. The land emptied. Herod the Great conquered it, and with soldiers and a Babylonian Jew in charge, restored law and order (and freedom from taxes). The Arabs were driven out and the population exploded as farming became possible.     

After the 132 CE Roman-Hebrew War when Hadrian forbade Jews to live in Judea, many of them moved to the Golan establishing over 170 communities. During the original settlement of the Golan, settlements were concentrated at the northeastern corner of the Kinneret and then thinned out towards the east, north and south. Over time, these communities split into distinctly Jewish or Christian towns with the Jewish towns concentrated near the Sea of Galilee and the Christian towns in an arch around them. The communities experienced a period of great prosperity based on the export of olive oil under the rule of the Byzantines. After the defeat of the Byzantines by the Arabs, both the Jewish and Christian communities vanished from the Golan almost overnight. It is tempting to say that this was due to persecution but that would not be true. It was the change of political masters that caused the collapse of the olive oil industry. This was the wealth of the Golan and as it was dependent on export trade to the west, it stopped when the harbors had been destroyed. From then on, the Golan had remained virtually unpopulated until the Ottomans started forcefully relocating people like the Druze and Circassians to the area.

The Golan was given to the French after WWI, and so landed in the hands of the Syrians and it emptied of people. After 1967, it became a part of Israel - people came back and today it is again famous for its beef. And lately, its Californian style wines.