The company of the giants
This is from Thomas Goodwin, a Puritan, from a work on Ephesians:
He's talking about death and one's destination.
At the end of the world, when Christ shall have taken out all of His own, all the rest shall be cast into the fire prepared for the devil and his angels. The expression in the Old Testament was that men were "gathered to their fathers," but the wicked were gathered unto coetus gigantum - that is, "the company of the giants," those wicked ones before the flood, from whom hell has its denomination, as the first inhabitants of it (Prov. 21:16). So the language of the New Testament is "gathered to the devil and his angels," to the fire prepared for them.
Pro 21:16 The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead.
4 Comments:
“the dead” in the “congregation of the dead” of Proverbs 21:16 are the rephaim, a word with a dual (and possibly related) meaning of both (1) 'disembodied spirits' and (2) 'giants'
the rephaim (2) are often conflated in meaning with the nephilim of Genesis 6.
the Latin reference to “the company of giants” reminds me of chapters XVIII-XXII of the Book of Enoch where he sees the desolate prison the fallen angels who cohabited with the daughters of men are kept in until the time of judgement, and the terrible receptacle of suffering that was made to hold the spirits of the unrighteous until that day of judgement.
which reminds me of Isaiah 24:21-22
It shall come to pass in that day
That the LORD will punish on high the host of exalted ones,
And on the earth the kings of the earth.
They will be gathered together,
As prisoners are gathered in the pit,
And will be shut up in the prison;
After many days they will be punished.
which is then echoed in Revelation 20
just got some books in the mail today. . and as i'm looking at the cover title of The Myth of Kirke i see that it includes A Visit of Odysseus to the Shades.
fwiw, this word 'Shades' is equivalent in meaning to rephaim.
I consider the Homeric epics unique in world literature even among summit works, buy certainly not the level or category of God's special revelation the Old and New Testaments (just have to say that), but unique in the sense of a very pure higher visual language depicting inner development and often - through a glass darkly - touching on biblical truth along the way, but a language to themselves.
but of course!
and as you say. .
btw, the other book that came in the mail today was Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books by Michael J. Kruger (2012). .
so far it's promising to be a good read. .
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