Because many incorrectly interpret Genesis 3:15 to mean a personal private war between one’s spirit and one’s flesh, I wish to cry out, urgently and loudly, to inform them the “enmity” spoken of in that passage is a “hate” WAR to the death between two different walking, talking, breathing genetic family seedlines; and that “hate” was placed there by the Almighty Himself! Since the anti-seedliners willfully and arrogantly refuse to identify our enemy, they categorize themselves with those who “serve HIM not.” Their message is an invitation for disaster. Genesis 3:15 says “I will put”, and our Maker never put “enmity” between our spirit and our flesh. Before making such an assertion, they should stop and think what they are accusing HIM of, for that makes HIM responsible for every sin man has committed and continues to commit. Furthermore, if the enemy can get us all wrapped up in ourselves, and convince us that the only war we are fighting is a “spiritual war” between the spirit and the flesh, we won’t be of any use to the Almighty or to ourselves.

With this paper we will expand on Special Notice #16, where Ted R. Weiland foolishly tried to make it appear that the only difference between the “wheat and tares” of Matthew 13 were “righteous Israelites” and “wicked Israelites”, remarking in his Eve, Did She Or Didn’t She?, page 72: “Instead, this parable [of the wheat and the tares] is simply contrasting righteous Israelites with wicked Israelites, much the same as the good and evil figs of Jeremiah 24.” It is evident that Weiland hasn’t the slightest clue to why Zedekiah and company were listed among the “naughty figs.”

We noted there were two factions at Jerusalem: one favoring diplomacy with Babylon; the other with Egypt, the house of Zedekiah advocating the latter. After Nebuchadnezzar captured Zedekiah, killing all his sons and gouging out his eyes, the remainder of that group forced Jeremiah, against his warning, to accompany them to Egypt. Upon Jeremiah sailing to Ireland with Tea Tephi, they fell under the judgment of the sword, famine & pestilence.

Had Weiland read and studied Jeremiah 24:8-9 thoroughly, he might have grasped the prophet’s true message regarding the “evil figs”, which says: “8 And as the evil figs, which cannot be eaten, they are so evil; surely thus saith Yahweh, So will I give Zedekiah the king of Judah, and his princes, and the residue of Jerusalem, that remain in the land, and them that dwell in the land of Egypt. 9 And I will deliver them to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth for their hurt, to be a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places wither I shall drive them.”

In analyzing this passage, we see Jeremiah’s prophecy was directed at four categories: (1) Zedekiah and some of his household, (2) His “princes” (better rendered “rulers”) under him, (3) The residue of Jerusalem, which included Hittites and Amorites, (Ezek. 16:3-4) who had “confusion of face” (Ezra 9:1,7) and were referred to as “wild grapes” (Isa. 5:2), and (4) Them that dwell in Egypt. Weiland and his anti-seedline, antichrist, fellow travelers refuse to address these four categories in their proper context. Zedekiah was 32 years old when Nebuchadnezzar killed all his sons and gouged out his eyes, leaving him only daughters (the tender twigs of Ezek. 17:22). Other than Tea Tephi and her sister, we are not told how many. The “princes” were simply the political and religious leaders under Zedekiah, not necessarily royal family members. After the campaigns of 605 and 597 B.C. by Nebuchadnezzar, and removal of the royal family of Jehoiachin along with 7,000 soldiers of Judah and their best craftsmen, only the poorest quality of people remained in Jerusalem; among them many non-Israelites. Such was the “residue of Jerusalem, 2 Kings 24.”

Additionally, after Jerusalem was depleted of most of its population, nearby peoples moved into their empty homes as a refuge from Babylon thinking it safe after Zedekiah was appointed king by Nebuchadnezzar. Even during the kingship of Jehoiakim, after Nebuchadnezzar’s first campaign of 605 B.C., there were the Rechabites of Jeremiah 35:11, who moved into Jerusalem; descendants of the Kenites of 1 Chr. 2:55 and Gen. 15:19, or “Cain’s bloodline.” In Joshua 15:63; Judges 1:19 and 2:2-3 we are told that Judah would not drive out the “inhabitants of the land” (Jebusites and others), and these would remain as thorns and snares among them. Surely, they must have been part of the “residue” making up the “evil figs.” Then, we must remember the descendants of Shelah, the son of Judah by Shuah, the Canaanite. In addition, we must recall Solomon’s affairs with non-Israel ite wives, 1 Kings 11:1-9. Undoubtedly he had descendants by those wives living in Jerusalem during Jeremiah’s time (Neh. 13:26). The idolatry which manifested itself under all of Judah’s evil kings originated with Solomon’s wives. Therefore, to believe that Jerusalem, as the Weilandites proclaim, was made up of only pureblooded Israelites (“righteous” and “wicked”) is only a Mickey Mouse, childlike, fairyland pipe-dream on the level of Alice in Wonderland or the Wizard of Oz. The fourth category classified as “evil figs” (Jer. 24:8) included “them that dwell in Egypt.”

 

[Note that while Clifton does very well in the passages which follow, the commentaries which he cites rather consistently confuse Jews with Judaeans and Judahites. Concerning the colony at Elephantine first established in the Persian period, the word Judahites is more fitting than Jews, since the Jews of today are only partially, and marginally, descended from those tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Levi which made up the original kingdom. Elephantine was never a Jewish colony, in the sense in which the word is used today. Rather, it was originally an Judahite colony. Concerning the people of Judaea around and after the time of Christ and since the middle of the 2nd century BC, the Edomites and Canaanites had already been fully subsumed into the citizenry, and therefore the word Judaeans is more fitting than Jews because it may describe either a pure Israelite of Judah, Benjamin or Levi. or any one of those Canaanite tribes absorbed into Judaean polity during this period. Please bear these differences in mind while reading the material which Clifton is quoting. -  William Finck] 

 

TWO ELEMENTS IN JEREMIAH’S PROPHECY

 

While both Jeremiah 24:8-10 & 44:7, 12, 14, 26-30 seem to indicate that all the “evil figs” would die by the “sword”, “famine” and “pestilence” at that time; on the other hand, both passages contain a clause that the “evil figs” would be driven into all the “nations” and “kingdoms” of the earth as a “proverb”, “taunt” and a “curse” (Jer. 24:9; 34:17; 44:8). Therefore, it is evident these prophecies have both short and long-term fulfillment’s. Matthew Henry’s Commentary, volume 4, pages 564-565 comments on Jer. 24:9-10 thus: “Doubtless this prophecy had its accomplishment in the men of that generation; yet, because we read not of any such remarkable difference between those of Jeconiah’s captivity and those of Zedekiah’s, it is probable that this has a typical reference to the last destruction of the Jews by the Romans, in which those of them that believed were taken care of, but those that continued obstinate in unbelief were driven into all countries for a taunt and a curse, and so they remain to this day.” Rather, it was sifting-out of the racially impure.

 

THE “EVIL FIGS” OF EGYPT

 

When first researching this topic, I was convinced that the party that forced Jeremiah to accompany them to Tahpanhes, Egypt were those who eventually arrived and established a “Jewish” colony at Elephantine in Egypt. I no longer hold that opinion. Some Bible references such as the Pictorial Bible Dictionary, Merrill C. Tenney general editor, published by the Southwestern Company in 1966, on page 239, also holds that position. Rather, it was mainly the “Jews” who “returned from all nations” to Jerusalem and attempting to go to Egypt, who worshipped the “queen of heaven”, who fell under the curse of the sword, famine and pestilence. The Penguin Pictorial Historical Atlas Of Ancient Egypt says this on page 120, under the topic “The Saite Monarchy”: “... There is evidence of Greek commercial activity at Naukratis as early as c. 615 BC and during the reign of Amasis (570-526 BC) it was officially instated as the centre of Graeco-Egyptian trade (partly, of course, to keep within direct royal control). Other Greek communities settled at Memphis and elsewhere, alongside immigrant Phoenicians and Jews.” In his The Bible Is History, page 168, Ian Wilson places some of the “Jewish” immigrants in Egypt contemporary with Judah’s evil king Manasseh. I will now present various documentation for this period:

From the Eerdmans Dictionary Of The Bible (2000), page 391, we get the following: “ELEPHANTINE ... PAPYRI, A large number of papyrus documents and fragments, written in Aramaic during the 5th century B.C.E., discovered at Elephantine, an island in the Nile River opposite Aswan (biblical Syene) which became an asylum for Judean refugees after the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem (cf. Jer. 43-44).”

From the Tyndale Bible Dictionary by Elwell and Comfort (2001), under the same topic, pages 419-420: “ELEPHANTINE PAPYRI, Aramaic documents from the fifth century BC discovered at Elephantine, an island in the Nile River. At the time of the documents’ writing, Elephantine was a Persian military outpost, manned in part by a group of Jewish mercenaries with their families. The documents numbering over 100, belong primarily to three archives — two familial [family related] and one communal. The archives contained many complete scrolls that were still tied and sealed at the time of their discovery, along with numerous broken papyri and fragments.

“The manuscripts are of considerable archaeological importance. Several centuries older than most of the Dead Sea Scrolls, they portray the social, political, and religious life of a Jewish community outside Palestine. Several points of contact are made with the books of Ezra and Nehemiah ...

“Ancient Elephantine, Elephantine was located on the southern tip of a small island in the Nile River a few kilometers north of the first cataract, opposite its twin city, ancient Syene (modern Aswan). The Bible probably includes the twin cities of Elephantine and Syene in two occurrences of the phrase ‘from Migdol to Syene’ (Ezek. 29:10; 30:6 [RSV]), that is, from Egypt’s northern border to its southern border. The city’s name was an Aramaic version of an Egyptian name meaning ‘city of ivories’ and was translated into Greek as Elephantine. Because of its strategic importance on Egypt’s southern boundary with Nubia ... and figured repeatedly in Egypt’s military history ...

“Discovery of the Papyri Elephantine came into archaeological prominence with the discoveries of the papyri. The discoveries were made in three stages. The first group to be published (in 1906) had been gathered by purchases from antiquities dealers and was housed in the Cairo Museum. That first publication stimulated German and French excavations at Elephantine in the hope of discovering more papyri. The Berlin Museum was rewarded for its efforts with a second group of papyri, published in 1911. Ironically, a group of papyri discovered in the late 19th century was the last to be studied and published. American scholar C. E. Wilbour purchased papyri in 1893 from some Arab woman at Aswan. In storage until Wilbour’s daughter bequeathed them to the Brooklyn Museum, they were finally published in 1953. Since 1912, other excavations have been mounted by the pontifical Biblical Institute of Rome and the Egyptian government, but no further papyri were found ... [or so they say]

“Jewish Colony ... The Elephantine Jews worshipped in their own temple, which was dedicated to the Hebrew God, whom they called Yahu (a variation of Yahweh). Political and religious leaders at Elephantine were in correspondence with officials in Jerusalem and Samaria.

“... One document from Elephantine claims that the Jewish temple there was built during a period of native Egyptian rule before the Persian conquest under Cambyses (reigned 529-522 BC). That would give a date for the construction of the Elephantine temple by the mid-sixth century at the latest.

“Elephantine Judaism In spite of the law of a single sanctuary (Dt. 12:1-11), and in spite of the recent reforms of kings Hezekiah and Josiah in the seventh and eighth centuries BC that centralized worship in Jerusalem, the Elephantine Jews seem to have felt no wrong in having a temple in Egypt. Neither the German, French, Italian, nor Egyptian excavations located the Jewish temple, but the documents record that the temple was oriented toward Jerusalem.

“The Elephantine Jews may have recognized Jerusalem’s primacy in religious affairs. When the temple at Elephantine was destroyed by priests of the Khnum temple in 410 BC, an appeal was sent to Johanan the high priest (cf. Neh 12:22; 13:28) and Bagoas the governor of Judah, seeking their permission and influence for its restoration. The appeal produced no response, perhaps because of the Jerusalem leadership’s disapproval of the temple in Egypt. A second appeal, sent years later to Bagoas, governor of Judah, and to Delaiah and Shelemiah, sons of Sanballat, governor of Samaria, produced an oral reply, recorded in a memorandum. The reply ordered the temple’s rebuilding and the resumption of meal and incense offerings. Permission to reinstitute the burnt offering, however, was not given, perhaps as a concession to Egyptian or Persian religious convictions. A deed for a piece of property, dated 402 BC, mentions the temple of Yahu, implying that it was in fact rebuilt ...

“Moreover, intermarriage with surrounding peoples, forbidden in the OT because it would lead to religious apostasy (Ex 34:11-16; Dt 7:1-5), had become a common practice at Elephantine. It was a contemporary problem in Israel as well under Ezra and Nehemiah (Ezr 9:1-10:44; Neh 13:23-28). Children of mixed marriages in Elephantine often had Egyptian names ...” [emphasis mine]

If you read this very carefully, you will notice that Elephantine was located near Nubia, an area inhabited by many blacks. Therefore, we should not be surprised that many blacks today are claiming they are “Jews.” In view of this, let’s return to Weiland’s statement about the “bad figs”: “Instead, this parable [of the wheat and the tares] is simply contrasting righteous Israelites with wicked Israelites, much the same as the good and evil figs of Jeremiah 24.” So much for his credibility!

Another witness to this is the Collier’s Encyclopedia (1980), volume 13, page 575, under the topic “The Early Jews”: “... Documents discovered at Elephantine in Upper Egypt have revealed the existence here in the fifth century B.C. of a military colony of half-assimilated Jews in the Persian service, with their own temple, looking, however, to the authorities in Palestine for guidance.” [emphasis mine]

The events which happened in the time of Ezra, Nehemiah and at Elephantine are good examples of what happens under the influence of such false teachers. As I have pointed out before, the anti-seedliners like Weiland and company are contributing as much toward multiculturalism as the “Jews.” Substituting their kind of “spiritual hocus-pocus” for racial discipline opens the door to all kinds of miscegenation. One shouldn’t be surprised, then, by supporting the teachings of the anti-seedliners, if he ends up with a half-breed grandchild. The bottom line is, the anti-seedliners are trying, wittingly or unwittingly, to lead the rest of us down the path of race-mixing similar to that of Elephantine in Egypt.

As the residue of Jerusalem was made up partly from the ten Canaanite nations (later designated seven), we really need to go back and review Genesis 15:19-21 again: “19 The Kenites, and the Kenizzites, and the Kadmonites, 20 And the Hittites, and the Perizzites, and the Rephaim, 21 And the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”

In Genesis 15:19-21 are listed ten nations who then race-mixed so much that in Deuteronomy 7:1-2 there were left only seven. The Kenites, Kenizzites and Rephaim were completely absorbed by the other nations of this group from which the “Jews” are extracted. The Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible, abridged by Ralph Earle, page 38, has this to say: “The Kenites. Here are ten nations mentioned, though afterwards reckoned but seven; see Deut. vii. 1; Acts xiii. 19. Probably some of them which existed in Abram’s time had been blended with others before the time of Moses, so that seven only out of the ten then remained ...”

In the Peake’s Commentary on the Bible, page 116 we find this about that mixed group of nations spoken of in Genesis 15:19-21: “When the Israelites entered Canaan they found there a very mixed population generally designated by the term Amorite or Canaanite.”

We can see from this that the line of Cain was assimilated into all those peoples. Therefore, when any one of the ten (later designated as seven) nations are mentioned, it automatically includes the line of Cain, as in Acts 13:19. Although continuing to be designated as seven nations, as the race-mixing persisted, many more were added to the list, such as the “Egyptians” at Ezra 9:1.

 

AN ODD TWIST TO THE STORY

 

A most unusual aspect to this story is the fact that the modern-day “Jews”, for the most part, were not aware of the Elephantine connection until the beginning of the 20th Century. This can be seen in the seven volume set of books the, History Of The Jews, by Heinrich Graetz. The set I have was copyrighted in the year 1898. The first six volumes are the original set of history books. They then added a seventh volume to bring their history up-to-date; copyrighted 1944. In the index for the first six volumes, no mention is made of the black Falasha Jews of Ethiopia. In the additional volume entitled A Century Of Jewish Life, (an update by Ismar Elbogen) pages 419-420, it says the following:

“Joseph Halévi (1827-1917), the well-known Parisian Semitist, had been sent to Abyssinia by the Alliance Israélite Universelle in 1868 to study the Falashas. He brought important personal impressions from his travels, but he lost his materials in consequence of the Franco-German War. The contact which had been made was not followed up. The Falashas had for centuries manfully resisted the attempt of Christian missionaries to convert them, and their courage was now strengthened by contact with Jews. The reports of missionaries that there was a community of Jews who believed in Christ was proven false. Halévi never gave up hope for renewed contact, and his pupil, Jacques Faitlovitch, undertook an expedition to the Falashas equipped by Baron Edmond de Rothschild (1904). His report of the loyalty and persistence of the Falashas in their faith was stirring and called for immediate attention to the problem. But the Alliance refused its help. It was Margulies who then aroused the interest of the Jews of Italy and Germany, and later those of the United States to undertake missionary work among the Falashas. Young Falashas were educated in Europe, became teachers in the model schools founded with the assistance of the Italian government in Addis Ababa (Abyssinia), and were enabled to send teachers educated there into the interior of the country.” Question: Why don’t the anti-seedliners present evidence like this last quotation? The reason is, they are too busy debating their own personal twisted form of Jew-deo-unchristian theology.

Because information concerning the Falasha “Jews” has only come forth within the last century, data concerning them is rather hard to come by. In his book A History Of The Jews by Abram Leon Sachar, we find this on page 250: “... The black Falashas of Abyssinia were another ancient community, historically allied to the Jews, living by pure Mosaism. They were proud of their supposed descent from Menelek, son of the Queen of Sheba by King Solomon.” The Falashas couldn’t have been practicing pure Mosaism, for Moses wouldn’t have allowed a negroid mamzer into the congregation!

In her book, The Story Of The Jew, Elma Ehrlich Levinger (1936) makes the following comment about the Falasha Jews under the heading, “The Wandering Jew” on page 13: “In Abyssinia you would meet the Falashas, black Jews who have almost forgotten their Judaism, who in every way but a few religious rites resemble the dark-skinned, thick-lipped natives among whom they have lived so long.” I would complement Elma Ehrlich Levinger on her first chapter heading title, as “The Wandering Jew” fits Cain’s descendants perfectly!

Abba Eban, in his book, and also in a television series, Heritage, Civilization and the Jews (1984), all but admitted that the modern-day “Jews” are not Israelites; but then, falsely, claimed lineage to “father Abraham”! At the time Abba Eban was writing his book, many of the Jews were not sympathetic with allowing the Falasha Jews into their ranks. Since then, however, they have recognized them and have allowed them to immigrate into Palestine as full-fledged “Jews.”

Another enlightening book discussing the papyri found at Elephantine is the Dictionary Of New Testament Background by Craig A. Evans & Stanley E. Porter, pages 283 and 574: “... At the time of the Babylonian conquest some Jews fled to Egypt (Jer 43:6-7; 44:1; 46:14); Aramaic papyri of the fifth century B.C. give evidence of a Jewish military colony at Elephantine, a colony that included a Jewish temple.”

Also page 574, under “Jewish History: Persian Period ... Extrabiblical Sources”: “The extrabiblical sources include the papyri left by a Jewish colony in Egypt at Elephantine. This provides valuable original material, especially in the way of legal documents and references to the colony itself, but little of it throws direct light on events in Palestine ... A number of coins were issued in Judah itself and mention the name of the province (Yehud); a few mention Hezekiah the governor, and there is one with the name of Johanan the priest.

“The Jewish military colony lived on the island of Elephantine in southern Egypt. It may have been founded before the fall of Jerusalem in 587 B.C., though its origins are obscure. They worshipped Yahweh but did so in their own local temple. When this was destroyed as a conspiracy of the priesthood of the local Egyptian cult, they wrote to the governor asking permission to rebuild it. They also wrote to ‘the high priest and his companions the priests who are in Jerusalem and to Ostan the brother of Anan and the nobles of the Jews’ and ‘to Delaiah and Shemaiah sons of Sanballat governor of Samaria’ (Porten and Yardeni 68-71). Their letter indicates that the high priest, the other priests and the Jerusalem nobility were in charge of the community even though a Persian governor had also been appointed over the province. It also shp class=text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 105%;/spanows, in contrast to the book of Nehemiah, that Sanballat was an important official in the Persian local government. Interestingly, the Jerusalem establishment did not reply, perhaps because they were opposed to the Elephantine temple. The only record of an answer is a memorandum jointly from Bagohi and Delaiah, permitting the temple to be rebuilt and resume some offerings but not those of blood sacrifice (Porten and Yardeni, 76-77).”

Ian Wilson’s The Bible Is History, published in 1999, makes the following observations concerning the Elephantine papyri (and I agree to some extent), pages 168-169: “... They came to Egypt to help Pharaoh Psammetichus I (664-610) fight the Nubians to the south ... This far-flung Hebrew colony was not only Yahwist (suggesting that it may have offered its services to Psammetichus quite independently of Manasseh), but also built its own temple of Yahweh on the island. There can be no doubt about this since one of the papyri datable to 407 BC and preserved today in Berlin’s State Museum, specifically complains of the very recent destruction of ‘the temple of Yahweh the god which is in Elephantine.’ Furthermore, today’s leading Jewish papyrologist, Bezalel Porten, collating the papyri’s various references to this edifice, has determined that this temple had a cedar roof just like its Jerusalem counterpart, that it matched its dimensions very closely and was oriented to Jerusalem ... this ... ancient community of Jews subsequently journeyed to and settled in Ethiopia, as the Falashas ...”

An informative source running 13 pages on Elephantine is The Bible And Archaeology by J. A. Thompson. On page 224 the English translation of the Elephantine papyri says: “Our fathers built this temple in the fortress of Elephantine, back in the days of the kingdom of Egypt, and when Cambyses came to Egypt he found it built ...” Evidently, the temple at Elephantine must have been built somewhere between 590 and 525 B.C. I’m also persuaded that the Almighty stirred up Cyrus, king of Persia, to proclaim only the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem, not Elephantine, 2 Chr. 36:22; Ezra 1:1, (making those at Elephantine “evil figs”). The object of this presentation is to demonstrate there is more to Jeremiah 24 than what Ted. R. Weiland claims.