Page 38 - Attractive Deception - The False Hope of the Hebrew Roots Movement

of your king Sakkuth and Kaiwan [names for the gods of the planet Saturn], your images of your
star-god which you made for yourselves and you will do so again. Therefore I will cause you to go
into exile beyond Damascus, says the Lord, whose name is the God of hosts.
[Amplified Bible]

It is pertinent to our present study to note that at least one of the gods named by Amos is identified
with the Roman deity known as Saturn. This was the understanding of the Jewish translators of the
rd
Septuagint, an early translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek dated around the 3 century
B.C.. In the Septuagint, the Hebrew word Chiun (Kaiwan) was rendered as “Remphan” which was
the Egyptian name for the planet Saturn. Evidence points to the Jews having embraced the worship
of Saturn while in Babylon. It is this idolatrous worship that serves as the true origin of the Festival
of Lights, which is also called Hanukkah.

I was astonished recently when I came across a serious Bible teacher proclaiming that the Jews
finally learned the lesson that Yahweh wanted to teach them while they were in captivity in Babylon.
The writer asserted that the Jews put away their idolatrous tendencies from the time of the
Babylonian captivity forward and became zealous adherents to, and proponents of, Yahweh and the
sacred Scriptures which He had entrusted to them. How can a Christian minister defend such a
claim? The people of whom he speaks murdered the Son of God when He visited them.

Was there ever a time when the Hebrew people became associated with another nation whether
through intermarrying, through conquest, or through alliances, when they did not transgress by
adopting their idolatrous practices? Why would it be assumed that the Jews’ period of habitation in
Babylon, a land that was “mad over their idols” (Jeremiah 50:38), would have a different result than
any other period of Jewish history? Do we not read that when Jacob went to Haran to marry Rachel
and Leah, upon his return the members of his household brought back idols with them (Genesis
31:34, 35:2)? Not many years later Jacob’s sons went down to Egypt. When they came up four
centuries later, they brought the idols of the land with them.

During the period between the Egyptian captivity and that of the kings of Israel and Judah, a period
recorded in the book of Judges, Abraham’s descendants were continually falling into idolatry. The
idolatry continued during the time of the kings. Solomon married many foreign women and they
turned his heart toward their gods. He built high places for them all around Jerusalem, leading the
people of God into idolatry.

I Kings 11:7-8
Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable idol of Moab, on the mountain which
is east of Jerusalem, and for Molech the detestable idol of the sons of Ammon. Thus also he did for
all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods.

This idolatry continued unabated in the northern kingdom of Israel, and knew only brief reprieves
in the southern kingdom of Judah. Therefore, Yahweh judged the people and sold them into captivity
to Assyria and Babylon.