Identifying the "Beast of the Field", #1
IDENTIFYING THE “BEAST OF THE FIELD”, #1
Clifton A. Emahiser’s Teaching Ministries
For many years I have held the position that the Biblical designation “beast of the field” often is an idiomatic expression for the non-Adamic races (i.e., such as the negroid and mongoloid), which I prefer not to capitalize). My late wife, who died in 1993, would refer to them as “BOFs”, our own secret-code term for them. Every culture has had idiomatic expressions peculiar to their own social conditions. Israel is not an exception to this phenomenon, for the Bible is just loaded with idioms, especially in the Old Testament Hebrew.
About two years ago, a very good friend of mine gave me a copy of a video presentation by pastor Allen Campbell of Belfast, Ireland entitled Who Are The Beast of the Field? I would guess that it was made ten years ago, around the year 2000. When I first viewed this video, I was quite impressed, as I agreed with Campbell that the negroids were indeed included under the Biblical idiom “beast of the field”! I was so swayed by Campbell’s reasoning that I decided to write my own version on this topic. But this is where I ran into trouble!
Campbell started his presentation by appropriately quoting Jonah 3:7-8 thusly:“7 And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: 8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands.”
Then, Campbell appropriately appraised the context of these two verses:“Now if you’ll come back ... to Jonah; let’s look at that Jonah passage for just a moment before I go on with it. You are being asked to believe that the beasts in chapter three (and organized religion tells you that they’re four-footed/quadruped beasts) – you’re asked to believe they would cover themselves in sackcloth – highly unlikely! You’re asked to believe they would cry unto God – they would use actual speech or language. That’s not just highly unlikely – that’s downright impossible! You’re asked to believe that the beasts (four footed/quadrupeds) repented from evil doing. That implies a God-consciousness! Do you think that four footed/quadruped animals have a God-consciousness? ‘... and turn from the violence that is in their hands ...’ ... which indicates the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. Now I have known a lot of intelligent animals ... I’ve never known of ones that could distinguish between right and wrong! ... of ones that had a God-consciousness; or ones that could cry unto God; or ones that could repent in sackcloth and ashes ...”
At this juncture, I should point out that I do not disagree with Campbell’s premise! My problem with Campbell is how he arrived at his conclusions. As all good Bible students are aware, all premises must be solidly based on the witness of Scripture. As we shall shortly see, Campbell failed miserably to back up his correct premise with qualified documented evidence from Holy Writ where he stated:
“So let’s treat this word; let’s treat the word ‘beast’. As it is rendered in our English ... you get ‘beast’ translated from three different Hebrew words:
• “The Hebrew word ‘behema’ [sic bhemah]. It means cattle or other domesticated quadruped four-footed beasts, sheep, goats; all that manner of domesticated farm animals or farm stock.
• “‘beir’ a brute beast , the wild animal, like the tigers and the others we saw at the circus here Saturday night. ...
• “And then we have the people referred to in the Genesis account where it talks of the ‘beast of the field’ and the people referred to in Jonah, and the other dozen or so passages I’m going to read to you tonight, and the Hebrew word is ‘c-h-e-v-a’; it’s chevya, ‘a living creature’, and that living creature is a biped/two-legged creature. He’s not a wild beast; he’s not a domesticated animal; he is a creation of his own above the animal creation, yet separate from Adam-kind”
I would like it understood that I have in my library vast amounts of lexical data, both in book and electronic form. I don’t know from whence Campbell gets “behema”, but Strong’s articulates it as “bhemah”, and is #929. “beir” is #1165 in Strong’s and is articulated “be‘îyr”, and I failed to find a classification such as “tiger”, but rather “in the sense of eating: cattle”. Campbell’s major error, though, is with the word “chevya” which obviously is what Strong has as #2423 “chêyvâ”, a Chaldean word not found anywhere in the Bible other than the book of Daniel. This entirely destroys Campbell’s thesis, at least from a language perspective, but not necessarily from an idiomatic perspective. There is absolutely no way that Campbell can apply “chêyvâ” to Genesis chapter one or to Jonah chapter three!
But there are some who will go beyond Campbell, and refuse to take “no” for an answer, as they will seize on Strong’s #2423 (a Chaldean word) where it says, “... from 2418 châyâh (another Chaldean word), found only in the book of Daniel). Once arriving at #2418, they will notice Strong’s #2417, another Chaldean word also found only in the book of Daniel (except for the lone exception at Ezra 6:10), and assume there must be some connection. Upon observing Strong’s #2417, they will notice this Chaldean word is articulated “chay”. Then immediately above #2417, they will notice Strong’s #2416, also articulated “chay”, and will cry “Eureka”! Then they will seize on the Hebrew #2416 “chay” and apply it to Genesis 1:24-25, which amounts to little more than intellectual dishonesty. All this to somehow include negroids and mongoloids in Yahweh’s creation! Really, we have to take the entire context of Genesis 1 into consideration before we concentrate on verses 24 and 25. Here is an example:
• Genesis 1:4: “And God saw the light, that it was good ...”
• Genesis 1:10: “... and God saw that it was good ...”
• Genesis 1:12: “... and God saw that it was good.”
• Genesis 1:18: “... and God saw that it was good.”
• Genesis 1:21 “... and God saw that it was good.”
• Genesis 1:25 “... and God saw that it was good.”
• Genesis 1:31 “... And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”
You will notice from all of this that God didn’t create anything in Genesis chapter 1 that was not good. Well, then, if we conjecture that the non-whites were created in verses 24 & 25 (somehow being “good”), we are sending a message to our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren that there is nothing wrong with mingling racially with them! Christ Himself said there were bad racial kinds at Matthew 13:47-50, and here I amplify it for a better understanding:
“47 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea [of people], and gathered of every kind [meaning race]: 48 Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good [racial kind] into vessels, but cast the bad [racial kind] away. 49 So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, 50 And shall cast them [the bad racial kind] into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” To take Gen. 1:24-25 out-of-context, and insinuate that God created the nonwhite races, and label them as “good”, is to give license to miscegenation!!!
We will now return to Allen Campbell’s video where he mistakenly quotes several passages of Scripture, where he inaccurately applies the Chaldean word “chêyvâ”, where it absolutely cannot be found.
Exodus 9:8-9: “8 And Yahweh said unto Moses and unto Aaron, Take to you handfuls of ashes of the furnace, and let Moses sprinkle it toward the heaven in the sight of Pharaoh. 9 And it shall become small dust in all the land of Egypt, and shall be a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon beast, throughout all the land of Egypt.”
Campbell claims that the “beast” of verse 9 is #2423 “chêyvâ”, but rather it is #929, “bhemah”. It really makes me wonder what kind of lexicon he is using, if any at all! He comments thusly on this passage, “Now if you read the account of the plagues, you will find there had already been a plague of cattle sickness. You’ll find God had already cursed the domestic cattle throughout Egypt. Yet here we find another plague which is experienced both by man and by living creatures which take the form of boils.” Then Campbell moves forward to quote Exodus 9:19: “Send therefore now, and gather thy cattle, and all that thou hast in the field; for upon every man and beast which shall be found in the field, and shall not be brought home, the hail shall come down upon them, and they shall die.” In this verse, Campbell misidentifies two Hebrew words, “cattle” and “beast”. He makes the erroneous claim that “cattle is “bhemah” #929, whereas it is rather #4735, “miqneh” ... “something bought, i.e. property, but only live stock ...” It is quite evident here that Campbell is trusting his deficient memory rather than taking the time to look up the words and make sure of their Strong’s numbers and meanings. Again, Campbell misidentifies “beast” at verse 19 as #2423 “chêyvâ”, rather than the correct term #929 “bhemah”!
Picking up Campbell a little later on his video, he quotes Exodus 19:12-13: “12 And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, Take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death: 13 There shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned, or shot through; whether it be beast (929) or man, it shall not live: when the trumpet soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount.”
Again, the “beast” of Exodus 19:13 is “bhemah” #929, rather than #2423, “chêyvâ”! This is substantial evidence that we are working with an idiom rather than a literal Hebrew or Chaldean word, and we will see more affirmation of this as we continue with this subject. In fact it will be #929, “bhemah” almost every time we encounter the translated word “beast” on this topic.
To his credit, Campbell comments, “Now you don’t really believe that Moses was saying to the four-footed animals in the camp of Israel; their cattle, their sheep, their goats – Moses really didn’t say to them ‘make sure you don’t put your paws on the mountain or you’re going to be stoned or shot through.’ He didn’t say ‘paws’, the word is ‘hands’, there’s a different word for paws and hooves of animals in your Bibles ... He says, ‘don’t let your own people, Israel, touch the mountain ... and don’t let your beast, your bipedal servants ... touch it either or they will suffer the same punishment’. A dumb animal wouldn’t have understood his instructions. Can you see Moses saying to the goats that are bleating: ‘Don’t you touch that Holy mountain with your paws or you are going to be killed’?”
The next two passages which Campbell addresses are Exodus 22:19 where they read: “Whosoever lieth with a beast (929) shall surely be put to death”, and Leviticus 20:15-16: “15 And if a man lie with a beast (929), he shall surely be put to death: and ye shall slay the beast (929). 16 And if a woman approach unto any beast (929), and lie down thereto, thou shalt kill the woman, and the beast (929): they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” First of all, it should be observed that most all animals have sexual intercourse standing on their feet rather than lying down, so these passages aren’t referring to the animal kingdom! Again, you will notice we are dealing with #929 “bhemah”, rather than #2423, “chêyvâ”, as Campbell inaccurately claims!
To Campbell’s credit, he states: “Now these verses are inserted between the commands of other forbidden sexual relationships. Now I know the churches expect you to believe that that refers to some sort of abominable wickedness between humankind and animals. I don’t believe that for a moment! I believe it is describing what the Bible rightly calls adultery. And I don’t equate that with running off with someone else’s wife ... it means adulterating or watering down the Holy seedline – the bloodline – crossing the color barrier – crossing the racial line of distinction that God has set – miscegenation – the intermarriage of the races. We read in another portion of Scripture how an Israelite cohabited with an alien woman, and Phinehas ran them through with a spear, and the Bible says ‘... Behold, I give unto him my covenant of peace ...’ because he rid the camp of Israel of the sin and the abomination of a mixed-race marriage ... Miscegenation is the sin of the last days of Israel.”
Campbell takes us next to Jeremiah 31:27 which he describes as “controversial material, even for Identity people”: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man, and with the seed of beast. (929)” Here again, contrary to Campbell, it’s #929 “bhemah”, rather than #2423, “chêyvâ”! Although Campbell bases his thesis on the wrong word (which happens to be Chaldee rather than Hebrew), he gets the context right where he states, “What’s God saying? The day will come when Israelites will intermarry with other Adam-kind. There are other people, White people, who aren’t of the seed of Israel. The Israel line is a special line called out of the race of Adam – it’s a godly seedline – it comes on down through Seth, Noah and Shem – and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph – there’s lots of White people out there, and they’re not all [of] that chosen line of Israel. And, God said the Israelites will marry with them – or other Adamic people. But also, I will mix them – I will mingle them – I’ll permit them to be mingled with the descendants of the beasts. What’s God saying? The sin of the last day of the nations of regathered Israel, is the sin of crossing the color line – of mingling of blood – of racial miscegenation – of the cohabiting, I’m not going to call it marriage, but cohabiting – of the White Caucasian Israelitish people with the living creatures – with the beast of the field – with those who are not of the creation of Adam-kind in the first place ...”
I agree almost wholly with what Campbell is stating here, except his comment “with the living creatures”. Actually, these beast-people to whom he refers can only be considered the walking-dead, or zombies, for it was only Adam who received Yahweh’s breath of life, (Gen. 2:7)! By using the Chaldean (Aramaic) word #2423, “chêyvâ” rather than the correct Hebrew #929 “bhemah”, he acquired a wrong definition from #2423 “chêyvâ” and #2418 châyâh meaning “... to live ...” Many are making a similar mistake by using #2416 “chay” at Genesis 1:24, as it also has the definition of “alive”. Paul made this very clear at Romans 8:11 where he wrote: “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Yahshua from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” Such people who are void of the breath of life breathed into Adam, when they die, they are considered “twice dead”, Jude 12. The first stage is the walking dead, and the second stage is the second death, Rev. 2:11; 20:14 & 21:8. Therefore “living creatures” do not describe the nonwhite races, for all the non-Adamic peoples are the spawn of Satan (serpent-seed)! Campbell couldn’t be more wrong when he stated,“God created the negroids and mongolians for a purpose – for His own glory.” They are rather fallen angel-kind mixed with animal-kind! (“The Book Of Giants”, The Dead Sea Scrolls, A New Translation by Michael Wise, Martin Abegg Jr. and Edward Cook, on page 247, a translation of 1Q23, fragments 1 + 6).
Campbell takes us next to Exodus 23:29: “I will not drive them out from before thee in one year; lest the land become desolate, and the beast(2416) of the field multiply against thee.”
Campbell is wrong on two counts at the above passage. (1) He believes the “beast” at Exodus 23:29 are the other races, and (2) he claims the word is #2423, “chêyvâ”, but it is not. It is #2416 “chay”. This is very important, as there are others beside Campbell who are attempting to bring in negroes and mongols under Yahweh’s creation at Genesis 1:24-25 with the Hebrew word #2416 “chay”. But now we have prime evidence that #2416 “chay” at Gen. 1:24 simply means wild animals as it also means at Exodus 23: 29! For documentation on this, I will cite Commentary Practical And Explanatory On The Whole Bible by Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, vol. 1 of 6, pages 376-377 on Exodus 23:29. Notice the description of the “beast” given here:
“... We can make nothing out of this description, unless by sea is meant the Dead Sea, into which the Jordan empties itself. On this view the Canaanite inhabited the southeastern extremity of Palestine west of the Jordan. Apart from this, it is but natural to suppose that the reason of theassociation of these three tribes is, that the part inhabited by the Canaanite was also a wild and dangerous region. Now, look at the northern extremity of Palestine, with its mountains forming the southern ridges of the Lebanon range, which are even at the present day full of the haunts, of the buffalo, jackal, wolf, hyena the once, lion, bear, tiger, leopard, lynx, and serpents, vipers, scorpions, centipedes, the tarantulas, the hornet, and the wasp. Look again at the southern part of Palestine, with its road from Jerusalem to Jericho – a road which travellers unite in depicting in the most gloomy hues, as a ‘wild and melancholy region.’ The aspect of the whole of it is said to be ‘peculiarly savage and dreary, vying in this respect with the wilds of Sinai,’ The wilderness of Judea is full of extensive caverns, in which David wandered about. It is the region of which, so late as in the time of Christ, ‘wild beasts’ are spoken of as inhabitants (Mark i. I3). Further to the south is Idumea, with the great Eastern desert, to name [a few] which is enough for present purposes. Now, in the historical account of the occupation of these localities there is no instance detailed of overrunning by wild beasts having really occurred; and it must be considered, therefore, that the pre-arrangement described in this passage, as to the gradual dispossession of the native tribes, is a beautiful illustration of the minute care Jehovah took of His chosen people.”
Did you notice the kind of “beast” that occupied Palestine? Although Campbell’s premises are quite good on the “beast of the field”, he is wanting in much of his research. There is positively no way that the “beast” mentioned at Exodus 23:29 could be negroes. Also, there is absolutely no way that the “beast” mentioned at Genesis 1:24 could be negroes or mongoloids or any other nonwhite race.
Since Mark 1:13 is cited above, we need to read that one too: “And he (Christ) was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him.” So now we have the required two Biblical witnesses we need to establish a matter, but do we have a third as recommended by Deuteronomy 19:15? Yes we do. We find our third testimony at 2 Kings 17:25-26. The 17th chapter of 2 Kings addresses the second of three deportations of Israelites from Samaria of the northern kingdom by Assyria under king Shalmaneser. After king Shalmaneser had deported the greater part of them, he repopulated Samaria with aliens. (Read 2 Kings 17:24-26!) Verse 26 states: “Wherefore they spake to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations which thou hast removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land: therefore he hath sent lions among them, and, behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land.” This is proof positive that the “chay”, translated “beast” of Genesis 1:24 andExodus 23:29, is speaking of wild animals such as buffalo, jackal, wolf, hyena, lion, bear, tiger, leopard & lynx rather than the nonwhite races! The “beast” at Gen. 1:24 typifies wild animals, not the nonwhite races!
