(Part 1 of the Daniel Trilogy)

Chronicles of the Watchers
Book 6

By Brian Godawa

1st Edition

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Copyright © 2026 Brian Godawa

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.

Warrior Poet Publishing
www.warriorpoetpublishing.com

ISBN: 978-1-963000-90-0 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-963000-94-8 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-1-963000-94-8 (eBook)

ISBN: 978-1-963000-95-5 (Large Print)

Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001.

Excerpts from the Enuma Elish taken from William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger, The Context of Scripture (Leiden;  New York: Brill, 1997–), 391-403.

Chapter 1

Jerusalem
The reign of King Jehoiakim
circa 605 B.C.

The two-mile walk from the town of Anathoth south to Jerusalem had been hearty for Jeremiah ben Hilkiah and his companion, Baruch ben Neriah. For the two angels guarding them, it was an easy trip that would not even break a sweat. They walked behind their wards, armed in the spiritual realm, unseen and unheard by human senses.

If the two human travelers or the people around them on the road outside the walls of the city were allowed to glimpse the spiritual realm, they would see an interesting contrast. The men in front were a thirty-five-year-old bearded prophet in ratted hair and tattered brown tunic accompanied by his twenty-two-year-old scribe, mildly bearded with shaggy eyebrows but with the finer garb of the noble class: quality linen tunic beneath a color-striped, finely-woven mantle with tassels. Their contrasting clothes spoke to status. Scribes were chosen by nobles and elites, while prophets were chosen by God. Behind them at six-plus feet with dark, stealth heavenly armor and sheathed sword walked Michael, his long, black wavy hair flowing with smooth elegance about his square jaw with clenched teeth and stern face of concern. Beside him strode an unusually small angel, also in dark armor—Uriel, at only the size of a human with blond, stringy hair and two swords in his belt. His gait was lighter than Michael’s, his disposition as well. Everything was lighter about Uriel: his attitude, his voice, the way he liked to jibe with Gabriel. Even his fighting style with two swords was the lightest of the angels—but also the deadliest. Uriel was the best among them at the Way of the Karabu, the ancient fighting style from the Garden. That was one reason why Michael had him along as they strode through the deep Kidron Valley on the east side of Jerusalem.

The angels’ gaze matched that of their human wards, looking up to the Mount of Olives on their left. The steep hill hosted orchards and some residences on its incline. At the top were the abominable high places, platforms of worship for the gods of Canaan: Baal the storm god, his consort Lady Asherah, and Astarte, goddess of sex and war.

Uriel muttered, “On every high hill and under every green tree you bowed down like a whore.”

Almost as if he heard the angel, Jeremiah stopped walking and said with a painful, breaking voice, “Oh, Judah. You adulterous wife.”

From their low position, the prophet and scribe could see stone altars on the high places, wooden Asherah poles, and massebot standing stones representing the deities, all elements of their idolatrous worship. Priests and priestesses in crimson red robes went about their duties right in the sight of Yahweh’s holy temple directly across the valley in the city.

With their preternatural vision, the angels could see more. They could see Judahites, or Jews as they were now called for short, copulating with qedeshim cultic prostitutes beneath trees in the gardens of the high places. Such sacred prostitution was part of the worship of Astarte, Queen of Heaven to the Jews and counterpart of the goddess Ishtar in Babylon. There was something else the humans could not see: the goddess Astarte glaring down at them from the high place. She could see the angels as she too was an elohim of the spiritual realm, shedim guardian of this territory. Astarte was equally tall in her coal-dark queenly robe with wolfen black hair, high cheek bones, and fiery eyes beneath her small, bony crown of horns that signified deity.

She and her fellow Canaanite elohim had grown strong here because of the centuries of worship they had received from Israelites and their kings. Worship gave these Watcher gods power over human lives and destiny, so they were becoming bolder now, willing to stand defiantly like this in the face of Yahweh’s own archangels. No more hiding in the shadows of shame and repression.

Several Jewish women passed the travelers with handheld trays of star-shaped cakes baked for the Queen of Heaven as part of their devotion to the one they also called the Morning Star. The cakes matched the silver eight-pointed star that hung from a silver chain on the neck of the goddess. The women carefully climbed the hill to deliver their offerings to the priestesses.

The four travelers rounded the southern part of the city walls into Gehinnom, the valley of the Sons of Hinnom. Michael heard Jeremiah praying for God’s justice as they continued on. It reminded him of Joshua’s army marching around Jericho with the ark almost a millennium ago. Jerusalem had become a Jericho in the eyes of God. An Egypt. A Sodom and Gomorrah.

Uriel nudged Michael’s arm and gestured to one of the high places of Molech, Canaanite god of the underworld. Both man and angel saw the gruesome remains of a sacrifice in the arms of the bronze bull-headed statue of Molech. The smoke from the holocaust billowed upward like abominable incense that assaulted the nostrils of Yahweh. The flames were stoked by dark-robed priests. A line of women stood with their infants and toddlers, preparing to pass their sons and daughters through the fire for protection against the encroaching abuses of Judah’s current suzerain ruler, King Nabopolassar of Babylon. As their Assyrian overlords had done before him, their Babylonian sovereign taxed Judah heavily and ruled the people oppressively, making survival of the average Jew a great difficulty, especially in droughts and famines.

In the spiritual realm, Molech stood naked beside the sacrifice, splattered in the smoldering carnage of slaughter and drinking heavily from a chalice. He emptied it in one long gulp and sloppily used his arm to wipe the blood dripping from his lips. He forced a hideous mocking laughter in the angel’s direction.

Uriel said, “As if he isn’t ugly enough with his hairless mole face and obesity. He sounds like a demonic prune with a harpy cackle. Let me teach him a lesson.”

Uriel moved toward the hill. Michael held his arm. “Uriel, now is not the time. They are too strong.”

At that moment, the god Baal stepped up next to Molech.

“On second thought, maybe you’re right,” Uriel admitted.

Baal was the mightiest of the Canaanite pantheon, and he looked it with massive, bulging muscles on his naked torso above a battle skirt. Curled ram-like horns grew from his skull, and he carried a massive mace in his hand, a toothy grin on his burly, bearded face. He had taken on many appearances over the centuries. This was his simplest.

“At least he doesn’t have Driver and Chaser,” said Uriel. “Then we’d be in trouble.”

Michael replied, “So you admit Gabriel did well capturing Baal’s war hammer and lightning spear all those years ago?”

“Okay, Gabriel has done one good thing in the past millennium.”

Michael shook his head in incredulity. Those two would compete into eternity if Yahweh let them.

Their attention was drawn to the quiet weeping that they now heard from Jeremiah as he walked on. The angels gave each other a solemn look. Now was not the time for levity. They were guarding Jeremiah, who was coming to Jerusalem with purpose because of the very idolatry that surrounded them.

The four of them arrived at the Middle Gate of the city in the northern wall of Hezekiah. They went through the gates and made their way through crowded residential streets toward the temple. It became immediately evident that the despicable behavior of the Jews was not confined to outside the walls of the city.

They were halted by a large procession of women in the street walking with heads covered in dark robes of mourning. They carried little teraphim statues of deity and cried and wailed with ritual unity.

“Weeping for Tammuz,” said Jeremiah with disgust.

He and Baruch covered their ears at the piercing ululating of the women that expressed their mourning. It was a blasphemous Mesopotamian practice that Jews had appropriated from Babylon. Tammuz was both the name of this month they were entering and of a deity whose death in Arallu, the underworld, at the hands of the goddess Ereshkigal represented the end of the harvest season. Tammuz would escape from his prison in the spring just in time for the new growing season of fertility. That was the mythical narrative. But for now, they mourned his death in the coming of the hot summer months.

The four travelers followed far behind the procession. They passed mudbrick homes where men had gathered wood for the stoves of the women who baked their cakes for the Queen of Heaven. On their roofs, incense to Astarte also drifted lazily to the heavens in her honor. It had become too much for Jeremiah. He ran over to an alleyway and vomited.

Michael said to Uriel, “I’ve been watching him closely. His soul is heavy with despair. When he received his call years ago, he wanted to be released because he thought he was too young. Now he thinks he is completely ineffective.”

“I can understand why,” said Uriel. “Despite the looming threat and oppression of kingdoms like Assyria, Egypt, and now Babylon, it turns out that Judah’s greatest enemy is within.”

“And the gods are pressing in,” Michael said. “I don’t know how much longer we can hold the temple.”

Uriel was distracted by a balcony in the nobles’ quarter. “Look up there.”

Michael followed his gaze as they continued toward their destination. He saw a small, young servant girl with long, dark braided hair and expressive eyebrows over wide and innocent eyes—looking directly at them! She was watching the angels with her mouth slightly agape, more wonder than surprise. She had seen them before.

“A sensitive,” said Michael. Those who could sometimes see the unseen realm.

“Gabriel has his hands full with that one,” Uriel quipped. With a grin, he waved at the girl. She pulled away from the ledge as if to hide from their discovery.

“Really, Uriel?”

“She needs to know who the good guys are.”

Uriel’s playfulness sometimes struck Michael as juvenile. Then again, Michael felt like he himself was sometimes too serious. Maybe he needed to laugh more.

But now was not the time to laugh. Now was the time to prepare for war.

Chapter 2

Daniel scolded Ariela to come away from the balcony and finish her lesson. They were in his father’s library where he kept his scrolls and instruments of knowledge. “What are you looking at?”

“I don’t know,” she responded. “There seems to be some commotion in the street. Did I use that word right? Commotion? An increase of unrest in a crowd of people?”

“Yes,” he smiled. Ariela was always so full of questions, so hungry for knowledge, and a quick learner. He called her “little lioness cub” as much for her zeal as for her name, which meant “like a lioness.” Daniel watched as she approached him in her simple brown maidservant’s robe, her chocolate-brown hair braided modestly down to her waist, her lovely deep-brown eyes full of wonder and hope. She was only three and ten years of age but was maturing toward young womanhood, which entranced Daniel, two years older at fifteen.

Daniel carefully handled an unrolled scroll on the reading table. Sitting down on a stool beside him, Ariela sounded the text out aloud. She had been a bond slave to his family since she was five. Her mother had died in her childbirth. Her father, a stern and duty-bound man named Jairus, had become so devastated that he fell into debt and had to sell himself and Ariela to Daniel’s family.

Jairus had been head steward of the household, but after two years of servitude, he had died, leaving a deep sadness in Ariela that she only shared with Daniel. They had become best friends over the years, but as they matured, they were allowed less interaction with each other—which always seemed cruel to them both—so they had to plot their meetings in secret.

Daniel’s noble status would not allow them to be anything more than master and servant, so he had been teaching Ariela these past few years how to read and write as his form of rebellion against the establishment. Or was it really rebellion? He just wanted Ariela to be happy and to have a chance to rise in the ranks of her servitude. A young female servant who could read was a rare commodity and therefore more highly valued.

Unfortunately, his skill at hiding their relationship from others overflowed into hiding his own feelings for her. Feelings that were more than mere friendly affection. Affection that had intensified in recent months.

Was this love? Daniel had never felt these kinds of things before. They seemed so strong. But he was so young. How could he know what love was? And what did love matter in their class system of arranged marriages?

He noticed that Ariela was reading quickly as if trying to rush through the text. He scolded, “You are starting to lose attention again. You need to realize how very blessed we are to have access to Scriptures like this. It is only because my father is a relative of the king and these are Aramaic translations that we can do so. The Hebrew would be too sacred.”

“I know,” she retorted. Aramaic had become the common tongue of the earth.

“Do you even remember what you just read?”

Her big brown eyes looked up at him with intensity as if she were studying him, her lips slightly upturned in subtle pleasure.

 “Why are you looking at me like that?” Daniel asked.

She began quoting from memory.

“For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called

Angel of the Great Counsel, Mighty God,
Father of eternity, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,

on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it

with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore.”

Ariela ended with a big grin but did not move her eyes from their stare at him. It made Daniel’s stomach flutter like reeds in the wind. With a roll of his eyes, he rolled up the scroll. He could not help but respond with his own smile.

“Okay, little lioness cub smarty scribe, so you were listening to the words. But what is the meaning? What is the prophet promising?”

“Messiah?” she said.

“Who is…” he urged.

“A savior king from the line of Judah.”

“Very good.”

“Is that what you want to be?”

Daniel withdrew in shock. “Me? No, silly.”

“But you’ve told me many times you could become king because your father is a first cousin of King Jehoiakim.”

“Well, yes. But this is someone special. He is called, ‘Mighty God,’ and ‘Father of eternity.’ He heads the divine council. That’s more like Yahweh himself coming down to save us.”

“Well, I still think you would be a wonderful king,” Ariela intoned.

Daniel had in fact studied harder and worked harder than any of his peers in the royal family to be known for his wisdom and leadership because he wanted to be capable and ready if one day the odds might turn in his favor. It was an impossible dream he had let her share in.

Such things had happened.

“You sure act like a king,” she quipped, pursing her lips like a snob.

Opening his eyes and mouth with feigned shock, Daniel teased her with faux royalty. “You dare say such a thing? You dare speak the truth to your noble lord!”

She started to giggle.

“There is only one punishment for such treason!”

Ariela knew exactly what that meant. She screamed playfully, “No! No, no, no!”

Reaching over, Daniel picked up her slight figure from the stool and laid her down on the goat skin rug, where he tickled her. She squirmed, squealing with joy. He couldn’t help but laugh with her. She was completely helpless in his hands.

He stopped and let her catch her breath, then started up again. Her giggling was like the call of a lovebird in his soul. He so cherished the sound of her voice.

Suddenly, he stopped. He was now on top of her, straddling her, leaning down. She was immobile. Vulnerable. Surrendered.

His stomach quivered again. He could feel her sweet breath on his face, an intoxicating warm spirit.

Daniel wanted to kiss her. Somehow, he knew she would not stop him. Her face turned serious. Inviting.

But he would not violate her purity or his own integrity.

Rolling off her, Daniel lay down on his back. They looked into each other’s eyes. Ariela looked sad now. Did she share his feelings? Could a young girl of her age know love? Or was she infatuated with his highborn status?

What would it matter anyway? They could never be together if he was to rise in his royal circle. He looked up into the ceiling as if it were the firmament of the heavens beyond.

 “I know it’s crazy. A mad delusion. But I would be a good king. Like Josiah. I would enforce Torah.” Daniel’s hopeful musing turned angry. “I would destroy every high place, every Asherah pole, every idol, and cleanse the holy temple of its abominations.”

He felt Ariela grab his hand in affirmation. The flesh of his hand and the skin up his arm lit afire. He turned back to see her still staring at him.

Her eyes went wide with realization, and she released his hand. Staring up at the ceiling, she hurried her response. “And I would be a servant of my king, Daniel.”

“Or I could make you my queen,” he fancied. “Queen Ariela. A king could marry whoever he wants. Even a slave.”

They shared a laugh. She exclaimed with a bright smile. “We wouldn’t have to sneak around to have fun!”

He added, “You could do almost anything you wanted.”

Ariela became carried away in her thoughts. “What if I wanted to meet kings and queens of other nations?”

“Then I would introduce you to them. And we would represent Yahweh to the nations. Lydia, Egypt, Babylon.”

“Oh!” she squeaked. “Could we travel to Babylon?”

They had read much of the mysterious land of Mesopotamia in her reading lessons. Daniel could see her imagining the wonder.

“Yes. We would travel down the Euphrates River on a boat, and we would be welcomed by the king and queen to his palace behind the walls of the mighty city.”

They were now one in their imagination. Ariela added, “And they would treat us to a wonderful banquet of strange rich foods and spices.”

Daniel felt as if they were there in Babylon together, king and queen. “Yes, they would. Roasted gazelle smothered in saffron from the far East. Stuffed dates with almonds and honeyed locusts.”

Ariela didn’t respond. Daniel noticed she was sniffling. He got up to sit on the floor beside her.

She leaned up but kept staring down sadly at the ground. “I really do pray for you, Daniel. That Yahweh will bless you with your ambition. I believe you are going to be a great man in Judah.”

She said it as if she had nothing to do with his future. And still, he could not tell her of his true affection for her. What good would it do? It would only give her a moment of hope that would be crushed by the reality of their world.

Instead, he confessed, “I want to tell you something I have told no one.”

Ariela looked up at him with full attention as always. He turned inward as he focused beyond her into the distance. “I have had dreams.”

“What kind of dreams?”

“Frightening things. For our future. For Judah. And Jerusalem.”

She leaned in. “Do you think they are from your fears? Or from Yahweh?”

“Yahweh.”

“How do you know?”

“There is an angel in them named Gabriel. A dark man with sad, compassionate eyes. He explains things to me and watches over me.”

“My lord.” A pounding came on the door. The voice from behind it was the elderly household steward Barkai, who had been standing on the lookout for them. He had always had a soft spot for Daniel.

Daniel popped up and ran to the door. He opened it a crack to see Barkai’s middle-aged Ethiopian face peeking in at him. The servant whispered, “The prophet Jeremiah has been reported going to the temple. A crowd is gathering. Your father’s household has been called by the elders to meet there.”

Daniel turned back. “Ariela, put the scrolls away. I have to leave.”

He bolted out the door.

Standing in the shadows of the closed curtains of Phoenician-dyed purple wool, Gabriel the archangel watched the young Jewish servant girl follow Daniel’s order. He was exactly as he presented himself to Daniel in his dreams. Over six feet tall with Ethiopian-dark skin, close-cropped beard and hair, he wore black armor that was useful in both combat and stealth operations.

The girl put away the pillows on the floor and the scrolls on the reading table, then exited the room. Before closing the door, Gabriel saw her glance back into the room knowingly. She couldn’t see him. She couldn’t always see the spiritual world. But he could tell she knew he was there.

She smiled to herself and shut the door behind her.

And Gabriel left to follow Daniel.