Heleah: Meaning & Where to Read

Pronunciation: heh-LEE-ah

The Meaning of the Name

“The name Heleah means to be very remote and removed beyond the horizon” — and because of this, the children of Kenneh found themselves in the midst of the floods that would come (Enoch, Seth 3:38).

The Lay of the Land

To the west, north, and east of the land of Towah were the great and broad valleys of Heleah, and the people of the Niphilim spread themselves abroad to fill them (Enoch, Seth 1:61–62). Most of the land of Heleah lay downward into these broad valleys. The hardest of the wicked gathered there, and the people of Heleah delighted in newcomers to the land of Towah, building them up with visions of grandeur and enticing them with subtleties (Enoch, Seth 3:82–84).

Where Cain Fled

After the murder of his brother, Kenneh (Cain) and his wife Awan became vagabonds in the earth and went to Heleah, “because there was no one there” (Grandmothers 1:81). He fled to the northwest of the land of Towah, into the regions of Heleah, and came to the brook Halies (Enoch, Seth 3:38).

Kenneh at the Valley’s Edge

Kenneh camped on the edge of the valley of Heleah, because he wanted to live alone, while most of the rest of his people went on down into the valley (Moses 2:113). Evil men there planned to take the young Awkhoo away into the valley of Heleah and trade her for provisions, but her father listened to the voice of the Lord and sent her away south by night (Moses 2:114). In the end, when the joy of the people of Yawd overflowed and the earth shook, “in the land of Heleah the rocks were rent, and some of them fell upon Kenneh as he slept,” and he died in the midst of his house (Enoch, Bedal 9:136).

Once Eden Itself

The Lord later declared that Heleah was once a holy place. In vision, the seer — touched by the Lord alongside Noah and Melchizedek — beheld the valley of Heleah as it once was: alive and joyful, every part of creation speaking of what it would contribute to the coming of the image of God there (Melchizedek 11:65).

Mehujael and the Second Niphilim Child

Generations later, the wicked Lamech — of Cain’s own line — fled into the valleys of Heleah to escape his enemies, abandoning his wife Zillah. Mehujael, Lamech’s own grandfather (“smitten of God”), took Zillah in, and she bore him another Niphilim child (Grandmothers 4:87–88). Mehujael “was smitten of God for his many fornications, and thus fornications were multiplied in the land of Heleah, beginning in this same generation” (Enoch, Seth 3:86).

The Niphilim Wars Begin

It was this act that began the great Niphilim wars throughout the valleys of Heleah, in the years just before the Flood. Children conceived to hold the spirits of the Decadarchoi infested the land; violence became universal, “the hand of every man was against his neighbor,” and the wicked turned their own bodies into weapons of destruction — called in heaven the greatest evil of all (Grandmothers 4:89–90).

Terror Before the Flood

A secret society under the leadership of Kohath, called the Society of Saycoo, plundered the regions all around, “and there was terror in the land of Heleah” (Enoch, Bedal 11:104–105). When the mountains raised up from south to north and the earth shook, the company of the men of Heleah were scattered in fear by a strong east wind and clouds of dust — the first such dust storm observed upon the earth since Yaatsekawd left Eden (Enoch, Bedal 13:36–37). At the last, all the land of Towah became empty, “for all the people went into the low places of the land of Heleah, and they dwelt by the waters of the seas there,” and terror filled every breast (Enoch, Bedal 15:118).

Four Views of What Happened There

Melchizedek’s Little Book records four distinct perspectives on what the Flood, breaking in upon the valleys of Heleah, actually meant:

The Decadarchiy’s view — that it was their war upon the Eerkodeshiy, which they were winning — right up to the moment “the Eerkodeshiy wanted to die, and desired to give up their purpose as the home of mankind” — when the Flood swept their dominion away before their eyes (Little Book 1:59–60).
The Eerkodeshiy’s own view — that it was a war on the Fatherhood of Anokeesed itself. They grieved as the knowledge of the conditions of Elda was lost to them there, mourned constantly at the sounds of death, and were worn down until they too “wanted to die” — though the Council of Elda were the last to give up their place in creation (Little Book 1:64–67).
Christ’s own view — that the wickedness of Heleah was a war on His own vision as Messenger of Salvation, and on the Holy Order itself (Little Book 1:69–70).
The Father’s own view — that agency had run its full course upon the earth, coming to its complete expression. The righteous in Ma’een who chose repentance had become so holy that they could no longer remain in the temporal world, and had to be transfigured and brought back into the glories of Eden; the wicked of Heleah who chose wickedness had become so evil that repentance was lost to them, and they were given over to the condemnation they had chosen (Little Book 1:74–75).

Boundaries Set for Evil

Because the righteous and wicked would live intermingled for the rest of the earth’s history after the Flood, the Father set a boundary: a spirit of evil could only come to dwell with a person through invited, intelligent acts of sin — never through inadvertent sin (Little Book 1:76–78).

Swept Away

Before the Flood, the Lord told Melchizedek that Noah would ask the waters of the earth to cover this entire valley, “to become the bottom of the sea” (Melchizedek 11:100). After seven days of the Flood, the valley of Heleah was no more, and in its place stood a vast sea of dancing waves (Grandmothers 12:70).

Now the Sea of Ba-ah

When the people on the ark beheld that great sea, they called it the Sea of Ba-ah, “because it was the sea of rising up” (Grandmothers 12:71). The book’s own footnote identifies it as today’s Black Sea (Melchizedek 11:100, note 99).

After the Flood, about forty-three souls led by Achee, together with Jared and their friends, departed northward out of the Land of Shinar and came down to this sea. It had been changed by the Flood, and trees could still be seen standing in the water by the shore — so they too named it the Sea of Ba-ah, “to gush up or swell over” (I Achee 1:96–97).

A Pattern That Returns

In the days of Ezekiel, the earth and all creation wondered what it was supposed to be as the home of man, and the grass was saying it didn’t want to be grass anymore — “much like what the earth felt in Heleah before the Flood” (Moses 14:60). And just as there was a complete separation between the righteous and the wicked in Maween and Heleah, when the righteous do not walk in the way of the people but retreat into righteous communities and “come out of her,” they will be spared the plagues of Babylon and the fires of destruction (Handbook, p. 524).