The wastelands of the ancient Near East teemed with dangerous supernatural beings. The Egyptian Book of the Dead warned of tomb guardians who lay in wait for anyone presumptuous enough to intrude upon their sacred space without knowledge of the proper rites or evidence of the ritual purity required to enter. In Mesopotamia, incantations intoned with trembling lips and amulets clutched with anxious hands warded off the invisible spirits that roamed the desert steppe and protected against the lethal sting of snake and scorpion that they caused. The ancient Israelites shared this belief that malevolent, semidivine creatures lurked in the darkness beyond their settlements, like the night hag Lilith (Isaiah 34:14) and the “hairy ones” who danced in the ruins of cities forsaken by God (Isaiah 13:21). Chief among them was Azazel, the desert demon to whom they sent the scapegoat ritually laden with their iniquities and driven into the wastes bound for destruction on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:7–10 and 20–22). God could command these superhuman beings to do his bidding, like the “Destroyer” sent to slay the firstborn sons of Egypt to compel Pharoah to free the Israelites from bondage (Exodus 12:21–36) and the “Adversary” known as Satan, who tormented Job to test his faith (Job 2:1–10). The Hebrew scriptures hinted darkly that these spirits were the product of the illicit union between “sons of God” and human women (Genesis 6:1–4), but it was only centuries later in the Second Temple period (516 BCE–70 CE) that Jews wove a tapestry of stories to explain the origin of demons. These tales implicated rebel angels who had seduced mortals and spawned a race of terrible giants, the Nephilim, whose malicious spirits caused ruin for humankind.