Anakim

Emim

Rephaim

The Tribes of The Nephilim

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Giants in the Land: A Biblical Theology of the Nephilim, Anakim, Rephaim (and Goliath)

By Zachary Garris July 2, 2019

Source: https://knowingscripture.com/articles/giants-in-the-land-a-biblical-theology-of-the-nephilim-anakim-rephaim-and-goliath

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Christians, including many pastors and scholars, tend to gloss over the references to giants in the Bible. Yet giants play an important role in the biblical story, particularly in relation to their occupation of the Promised Land. As will be seen, Israel initially refused to enter the land because of giants, and only men of great faith (Joshua, Caleb, and David) were able to defeat them.

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The Sons of God and Giant Nephilim (Genesis 6:1-4)

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown (Genesis 6:4).

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It is important to note that Genesis 6:4 never explicitly calls the Nephilim “giants.” However, the Nephilim have often been considered giants because of the description of the giants in the land as those who come from the Nephilim in Numbers 13:32-33.

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Also, the Septuagint translates both the Hebrew נְּפִלִ֞ים (Nephilim) and גִּבֹּרִ֛ים (gibborim, “mighty men” or “men of renown”) in Genesis 6:4 as γίγαντες (gigantes, “giants”). (It may be that the Septuagint translated Nephilim as “giants” because of the account in Numbers 13, though some think Nephilim comes from the Aramaic word naphiyla for giant.)

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Nephilim and Anakim in the Land of Canaan (Numbers 13:21-33)

Numbers 13 is the key passage on giants in the land of Canaan. When Israel left Egypt and was in the wilderness seeking to enter the Promised Land, Moses sent 12 Israelite spies (one from each tribe) to Canaan. The spies were to scout out the land and assess “whether the people who dwell in it are strong or weak” (Numbers 13:18). The spies returned to Moses after 40 days and gave a good report about the land—“It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit” (Numbers 13:27). However, they gave a bad report about the people in the land:

However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negeb. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan (Numbers 13:28-29).

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Caleb, one of the spies, urged Israel to go up and occupy the land, but the other spies (except Joshua) said they were not able because the people there were stronger (Numbers 13:30-31). Then the “bad report” got even worse:

The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them (Numbers 13:32-33).

Read More Fallen Angels The Nephilim The Watchers 1st Book of Enoch click

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Who were the Anakim? They were descendants of a man name Anak, whom we are told had three sons, Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai (Joshua 15:14; Judges 1:10, 20). Joshua later devoted the Anakim to destruction, only leaving them in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod (Joshua 11:21-22).

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(1 Samuel 17:4 says that Goliath was from Gath, leading us to conclude he was a descendant of Anak.) Caleb is said to have driven out the Anakim from Hebron (Joshua 14:12; 15:14; Judges 1:20), a city that was formerly called Kiriath-arba, named after Arba, who “was the greatest man among the Anakim” (Joshua 14:15; cf. Judges 1:10).

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Numbers 13:33 mentions that these sons of Anak “come from the Nephilim” (which is the only explicit connection between the Anakim and Nephilim in Scripture). Is this claim correct? Since Moses never mentions the Anakim as coming from the Nephilim, this may be the part that the spies fabricated in order to support their case against entering the land. However, there are three reasons for believing the statement in Numbers 13:33 is correct and that the Anakim in fact came from the Nephilim:

1. Genesis 6:4 says the Nephilim were on the earth at a later time—“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward.” The “afterward” is presumably after the flood. Numbers 13:33 is the only other mention of Nephilim in Scripture, so this would explain the comment in Genesis 6:4.

2. The spies’ claim to have seen the Nephilim in Numbers 13:33 is followed with what reads like an editorial comment that seeks to connect the reference of the “sons of Anak” in 13:28 with the reference to Nephilim in 13:33—“the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim.” In this case, the author of Numbers considered the spies’ report of the Nephilim accurate and then added his own explanation that the Anakim came from the Nephilim.

3. This connection between Anakim and the Nephilim in Numbers 13:33 is the only apparent explanation as to why some of the Canaanites were so tall. While some scholars suggest that these were only giants relative to the shorter Israelites (meaning six feet would be tall), Og’s bed and Goliath’s height suggest these were in fact genuine giants over nine feet tall.

If the giants in the land came from the Nephilim, how did this happen when the Nephilim were wiped out in the flood? While some argue that the flood was only local, this would still be an unlikely explanation because the flood was intended to wipe out the Nephilim in Genesis 6.

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Nephilim genes were passed down through Noah’s daughters-in-law. These wives of Ham, Shem, and Japheth were not descended from Noah and thus potentially had Nephilim genes in them.

Read More Fallen Angels The Nephilim The Watchers 1st Book of Enoch click

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Moses Defeats Og of Bashan, One of the Last Rephaim (Deuteronomy 3)

Israel was afraid of the giants in the land of Canaan, and it would have to be a later generation that dealt with the giants under Joshua’s leadership. However, Israel still had to deal with a giant while in the in the wilderness, Og of Bashan. As Israel went up the way to Bashan, King Og came out against them for battle.

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Yahweh gave Og into Israel’s hand, and they “devoted” Og’s people to destruction (herem), leaving no survivors, just as they had done to Sihon king of the Amorites (Deuteronomy 3:6). (This victory is celebrated in Psalm 135:11 and 136:20.) We are told that both Og and Sihon were considered Amorite kings (Deuteronomy 3:8). Then we read this fascinating verse:

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For only Og the king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bed was a bed of iron. Is it not in Rabbah of the Ammonites? Nine cubits was its length, and four cubits its breadth, according to the common cubit (Deuteronomy 3:11).

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Seeing that a cubit was about 18 inches, Og’s bed was about 13 feet 6 inches long. This suggests he was a giant. On top of this, Og is said to be the last remnant of the Rephaim. Both Joshua 12:4 and 13:12 also say Og was of the remnant of the Rephaim, which the LXX interestingly translates as “giants” (γιγάντων).

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Who were the Rephaim? They were likely the descendants of a giant named Rapha. Rapha (רָפָה) is mentioned six times in the Bible (2 Samuel 21:16, 18, 20, 22; 1 Chronicles 20:6, 8), in contrast to the more common plural Rephaim (רְפָאִ֥ים). Though some translations like the ESV take this as “giants,” Rapha is probably a proper name.

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Deuteronomy 2 provides some interesting information about the Rephaim. It says the Rephaim were as “tall as the Anakim,” but were mostly wiped out by Yahweh (Deuteronomy 2:21). The Ammonites called the Rephaim by the name “Zamzummim” (Deuteronomy 2:20). Deuteronomy 2:10-11 says that the “Emim” were also as “tall as the Anakim,” but then it says that both the Anakim and Emim “are also counted as Rephaim.” This is important, as it links the Anakim with the Rephaim. While Og was one of the last of the Rephaim, there were still Rephaim in the land, namely the Anakim and the “descendants of Rapha” in 2 Samuel 21:16, 18, 20, 22.

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The prior information sheds interesting light on Genesis 14:5-7, where Chedorlaomer “defeated the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim, the Zuzim in Ham, the Emim in Shaveh-kiriathaim, and the Horites in their hill country of Seir,” in addition to defeating Amalekites and Amorites.

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It seems Chedorlaomer fought three groups of giants—the Rephaim (the Septuagint actually translates Rephaim in Genesis 14:5 as γίγαντας, “giants”), the Zuzim (which is probably the Zamzummim of Deuteronomy 2:20), and the Emim (Deuteronomy 2:10-11). The Amorites may also have been giants. Amos 2:9-10 says, “the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars,” and Og was also an Amorite (Deuteronomy 3:8).

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What is all the more fascinating is that Abraham then went and defeated Chedorlaomer—the giant killer—in order to rescue his nephew Lot (Genesis 14:14-17). These groups, including the Amalekites, Amorites, and Anakim-Rephaim, were still in the land during the time of Joshua (Numbers 13:29, 33). Thus Abraham’s victory in Genesis 14 is a foretaste of Joshua’s later victories over the giants in the land of Canaan.

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It is of note that the region of Bashan was in the land of the Rephaim. Og was king of Bashan, and Og was one of the Rephaim giants. But Deuteronomy 3:13 makes this land connection explicit—“The rest of Gilead, and all Bashan, the kingdom of Og, that is, all the region of Argob, I gave to the half-tribe of Manasseh. (All that portion of Bashan is called the land of Rephaim . . . ”

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Scripture calls this both the “land of the Rephaim” (Joshua 17:15) and the “Valley of Rephaim” (Joshua 18:16; 2 Samuel 5:18, 22; 23:13; 1 Chronicles 11:15; 14:9; Isaiah 17:5). Bashan is seen as a place of darkness in the Old Testament and may even be called the “mountain of the gods” (Psalm 68:15). The Hebrew הַר־אֱ֭לֹהִים (har elohim) can be translated as “mountain of God” (as per the ESV) or “mountain of gods”.

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The Rephaim are also associated in the OT with Sheol, the place of the dead. They are said to be inhabitants of Sheol in the following passages: Isaiah 14:9; 26:14, 19; Psalm 88:10; Job 26:5-6; Proverbs 2:18; 9:18; 21:16. The Hebrew Rephaim is in every one of these passages, yet you would never see this in the English if reading translations like the ESV, NASB, or KJV. Instead, the ESV uses words like “shades,” “dead,” and “departed.”

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If we leave Rephaim untranslated, this may reveal the role of the dead giants in Sheol, which is distinguished from other dead beings there. The Rephaim are said to rise up to greet the Babylonians when they sink down to Sheol in death (Isaiah 14:9).

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David Kills Goliath (1 Samuel 17)

Goliath was from Gath, one of the three Philistine cities where Anakim remained. Goliath also receives the most explicit description of a giant in all of Scripture:

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And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span. He had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze. And he had bronze armor on his legs, and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron (1 Samuel 17:4-7).

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David did not just defeat some random giant that Saul and the Israelites feared. Rather, Goliath was a remnant of the Anakim that Israel was supposed to drive out of the land of Canaan. The Anakim apparently became aligned with Israel’s new enemy, the Philistines. In killing Goliath, David was finishing the task of herem in Deuteronomy 7 that Joshua began to carry out.

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Moreover, Goliath is called a gibbor (גִּבּוֹר), a “mighty man,” in 1 Samuel 17:51, associating him with the gibborim-Nephilim of Genesis 6:4. (The ESV translates gibbor as “champion” in 1 Samuel 17:51, but this is a different Hebrew word than that for “champion” in 17:4.) David, of course, proved to be his own gibbor in defeating Goliath (1 Samuel 16:18).

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There has been much discussion over Goliath’s height. The Hebrew text says he was six cubits and a span tall. A cubit was approximately 18 inches and a span nine inches, making Goliath 9 feet 9 inches tall. Many scholars prefer the reading of the Septuagint and an early Hebrew manuscript from Qumran (Dead Sea Scrolls), both of which say that Goliath was only four cubits and a span, or about 6’9”.

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The story of giants starts with the mysterious Nephilim in Genesis 6:4, who were wiped out by the flood. However, the Nephilim are linked with the later Anakim and Rephaim. Ten of the 12 Israelite spies feared going into the land of Canaan because they saw giant Anakim there, and Numbers 13:33 says they came from the Nephilim.

Read More Fallen Angels The Nephilim The Watchers 1st Book of Enoch click

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Deuteronomy 2:11 says the Anakim were part of the giant group known as the Rephaim. And while in the wilderness, Moses defeated the giant Og of Bashan, who was one of the remaining Rephaim. After wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, Joshua and Caleb—the two faithful spies—then drove out the giant Anakim from Canaan. They “devoted” the Anakim to destruction, though they left some Anakim in Philistine territory (Joshua 11:21-22). One of those cities was Gath, from where Goliath hailed.

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Thus the giant Goliath represented not just the Philistines, but the dreaded Anakim—which even Joshua could not fully defeat. Goliath and his fellow Anakim were also considered Rephaim (2 Samuel 21:15-22; cf. Deuteronomy 2:11).

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