Unit 9 · Giants in the Land

Numbers 13 tells how Moses sent twelve men to scout the land of Canaan. There was one leader from each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Their job was to look at the land, its towns and its people, and then report back. The text says the trip took forty days. In the valley of Eshcol they cut a cluster of grapes so large that two men carried it on a pole.

The scouts passed through Hebron, a town in the southern hill country. There they saw three men named Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai. Numbers 13:22 calls them children of Anak. The Anakim were a people the Bible remembers as very tall. Their name simply means the descendants of Anak.

When the scouts came back, they agreed the land was rich. But most of them said the towns had walls and the people were too strong. Caleb disagreed. He said Israel could go up and take the land. The rest of the story becomes an argument about what the scouts saw and what it meant.

The scouts’ report ends with a striking line. In Numbers 13:33 they say they saw the Nephilim there, and that the sons of Anak came from the Nephilim. Then they add that they felt like grasshoppers, and that is how they looked to those people too. The picture is of small insects looking up at very tall people.

The word Nephilim is rare. It appears in only two places in the Hebrew Bible: here and in Genesis 6:4. In Genesis 6 the Nephilim are on the earth when the sons of God take human wives. The King James Version of 1611 translated the word as giants in both places. The Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, had already used the Greek word gigantes, giants, in both verses.

So the translators of the Septuagint read the two verses together. Many modern scholars do too. Michael Heiser, in The Unseen Realm (2015), read Numbers 13:33 as a deliberate link to the Genesis 6 story. He also argued that the word Nephilim is best explained from an Aramaic word for giants, not from the Hebrew verb for falling. Other scholars prefer the falling root, or leave the question open.

That raises a puzzle. If Nephilim lived before the flood, how could any be around in Moses’ day? Genesis 6:4 says the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward. Readers answer the puzzle in different ways, and later lessons look at them.

Numbers 13:32 calls the scouts’ words an evil report. Many newer translations say a bad report. The scouts said the land eats up the people who live in it. In chapter 14 the whole camp weeps and talks of going back to Egypt. Joshua and Caleb tear their clothes and urge the people not to be afraid.

Because the text itself calls the report bad, some readers doubt the giant line. They think frightened scouts made their enemies sound bigger than they were. On this reading, Nephilim is the scouts’ scary label, not the narrator’s own description. The book of Numbers, they note, puts these words in the mouths of the fearful ten.

Other readers point elsewhere. Deuteronomy 2 and 9 and Joshua 11 and 15 also speak of the Anakim as very tall, and those words come from the narrator, not from the scouts. On this view, the problem with the report was the scouts’ lack of trust, not an invented enemy. Readers still weigh both views, and the text leaves room to discuss each one.

Deuteronomy 2 pauses its travel story to give a short history lesson. As Israel passes Moab, the text says a people called the Emim once lived there. They were great, many and tall like the Anakim. The Moabites called them Emim. But the text says they were also counted among the Rephaim (Deuteronomy 2:10-11).

A few verses later, the same thing happens in the land of Ammon. Deuteronomy 2:20-21 says the Ammonites called the old tall people there Zamzummim. They too were counted as Rephaim. The text says God destroyed them before the Ammonites, who then settled in their place.

So one kind of people had several names. Anakim, Emim and Zamzummim were local names, and Rephaim was the wider label. Deuteronomy explains this almost like a note on a map. Many scholars think these notes were added by a later editor to explain old names to readers. Either way, the text tracks tall clans on both sides of the Jordan.

Og was king of Bashan, a region east of the Jordan River. Numbers 21 and Deuteronomy 3 tell how Israel fought his army at Edrei and won. Then Deuteronomy 3:11 adds a note. It says Og alone was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. The text treats him as the last of an old line.

The same verse describes his bed, or bedstead, made of iron. It was nine cubits long and four cubits wide. A cubit was a measure from the elbow to the fingertip, about 18 inches. So the bed was about 13 and a half feet long and 6 feet wide. The verse says it could still be seen in Rabbah of the Ammonites. That city is Amman, in Jordan, today.

Readers explain the bed in different ways. Some take the verse as a plain record of a very tall king. Some scholars suggest the bed was a ceremonial couch, sized for display rather than sleep. Some older commentators thought the word for iron might describe dark basalt stone. Either way, the verse’s main point is that Og belonged to the Rephaim.

The book of Joshua tells how Israel entered Canaan. Near the end of its war stories, Joshua 11:21 says Joshua cut off the Anakim from the hill country. It names Hebron, Debir and Anab. Later, Joshua 15:14 says Caleb drove out the three sons of Anak from Hebron. They are the same three names the scouts had seen.

Then Joshua 11:22 adds an exception. No Anakim were left in Israel’s land, it says, except in Gaza, in Gath and in Ashdod. These three cities lay on the coastal plain in the southwest. In later books of the Bible, all three are cities of the Philistines.

Many readers see this verse as a setup. It leaves a few of the tall clans in the very places where Israel’s later enemies live. When a giant warrior comes out of Gath in 1 Samuel, readers who remember Joshua 11:22 notice. Other readers see the verse as a plain record of places Israel did not take.

1 Samuel 17 introduces Goliath with care. He is a champion, a man who fights one-on-one for his whole army. The Hebrew phrase means, word for word, the man between, the one who stands in the space between two battle lines. He comes from Gath, one of the chief Philistine cities.

The writer lists his gear. He has a bronze helmet and a coat of scale armor weighing five thousand shekels of bronze. That is roughly 125 pounds. His spear shaft is like a weaver’s beam, and its iron point alone weighs six hundred shekels. The long list is on purpose. It makes the reader feel how outmatched Saul’s army seemed.

David’s answer turns the scene. In 1 Samuel 17:45 he says, in effect, that Goliath comes with sword and spear, but he comes in the name of the LORD. Jewish and Christian readers have long read the story as trust set against might. The hometown adds another layer: Goliath of Gath recalls the Anakim left in Gath in Joshua 11:22.

The Gath thread does not end with Goliath. 2 Samuel 21:15-22 tells of four more warriors from Gath. They are called descendants of the Rapha, which the KJV translates as the giant. Many scholars connect that word with the Rephaim. One of the four had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. David’s soldiers defeated all four.

Most English Bibles translate the Masoretic Text, the standard Hebrew text. Jewish scribes called Masoretes copied it with great care. Its oldest complete copy is the Leningrad Codex, from about 1008 CE. In 1 Samuel 17:4 it says Goliath was six cubits and a span tall. A span is about half a cubit. That makes about nine feet nine inches.

Other old witnesses read differently. A Dead Sea Scroll of Samuel from Qumran Cave 4, called 4QSamuel-a, was copied around 50 BCE. It reads four cubits and a span. Most copies of the Greek Septuagint also read four. So does the Jewish historian Josephus, writing around 94 CE. Four cubits and a span is about six feet nine inches.

Which reading is older? Scholars who practice textual criticism, the careful comparing of manuscripts, disagree. Some think a copyist raised the number over time. Others defend the Masoretic reading. Either way, a man about six feet nine inches tall, in full armor, would have stood far above most soldiers of his day.

Put the verses side by side. Genesis 6:4 names the Nephilim. Numbers 13:33 says the sons of Anak came from the Nephilim. Deuteronomy 2 and 3 count the Anakim and others as Rephaim. Joshua 11:22 leaves Anakim in Gath. 1 Samuel 17 sends out a champion from Gath. Read in order, the verses form a chain.

Ancient Jewish writers already connected giants with Genesis 6. 1 Enoch 7 says the sons of God, whom it calls Watchers, fathered great giants. Fragments of a Book of Giants, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, tell more of their story. Loren Stuckenbruck studied those fragments in The Book of Giants from Qumran (1997). Josephus, writing around 94 CE, compared the children of angels in Genesis 6 to the giants of Greek stories.

Michael Heiser, in The Unseen Realm (2015), argued that the biblical writers wove this chain on purpose. He read each of the sons of God as a divine being who crossed a line, and the giant clans as the lasting fallout of that rebellion. That, he argued, is why the conquest stories pay the clans so much attention.

What about the flood? If the Nephilim died in the flood, how could they appear later? Genesis 6:4 says the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward. Readers have offered several answers, such as the same kind of event happening again after the flood. The text itself does not say how.

Not every reader sees a thread from Genesis 6. One common view is that the Anakim and Rephaim were simply tall peoples. Tall families and tall warriors appear in every age. On this reading, the Bible remembers real enemies who stood out, with no link to heavenly beings.

A second view looks at how ancient people wrote about war. Kings and scribes across the ancient Near East often made enemies sound huge and victories total. Some scholars read the giant language as this kind of hyperbole. It shows, they say, that Israel’s God gave victory against impossible odds. The scouts’ bad report in Numbers 13 fits this reading too.

A third group reads the sons of God in Genesis 6 as human. Early Christian writers such as Justin Martyr read them as angels. Later, Julius Africanus and Augustine favored men from the family line of Seth, the Sethite view. Many Jewish readers took them to be powerful rulers. Annette Yoshiko Reed, in Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity (2005), traces how these readings rose and fell.

Some modern books claim that giants built the pyramids or came from other planets. Scholars of the Bible, whatever their reading, reject such claims. A good check is simple: open the text and see whether it actually says so. None of these verses mention pyramids or other worlds.

Rephaim is a puzzling word. In Deuteronomy and Joshua it names tall clans. In other books it names the dead. Psalm 88:10 asks whether the Rephaim will rise and praise God, and the King James Version translates the word as the dead. Isaiah 14:9, Isaiah 26:14 and Proverbs 9:18 use it the same way, for those in the realm of the dead.

Clay tablets from Ugarit help explain this. Ugarit was an ancient city on the coast of Syria. It was destroyed around 1185 BCE, and its tablets were found from 1929 on. Its texts speak of the rpum, a word scholars connect with Rephaim. In these texts they are honored ancestors, especially dead kings, remembered in ceremonies for the royal family.

Heiser argued the two uses belong together. In his reading, the biblical writers linked the giant clans with the shadowy dead of the underworld, and the one word carried both ideas. Many other scholars think the word simply had two meanings. Some suggest that old warrior kings came to be remembered as the mighty dead. Either way, knowing both uses helps readers of Isaiah and the Psalms.

Mount Hermon rises about 9,200 feet at the north end of the lands the Bible describes. Snow covers its top for much of the year, which is rare in this region. Its melting snow feeds springs that become the Jordan River. For people far to the south, it was the great white mountain on the horizon.

Hermon had more than one name. Deuteronomy 3:9 says the Sidonians called it Sirion and the Amorites called it Senir; the King James Version spells it Shenir. Deuteronomy 3:8 describes the land Israel took east of the Jordan as running from the Arnon River up to Mount Hermon. So Hermon served as a northern landmark, the edge of the map.

The name Hermon may carry meaning too. It shares its Hebrew root letters, h-r-m, with a word for something set apart or devoted, often to destruction. That word is herem. As the next lesson shows, the book of 1 Enoch plays on this link, and scholars of 1 Enoch have studied it closely.

1 Enoch is an ancient Jewish book made of several parts. Its first part, the Book of the Watchers, was probably written by the third century BCE. It is part of the Bible only in the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox churches. Pieces of it in Aramaic were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and J. T. Milik published them in The Books of Enoch (1976).

1 Enoch 6 retells Genesis 6 in much more detail. It says two hundred Watchers, heavenly beings, came down in the days of Jared onto the top of Mount Hermon. There they bound themselves together with an oath. The text explains the mountain’s name from this oath, a play on the h-r-m root. In 1 Enoch 13, Enoch sits by the waters of Dan, near the foot of Hermon, when he receives a vision.

Scholars read this setting in different ways. George Nickelsburg, in his commentary 1 Enoch 1 (2001), studies the chapter line by line and its ties to the land around Hermon. Michael Heiser, in Reversing Hermon (2017), argued that Hermon became a symbol of the rebellion of Genesis 6 for ancient Jewish readers. Many scholars stress that 1 Enoch is a later retelling. It shows how Jews of that time read Genesis, not what Genesis first meant.

Bashan is the high, fertile land east and northeast of the Sea of Galilee. Today much of it lies in the Golan Heights and southern Syria. Its soil comes from old volcanic rock, which makes it good for grass and grain. In the Bible it is the kingdom of Og.

Joshua 12:4 describes Og as one of the remnant of the Rephaim, who lived at Ashtaroth and at Edrei. Verse 5 says he ruled in Mount Hermon, in Salcah and in all Bashan. Deuteronomy 3:13 goes further. It says all of Bashan was called the land of the Rephaim.

Israel’s victory over Og at Edrei is told in Numbers 21:33-35 and Deuteronomy 3:1-7. Later songs remember it. Psalm 135 and Psalm 136 both list Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan, among the kings God defeated. Some readers see this steady focus on Og as a clue that Bashan mattered to the writers for more than its farmland.

Recall Ugarit, the ancient city on the Syrian coast. Its clay tablets were found from 1929 on. One short tablet, catalogued by scholars as KTU 1.108, speaks of a figure called Rapiu, king of eternity. Scholars commonly translate a line that says this god dwells in Ashtaroth and rules, or judges, in Edrei.

Those are the very cities of Og in Joshua 12:4. The name Rapiu also comes from the same root as Rephaim. Other Ugaritic texts speak of the rpum as the honored dead, especially dead kings. So in Ugarit’s world, the area of Ashtaroth and Edrei was tied to the Rephaim and to the realm of the dead.

Heiser saw this as strong background for the Bible. In his reading, an Israelite writer who called Bashan the land of the Rephaim would have known this reputation. Bashan was, in the religious map of Israel’s neighbors, a kind of gateway to the underworld. Other scholars agree the match is striking. They are more cautious about how much Israel’s writers knew or meant by it.

Bashan’s rich pastures made it famous. Amos 4:1 speaks of the cows of Bashan. Ezekiel 39:18 mentions the fattened animals of Bashan. Isaiah 2:13 and Ezekiel 27:6 speak of its oaks. To biblical writers, Bashan meant strength, wealth and plenty.

Psalm 22 uses Bashan in a different way. The speaker is in deep trouble. In verse 12 he says that strong bulls of Bashan have surrounded him. The picture is of powerful enemies closing in. Many Christians read this psalm alongside the story of Jesus’s death, since Jesus speaks its first line in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34.

Some scholars add a note about language. In Ugaritic, the word for serpent is written btn, which is close to the Hebrew name Bashan. They suggest the name could make ancient readers think of a place of the serpent, which fit Bashan’s reputation. Other scholars note the sound link but think the name simply described the land, perhaps as a fertile plain. This kind of sound link is called wordplay.

Psalm 68 is a victory song. In verses 15 and 16 it turns to mountains. It calls the mountain of Bashan a mountain of God, a mountain of many peaks. Then it asks why the many-peaked mountains look with envy at the mountain God desired for his home.

The mountain God desired is Zion, the hill of Jerusalem where the temple stood. Zion is small. At about 2,500 feet it is far lower than Hermon at about 9,200 feet. Yet the psalm says God chose to live on the little hill, not the grand one. Many readers see this as a picture of God choosing the humble over the proud.

Some readers see more in it. The Hebrew word elohim can mean God or gods, so the phrase can be read as mountain of gods. On this reading, the peaks of Bashan, likely including Hermon, are the seat of rival powers, and the psalm pictures a contest between two holy mountains. Other readers take mountain of God as a Hebrew way of saying a very great mountain.

In 1 Samuel 26:19, David is on the run from King Saul. He complains that he has been driven out of the LORD’s inheritance, as if told to go and serve other gods. In 2 Kings 5:17, Naaman, an army commander from Aram, has met the prophet Elisha. Before going home, he asks for two mules’ loads of Israel’s soil, so he can worship Israel’s God on it.

Deuteronomy 32:8-9 may explain the pattern. The Masoretic Text says God divided the nations by the number of the sons of Israel. A Dead Sea Scroll from Qumran reads sons of God, and the Septuagint has angels of God. Many scholars, including Mark S. Smith in The Origins of Biblical Monotheism (2001), take the Qumran reading as older. In it, the nations are given to heavenly beings, and God keeps Israel as his own.

Heiser called this idea cosmic geography: land was also spiritual territory. In his reading, Bashan and Hermon sat at the edge of Israel’s land and were linked with the Rephaim, the dead and the Watchers. E. Theodore Mullen compared the Bible’s heavenly council with the council of the gods at Ugarit (1980). Other scholars see stories like Naaman’s as common ancient ideas about local gods, not a full system.

Deuteronomy 9:1-2 prepares Israel to cross the Jordan. It warns of great walled cities and a people tall like the Anakim. It quotes a saying: who can stand before the sons of Anak? Joshua 11:21-22 then reports that Joshua cut off the Anakim from the hill country. The giant clans are named at the start of the conquest and near its end.

The books use a strong word for this war: herem, the ban. It meant devoting a city and its people to God by destruction. Deuteronomy 2:34 and 3:6 use it for the cities of Sihon and Og, east of the Jordan. Joshua uses it for Jericho and other towns.

Heiser argued the ban was aimed especially at the places where the giant clans lived. In The Unseen Realm (2015), he read the conquest partly as a campaign. It was aimed at the peoples the writers tied to Genesis 6. He noticed that the same places come up again and again: Hebron, Gath and Bashan. Other scholars read the giant language as one theme among several, beside land, covenant loyalty and worship.

These texts are hard to read. Deuteronomy 2:34 says Israel devoted the towns of Sihon to destruction, men, women and children, leaving none. Joshua 6:21 says the same of Jericho. Many readers, religious and not, find these words deeply troubling. Honest study names that plainly.

The Bible itself adds details that complicate the picture. Rahab of Jericho and her family are spared and live on in Israel (Joshua 6:25). The Gibeonites make a treaty and are kept alive (Joshua 9). Genesis 15:16 says the land would be given only when the wrongdoing of the Amorites was complete. Some readers take that as a long delay before judgment.

Jewish readers have wrestled with these texts for centuries. An old tradition, found in the Jerusalem Talmud and in midrash, says Joshua first sent word offering peace or the chance to leave. The medieval teacher Maimonides wrote that those ancient nations no longer exist, so the command cannot apply to anyone today. Many Christian readers see the conquest as a one-time judgment in a unique moment. Others, like the early teacher Origen, read the battles as pictures of inner, spiritual struggles.

The giant-clan reading from the earlier lesson is one more attempt to explain why these texts single out certain peoples. Some readers find it helpful. Others say it still leaves the hardest question, the harm to families and children. Students can set these readings side by side and discuss them with care.

Around 840 BCE, King Mesha of Moab set up a stone to celebrate his victories. The Mesha Stele is now in the Louvre museum in Paris. It boasts that Israel had perished forever. Yet Israel did not perish. The claim is hyperbole, an overstatement meant to praise a king and his god. The stele even uses a word from the same root as herem.

Some scholars have compared Joshua with war reports from Assyria, Egypt and the Hittites. K. Lawson Younger did this in his 1990 study, Ancient Conquest Accounts. Such scholars found the same patterns: victories that sound total, repeated set phrases and huge numbers. On this reading, words like leaving none alive were a standard way to say a battle was won.

The Bible’s own pages give hints. Joshua 10:40 says Joshua left none remaining in the south. But Joshua 15:14 and Judges 1:10 say Hebron still had to be taken. Joshua 11:22 leaves Anakim in three cities. Readers who hold the hyperbole view point to such differences. The giant-clan reading uses the same verses about survivors, since they explain the giants of Gath.