Giants
When I was a child
of six or seven, reading Genesis for the first time, I came to chapter six and
found the word “giants” for the first time. At that tender, innocent age, I
accepted that the Bible was true, so there was no problem in my mind with the
word. It said what it meant, and it meant what it said.
However, when I was
in my teens I came across some comments by a theologian, which reduced the
whole meaning of the word “giants” down to “Men who were very bad”. Suddenly I
had a choice between reading some hidden meaning into what the Bible said, or
accepting it at face value.
Since that time I
have discovered that there are two well-defined groups – those who say the
giants were really giants, and those who say they were just ordinary people
only very wicked. It seems to me that either God says what He means, or perhaps
He deliberately writes in an ambiguous way because He likes to start
controversies! Obviously the second choice cannot be true because it is out of
character for God to do such a thing, so what are we to think about these
“giants”?
Gen.6:4 “There
were giants on the earth in those days . . .” “giants” = Heb. “nephilim”.
This word comes from another word meaning “to fall”. These giants were fallen
ones, or mighty ones who had fallen. They were, apparently, of great size and
also very wicked. They might be called superhuman. They were abnormal humans,
and their destruction was essential in order to preserve the human race.
Gen. 6: 4 gives the
origin of these giants. “The sons of God came in the daughters of men, and
they bore children to them”. In other words, humans and angels interbred.
The main objection to this is the biological one. How can human and angelic DNA
combine? Surely the two are different species? The offspring, if offspring was
at all possible, should have been sterile? But this objection is based on the
assumption that DNA was involved from both sides. Other assumptions are also
included as the human mind tries to assimilate a miraculous event and explain
it in literal, earthly terms. (Without wanting to degrade the incarnation, was
that not also a sort of combining of God with Man in a human woman’s womb?”)
Another explanation
is often brought in here. The “sons of God” it is said, were actually a line of
humans directly linked to Adam’s chosen lineage which would eventually come
through to Mary the mother of Jesus. But this explanation misses the meaning of
the expression “sons of God” which means “sons of El” – the angelic beings. It
is not correct to call one line of humans “sons of God” and another line
“children of men” because even Gentiles are able to be saved through faith,
which would make nonsense of the expression if even a single Gentile was
included in the “sons of God line” i.e. Ruth and Rahab.
“Sons of God” =
angels. See Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7.
The flood, we are told, was brought in “upon
the ungodly” (2Pet.2:5), something which Jude also predicted (Jude 14) and a
good reason for that Flood would be the removal of these ‘nephilim’, who were a
threat to the human race. Sadly, of course, the human race was also so
corrupted it had to be destroyed too, but at least the ‘nephilim’ were gone.
But when we come to
Numbers 13:33 we find that the ‘nephilim’ are in the story again. How did they
get there? Gen. 6:4 tells us “There were giants in the earth in those days
(before the flood) and also after that . . .( that is, after the flood). It
seems clear that after the Flood there was a second irruption of angels
interbreeding with humans, only this time they were fewer in number (perhaps
because of the consequences of their first attempt) and their area of
contamination was limited to the land of
Palestine. Apparently these giants were already occupying the land before
The giants had many
large families, and soon the nations known as the Canaanites were a
cross-section of humans and hybrids, all pagan and antagonistic to the
Israelites. Satan’s plan, of course, was to destroy
In Gen. 14:5 a
number of nephilim families are mentioned. They are called “Rephaim” and
“Zuzims” and “Emims”. They were well established in Ashteroth and Shaveh
Kiriathaim. As Gen.12:6 says “the Canaanite was then (i.e. “already”) in the
land”. By itself this verse only implies that there were nephilim in the land
when Abraham arrived from
In Gen.15:18-21 the
Canaanite nations are named. At this time the nephilim were mixed in amongst
them. For further information, see Gen.15:18-21, and Ex.3:8, 17, 23:23, and
Deut. 20:17 and Josh.12:8.
God said the
Canaanites were to be “cut off” which means “utterly destroyed’ – Deut.20:7,
Josh 3:10. But Israel failed to obey this command fully – Josh.13:13, 15:63,
16:10, 17:18, Judg.1:19-36, 2:1-5, 3:1-7, and many nephilim were scattered into
the countries around Palestine. It is highly likely that the stories about
these giants filtered down through myths and legends, and soon became the Greek
gods and other deities. There are several reasons why this is likely: 1. Most
ancient pagan stories have a mixture of immoral and immoral heroes, 2. The
supernatural is frequently involved, 3. Many of the stories are
phantasmagorical. The many stories also pose the question as to where they came
from – are they purely the result of unaided imagination, or is there some
substance to them?
Another names for
these giants was the Anakim. The
Anakim – Num.13:23. They were descended from Anak, who was the son of Arba, one
of the “sons of Heth” – Gen.23:3, who, seven years before the building of Zoar
in
So, rather than
building a case out of almost nothing, we have a great deal of information
about these nephilim – their names, their cities, and where they lived. From
these facts were may conjecture that since these nephilim were larger than the
average human, they might need larger buildings to live in, which might explain
why many of the ruins of the ‘ancient world’ are made from such large blocks of
stone. Perhaps, too, the technology which was used in those days was based on
‘giant’s’ intellects, and used larger workers who could haul and lift stones
with greater strength?
The Anakim
were great, and many, and tall, but they were not invulnerable. They were
actually driven out of their land by the Moabites (Deut.2:10-12) but it was a
common saying, or proverb “Who can stand before the sons of Anakim?” –
Deut.9:2. Yet Joshua, powered by God, was able to cut them down, from the
mountains and wherever he found them – Josh.11:21, 22. These giants had great and fenced cities, the
chief of which was
Just in passing it
is interesting to notice how few if any Bible picture books
illustrate these events with the inclusion of the giants. Once again the
artists have done the Church and public a grave disservice by omitting the
truth.
The Rephaim
(Gen.14:5, 15:20) were also called the Zamzummims, the Zuzim, the Emim and the
Anakim.
Zamzummim
means “powerful” or “vigorous” (Deut.2:20).
Emim means
“the terrible”. Being a race of gigantic stature, they originally lived on the
east of the
Horim means
“troglodyte”, or “cave-dweller”. These were the original, or first inhabitants
of Mt.Seir, probably related to the Emim and Rephaim. Their excavated dwellings
are still found in their hundreds in the sandstone cliffs and mountains of
All the above
nephilim, here listed, were well known during the times when they lived, and
the name Rephaim is often mentioned in Scripture. Unfortunately, because the
translators had a problem with “giants” they variously translated the word as
“dead”, “deceased” or, correctly as “giants”. One needs to examine the text
carefully to find the original Hebrew, in order to gain the correct reading,
sometimes.
The Rephaim have no
resurrection – Is.26:5, Ps.88:10, Prov.2:18, 9:18, 21:16, Is.14:8, 26:19. The
name is rendered “deceased” in Is.26:14. In other places it is rendered
“Rephaim” – gen.14:5, 15:20, Josh.12:15 (sometimes mentioned in the margin),
2Sam.5:18,22, 1Chron.11:15, 14:9, 20:4 (sometimes in margin), and Is.17:5.
The same word is
rendered “giants” in Gen.6:4, Num.23:33 and Job 16:14, where the Hebrew word is
‘gibor’, or ‘geber’, which denotes a specific type of man. See also Ex.10:11,
12:37 and 1Sam.16:18
Goliath
Goliath (1Sam.17:4)
was undoubtedly a giant, and not simply a larger-than-average man. His size and
height have often been played down because of a disbelief in what the Bible
says. He was called a Philistine, but was probably descended from one of the
scattered nephilim who were dispersed by the Ammonites. (Deut.2:20,21 and
2Sam21:22). By all estimates he was over nine feet tall. There have been
skeletons found in
Other individual
giants are mentioned too – 2Sam. 21:16-22.
“The persistence of
a giant race” writes Unger, “persisted in the ancient
W.F. Albright wrote
“Yahweh (Jehovah) was believed to have created astral as well as terrestrial
beings, and the former were popularly called “the host of heaven”, or “the sons
of God” . . . the (astral) gods had intercourse with mortal women who gave
birth to heroes (literally meteors, or in Hebrew ‘nephilim’), an idea that may
often be illustrated by Babylonian and Greek mythology. But the Israelite who
had this section recited, unquestionably thought of intercourse between
angels and women”. (‘From Stone Age to Christianity’ published 1940, page 226)
The two
irruptions.
The Bible makes it
clear that there were two irruptions of angels. The first occurred before the
Great Flood and the second came after it. In both cases it seems to have been
an attempt by Satan to either destroy Mankind, or to interbreed and thus usurp
his place on Earth. If, for example, Satan had managed to pollute the chosen
line, God would have had a big problem choosing it for the Messiah, and what a
mess it would have made of the whole principle of redemption! Satan’s ‘spanner
in the works’ would have ruined everything.
The strength of the
nephilim is seen today in the ruins of the cities they built. For example the
“giant cities of
Deut. 3:11 “For
only Og king of
How large was it? A
cubit is about 18”, taken from the elbow to the end of the longest finger. Nine
times 18” equals 162 inches, or more than 13 feet.
There are several
theories as to why angels no longer try to co-habit with humans. One theory is
that the angels who attempted it first were wiped out by water, and the last
few who tried were destroyed by
A second theory
suggests that instead of interbreeding, the angels sometimes try something
similar – possession. Instead of producing hybrid offspring, they simply occupy
a human body and manipulate it as they will.