I’m going to aim for 1,000 words per day on the blog for the next 30 days. No promises, but I’ll try. (I guess that’s a promise, LOL.)
The giants–the Nephilim, Anakim, and Rephaim–occupy a central role in the books of Moses. They show up again in 1 Samuel when David fights Goliath, and 2 Samuel describes the killing of other sons of Anak. I want to focus, though, on a well-documented side story of giants in Genesis through Deuteronomy. This may be the most interesting story thread in the Bible that will make no impact on your life. It’s just interesting, not practical in any way I know of.
They show up first in Genesis 6:4:
The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when God’s sons came in to men’s daughters and had children with them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
There’s a lot of dispute over who the Nephilim, and even “God’s sons” are, but I think the confusion will be erased by simply going on.
They come up again in Genesis 14:
In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him came and struck the Rephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzim in Ham, the Emim in Shaveh Kiriathaim, and the Horites in their Mount Seir, to El Paran, which is by the wilderness. They returned, and came to En Mishpat (also called Kadesh), and struck all the country of the Amalekites, and also the Amorites, that lived in Hazazon Tamar.
We will see shortly that the Rephaim and Emim are also giants, said to be so in Deuteronomy. This passage, though, does not center on the giants. Instead, these are the kings who captured Sodom and Abram’s nephew Lot. Abram went with 318 men, defeated the kings mentioned above, and rescued Lot.
Note: “318” is an interesting number. In Greek it is written with the letters tau, iota, and eta. Tau (Τ) looks like a cross, and iota and eta are the first two letters of Jesus’ name in Greek. The early Christians (Letter of Barnabas, Clement of Alexandria) say this number is a prophecy of Christ.
Later, Moses sends spies into the Promised Land to check out its fertility and inhabitants. Ten of the spies came back terrified, saying …
The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that eats up its inhabitants; and all the people who we saw in it are men of great stature. There we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim. We were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.” (Num. 13:32-33)
In this story, we find that the giants in the land of Canaan, to whom the spies seemed to be mere grasshoppers, were Nephilim, specifically the descendants of Anak. The descendants of Anak are also called the Anakim, and we will see them again as well. In fact, let’s leap to the most important chapters on the Nephilim, Anakim, and Rephaim, both in Deuteronomy:
Yahweh said to me [Moses], “Don’t bother Moab, neither contend with them in battle; for I will not give you any of his land for a possession, because I have given Ar to the children of Lot for a possession.” The Emim lived there before, a great and numerous people, and tall as the Anakim. These also are considered to be Rephaim, as the Anakim; but the Moabites call them Emim. The Horites also lived in Seir in the past, but the children of Esau succeeded them. They destroyed them from before them, and lived in their place, as Israel did to the land of his possession, which Yahweh gave to them. (Deut. 2:9-12)
The comments about the giants here are likely an insertion into Moses’ speech by another writer, probably a later editor. The version I read, the World English Bible (because it has no copyright), puts parentheses around the parts about the Rephaim, Anakim, and Emim. This editor clearly approved of the fact that the Moabites and Edomites (sons of Esau) destroyed the giants. You may remember that the Emim were mentioned in Genesis 14.
In the next chapter, Deuteronomy 3, we read:
We took all the cities of the plain, and all Gilead, and all Bashan, to Salecah and Edrei, cities of the kingdom of Og in Bashan. For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron. Isn’t it in Rabbah of the children of Ammon? Nine cubits was its length, and four cubits its width, after the cubit of a man. (Deut. 3:10-11)
I left out the parentheses in this passage as well because they clash with the parentheses I use for the reference. The WEB puts the description of Og as a remnant of the Rephaim in parentheses, along with the description of his 13 1/2 ft. by 6 ft. bed.
I’m not telling you to do anything with this. I am just trying to tell you that the Nephilim of Genesis 6:4 were definitely giants, which means that the sons of God who fathered children with the daughters of men were definitely heavenly beings, not descendants of Seth as some people teach.
Note: AFTER I wrote this, I ran it by ChatGPT. It told me that “definitely heavenly beings” is overstating my case. Yes, the Nephilim were definitely giants, but my case for their fathers being heavenly beings is more probably than definite. I don’t agree, but I am passing on the warning.
It’s worth paying attention to the fact that the parentheses in the WEB suggest to me that the translator thinks these are later edits. He’s not alone. A lot of scholars think they are later edits. Some suggest Joshua or even Ezra added them to supply context though, of course, we have no idea who might have edited them. You can read through the quotes above and see just how much the parts about the giants sound like later insertions.
The Sons of God and the Divine Council
I have to point out that “the sons of God” is not unique to Genesis 6:4 as applying to heavenly beings.
Now on the day when God’s sons came to present themselves before Yahweh, Satan also came among them. (Job 1:6)
Psalm 82:1 says that God presides in the great assembly, he judges among the gods. The late Dr. Michael Heiser spent a lot of time explaining this “divine council” in his lifetime. For my purposes, you need only to know that the “gods” that the true God was judging in this divine council were created, like Satan was. They are not real gods, but there is an argument from the Greek translation of Deuteronomy 32:8 that God assigned some of these lesser gods, also called the “sons of God” in Job 1:6, to rule nations. If this is true, then Psalm 82 describes God’s judgment on them for not taking care of the weak and needy in their nations.
ChatGPT says the argument that Deuteronomy 32:8 should be “sons of God” is stronger than I made it sound because the Dead Sea Scrolls have “sons of God” even in Hebrew. It gave me a TheTorah.com article that argues for “sons of God,” written by a Jewish professor.
By the way, these “gods” or “sons of God” that were given rule over the nations would be the principalities and powers that we read about in the New Testament. In fact, they are the “rulers of this age” who would not have crucified the Lord of glory if they had known what would happen to them.
They do appear one more time in 1 Kings 22 (and 2 Chronicles 18 repeats the story). It’s interesting, so I’ll post the passage here:
Micaiah said, “Therefore hear Yahweh’s word. I saw Yahweh sitting on his throne, and all the army of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left. Yahweh said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead?’ One said one thing, and another said another. A spirit came out and stood before Yahweh, and said, ‘I will entice him.’
Yahweh said to him, ‘How?’
He said, ‘I will go out and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’
He said, ‘You will entice him, and will also prevail. Go out and do so.’ Now therefore, behold, Yahweh has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; and Yahweh has spoken evil concerning you.” (1 Kings 22:19-23)
I don’t know how you’re going to apply all this, but I thought you would want to know. It will help you understand what you read in the Old Testament better. You might also want to know this.
The Book of Enoch
The Book of Enoch, loved by Christians and Eastern Mystics alike, is available wherever books are sold. You do need to know that no scholar anywhere believes Enoch, the pre-flood descendant of Adam, wrote it. The part most pertinent to this post, The Book of the Watchers was (most likely) written between 300 and 200 BC. It does describe things that are written in our Bibles because the Jews and Christians believed them.
For example, 1 Peter 3:19 says that Jesus preached to “spirits in prison” who were disobedient in the times of Noah. First Enoch tells us that the “Watchers” that came to earth and bore children with women were judged by God and bound in chains until the time of the judgment. Jude goes further and seems to quote 1 Enoch:
About these also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones, to execute judgment on all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” (Jude 1:14-15)
This is from 1 Enoch 1:9. There are plenty of disputes about why Jude quotes it and how it made it into our Bible. After reading the early church fathers through the AD 250s, it seemed clear to me that the early Christians were familiar with 1 Enoch, though the scholars you and I would trust would never include it in the “canon,” the official books of the Old or New Testaments.
ChatGPT pointed out that Tertullian, a Carthaginian lawyer writing around AD 200-220, argues for the authority of 1 Enoch in “On the Apparel of Women,” ch. 1, par. 3. It also points out that the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Churches have 1 Enoch in their canon. Here’s a video of Dr. Wes Huff explaining Enoch.
There are some commentaries on those verses at biblehub.com. You can also try asking an AI, but make sure you ask the AI to give you scholarly sources. All sorts of people have made videos on the Book of Enoch, but it’s best to get your information from sane sources. Dr. Heiser has an hour-long video on the Book of Enoch that will give you the facts as well as the theories.
Tomorrow, it seems, we should talk about the origin of demons!
