No, that’s not a football cheer.
So many people are caught up in so many lies today. One of them is that there were GIANTS in the land of Israel when Moses sent Joshua and Caleb and 10 other spies into the land.
There. Were. No. Giants. There!!!!
It was a LIE.
And the Scriptures tell us it was a lie.
Here is the return of the 12, and here are the things they said which were true:
“But the people that dwell in the land are fierce, and the cities are fortified, and very great; and moreover, we saw the children of Anak there. Amalek dwells in the land of the South; and the Khiti, and the Yevusi, and the Amori dwell in the mountains; and the Kena’ani dwells by the sea, and along by the side of the Yarden.”
All of those things were true. There really were tribes of people by those names in those places. None of whom were “giants,” by the way, though the children of Anak were indeed of greater stature, much like groups of people today can be taller than their neighbors.
Next, we see Caleb giving his TRUE report, which was UNACCEPTED by the people of Israel:
Numbers 13:30
“And Kalev stilled the people toward Moshe, and said, “We should go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.”
Simple. True.
And here is what the other ten men’s response was:
13:32
“But the men that went up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.” And they spread an evil report of the land which they had spied out unto B’nei Yisra’el, saying, “The land, through which we have passed to spy it out, is a land that eats up the inhabitants thereof; [the land was in fact very ‘friendly’ to people, offering up bounty] and all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature. [No, only those of Anak were taller] And there we saw the Nefilim, the sons of Anak, who come from the Nefilim; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.”
None of the false report was true! Not one shred of it, except that Anak were generally taller. But, they were not ‘giants’. Today, people in the Netherlands are taller on average than any other country, but they are not giants. Julius Caesar reported that the Germanic tribes were very tall. But they were not giants. What the reader cannot forget is that these ten men were speaking first in hyperbole, out of fear, and then outright lying! The Anakim were NOT the ‘sons of the Nefilim’. The Nefilim PERISHED IN THE FLOOD. Not one person of the Nefilim, whatever one believes them to be, transitioned through the flood! Only Noakh, Shem, Kham, and Yafet and each of their wives, eight people in all, crossed through the flood! The Torah implies that, without stating the count outrightly, but the Renewed Covenant scriptures give us the actual count:
1 Peter 3:20
“… in the days of No’akh, when Ru’akh HaElohim had patience, He commanded an ark to be made in the hope of their repentance, but only eight souls entered into it, and were saved by its floating upon the water.
Anak was not a giant. Neither were his children. Anak simply means “long necked”; perhaps they were taller than the average Israeli, and yes, they were fierce, but they were not ‘giant’. And, there were ONLY THREE OF THEM.
Anak only appears in Numbers 13 in the false report, and in Joshua 15, and in 21, and Judges 1, in describing who is inheriting what portions of the Holy Land.
Numbers 15: 13-14
“And unto Kalev Ben Yefuneh he gave a portion among the children of Yehudah, according to the commandment of יהוה to Yehoshua, even Kiriyat [City Of] Arba, which Arba was the father of Anak, the same is Khevron. And Kalev drove out there the three sons of Anak, Sheshai, and Akhiman, and Talmai, the children of Anak. [Also seen in Judges 1]
There were only THREE MEN who could truly be called “Anakim”. And they were not ‘demi gods’. They were conquerable by average people, since Caleb drove them out BY HIMSELF.
It never ceases to amaze me that otherwise educated people can do such poor reading of Scriptures.
They do so, because they WANT to believe a fantasy. They need to believe in the mythology of man. And today, they are using this same myth for the same purpose: to instill fear and doubt in people. And The Adversary is using it to distort the simple truth of The Word of God, and twist the meaning of it, to divert attention away from SALVATION from SIN.
So, lets talk about the Nefilim, now. The Nefilim, as I said, did exist, but only pre-flood. And Arba was not their son. Arba was a son of CANAAN! That is the WHOLE REASON the land of the time was called “Canaan”, because all of the people in it descended from Canaan, Noah’s GRANDSON. Canaan was not a son of the Nefilim!
So, who were the Nefilim?
First, the word “Nefilim” simply means “fallen ones”; it is not a name of a supernatural mixed race. Before we address who they were, lets establish whether or not an angel can breed with a human, because that is what many people think the Nefilim were: a mixed race of angelic beings with human beings. This is just Greek mythology reborn, and perverting the interpretation of Scripture.
Yeshua is my Rabbi. He answers all doctrinal disputes for me. If He doesn’t address it, it’s not worth squabbling over. But, thankfully, He does address the ridiculous notion of angels breeding with humans, albeit He does so somewhat indirectly.
He is speaking about marriage of men and women after the resurrection, and he states that men and women will not do so after the resurrection, but will be like the Messengers [Angels], who DO NOT MARRY. Angelic messengers, every last one, are masculine, but neuter: asexual. God did not give them reproductive ability like He did mankind.
Mat 22:30
“For at the resurrection of the dead, they neither marry women, nor are women given to men in marriage, but they are like the Malakhim of Elohim [Messengers of God] in Heaven.
Mark 12: 25
Yeshua said to them, “Is it not that you err because you do not understand the scriptures nor the power of Elohim? For when they rise from the dead, men neither marry women, nor are women given in marriage to men; but they are like the Malakhim in heaven.
But, even if they could marry, which they cannot, and do not, according to Yeshua, they would not be able to marry men and women:
1 Cor 15:39
All flesh is not the same flesh; but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of birds, and another of fish. There are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial [earthly]; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body [to become like ‘angels’, messengers]. There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, “The first man Adam was made a living neshama;” the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. But, that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.
So, Paul is supporting the notion that our bodies are different than those of messengers. And Yeshua tells us they do not marry, and thus they do not procreate.
So, who or what are the Nefilim?
Fallen men.
Nefilim comes from the Hebrew word “nafal”, which means ‘to fall’.
Gen 6:4
“The fallen ones were in the earth in those days, and and as such, afterward, the sons of the powerful came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.”
In other translations, the first sentence reads, “ and the giants were in the earth…”. And few people dare to remember that this is a translation of the Hebrew, and that translations are all subject to the error or the nefarious desire of the men who translate. The word there is, again, ‘nefilim’, which is from the root word, נָפַל , and is best rendered there, if anything other than fallen, as a ‘bully’ or a ‘tyrant’. They were what most of the ‘ruling class’ is today, and always has been. But, they were not giants, neither were they the sons of angels.
Yes, in previous verses, Moshe did write: “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of the powerful saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took women unto themselves, whoever they chose.”
People take those verses and augment their idea that the Nefilim were giants, because this says “sons of God,” which is used in a couple of other places to talk about angels, so they think angels bred with men; but, Yeshua and Paul tell us they cannot; yet people insist they are wrong. Yeshua also points out that God calls us “gods”, [John 10:34, Ps 82:6] but that does not make us supernatural beings! This is simply human nature going awry, and men of power making subjects out of other men! And Yeshua proves it did not mean that demons were breeding with humans in another place:
Mat 24:37
“Just as in the days of No’akh, so will be the coming of Ben HaAdam [The Son of Man]. For as the people before the flood were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day No’akh entered into the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and carried them all away, such will be the coming of Ben HaAdam.”
That is what Genesis 6 is describing, indiscriminate sex among men and women! And that is how mankind is again today. It simply means that they do not care who they sleep with or ‘how many wives/husbands’ they end up having in a lifetime. There certainly are no ‘giant’ or supernatural demigods running around!
Other places in Scriptures that some give to say there were ‘giants’ in the land is Og of Bashan, and Goliath. We will deal with Og first.
The scriptures never describe Og as a large man, or a giant. The only things the scriptures say about Og is that he was the king of Bashan, a territory on the east side of the Jordan river, and that he was defeated by Israel at Edrei. This is told in Numbers 21, and again in Deuteronomy 1, and in Deuteronomy 3. The Scriptures also say that his land was given to one of the three tribes of Israel that stayed on the east side of the river, in Numbers 32:33. But, it is in Deuteronomy 3 where people commit eisegesis and write into the scriptures what is not there:
3:11
“For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the Refayim; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabah of the children of Amon? Nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man.”
All the places in the book of Joshua that say in most translations “giants” in chapters 12-18 is the word “refayim”.
People read these verses and assume a couple of things: that the Refayim are also somehow magically descended from the Nefilim. They do so, because translations put tradition in their rendering, committing eisegesis and writing into the Scriptures what is not there, when the word is simply “Refayim”, and NOT ‘giants’. “Refayim” simply means only that they were descended from Rafa, a healer, or that they themselves were healers. These are the people that were easily defeated in Avraham’s day by Kedorla’omer, another Canaanite king, who is not touted as a giant. [Genesis 14]. And in all of Avraham’s travels 400 years before the Israelites wandered in the desert and sent in the spies, not once did Avraham encounter or fear any giants, though ALL of the people the Israelites met were there in Avraham’s day! It is insanity to think otherwise.
The fact that Og, a king, had an iron bed that was about 12 feet by 6 feet does not mean that he himself was a giant. It was effectively and quite literally a “king sized bed”. It was likely used for orgies. The Word does not say that he ‘needed’ a king sized bed. I had a friend in the Navy who was all of about 5’8” tall, but he had a “California King” sized bed. Just because he slept in it did not mean that he was seven feet tall. To say that Og was a giant is an egregious violation of scripture. It puts in the text what is not there, as his stature was not even mentioned in the text.
Now, to Goliath. There is no doubt that Goliath was about 9 feet tall. Even that is not a giant. We have people on record today who are nearly that tall. We do not consider them “giants”, Robert Wadlow was about as tall as Goliath, but no one considered him a giant, but an anomaly. Someone different. And, he did not create his own new race of giants. There are people scattered around the globe today who are nearly as tall. They are not giants.
Some biblical truths about Goliath: he did not belong to any of the tribes above: “Nefilim”, “Anakim”, “Refayim”; in fact, he was not even a Canaanite. He was a “Philistine”, an ‘Invader’ that lived on the sea coast near Gaza. If anyone in the scriptures ‘could’ be called a ‘giant’, he could, but he wasn’t! It simply said that he was roughly 9 feet tall [six cubits and a span]. [1st Samuel 17:4] It only calls him a “champion”, which was simply a ‘chosen man’ to do the fighting; guess why. There is no other description of Goliath, and no indication that he was special other than his extraordinary height.
The simple truth is that people want the mythical. Believers are fickle: they will not believe that Yeshua is the Son of God, but they will believe there were races of giants roaming the earth, without a shred of real evidence, and by a gross misreading and misinterpretation of the Scriptures.
It is a sad commentary on the people of God that go around spouting nonsense. There were no giants. It was a lie then, and it is a lie now. This all falls under the admonition of Paul when he warned Timothy to guard against such nonsense in his congregation:
1 Tim 4:6
“If you teach these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Yeshua HaMashi’akh, brought up by the Words of the Faith, and in the good doctrine which you have been taught. Refuse foolish and old wives’ fables, and train yourself in tzedaka. For physical training profits only for a little while; but tzedaka is profitable in all things, having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.
People today are so preoccupied with miracles and myths that they neglect training themselves truly in the Scriptures and in righteous living. The people who tried to discuss these things with me so misquoted and misrepresented scripture it was laughable.
“Ever learning, but never coming to the knowledge of the truth…”