Zachary Garris founded a site called Knowing Scripture from which I will be reviewing the article Giants in the Land: A Biblical Theology of the Nephilim, Anakim, Rephaim (and Goliath). Garris is a pastor who holds a Master of Divinity from Reformed Theological Seminary (Jackson, Mississippi) and a Juris Doctor from Wayne State University Law School.
I previously posted My review of Zachary Garris’ review of Douglas Van Dorn’s book “Giants Sons of the Gods”.
Since Garris begins by noting, “Christians, including many pastors and scholars, tend to gloss over the references to giants in the Bible” we will have to see if he tells us to whom or what he is referring since giants is a vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word.
Well, he wrote, “The first mention of giants in the Bible is the Nephilim in Genesis 6:1-4” but that was just after, “Israel initially refused to enter the land because of giants” so that will be a gigantic problem since he will have to elucidate just how it is that they, contextually specifically Nephilim, made it past the flood, past God.
He begins to elucidate section, “The Sons of God and Giant Nephilim (Genesis 6:1-4)” (incidentally, biblically contextually, “Giant Nephilim” means, “Nephilim Nephilim”) by noting, “‘sons of God’ were spirit beings…spirit beings/angels (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7)” but there is no indication that Angels are spirits—and, incidentally, appealing to one wrongly translated English word will not change that. Angels are always described as looking like human males, performing physical actions, and without indication that such isn’t their ontology. See my book, What Does the Bible Say About Angels? A Styled Angelology.
I do agree that they were Angels and, in fact, the original, traditional, and majority view among the earliest Jewish and Christians commentators, starting in BC days, was the Angel view as I proved in my book, On the Genesis 6 Affair’s Sons of God: Angels or Not?: A Survey of Early Jewish and Christian Commentaries Including Notes on Giants and the Nephilim.
Ergo, I agree with Zachary Garris that the view that, “the mixing of the lines of Seth and Cain assumes that everyone in Seth’s line was godly and everyone in Cain’s line was wicked…is not something the text ever claims.” In fact, the Sethite view is a late-comer of a view based on myth and prejudice which only creates more problems than it solves (so, more than zero).
Having referred to Nephilim as giants, he then notes, “Genesis 6:4 never explicitly calls the Nephilim ‘giants.’” Yet, that is linguistically confusing since why would a Hebrew text refer to Nephilim by an English word that did not yet exist and biblically contextually, that means, “never explicitly calls the Nephilim ‘Nephilim’” so something is afoot—a big-foot?
So, we now come right down to it since Zachary Garris continues directly with:
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.
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”).[1]
(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.[2])
Notes:
[1] The Septuagint also translates גִּבֹּרִ֛ים (gibborim) as γίγαντες (gigantes, “giants) in Ezekiel 32:21, 27, a passage that may describe giants and their place in Sheol after death. Nimrod was a גִּבֹּ֖ר (gibbor), which the Septuagint also translates as γίγας (“giant”) in Genesis 10:8-9.
[2] Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm, 107.
So, by giants he actually means something uselessly generic about subjectively unusual height. This means that his usage does not agree with the usage of English Bibles wherein giants merely renders (does not even translate) Nephilim in 2 verses or Repha/im in 98% of all others and so never even hints at anything to do with any sort of height whatsoever.
Thus, the misuse of that word will haunt Garris’ entire article.
Perhaps, “Nephilim have often been considered” subjectively unusually tall, “because of the description of the” subjectively unusually tall personages, “in the land as those who come from the Nephilim in Numbers 13:32-33.” Yet, who described anyone as such? Well, that is based on one single sentence from an evil report by ten unreliable guys whom God rebuked. Since theirs is the only physical description we have of Nephilim then we have no reliable physical description of them and so their size is a non-issue.
You see, by, “the description” Garris was referring to the Num 13:32-33 evil report and that anyone post-flood was or, “come from the Nephilim” is just part of that tall-tale. Any such concept implies that God failed, that He missed a loophole, that the flood was much of a waste, etc., etc., etc., see my post Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal.
He missed something regarding how, “the Septuagint translates” or, renders actually, since it is Nephilim and gibborim but also Repha/im: and rendering three very different words with very different morphologies and very different meaning all by only one word was a terrible idea, see my linguistics book Bible Encyclopedias and Dictionaries on Angels, Demons, Nephilim, and Giants: From 1851 to 2010.
It is also not accurate to assert, “γίγαντες (gigantes, ‘giants’” since it means earth-born. Eze 32:21, 27 is just using the general descriptive term gibbor/might/mighty and the root naphal/fall/fallen, etc. Thus, “giants and their place…Nimrod was a גִּבֹּ֖ר (gibbor)…γίγας (‘giant’)” is misleading and based on his mistaken views of what the English and Hebrew and Greek mean: gigas or gigantes refers to a Greek false Earth goddess—with earth-born implying born of Gaia/Gaea—and not anything about any sort of height at all.
As for, “It may be that the Septuagint translated Nephilim as ‘giants’” well, it did not since giants is an English word, not a Greek one. But sure, it may be due to playing off of or erroneously accepting the fallacious, “account in Numbers 13.”
As for, “naphiyla for giant” well, that is when it becomes a battle of the experts since Dr. Heiser claimed that naphiyla means giant but the J. Edward Wright Endowed Professor of Judaic Studies (who is J. Edward Wright, Ph.D. himself, and who is the Director of the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Arizona) notes, “The term traditionally translated as ‘giants’ in both the Greek Septuagint (γιγαντες) and now in English is נפילים nephilim, a term based on the root נפל npl meaning ‘fall.’ It has nothing to do with size” and specifies that this goes for both Hebrew and Aramaic as “The root npl in Aramaic also means fall and not giants.”[1]
Yet, even a battle of the experts may be much ado about not very much since when Heiser claims it means giant the logical question is to ask him, “What does giants mean?” Fortunately, he answered that for us, “I don’t think the biblical giants were taller than unusually tall people of modern times (between 7-9 feet).”[2]
At least Garris goes on to qualify that, “Whether descendants of the Nephilim were actually in the land of Canaan is uncertain, as the Israelite spies may have been exaggerating their account” about which I will say that it is quite certain since God didn’t fail, didn’t miss a loophole, the flood wasn’t much of a waste, etc., etc., etc. and it was more than an exaggeration, it was a straight up tall-tale that contradicted Moses, Caleb, Joshua, God, and the whole rest of the entire Bible.
Yet, he also wrote, “However, exaggeration is unlikely because Genesis 6:4 says the Nephilim were on the earth ‘in those days, and also afterward’ and the link between the Anakim and Nephilim in Numbers 13:33 seems to be an editorial comment (possibly referring back to Numbers 6:4). At minimum, the claim in Numbers 13:33 shows that the Israelites were aware that the Nephilim of old had a reputation of being giants.”
Note the missing piece of his assertion: he told us, “in those days, and also afterward” but did not get around to the key point, afterwards of when? Surely, he implies the flood but the flood is not even mentioned until a full 13 verses later—so he is cheating by reading ahead and then looping back—and the verse tells us exactly to what days it is referring.
It also cannot mean anything about the flood since the only post-flood reference to Nephilim is from the evil report.
Gen 6:4 states, “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.”
The question becomes: when were those days?
Well, Gen 6:1 told us, “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.”
The next question becomes: when was afterward?
Since it was after those days then it was simply after, “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them…”
Thus, the began doing it then and they continued to do it but that’s all pre-flood.
As for, “the link between the Anakim and Nephilim” that is not only also from the evil report but only from non-LXX versions of that report since the LXX lacks any mention of Anakim there—and, it is also logically, bio-logically, and theo-logically impossible.
So, “At minimum, the claim in Numbers 13:33 shows that the Israelites were” told a tall-tale which continued or began de novo, a mere story, “that the Nephilim of old had a reputation of being giants”—keeping in mind that Garris is misusing that word.
He then wrote:
In the context of Genesis 6, God sent the flood to wipe out violent humans, including the Nephilim, seen in the language of “all flesh” (Genesis 6:12-13). God continued the human race through Noah, a new Adam, who was not tainted by Nephilim blood. Noah’s direct lineage is given all the way back to Adam (Genesis 5:1-32), and he is said to be “blameless in his generations” (Genesis 6:9), possibly referring to his pure line—notice the plural “generations” (דֹֽרֹתָ֑יו). In spite of the flood, giants eventually made a comeback and dwelt in the land of Canaan.
This is what I meant about God not failing, not missing a loophole, the flood not being much of a waste, etc. since, “God sent the flood to wipe out violent humans, including the Nephilim” and if, “God sent the flood to wipe out violent humans, including the Nephilim” then Nephilim did not make it past the flood in any way, shape, or form.
Yet, consider the utter damage that post-flood Nephilology (literally one single unreliable sentence) does to Garris’ theology proper since despite what he just affirmed about God’s intent and actions, “In spite of the flood” in spite of God Himself, “giants eventually made a comeback” so his concept of the flood was much of a waste and God must have missed a loophole that I hope Garris will elucidate—it will have to be an un-biblical made up one, by definition, but we should be told what it is nevertheless.
The subjection, “Nephilim and Anakim in the Land of Canaan (Numbers 13:21-33)” is much the same since there is literally nothing more to which he can appeal for post-flood Nephilim nor any (non-LXX) correlation to Anakim.
No wonder then that Zachary Garris notes, “Numbers 13 is the key passage on giants in the land of Canaan” since it is the only one: yet, keep in mind that by, “giants in the land” he actually means subjectively unusually tall personages in the land which is slippery enough to be meaninglessly useless—actually it is useful since it allows for making many assertions about giants since the (faulty) premise is that virtually anyone who is subjectively unusually tall is a Nephil (or at least hints that they are or might be).
Garris specifies, “Moses sent 12 Israelite spies…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…God even killed the 10 unfaithful spies.” Yet, he noted, “The spies lacked faith” and then, “what concerns us here is…Was their report accurate? If so, this would help explain why the spies were so fearful.” Yet, it is a combination. The original, reliable, report in Num 13 noted, “the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large…we saw the descendants of Anak…Amalekites…Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites…And the Canaanites.”
Thus, the unfaithful, disloyal, unreliable guys were clearly intimidated since as itinerate tent dwellers they were faced with confronting six strong people groups living in fortified and very large cities. This then led to them making up a fear-mongering, scare-tactic, “Don’t go in the woods…” style tall-tale. As Garris noted, “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.”
Oddly, Garris notes, “this exaggeration must be limited. This is because Moses confirms the spies’ account in Deuteronomy 9:1-2, where he says that Israel would cross the Jordan to ‘dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, cities great and fortified up to heaven, a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you have heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the sons of Anak?’ (cf. Deuteronomy 1:28; 2:10). The people in the land, particularly the Anakim, were in fact tall and mighty.”
Well, sure they were subjectively tall (meaning taller than the average Israelite male who was 5.0-5.3ft in those days) but he seems to have missed the key data point: Moses did not say one single word about Nephilim nor that Anakim were related to them when he related the Num 13 events. Moses was too practical, he was concerned about the real dangers on the ground such as the notorious Anakim and not some fantasy tall-tale about Nephilim.
But note what I noted, the (faulty) premise is that virtually anyone who is subjectively unusually tall is a Nephil (or at least hints that they are or might be). and Garris did just that, “The people in the land, particularly the Anakim, were in fact tall…”
As for the Anakim, he rightly notes, “They were descendants of a man name Anak” who was Arba’s son and there is zero indication Arba or Anak or anyone before Arba was related to Nephilim.
Garris has to admit, “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)”: literally all post-flood Nephilology is based on one single sentence from the evil report.
Yet, he does on to argue, “three reasons for believing the statement in Numbers 13:33 is correct”:
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.
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.
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 (see below).
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. Thus there are two likely explanations: (1) The same event transpired later in history, as spirit beings again bred with women and produced more Nephilim; (2) 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.
I am unsure why he reiterated so much but let us review the parts we have not had to repeat too many times as of yet.
That “The ‘afterward’ is presumably after the flood” is just a presumption and a fallacious one and Num 13:33 is not the only explanation for the comment in Gen 6:4 since Gen 6:4, not just a fragment of it, is the only explanation—that plus theology proper.
Keep in mind that it was not generically, “The spies’…the spies’” but the ten unreliable ones who God rebuked—to death.
Do you see how Num 13:33 becomes a worldview-philosophy-hermeneutic? First, for some (literally God forsaken) reason, someone believes it and then they run around the Bible picking and choosing single verses or fragments of verses to misread, misinterpret, misunderstand, and misapply in order to conform it to the evil report. Garris did this with Gen 6:4 and now since, again, anyone who is subjectively unusually tall is a Nephil (or at least hints that they are or might be), so then, “Anakim and the Nephilim in Numbers 13:33 is the only apparent explanation as to why some of the Canaanites were so tall” and yet, what makes him merely assert that Nephilim were even just subjectively unusually tall? You guess it: the evil report—and the evil report plus his misuse of the word giants making him think that Gen 6:4 was saying something about the Nephilim’s height when it was not.
See, it all begins and ends with the evil report and asserting that giants in Gen 6:4 refers to height is not only linguistically unsupportable but is a word-concept fallacy.
There is literally zero indication of, “The same event transpired later in history” and that too implies that God failed to account for that loophole. There is literally zero indication of, “Nephilim genes were passed down through Noah’s daughters-in-law” and that too implies that God failed to account for that loophole.
See, he was forced to make up un-biblical stuff and the only thing it accomplished is to support an evil report by guys whom God rebuked and damaged theology proper—what a tragically high price to pay.
Now, he wrote, “connection between Anakim and the Nephilim in Numbers 13:33” exclusively, of course, “why some of the Canaanites were so tall…Og’s bed and Goliath’s height” but continued with a section titled with, “…Og of Bashan, One of the Last Rephaim”: indeed, he was a Repha, not a Nephil so then what happened to Garri’s theory?
I will re-write what he next wrote as per his misuse of the term giants, “Israel was afraid of the merely subjectively unusually tall people in the land of Canaan, and it would have to be a later generation that dealt with the merely subjectively unusually tall people under Joshua’s leadership. However, Israel still had to deal with a merely subjectively unusually tall person 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.” See, it is not so exciting when you keep in mind what he is actually saying.
Yet, the oddest thing about it is that he appeals to a man for whom we do not have a physical description, so this is an argument from silence and piling tall-tales atop tall-tales. The best, the only, thing that Garris can offer is to write, “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)…Seeing that a cubit was about 18 inches, Og’s bed was about 13 feet 6 inches long. This suggests he was a giant.”
Well, it only suggests that if you are unfamiliar with the relevant data, base that on various mere assumptions, and are desperate to find giants. I know because I wrote the book The King, Og of Bashan, is Dead: The Man, the Myth, the Legend—of a Nephilim Giant? As it turns out, his bed was a ritual object, not something on which he slept.
Recall what I noted in that, “He missed something regarding how, ‘the Septuagint translates’…but also Rephaim” well, in this case he got around to noting, “Og was of the remnant of the Rephaim, which the LXX interestingly translates as ‘giants’ (γιγάντων)” which, of course, it did not: it did not use an English word and the Greek one is gigantes/earth-born.
Zachary Garris wrote, “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)” without any indication whatsoever that he was even merely subjectively unusually tall.
He then fixates on merely subjectively unusual height by promising us, “some interesting information about the Rephaim” which is merely that Rephaim were a.k.a. Zamzummim (or Zuzim) and that Emim and Anakim were Rephaim subgroups: like a clan of a tribe—oh, and that Rephaim were merely subjectively, “tall” on average. He focused a lot on Deut 2 but seems to have missed that even a text that tells us so much about Rephaim, by any other name, did not even hint at any such thing as them having anything whatsoever to do with Nephilim.
We then get more about, “giants” and, “γίγαντας, ‘giants’” and finally, “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).” Let us begin with that the quote is not of 9-10 but only a fragment of 9. If, for whatever giants-obsessed reason, someone takes God, via Amos, telling us that Amorites were big and strong as implying some sort of one-to-one mathematical ratio-based calculation correlation between cedars and Amorites (what of the strength of oaks and Amorites?) then, by definition of logical extension, they must also assert that Amorites also had literal fruits and roots growing right out of their bodies.
That would be because, after all, 9-10 state, “Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars and who was as strong as the oaks; I destroyed his fruit above and his roots beneath. Also it was I who brought you up out of the land of Egypt and led you forty years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite.”
Keep in mind that the only reason to think that Nephilim were even merely subjectively unusually tall was the evil report. That Anakim (in non-LXX versions) being tall has something to do with Nephilim means that only by an unsupportable extension, all Rephaim were Nephilim since they were, on average, merely subjectively unusually tall so you can then even throw Og into the mix even though we do not have a physical description of him—and on and on goes how to concoct a tall-tale from literally zero reliable data: but wait, perhaps Goliath will save the day, stand by.
See, this is followed by, “Abraham…went and defeated Chedorlaomer—the merely subjectively unusually tall killer…Joshua’s…victories over the merely subjectively unusually tall in the land…Og was one of the Rephaim (merely assumed) merely subjectively unusually tall persons…”
He then gets into linguistics with that, “The Rephaim are also associated in the OT with Sheol, the place of the dead” but to cut to the chase, since the root word rapha ranges in meaning from healing/healer to dead, he opts for dead and reads the root word as a reference to the Rephaim people. It is also a case of incorporating Ancient Near East Pagan mythology into biblical theology since in Ugaritic texts when a king or hero died they were called king or hero but after the had been dead for some time they were referred to as Rephaim—see my article Dead Kings and Rephaim The Patrons of the Ugaritic Dynasty.[3]
Thus, a reference to the dead turns into that the Rephaim people groups, “are said to be inhabitants of Sheol” so now they are some sort of living dead—and, “dead giants.”
We then come to the subsection, “Joshua and Caleb Drive Out the Anakim (Joshua 11; 14–15)” which is about Anakim and not about Nephilim so Garris will have to force them to be Nephilim.
Garris writes, “Joshua and Caleb were the only two of the 12 spies who believed that Yahweh would give them victory over the giants in the land (Numbers 13:30; 14:6-9)” but this is giving into the false evil report narrative. The most one can say is that the original report referred to the people as, “strong” and even the first attempt at dissuasion by the ten agreed that the issue was that they were, “stronger” then the Israelites—even that is technically taking it up a notch from strong to stronger—but in the evil report they took it up another notch by asserting that, “all the people that we saw in it are of great height” (as vague, generic, subjective, and multi-usage as that is)—and, of course, they then took that up many more notches with their tall-tale about Nephilim.
So, why fixate on, “giants” when the reliably contextual issue was as itinerate tent dwellers they were faced with confronting six strong people groups living in fortified and very large cities? And note that we cannot even verify that, “all the people that we saw in it are of great height”—see my article Were “all the people” in Cannan “of great height”?
When Zachary Garris goes on to write the following, we know it has nothing to do with Nephilim and at times, not even anything to do with personages who were merely subjectively unusually tall, “Joshua and Caleb drove out those giants…Joshua cut off the Anakim and ‘devoted’ (herem) them to destruction (Joshua 11:21)…‘devote’ the Canaanites…the Canaanites included the giants…Anakim,” etc.
In my book What Does the Bible Say About Giants and Nephilim? A Styled Giantology and NephilologyI devoted (pun intended) a whole chapter to herem and there is zero indication that it ever had anything to do with Nephilim or anyone related to Nephilim—and both would be impossibilities.
We then come to he who may save the giants day with the subsection, “David Kills Goliath (1 Samuel 17)” wherein Garris quotes:
…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).
Garris notes:
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).
Note the effects of fixating on Nephilim and the mindset of Nephilim equals subjectively unusual height as per the evil report ergo anyone who is of subjectively unusual height must be a Nephil (or at least hints that they are or might be)—especially only considering non-LXX versions which allow us to thrown Goliath into the mix: gibbor is, “associating him with the gibborim-Nephilim” but why not assert that gibbor is, “associating him with” God Himself who is referred as a gibbor in Isa 9?
In fact, it is not just that, “David, of course, proved to be his own gibbor” but that David had an elite force of gibborim since, again, that is a mere descriptor that informs us they were unusually mighty, not that they were Nephilim. They only way they were associated with Nephilim is very generically since both were mighty so then well, sure but that has nothing to do with biology and we will have to also say that Gideon is thusly associated with Nephilim and Boaz is thusly associated with Nephilim and God is thusly associated with Nephilim and yet, that is not the form of association that Garris seems to imply—much like he was not implying David was biologically associated with Nephilim by referring to him as a gibbor.
Garris went on to elucidate:
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”. In general, we should prefer the Hebrew Masoretic Text, unless we have good reason to go with alternate readings. There are problems with the MT textual tradition of 1-2 Samuel, so there may be a good reason to favor the alternate readings.[Garris’ endnote, “See Daniel J. Hays, “Reconsidering the Height of Goliath,” JETS 48.4 (2005), 702–715, who discusses the textual issues and argues for the shorter height.”]
However, thinking 9’9” is too tall for a giant is not a good reason to reject the Hebrew text. We already saw that Og of Bashan had a bed that was over 13 feet long, which cannot be explained well if he were under seven feet tall. This should at least make us open to the idea of Goliath being closer to 10 feet tall. The four cubit and a span reading (6’9”) would make Goliath’s height less impressive, nine inches shorter than the five cubit (7’6”) Egyptian man killed by Benaiah, one of David’s mighty men (gibborim) (1 Chronicles 11:23-24).
The shorter height is actually from the LXX, the Dead Sea Scrolls and also Flavius Josephus so that is the preponderance of the earliest data.
I am unsure why it is asserted that, “In general, we should prefer the Hebrew Masoretic Text.”
That, “9’9” is too tall for a” merely subjectively unusually tall person may be due to the tallest people on record were not that tall and suffered physical problems. As for, “Og of Bashan had a bed that was over 13 feet long, which cannot be explained well if he were under seven feet tall” well, we already covered this and there are other explanations for it such as that he was an ancient king living a lavish lifestyle. Also, if you compared the bed on which I sleep to my height, you could subtract about one foot from my bed and get my height just about correct. Yet, you would also, wrongly, calculate that I am circa five time wider than I actually am.
Now, the comment about the, verifiably, tallest person in the Bible at, “five cubit (7’6”) Egyptian man killed by Benaiah” is interesting because many will opt for the taller Masoretic range for Goliath due to the description of the equipment: as Garris puts it, “This armor weighed over 125 pounds, implying he was massive.”
Yet, he had a guy assisting with the equipment. Also, you can search for strongman or weightlifting competition vids and see guys who are around 6ft lifting 1,000 lbs. And, regular guy Benaiah took a spear like a weaver’s beam, just like Goliath’s, that Egyptian and successfully wielded it against him in hand-to-hand combat (2 Sam 23).
At this point, Zachary Garris does something rather odd when he goes on about that:
Everywhere the term קַשְׂקַשִּׂ֖ים (qasqasim) is used in the OT, it means “scales” (Leviticus 11:9-10, 12; Deuteronomy 14:9-10; Ezekiel 29:4). The ESV only makes one exception, as it translates the word as “coat of mail” here in 1 Samuel 17:5. Though this translation is understandable because chain mail would resemble scales, it obscures an important connection with the serpent (and possibly Dagon).
Scale armor ramps up the significance, as it connects Goliath with the serpent himself. Goliath was the seed of the serpent, and David was of the seed of the woman. Whether Goliath was the biological offspring of the serpent (through the Nephilim) or merely the spiritual offspring, there is a connection with Genesis 3:15. David killed Goliath with a stone to the head, and then he cut off Goliath’s head (1 Samuel 17:48-51). David, the seed of the woman, crushed the head of the seed of the serpent. Thus David’s defeat of Goliath is ultimately a picture of Christ conquering the devil.
The scale armor may also connect Goliath with the Philistine god Dagon, who was possibly a god of the sea. Goliath had cursed David “by his gods,” but in the end it was Goliath who was cursed (1 Samuel 17:43). Like his god Dagon, Goliath fell facedown and his head was cut off (1 Samuel 17:49-51; cf. 5:3-4). Israel’s first king, Saul, fought a serpent in his first battle against Nahash (Hebrew “serpent”), king of the Ammonites, and here David faced his own serpent. David passed the test by defeating the giant serpent and cutting off his head. David was better than Saul, the tall man who feared the Philistine giant (1 Samuel 17:11).
This is reminiscent of asserting that all things reptilian/snake/serpent are Satanic since it requires levels of abstraction to read, “the serpent (and possibly Dagon)…serpent himself…seed of the serpent…offspring of the serpent (through the Nephilim)…seed of the serpent…the Philistine god Dagon…a serpent…the giant serpent” into how a piece of equipment was put together.
The next subsection is titled, “David and His Men Finish Off the Giants (2 Samuel 21; 1 Chronicles 20)” and, of course, contains nothing about Nephilim and only some things about some people who on average were merely subjectively unusually tall, “killed four other giants…descendants of the giants…descendants of the giants…a man of great stature…descended from the giants…descended from the giants…these giants…the giant…the giant…giant.”
At this point, Garris puts a pin into the giants balloon by elucidating that those giants, “are described as Rapha (רָפָה), which the ESV translates as ‘giants’” which means that when all of those people were referred to as giants, in some English Bibles, nothing whatsoever was even being implied about their height at all but they were merely being identified as being of the Rephaim—who were on average were merely subjectively unusually tall (not that that has anything to do with anything).
Oddly, he goes on to write, “The description of Rapha is related to the word for Rephaim (רְפָאִ֛ים). This connection is made explicit in the use of the plural Rephaim (רְפָאִ֛ים)” well, sure: Rapha is a root word and is a singular word while Rephaim is a male plural word.
We next come to the, “Conclusion—Giants Today” wherein we get a reiteration of the damage that fallacious Nephilology does to theology proper with, “Nephilim in Genesis 6:4, who were wiped out by the flood. However, the Nephilim are linked with the later Anakim and Rephaim.”
He then notes, “the land of Canaan…giant Anakim…Anakim were part of the giant group known as the Rephaim…Moses defeated the giant Og…Joshua and Caleb…drove out the giant Anakim…Goliath” none of which has anything to do with Nephilim, not reliably anyhow since his only way to weave his tall-tale is to make Num 13:33 his premise.
Likewise, when he continues thusly, “giant Goliath…dreaded Anakim…considered Rephaim…if the Anakim were descended from the Nephilim (as Numbers 13:33 claims) and the Nephilim were the children of fallen angels and women (Genesis 6:4), then this would make Goliath the biological offspring of the serpent (Genesis 3:15)”—he merely asserts a correlation between Gen 3 and Gen 6—“Goliath’s connection to the Nephilim is strengthened by his description as a gibbor…Goliath wore serpent-like ‘scale armor’…seed of the serpent, the giant gibborim-Nephilim-Anakim-Rephaim warrior named Goliath” which combines solid and flaccid data points strung together illogically, ill-bio-logically, ill-theo-logically and ill-linguistically for that matter.
Overall, we saw an attempt at an all-encompassing narrative regarding certain factors in the biblical text and yet, there was too much vagary, stretches, missteps, and other pitfalls along the way.
Endnotes:
[1] Private communique, July 2019
[2] Heiser, https://www.moreunseenrealm.com/ch25
[3] https://truefreethinker.com/dead-kings-and-rephaim-the-patrons-of-the-ugaritic-dynasty
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