Who exactly were the Rephaim?

From the Nephilim to Goliath, giants are mentioned frequently in biblical texts. Giants conquered and were conquered, killed and were killed, lived and died. The mention of the humongous beings is so matter-of-fact that a modern reader can almost be whisked away into a fantastical land. It’s easy to forget the possibility that these people could have actually existed. The Rephaim, in particular, is a group of apparent giants mentioned several times throughout the Bible, and they always seem to be in opposition to the people of Israel. Having Yahweh on your side would most definitely come in handy if you were across the battlefield from people at least twice your size. But who exactly were the Rephaim, and where did they come from? 

Perhaps it will be easiest to start with the last in this case. Og, the king of Bashan, is mentioned as the last “remnant of the Rephaim” by Moses. It is no wonder that Moses’ saw fit to recollect his military victory over Og in his last words to the people of Israel. According to Deuteronomy 3:11, “his bed was a bed of iron...nine cubits was its lenth, and four cubits its breadth.” Now, in modern measurements, this means that Og’s bed was about 13.5 feet long and over 6 feet wide. As I look over at my bed right now, only one thought is running through my mind: this guy was BIG. Not to mention that his bed was made of iron. I mean, what sort of person requires a bed made of extremely dense metal to hold them up? I don’t blame Moses for recounting this story; personally, I would have found a way to interject this tidbit of information at least 13 more times before I quit talking. 

The Rephaim came to be equated with the kingdom of Bashan. They, and several other people groups known to be great in stature, inhabited the region just east of the Jordan River. This means that the Israelites had to make it through a land literally filled with giants in order to reach the land promised to them by Yahweh. Deuteronomy 3:3-4 states that the Israelites captured 60 cities from the Rephaim in the region Argob. So, at one point, thousands of giants stood in the way of the Israelites’ inheritance.

Even though Moses was convinced Og was the last remaining Rephaim, other stories in the Bible place descendants of Rephaim in the land of Canaan itself. All the way up to David’s war against the Phillistines, there are accounts of the Rephaim:

“And after this there arose war with the Philistines at Gezer. Then Sibbecai the Hushathite struck down Sippai, who was one of the descendants of the giants, and the Philistines were subdued. And there was again war with the Philistines, and Elhanan the son of Jair struck down Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam. And there was again war at Gath, where there was a man of great stature, who had six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number, and he also was descended from the giants. And when he taunted Israel, Jonathan the son of Shimea, David's brother, struck him down. These were descended from the giants in Gath, and they fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.” (1 Chronicles 20:4-8)

So, apparently Moses had not quite rid the Earth of the giant Rephaim. One source in particular suggests that Moses’ claim could have been referring only to the Rephaim living in the land Argob. Since the Israelites destroyed all 60 cities in the region, Moses would have had good reason to consider the giants a problem of the past. 

There are many theories of where the Rephaim actually came from, but most theories fall back to one starting point. The Rephaim, along other groups of giants mention in the  Bible, most likely descended from the Nephilim found in the book of Genesis. Deuteronomy establishes a connection between the Anakim and the Rephaim, and in earlier parts of scripture, the Anakim were called descendants of the Nephilim (Numbers 13:32-33). So, it makes sense that the Rephaim descended from the Nephilim found in Genesis. 

I suppose this is one way to imagine the Nephilim

In a nutshell, the Rephaim were huge, and they most likely descended from the infamous Nephilim found in the book of Genesis. The Israelites most likely got their money’s worth when fighting through an entire nation of these gargantuan men to reach the Promised Land.