Big Bad Giants

The Bible has some strange and fascinating characters, and few are more intriguing than the giants: the Nephilim, the Anakim, the Rephaim, and others. If you’ve ever read passages like Genesis 6 or Numbers 13 and wondered, “Who exactly are these people?”, you’re not alone.

In this post, I want to walk through the main biblical texts about giants and show how they fit together. Along the way we’ll ask: Were these beings really angel–human hybrids? How could they exist both before and after the flood? And what does any of this have to do with faith and fear in our lives today?

Nephilim Before and After the Flood

The starting point is Genesis 6:4, which says:

“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward…”

That phrase “and also afterward” is what raises the question. We usually understand that the flood wiped out all human and animal life except those on the ark. So if the pre-flood Nephilim perished in the flood, how can the Bible still speak of giants later in Israel’s history?

When we move forward in the Bible, we discover that later “giants” have specific tribal names: Anakim, Rephaim, Emim, Zamzummim, Horites, and so on. They are connected to family lines and territories, and they show up primarily in and around the land of Canaan.

The big question is: are these post-flood giants the same kind of beings as the pre-flood Nephilim, or are they something different?

The Spies, the Anakim, and a Bad Report

In Numbers 13, Moses sends twelve spies into the Promised Land. As they go through the Negev and up to Hebron, we are told they encounter some very specific people:

“They went up through the Negev and came to Hebron, where Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, the descendants of Anak, lived.” (Numbers 13:22)

Here we meet three named individuals: Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai. They are described as descendants of Anak, and collectively they’re known as Anakim (or Anakites). So we don’t just have an anonymous race of giants; we have a family line with traceable descendants.

Later, when the spies return, ten of them give a fearful, exaggerated report:

The people are powerful.
The cities are large and fortified.
“All the people we saw there are of great size.”
“We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim).”
“We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” (Numbers 13:28–33)

This is more than just a factual report; it’s a psychological operation. The spies are amplifying fear. Yes, these people are large. Yes, they are formidable warriors. But the language of “grasshoppers” is clearly rhetorical, designed to make everyone feel hopeless and small.

In practice, this fear overwhelms their trust in God, and Israel turns back from taking the land—despite the fact that God had already promised to be with them.

Canaan’s Curse and Canaan’s Giants

To understand why so many giants are clustered in and around Canaan, we need to go back to Genesis 9–10.

In Genesis 9, we read the odd and troubling story of Noah’s drunkenness. Noah gets drunk, lies uncovered in his tent, and his son Ham sees him naked and goes out to tell his brothers. Shem and Japheth respectfully cover their father without looking at him. When Noah wakes up and realizes what has happened, he doesn’t pronounce a curse on Ham, but on Canaan, Ham’s son:

“Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.” (Genesis 9:25)

The text doesn’t spell out every detail we might like to know. Some later speculation suggests something more serious may have occurred, possibly involving Noah’s wife and Canaan’s parentage. Whatever the exact nature of the sin, the result is clear: Canaan is cursed, and that curse plays out historically in the moral and spiritual corruption of the Canaanite peoples.

Then in Genesis 10, we are given a list of Canaan’s descendants and their territories. The Canaanites occupy:

The coastal regions, including Sidon,
The inland areas that will become Israel,
And territory that later falls to Edom, Moab, and Ammon.

In other words, the land that Abraham and his descendants are promised is squarely in Canaanite—and often giant-influenced—territory. The cursed line of Canaan becomes closely associated with oppressive, violent, and idolatrous cultures, many of which involve these giant warrior clans.

Giant Tribes in the Time of Abraham

We see some of these giant clans already in Abraham’s day, in Genesis 14. A coalition of kings from the north sweeps through the region and defeats a series of peoples, including:

The Rephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim,
The Zuzites (also called Zamzummim) in Ham,
The Emim in Shaveh Kiriathaim,
The Horites in the hill country of Seir.

The Hebrew word Rephaim is often associated with “giants” in lexicons and translations. The names of these groups—Zamzummim, Emim—evoke ideas of terror and dread. They weren’t just tall; they were feared.

These are not isolated freaks of nature, but organized tribes of giants occupying whole territories, fighting in coalitions, and taking part in regional politics and warfare.

Deuteronomy: Giants Already Being Defeated

By the time Israel is on the verge of entering the Promised Land, much has already happened around them. Deuteronomy 2 gives us a fascinating historical footnote.

God tells Israel that as they travel, there are certain lands they must not invade:

The land of Edom (descendants of Esau),
The land of Moab,
The land of Ammon (both descendants of Lot).

In those very passages, we learn that these neighboring nations had already dealt with their own giant populations:

The Ammonites had a land formerly inhabited by Rephaim, whom they called Zamzummim—“a people strong, numerous, and as tall as the Anakim.” God destroyed them before the Ammonites, who took their land.
The Edomites had displaced the Horites in Seir after God destroyed them.
The Avvites near Gaza were replaced by Caphtorites who came from Caphtor.

The key point is this: giants had already been defeated by other nations with God’s oversight. So when Israel later trembles at the thought of taking on giants in Canaan, they are ignoring recent history. Their neighbors, with far less revelation from God, had already faced and overcome giant enemies.

Og of Bashan: A Giant King

Perhaps the most vivid example of a giant in the Old Testament is Og, king of Bashan. In Deuteronomy 3, Israel marches against him. God reassures Moses:

“Do not be afraid of him, for I have delivered him into your hands…”

Israel defeats Og, capturing sixty fortified cities. Then the text gives a striking detail:

“His bed was decorated with iron and was more than nine cubits long and four cubits wide.” (Deuteronomy 3:11)

A cubit is roughly 18 inches (about 45 cm). Nine cubits is around 13–14 feet (4+ meters). Even allowing for some difference between his height and the length of his bed, this is an enormous person, easily in the same league as Goliath, whom the text describes at around nine feet tall.

Og is also called one of the last of the Rephaim in that region. Again, we see that “Rephaim” is a general term for giant peoples; specific tribes like the Anakim or Emim are subgroups within this larger category.

Joshua, Caleb, and the Defeat of the Anakim

This brings us back to the Anakim mentioned in Numbers 13. After Israel’s forty years of wandering, a new generation enters the land under Joshua.

One of the most inspiring figures in this story is Caleb. As an 85-year-old man, he comes to Joshua and reminds him of God’s promise:

He was 40 years old when he first spied out the land.
He brought back a faithful, God-trusting report.
Now, decades later, he is as strong as ever and ready for battle.

What land does Caleb ask for? Not the easy plains, not the safe valleys. He asks for the hill country where the Anakim live—the very giants that terrified the previous generation.

Joshua grants him Hebron, also known as Kiriath-Arba (named after Arba, the greatest man among the Anakim). Caleb then drives out Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai—the very three descendants of Anak who had been named as fearsome giants in Numbers 13.

Joshua 11 adds that Joshua himself destroyed the Anakim from:

Hebron,
Debir,
Anab,
All the hill country of Judah and Israel.

The text notes that no Anakim were left in Israelite territory. The only survivors fled to the Philistine cities of Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod. It doesn’t take much imagination to see a line from these surviving Anakim to Goliath of Gath and his giant relatives, some of whom are described as having six fingers and six toes.

In other words, the giants that once terrified Israel eventually fall before faithful men like Caleb and David, who trust God more than they fear tall enemies.

Were These Giants Angel–Human Hybrids?

This brings us back to the original theological puzzle: are these giants the product of angels mating with human women, as some interpretations of Genesis 6 suggest?

Here’s where a simple biological analogy helps. When a horse and a donkey mate, they produce a mule. That mule is usually sterile. Cross-species offspring often cannot reproduce. If angels, who are not human, were to mate with humans, we might expect the resulting offspring to have similar problems. We wouldn’t expect to see long, stable, multi-generational bloodlines.

But what we actually see with the post-flood giants is:

Named fathers and sons,
Tribes and clans that span multiple generations,
Widespread distribution across regions and centuries.

These features look much more like very large, but fully human, family lines than they do like ongoing hybrid beings.

It’s possible that the original pre-flood Nephilim did involve some kind of angelic rebellion, and the New Testament does speak of angels who “left their proper dwelling” and are now in chains of gloomy darkness. But after the flood, the giants described in Canaan and its surrounding areas are best understood as human giants, often wicked and oppressive, but still biologically human.

They are part of the cursed line of Canaan, not a continuing race of angel–human hybrids.

What Does This Have to Do with Us?

At this point you might say, “Interesting Bible study, but how does this help me today?”

The stories of giants and their defeat carry several powerful lessons.

First, no enemy is too big for God. Over and over we see that:

The Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites—hardly paragons of righteousness—are able to drive out giants when God is at work behind the scenes.
Israel, with far greater promises and revelation, initially backs down in fear.
Giants like Og and the Anakim are eventually defeated by people who trust God and obey Him, even when the odds seem impossible.

Second, fear distorts reality. The spies described themselves as “grasshoppers.” That wasn’t an objective measurement; it was what fear felt like. We do the same thing today. A rare traumatic event—a crime, a crash, a betrayal—can be replayed so often in our minds that we treat it as if it were normal and inevitable. We then lock ourselves into emotional and spiritual prisons to “stay safe,” punishing ourselves for what someone else did.

Third, faith doesn’t deny danger, but it refuses to be ruled by it. Caleb didn’t pretend the Anakim were small. David didn’t pretend Goliath wasn’t big. They just believed God was bigger. They chose to see giants in the context of God’s promises, not God in the shadow of their giants.

Finally, even death is not too big an enemy for God. If God can empower frail human beings to face literal giants and win, then He can certainly raise the dead, as He has promised in Christ. That means that even the worst that human or spiritual enemies can do—take our lives—is not the end of the story for those who belong to Him.

So when we face our own “giants”—whether cultural hostility, legal pressures, threats to our freedom of speech, or deeply personal fears—the call of these stories is the same: trust the God who is bigger than your giants. The land may be full of obstacles, but it is also full of promises. And the God who saw His people through then has not changed.