Giants

2022-09-20

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. (Genesis 6:4)

The Bible affirms the existence of giants, both before and after the flood. How they came about is unclear, because it is all in how you define “sons of God” and how they interacted with the “daughters of men.” “Sons of God” could refer to angels, as possibly seen here:

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them. (Job 1:6)

However, if these are angels, and they “saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose” (Genesis 6:2), how do you handle this:

For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. (Matthew 22:30)

Angels do not marry. But perhaps the angels that are not “of God” “married” in some way? Maybe that is what is meant by “angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day” (Jude 1:6). If “a spirit hath not flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39), did these demons possess human beings, and the result were these giants?

These giants are connected to these “sons of God” and “daughters of men”; otherwise, why connect them in a single verse? It was also a part of the wickedness that was on the earth that caused God to destroy the earth. The fallen angels would likely want this because they want to destroy human beings, who are in the image of God.

We will not know more than what is said in the Scriptures. But what about these giants? They were in the antediluvian period “and also after that.” They were in the promised land, which caused the spies to bring a bad report:

And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight. (Numbers 13:32-33)

Anak was the son of Arba, which were famous giants, who had their own city:

...the city of Arba the father of Anak, which city is Hebron (Joshua 15:13)

Edom (“Horims” in Deuteronomy 2:12, 22), Moab (“Emims” in Deuteronomy 2:11), and Ammon (“Zamzummims” in Deuteronomy 2:20) all had giants in the lands that the Lord destroyed before them. This suggests there were entire nations or people groups of giants.

Og was a giant, the last of his kind, whom the Lord slew before the Israelites. The size of his bed (which may be a sarcophagus?) was 13 and a half feet long and six feet wide (a span being a foot and a half):

For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man. (Deuteronomy 3:11)

There were still a few giants left in the days of Samuel and David (2 Samuel 21:16-22; 1 Chronicles 20:4-8). Goliath was one of the giants left, which was the famous showdown between David and the Philistines. Goliath was over 9 feet tall: “Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span” (1 Samuel 17:4).

There is no evidence of any giants who served the Lord; they always were the Lord’s enemies. Though they were powerful, the Lord used ordinary people to destroy them. Caleb was an example of this:

And Caleb drove thence the three sons of Anak, Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai, the children of Anak. (Joshua 15:14)

Chedorlaomer also destroyed giants; it appears that he destroyed a great many of them. He may have been the instrument God used to make way for the nations to settle in giant lands:

And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings that were with him, and smote the Rephaims in Ashteroth Karnaim, and the Zuzims in Ham, and the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim, And the Horites in their mount Seir, unto Elparan, which is by the wilderness. (Genesis 14:5-6)