2026 Update: This post has recently gained new readers due to renewed interest in the biblical giant traditions. I’ve added a few clarifications below regarding manuscript differences and the various giant clans mentioned throughout Scripture. If you’re new here, you may also enjoy my work on the divine council and the spiritual geography of the Bible.
The creation of the giant Nephilim in Genesis 6, right before the flood, is a story that surprises most people today, no matter how long they’ve been a Christian. We just haven’t heard too many messages in church about the time that spiritual beings (the sons of God) had sex with human women and gave rise to a quasi-divine race of giants on the earth.
Likewise, we’re also surprised when our eyes are opened to see the giants present after the flood. This is clearly seen in Numbers 13 when Moses sends spies into the land of Canaan and they return with a report of having seen giants.
“The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”
Numbers 13:32-33
What’s interesting to note here is that the Nephilim that these spies saw went by another name: the sons of Anak—known elsewhere in the Bible as the Anakim. This is important to note, because we typically have nothing in mind when we read the names of people groups in the Bible and so we don’t stop and imagine them in detail. Whenever we see references to the Anakim—and related giant clans—we should understand them within the larger biblical tradition that traces back to the Nephilim of Genesis 6.
Yes, the giants have now been around long enough to take on different names. In this case, a giant named Anak has gained enough attention that his giant descendants are now a people group known as the Anakim. But other names for the giants will also come about, because different nations had different names for the Nephilim. For example, Deuteronomy 2 tells us that there are other groups of giants who are known by other nations as the Emim, the Rephaim, and the Zamzummim.
We also see the Amorites described by the prophet Amos as having the height of cedars, showing us that some of the Amorites were also known as giants. However, we know that not all the Amorites were giants because of the fuller picture the Bible paints of them. In a similar way, the Bible also seems to relate to us that a few giants were dispersed throughout the human clans of the Amalekites, Hittites, Jebusites, Canaanites, and Philistines. The giants were everywhere.
It’s strange that we should miss all of this, because these giants are standing right in Israel’s way; for they inhabit the land that God promised that his people would move into. And perhaps with this in mind, we might speculate that God specifically sent Israel to this land so that they would finish the job of what the flood was partially meant to do: Get rid of the giants. In fact, a very close reading of the Bible seems to relay that if there were no giants in specific parts of the promised land, then the inhabitants could be simply driven out and not necessarily killed in war. As Michael Heiser has pointed out, it seems possible that the holy wars of the Old Testament were set in place to eradicate the rebellious giants.
There are a few giants mentioned by name throughout the Bible. Since we’ve already noted that the “sons of Anak” were giants, that means we can connect all the Anakim by name to the giants; including Anak’s father, Arba, and Anak’s descendants, Sheshai, Ahiman and Talmai.
Deuteronomy 3 also speaks of King Og, a Rephaim that slept in a bed that was about 13 and a half feet long by 2 and half feet wide. And because this passage likens Og to another king named Sihon, who was an Amorite, we are left gathering that Sihon was one of the giants within the human clan of the Amorites.
All of the giants above are found closer to the time of war over the promised land. But if you know the story, then you know that Israel didn’t finish eradicating the giants. As Joshua 11:22 states, “There was none of the Anakim left in the land of the people of Israel. Only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some remain.” And so it’s much later in the time of David in the land of Gath, that we meet the most well-known giant of all: Goliath.
According to various manuscripts of the Bible, Goliath was either 9 feet, 9 inches, or 6 feet, 6 inches tall. Scholars typically believe the older 6 feet, 6 inches reading is correct, making this the only recorded measurement of a giant in the Bible. This may not sound like that much of a giant to us, but perhaps there were other discerning factors to recognizing a giant since Goliath was strong enough to wear a coat of armor that weighed 126 pounds and wield a spear that had a tip that weighed 15 pounds alone. Though he may not have been as tall as we thought, it’s clear that he was a daunting and fearsome warrior.
For many, Goliath is an odd story about an unusually tall man who came out of nowhere. But the Bible has been setting us up to see him in the light of the Nephilim. He is a descendant of the giants, still present on the earth well after the flood.
And believe it or not, even he is not the last of the giants. In the time of David, Israel went on to fight more giants in the land of the Philistines. A giant named Ishbi-benob, with a spear that weighed about half the amount of Goliath’s, set out to kill David during a war. However, one of David’s soldiers killed him first. In other wars the Israelites struck down a giant named Saph/Sippai and Goliath’s brother, Lahmi. And finally, a 12-fingered, 12-toed giant was also struck down in one of these wars.
The mythological elements of the Bible are often overlooked, but they have a lot to say to us today. Whether we read such stories as historical or theological, we must deal with the Bible as it is. If we ignore the wider world it paints, we risk missing what the text is trying to communicate.
This post is adapted from my book Fantasy IRL: Glimpses of a Hidden World, where I explore how the biblical authors consistently hint at a layered spiritual reality behind the events of Scripture.
If you’re interested in going further into themes like the divine council, spiritual rebellion, and the unseen realm woven throughout the Bible, I expand on them in greater depth in The Rush and the Rest: The Holy Spirit and the Supernatural World.
Further Reading on the Divine Council and the Supernatural World of the Bible
- Are Angels Made in the Image of God?
- The Image of God and the Idols of Gods
- The Bible’s Spiritual Realm is in Disarray
- Leviathan in Revelation
- The Lamb’s World VS The Dragon’s World
- A Trinitarian Theosis
- The Glories of the Human Image
- What Did Jesus Do While He Was Dead?
- The Angel of the Lord Becomes Human?
Jamin Bradley 
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