Here is Part 2 of BLK SHP Bible Talk’s exploration of “giants” in The Bible.
This time we’re looking at a different word entirely, Rephaim, not Nephilim, and tracing it all the way from Genesis 14 through Deuteronomy, Og’s kingdom, Goliath’s family line, and the ancient city of Ugarit.
Along the way, I’ll explain why I don’t think Goliath was part angelic, why the real darkness surrounding these nations was never about their bloodline, and why that same darkness might still be closer to your own life than you’d expect.
I also address the pushback from Part 1 directly, including where I land on Michael Heiser’s own research on the word Nephilim. If you missed Part 1, we ran it last Sunday, Sept 13, so you can easily scroll back to view it.
For most of my life, I believed exactly what you probably believe right now. The Bible describes real giants, and the word “giant” means exactly what it sounds like. Big. Tall. Simple. Then I actually went and looked at the Hebrew. And the Greek. And I found something I wasn’t expecting, and honestly wasn’t looking for. This is Part 1 of a two part deep dive into Biblical giants, going further than I think anyone on YouTube has gone with this topic. In this video, we cover:
What “Nephilim” actually means in Hebrew, and why it has nothing to do with height.
Why the Septuagint translators chose the Greek word “gigantes” instead of the word for demigods, and what that choice actually communicated to a reader in 250 BC.
How that word slowly flattened over two thousand years, through Latin, French, and English, until it became the plain, sizeless word “giant” we use today.
A close reading of Numbers 13, the one passage almost the entire idea of Biblical giants depends on, and what the Hebrew actually says once you slow down.
I’m not here to tell you giants did or didn’t exist. I’m here to give you the actual words, the actual history, and the actual text, so you can land wherever the evidence takes you. Part 2 is coming next week, where we get into Rephaim, Og’s bed, Goliath’s real height according to the Dead Sea Scrolls, and what I think all of this actually means.
Here’s more from BLK SHP Bible Talk. We will present the second part next Sunday, so come back then if you’re eager to see the rest of the saga.
