the Berasit Hebrew Dictionary

Since the concept of giants is both enduring and complex, supposedly supported by a number of different ancient Hebrew words, this page is meant to act as a landing page to tie those various words together.

By far the most well-known reference to giants in the Hebrew canon is the story of Goliath of Gath, as told in 1 Samuel chapter 17. Here, Goliath is described as a formidable and imposing warrior, over nine feet tall and clad in full metal armour, yet whom is miraculously killed by the young warrior David, an act which jettisons David onto a meteoric rise to become King of Israel.

Much attention is given to the large size and weight of Goliath's gear, seemingly insinuating that only a great giant could possibly use such large weapons. There are two problems with this line of reasoning. Firstly, the units of measurement used in the descriptions are not themselves documented, so we really do not know how big or small the indicated measurements are. Secondly, according to further records recounted in 2 Samuel 21:19 and 1 Chronicles 20:5, another ordinary human named Elhanan the Bethlehemite wielded Goliath's spear in at least two battles, during one of which he actually managed to kill Goliath's brother with it. Not only that, but David himself, supposedly a scrawny young fellow, actually used Goliath's sword on multiple occasions¹⁾

Perhaps Goliath's size has been exaggerated in modern times.

Several Hebrew words have been popularly misconstrued as indicating a race of giants. None of these words are associated with Goliath, who is identified only as a Philistine and a Gathite, both of which are merely geographical identifiers of his hometown.

• Commonly referred to as Rephaim, a term which construes two Hebrew words falsely with gigantic proportions - repa indicates healing and medicine, so the repaim more likely means “the healed” or “the healers”, not giants. Likewise for the other possible root word repeh which most probably means “deformed”. The presumed word built on this root would be repehim, but not only does this not mean “giant”, this is not even an actual word used anywhere within the corpus.
• Commonly known as the Nephelim, based on the root word pel meaning “fall”, the pelim are “the fallen ones” (those fallen in battle), the slain.
• Commonly known as the Anakim, based on yeneq, the yeneqim are a people group systematically killed by Joshua, after Yahweh stole their territory. Although they are mentioned as being tall, they were apparently not that difficult of a foe for Joshua, so it is probably a stretch to think of them as giants.

There is one word remaining that DOES actually mean giants:

• gedol = “big”, gedolim = “the big ones”/“giants”

Conclusion - there are giants mentioned in the Bible, but most of the stories that people think are about giants are not, and most of the words that we use to refer to giants are the wrong words. This concept is related to but doesn't quite fit with ghost words