Photo use courtesy of photographer Suat Eman.Numbers 13:23-25
23 Then they came to the Valley of Eshcol, and there cut down a branch with one cluster of grapes; they carried it between two of them on a pole. They also brought some of the pomegranates and figs. 24 The place was called the Valley of Eshcol, because of the cluster which the men of Israel cut down there. 25 And they returned from spying out the land after forty days.
If you read my blog post last Wednesday, you'll see that I was talking about the Giants/Nephilim in the Bible. A few verses before the verse that I quoted in Numbers, you'll see that the spies that Moses sent out were to bring him samples of the food that was growing in the land of Canaan (also known as the land of milk and honey). They went to Hebron and cut down one cluster of grapes and two men had to carry this one cluster on a pole between them! Can you imagine how huge those grapes were? Plus, this is where the Giants were living, too. I'll bet those grapes were as big or bigger than the apples that we eat today!
I did some more research about the Giant people that appear in the Old Testament. The Nephilim mentioned in Genesis were killed in the big flood that God caused to wipe out every living thing on the earth with the exception of the inhabitants of Noah's Ark.
The people that Moses's spies saw when gathering the grapes, the Giants/Nephilim, were descendants of a man named Anak. Anak was a Raphaite. The Anakites or Rephaim were Giants that are mentioned in the Old Testament several times. It appears that they finally died off because there is a scripture Deuteronomy 3:11 which states:
11 (Only Og king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaites. His bed was made of iron and was more than thirteen feet long and six feet wide.
As I think about it further, and as I mentioned yesterday, I'm assuming the Fallen Angels appeared again sometime after the flood and infiltrated the bloodline of Anak somehow?
If you are interested, here are all of the scripture references of the Anakites, Nephilim, and Raphaim. Look them up if you want:
Genesis 6:1-4
Genesis 14:5
Genesis 15:20
Numbers 13
Numbers 13:33
Deuteronomy 2:11
Deuteronomy 2:10-11,20
Deuteronomy 2:18-21
Deuteronomy 3:11,13
Joshua 12:4
Joshua 13:12
Joshua 15:8
Joshua 15:13
Joshua 17:15
Joshua 18:16
2 Samuel 5:11,22
2 Samuel 23:13
1 Chronicles 11:15
1 Chronicles 14:9
1 Chronicles 20:4
Most of the scriptures just give these giant people a brief mention. I'm assuming all were evil people like the Nephilim mentioned in Genesis, especially since Moses's spies were told to get rid of the different people living in the land of Canaan, which included these Giants! I got most of this research from Wikipedia, so, use at your own risk! I did look up all of the scriptures but this is NOT a subject matter in which I'm an expert! If I have any facts that are wrong, then feel free to correct me! I'm willing to learn!
What do you think about all of this? Can you imagine living in a land with these gigantic people with gigantic clusters of grapes? Almost makes me feel like I'm not on this earth when I read about it because the concept is so foreign. I'll bet God's earth looked a LOT different back in those days!
~Cecelia Dowdy~
14 comments:
Great post! This topic is fascinating.
I found it interesting that there are sites that show actual foot castings of the Giants that were left in clay! They were HUGE! Can you imagine running into a 20' man? The fruit thing is very interesting, that opens up a whole new territory to think about!
Hi Cecelia,
I am not sure about living between the Giants?
From far back, people strived for power.
So, I would think that maybe there were not that many of them. If there were many more, I am sure that they would rule. So maybe there giants but in very small numbers.
Anna Labno
Cecelia,
I don't think there were that many giants.
Maybe be there was a nice number of them, but I still believe there were not enough of them.
Back then, people strived for power. If there would be big numbers of them, they would have taken control over others.
Anna Labno
This is a fascinating topic to me too. I've always wondered about those Giants. Just how big were those jokers that the children of Israel had to come against? I can see why ten of the twelve spies gave bad reports. I mean, I used to get intimidated when I stood too close to the guys on the basketball team in college, and they were just six-seven. I can't imagine looking up at a guy ten or twelve feet tall :-).
Their line must have continued. I mean, Goliath and his brother were each over nine feet tall. They had to be descended from these same giants we're discussing here.
Anna, I think you do have a point. I also sense that there MAY have not been a whole lot of Giants? Like maybe there were 80-90% regular-sized humans and only maybe 10-20% of the population at that time were Giants? Or maybe less of a percentage than the 10-20% estimate?
Maurice, you brought up an excellent point and my husband was saying the same thing, about Goliath being the Giant in the Bible that everybody knows about. He'd also wondered about Goliath's lineage in relation to these Giants?
If you guys read the comments from the post the day before this one, you'll see that somebody mentions Goliath.
I don't think some people are aware of the Giants from the Old Testament. Some of told me that hearing about these Giants is new news to them!
Cecelia, I read through your posts. I had to research the "sons of God, daughters of men" thing for our pastor a few years ago, and all I can remember is that scholars have differing views on this. Now I'm curious about the giants and would like to look this up when I have some free time. I have a reference library of commentaries on my computer, so I'll see what I can find. But I have the feeling that there's a lot of things we'll have to wait until Heaven to find out!
Cecelia,I think the Nephilim are fascinating to think about,but yes,there sure is a lot of differing views on the subject.
Cecelia, Oh yes, Those grapes blow my mind too,and the description of Og the giant's bed!
Deu 3:11For 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.
My daughter and I can't figure out why giants were still around AFTER the flood though?
Hi, Chris. I sense that the Fallen Angels/Sons of God returned to Earth and mated with females again to get the new crop of Nephilim?? I'm speculating. I did email this guy who wrote Don't Know Much About The Bible because my sister said he seemed like a knowledgeable
person about Biblical topics. I asked him if there was a scripture reference about the Fallen Angels mating with women again AFTER the flood? I honestly don't know how else they'd pop up since every living thing was destroyed by the flood with the exception of the people on Noah's Ark.
Cecelia,
I know that the fruits and vegetables were much bigger a long time ago.
If you study archeological anthropology, you will come across it.
But I cannot tell you to the size of the vegetables and fruits that they have had. A lot of fruits and vegetables became domesticated, and over time they became smaller and smaller over time.
Archeological anthropology? Man, such a complicated scientific word! I keep thinking about the giant fruits...and the giants!! They won't leave my mind! I will research archeological anthropology and see what I come up with!
You will not find anything about giants because no skeletons have been found that big that resembled humans.
You can find out about famous LUCY, a bipedal that resembled close human skeleton. But the size was not of a giant.
But I know that fruits and vegetables were much bigger, but I did not get that far back to study how big they were. Things got smaller over time. Like I have said a lot of food was domesticated by humans and things got much smaller over time.
Cecelia, here's what one commentator said about the size of those grapes:
"The grapes reared in this locality are still as magnificent as formerly—-they are said by one to be equal in size to prunes, and compared by another to a man’s thumb. One cluster sometimes weights ten or twelve pounds. The mode of carrying the cluster cut down by the spies, though not necessary from its weight, was evidently adopted to preserve it entire as a specimen of the productions of the promised land; and the impression made by the sight of it would be all the greater because the Israelites were familiar only with the scanty vines and small grapes of Egypt."
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