Rephaim- Hebrew/Jewish RaceRace"Shades of the Dead"

Giants and Ghosts

The word rephaim in Hebrew carries two meanings that may be one: an ancient race of giants who inhabited Canaan before the Israelites arrived, and the shades of the dead who dwell in Sheol. The Ugaritic rpum texts preserve a similar pairing: dead kings who retained honor in the underworld. Giants in life, the Rephaim became the defining presences of the realm below in death.

The Giant Peoples

Genesis 14:5 records that Chedorlaomer and his allies defeated the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim during their campaign through Transjordan. Deuteronomy names the Emim in Moab and the Zamzummim in Ammon as peoples "counted as Rephaim," great and tall, destroyed by God before other nations displaced them.

Og of Bashan was "the last of the Rephaim." His iron bed measured nine cubits long. The Valley of Rephaim near Jerusalem preserved their memory in the landscape. David's warriors fought "descendants of the Rapha" in Gath, Goliath's kinsmen, the final remnant of a race the Israelites had been overcoming since they crossed the Jordan.

Shades of Sheol

Isaiah 14 describes the underworld stirring to greet the fallen king of Babylon: "Sheol beneath is stirred up to meet you when you come; it rouses the shades to greet you, all who were leaders of the earth; it raises from their thrones all who were kings of the nations. All of them will answer and say to you: 'You too have become as weak as we! You have become like us!'"

Once they were kings and warriors. Now they are barely roused even by remarkable visitors. Their greeting is mockery: even you, who shook nations, have become like us. Isaiah 26:14 states it plainly: "They are dead, they will not live; they are shades, they will not arise." Psalm 88 asks: "Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you?" The Rephaim exist in a realm cut off from worship, from action, from everything that gives life weight.