Page Content (OCR)
28 fallen angels, evidently smaller in number and more limited in area, for they were for the most part confined in Canaan, and were in fact known as the ‘nations of Canaan.’ It was for the destruction of these, that the sword of Israel was necessary, as the Flood had been before. "As to the date of this second irruption, it was evidently soon after it became known that the seed was to come through Abraham; for, when he came out from Haran (Gen. 12:6) and entered Canaan, the significant fact is stated: 'The Canaanite was then (i.e. already) in the land.’ And in Gen.14:5 they were already known as 'Rephaim' and 'Emim,' and had established themselves at Ashteroth Karnaim and Shaveh Kiria- thaim" (Appendix 25). Satan knew that the promised Messiah would come through the descendants of Abraham. Satan adopted a pre-emptive strategy and bred more "giants" to occupy the Promised Land to prevent the Israelites from being able to occupy it. His plan aborted, however, when the Israelites under Moses and later Joshua conquered the inhabitants of the land, and destroyed the A 1 In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses writes of the land of Moab, "The Emims dwelt therein in times past, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims; which also were accounted giants, as the Anakims" (Deut.2:10-11). The word for "giant" here is Raphah, which means "giant." Interestingly, the same word also means "ghost, dead, deceased." The Rephaim were another of the lines of giants which existed after the Flood. Moses tells us of the land of Moab, "That also was accounted a land of giants; GIANTS dwelt therein in old time; and the Ammonites call them Zamzummims; a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims; but the LORD destroyed them before them; and they succeeded them, and dwelt in their stead" (v.20- n4AN 21). Og, the king of Bashan, conquered by Moses and the Israelites on their entrance into the Promised Land, was one of the giants. "For 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 [approximately 14 feet!] was the length thereof, and four cubits [6 feet] the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man [i.e., a normal man -- the normal cubit measured 18 inches]" (Deut.3:11). Bashan, the land of Og, was called "the land of giants"(v.13; see also Josh.12:4, 13:12). The valley of Hinnom, the refuse dump for Jerusalem, a type of the final Gehenna fire, lay eastward of the "valley of the giants" (Josh.15:8; 18:16). Joshua 17:15 mentions the "Rephaim," another branch of the "giants." These dwelt in the region near Sodom and Gomorrah in the time of Abraham (Gen.14:5; 15:20; see also II Sam.5:18,22; 23:13). In an ancient text of the Jews, we read an astonishing description of some of these gigantic Amorites whom the Israelites conquered. In Buber's Tanhuma, Devarim 7, the text tells us of a Rabbi Johnanan ben Zakkai's encounter with the Roman Emperor Hadrian. This event occurred in about A.D. 135, soon after the Roman victory in the Bar Kochba war, when the Jews rebelled against the Romans. The text reads: "The wicked emperor Hadrian, who conquered Jerusalem, boasted, 'I have conquered Jerusalem with great power.’ Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai said to him, 'Do not boast. remaining Anakim. Another Race of Giants -- the Rephaim