At the end of part one, the Nephilim were wiped out in the flood, but their legacy goes on through the Rephaim, the Emim and the Anakim. Unfortunately, that legacy does not go on in very great detail. We have only a few verses about each of them and they were all driven out or killed eventually by Moses and Joshua.
It would seem in Deuteronomy 2:11, that the Rephaim were the common ancestor of the Anakim and Emim. Except that we see very early in Genesis 14:5 that the Raphaim were defeated alongside the Emim, so maybe Rephaim became a generic term for all giants. The only specific Rephaim that we know about is Og the king of Bashan, who was the last of the Rephaim. The Israelites captured all sixty of his cities and for some reason Moses seemed in Deuteronomy 3:11 to be amazed by his bed which was made of iron and 13.5 feet long by 6 feet wide.
The best known giant besides Goliath would have to be Anak, even though we know nothing of him in particular. We do know that his father was Arba and he had three sons named Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai, whom were spotted by the spies Moses sent to Canaan. Josh and Caleb eventually drove all of the Anakim out of Israel according to Joshua 11:22. They were driven out to the same area by the coast that the Philistines came from years later. This has led many to believe that Goliath was a remaining descendant of the Anakim.
There is very little fact given about the giants of the Old Testament, so it is hard to really understand who they really are. Many people think that stories about these giants are how the Greeks formed their belief in the Titans. What we do know is that they all seemed to be enemies of God and he systematically wiped them out.
The very limited information about the giants of the OT has led to speculation and wild theories. Some people think that the giants are the result of aliens living on earth and having children with humans. Yet another says that they have the ability to condense their bodies to blend in with others and still exist today somewhere around Mexico and Texas. More realistically, there is archaeological evidence that leads us to believe that the average Israelite was just barely 5 foot tall, so any one over 6 foot would have seemed pretty large. Less than 300 years ago, George Washington at 6 foot 3 inches was said to have towered over most any other man. Think of what high school seniors were like when your were a freshman…
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