Anakim, Rephaim, oh my!
This week's parsha features Bnei Yisrael passing through Edom and the two Emorite countries - Sichon's country and Og's country (Bamidbar 21:21-35). Og was the last of the Rephaim (Devarim 3:11), a race of giants that were wiped out way back during the War of the Four and Five Kings in Beresheet (14:5). Some midrashim state that Sichon was also a giant, of the antediluvian kind (for example, Devarim Rabbah 11:10).
Looking through Tanach it occurred to me that giants might be frightening, but they obviously aren't unbeatable. David and his men defeated a number of giants, and, as mentioned already, the four Mesopotamian kings managed to defeat the Rephaim. And yet, two parshas ago, when the spies told Bnei Yisrael that there were Anakim in the Land of Yisrael (Bamidbar 13:28), Kalev and Yehoshua said nothing about "hey, guys, giants are not unbeatable!" Kalev made a more generalized statement, that "yes we can, because we have Hashem!" (ibid. 30). Something like that. What gives? Why not mention that in the time of Avraham, most of the Rephaim were decimated?
Evidently there's a big difference between Anakim and Rephaim. In the whole story of the Meraglim (in both Shelach and Devarim) the references are all to Anakim, never Rephaim. And in Devarim 9:2 Moshe himself says to the people that "you know and you have heard that no one can stand up to the Anakim." In Devarim 2:10-11 and :20-21 he says that the Rephaim are "considered like" the Anakim, implying that they're second-rate.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point, although a follow-up to the comparison between Anakim and Rephaim is: In what way? That whole portion of Devarim has a lot of references to nationalities. Is it a question of size/strength/ferocity or a question of ethnicity/nationality?
DeleteCould be that both are giants, but the Rephaim were weaker. Could also be that the Rephaim - in keeping with the fact that their name also means "wraiths" or "ghosts" - were (or used tactics that were) psychologically frightening but which an opposing army could overcome with appropriate discipline, while the Anakim had actual military strengths which would be a much harder nut to crack.
DeleteAgreed. There are many things that could be. This is a highly speculative subject. For a project, I've been looking into some sectarian Jewish texts on giants. They had their own speculations/traditions on various giants.
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