Q&A: Giants in the Torah
Giants in the Torah
Question
Hello Rabbi,
In the Torah, several places speak about the existence of giant human beings. For example, in Deuteronomy 3:11:
“For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the Rephaim; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron. Is it not in Rabbah of the Ammonites? Nine cubits was its length and four cubits its width, by the cubit of a man.”
This is talking about human beings on the order of about 4 meters tall (based on the size of Og’s bed as described in the Torah). However, it seems to me that archaeological evidence for the existence of such giants has not yet been found. Do you believe that such giants existed?
Best regards,
Answer
I am not inclined to understand this literally. This is not like a one-time miracle. Here we are talking about an unusual person who lived his whole life this way, and there is also no apparent reason to perform such a miracle.
As for the lack of archaeological evidence, of course absence of evidence is not proof. Especially since we are talking about isolated individuals and not entire groups, so the chance of finding any remains is tiny.
Discussion on Answer
By the way, according to Maimonides’ calculation in Guide for the Perplexed, Part II, chapter 47, Og’s height was 6 cubits or a bit more (Maimonides assumes that the bed’s length is about one-third more than the height of the person lying in it), and if we take into account that a cubit according to Maimonides is apparently around 45–46 centimeters, it comes out that in his view Og’s height was close to the documented Guinness record, which currently stands at 2.72 meters.
And Maimonides concludes: “This is undoubtedly one of the strange individual variations of the species, but it is in no way impossible.”
Anything is possible.
Hello Oren. I wrote an article about the giants, and also about the issue of the sons of God and the daughters of man. You can receive it if you send your email address to my email: giladstn@gmail.com
Isn’t it possible to say that this was a very large person, but not necessarily literally 4.5 meters tall? Say, for example, 3 meters tall? That the number is typological.
You also see this kind of phenomenon among David’s warriors. For example, in Chronicles it says that one of the warriors was so mighty that he killed an Egyptian man who was five cubits tall. (Does that mean height? If so, that’s 2.5 meters.)
22 Benaiah son of Jehoiada, son of a valiant man of many deeds, from Kabzeel—he struck down the two Ariel of Moab, and he went down and struck the lion inside the pit on a snowy day. 23 And he struck down the Egyptian man, a man of great stature, five cubits tall; and in the hand of the Egyptian was a spear like a weaver’s beam, and he went down to him with a staff, and snatched the spear from the Egyptian’s hand and killed him with his own spear.
In any case, perhaps when the Torah gives a description of something that happened in the past, one can say that it was measured by the cubit used in the Torah’s period (as opposed to the cubit spoken of for an ongoing commandment). Since, as I vaguely recall, the Kadmonim claim that people used to be shorter, then if we assume the cubit was two-thirds of the later length, it works out: in the time of the Torah it would say nine cubits, and in the time of David it would say five cubits.