Who Were the Rephaim?

In the Bible, the word Rephaim has two meanings. The first one, Rephaim was an ancient race of giants or heroes (Gen. 14:5; 15:20; Deut. 2:11; 3:11,13; I Chron. 20:4). The second meaning suggests that the Rephaim are the dead who dwell in Sheol, normally rendered into English as “shades” (Isa. 26:14,19; Ps. 88:11; Prov. 2:18-19; 9:18; 21:16; Job 26:5). Scholars have debated extensively whether the two meanings existed side by side or one grew out of the other. Those who hold to the second opinion are themselves divided as to which was the original meaning, heroes or shades. The LXX uses gigantes (“giants”), both for the dead (Isa. 14:9; Job 26:5, Prov. 21:16) and for the aboriginal population (Gen. 14:5; Josh. 12:4; 13:12; I Chron. 20:4; Duet. 2:11, 20; 3:11, 13: Raphaïn). In this paper we demonstrate how the Rephaim became powerless shades from an ancient race of heroes and giants.

Rephaim “Shades”

In some biblical passages, the Rephaim “shades” are the dead who reside in the underworld. In Isaiah 26 they are mentioned twice. (1) They are dead, they will not live; they are shades, they will not arise (v. 14). Given this parallel, Rephaim may be a poetic term for the dead. Another possibility is that the dead are referred to as metim when they die, and as Rephaim when they are in the grave (cf. Ps. 88:11; Prov. 21:16). (2) The earth will revive Rephaim (Isa. 26:19). The supplicant is asking that the earth bring forth the Rephaim; that is, the dead who are buried in it.

In Psalm 88:11, also, the dead and the shades are paralleled, Do You work wonders for the dead. Do the shades rise to praise You? The rhetorical question in this verse implies the poet’s notion that death is final, and that God will not miraculously bring the dead back to life. The Rephaim, the spirits of the dead in the underworld, lie there doing nothing, unable to praise or thank the Lord. The dead and the Rephaim have no hope of resurrection. Spronk conjectured that the verse is a polemic against the Canaanite belief in the revival of the dead.¹ In this verse, however, Rashi glosses Rephaim as derived from rafah ‘feeble.’ Indeed, according to Radak and the Targum, the Rephaim are the feeble dead whose bodies have decomposed in the grave. These weak corpses are unable to arise from their graves.

The biblical usage of Rephaim as a synonym for the dead describes the inhabitants of the netherworld, it is also found in extra-biblical texts. A Phoenician inscription of the Sidonian king Tabnit and his son Eshmunazar found on a sarcophagus from the end of the sixth century B.C.E, warns against those who might desecrate the grave: “May there be no resting place for you with the Rephaim.”²

Rephaim as the Feeble

Because the Rephaim ‘shades’ are dead, we would expect them to be powerless. As we have seen, some associate Rephaim with the root r.p.h ‘feeble.’ This view is espoused by the medieval commentators. As Brown observed, however, this raises the problem of explaining the switch from heh to aleph; he holds that we are dealing with an orthographic development in biblical Hebrew of a sort possible with final weak verbs. He adds, however, that the discovery of extra-biblical texts with an aleph makes it difficult to assume that one comes from the other.³

In Job we learn about the physical state of those who descended to the underworld; their strength is spent they are like a fetus in their mother’s womb (Job 3:17). Similarly, according to Psalmist, I am reckoned among those who go down to the Pit; I am a man who has no strength (Ps. 88:5 [4]).⁴ This rendering of the verse is supported by Rashi and Ibn Ezra. Dahood, citing the Ugaritic, understood it to mean “a strengthless man.” It is interesting that the Egyptians also spoke of their dead as “the weary of heart.”⁵ The Greeks referred to them as ’the weary.“ In the Odyssey, those in the underworld are described as “the dead without a sense of feeling, phantoms of mortals whose weary days are done.”⁶

In Isaiah, when the inhabitants of the underworld mock the king of Babylon, they tell him: You too have become as weak as we are! You have become like us! (Isa. 14:10). The king, who rules the entire world, would be deprived of his power, like the shades in the underworld.

Rephaim “Giants”

In the Bible the noun Rephaim is also the ethnic designation of an ancient and evidently titanic race. The Moabites called them Emim (Deut. 2:11); the Ammonites, Zamzummim (v. 20). At one point the Land of Ammon was part of the territory of the Rephaim (vv. 21-22). The core of Bashan is also referred to as the Land of Rephaim (Deut. 3:13). The Rephaim are first mentioned in Genesis as part of the western campaign of Chedorlaomer and his allies, who smote the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim (Gen. 14:5). In Genesis the Rephaim are also mentioned as one of the nations inhabiting Canaan (Gen. 15:10; Josh. 17:15).

In several verses the Rephaim are said to have been giants (Deut. 2:11, 21; 3:11). One can infer their stature from the size of Og’s bed (Deut. 3:11), and from the weapons of their descendants (2 Sam. 21:16-22). The emphasis on their height and strength is what led the Septuagint to render the term as gigantes and titanes; the Peshitta has gabbare and gibbarayya. In the book of Jubilees, we read that the Rephaim were nine or ten cubits tall (29:9).⁷ The Rephaim giants were held to be the descendants of the Nephilim, the mighty men, the men of renown, the descendants of the sons of God, mentioned in Genesis 6:1-4.

In several passages the Bible refers to the towns of Ashtarot and Edrei as cities of Og, the king of Bashan (Deut. 1:4; Josh. 12:4; 13:12). Og was the last of the Rephaim and Bashan is the land of Rephaim (Deut. 3:11, 13). The Ugaritic text (RS24.252=KTU1.108) refers to Rpu who lived in ’ttrt and ruled or was king over hdr’y, which is a phonetic variant or scribal error for Edrei. These are evidently the towns mentioned in the Bible, Ashtarot, and Edrei.

In the Jewish tradition, Og was a survivor of the flood. According to Targum Ps.-Jonathan on Deut. 3:11, “only Og remained of the heroes who survived the flood.” The Jewish legend describes him as a descendant of the Nephilim.⁸ He is also identified with the refugee who brought Abraham the report of Lot’s capture (Gen 14:13), and is referred to as “the refugee” because he was the only one of the Rephaim defeated by Chedarlaomer to escape, and this is why he was left from the remaining Rephaim (Deut. 3:11).⁹

Rephaim as Warriors

The Rephaim may be a line of warriors; this can be seen from the reference in II Samuel 21:16 and 18 to yelidei harafah. According to the parallel text in 1 Chron. 20:6 and 8, they were born to Harafa’.¹⁰ The Septuagint understood this word as the singular of Rephaim, with the prefixed definite article. The Lucianic recension of vv. 15-16 in II Samuel 21 has “Dadou, son of Ioas, who was of the descendants of the giants.” Lucian (c. 240-312) was a Chrisitian presbyter theologian who took upon himself to “fix” the errors that he belived are found in the text, he revised the Septuagint based on the original Hebrew. The Targum reads “of the Giant”; the Peshitta, “David, Joab, and Abisai were terrified by a giant.” Targum Jonathan has “sons of the mighty man.” Clearly all the translators understood rafah as a form of Rephaim ‘giants.’ The reference to the height and strength of the Rephaim added to the belief in their military prowess.

Rephaim as Military Caste

L’Heureux (preceded by Willesen) conjectured that yelidei harafah does not refer to descendants, but to a military caste in which membership was not determined by birth but by “adoption, initiation, or consecration.”¹¹ Based on the studies by L’Heureux and Willesen, McCarter conjectures that the members of this military order were devoted to the god Rapha of Gath. The cult of this god was still active in David’s time. One of its centers was the Philistine city of Gath.¹² It seems more likely, however, that harafah is a proper noun. In II Samuel 21:15-22 we have a list of four Philistine heroes who were defeated by David’s heroes. The first three are said to be yelidei harafah and the fourth to have been born to Harafah. Summing up, the narrator tells us that those four were descended from the Raphah in Gath, and they fell by the hands of David and his men (II Sam. 21:22). According to the parallel text in I Chronicles 2:4-8, Sippai, who must be the Saph of II Samuel 21:18, was one of the descendants of the Rephaim. This suggests that the forms Harafah and rafa’ are a collective term or eponym derived from the noun Rephaim. The Talmudic sages also seem to have believed that this was a proper name; they said that harafah might be the name of a Philistine of Gath, or a woman. We also find her identified with Orpah, Ruth’s sister-in-law.¹³ The Septuagint of II Samuel 21 and I Chronicles 20:8 have Ραφα, as a proper noun, but in I Chronicles 20:6 it reads απογονος γιγαντων ‘of the race of the giants.’ In most places the Lucianic recension has “giants.” By the interpretation of giants, it referred to the strength of the warriors.

Dead Heroes and Kings

Relying on Isaiah rousing for you the shades of all earth’s chieftains, raising from their thrones all the kings of nations (14:9), scholars suggested that the Rephaim are the ancestral line of dead heroes and kings. The passage in Isaiah associates the Rephaim ‘shades’ with kings and heroes. It describes the reception of the king of Babylon by its denizens. It should be emphasized, though, that verse 11 describes them as powerless. Their royalty is meaningless because in death all are equal. The concept of the Rephaim as an ancestral line of dead heroes and kings is also found in the Ugaritic literature of the second millennium.¹⁴ In the Ugaritic text (Ras Shamra 24:252) we read of, rpu mlk elm, “Rpu the eternal king,” who is also said to be gtr ‘mighty.’ Another text (RS 34.126 = KTU.161) which belongs to the so called Rephaim texts, describes a ritual ceremony from the time of Ammurapi III, the last king of Ugarit, associated with or commemorating the death of his father, Niqmaddu III. It begins with an invitation to the king’s dead ancestors and to the rpu to attend a celebratory meal. This is followed by lamentations for the dead king. The god Shapash is called on to find the royal dead in the underworld. In the text the rpum are being referred to as illnym “divine ones,” which led to the suggestion that the rpum are minor deities.¹⁵ However there is no indication in the biblical narrative that the rpum are deities. In addition the Rephaim texts are fragmentary and difficult to interpret which led to disagreement among scholars.

Rephaim as R.P.’ Healing

Some have alleged a connection between Rephaim and the root r.p.’ ‘heal,’ drawing on Isaiah 26:14 and Psalm 88:11 [10], which the Septuagint translates as “the healers (iatroi) will not rise up.”¹⁶ The Samaritan Targum has a similar understanding of the references to the race of Rephaim in Deuteronomy 2:20 and 3:13. De Moor believed that the Rephaim were the ruling aristocracy of the land, who functioned as savior-healers and worshipped Baal, rp’u mlk ‘lm, “Savior, king of eternity.” After death they became deified royal ancestors but continued to play their role of savior-healers. Later, when Yahweh became the physician of Israel and ancestor worship was banned, the Rephaim became powerless. As we have seen, however, the biblical term Rephaim has nothing to do with healing. According to Sperling, the verb r.p.’ is found in Ugaritic only in personal names. Some have attempted to explain the terms heal and gather or united, found in Semitic languages, as referring to the Rephaim. It should be emphasized, however, that in Ugaritic, these words have nothing to do with the verb r.p.’. In Ugaritic “heal” is b.n.y.¹⁷ Consequently it seems preferable to understand the word as meaning the “powerless dead,” as noted previously.¹⁸

In II Chronicles 16:12, the Masoretic Text refers to physicians. When King Asa fell critically ill, rather than turning to the Lord he called in the physicians and placed his trust in them. At the start of his reign, Asa was a steadfast adherent of the Lord and played a key role in the people’s renewed contract with Him. In his personal distress he refused to pray for divine help. The portrayal of Asa’s consultation with physicians as sinful has no parallel in the Bible. Elsewhere human physicians are mentioned in connection with the embalming of Jacob, and in Job 13:4 and Jeremiah 8:22. Even though the Bible is cognizant of methods of practical healing, the biblical perspective is that healing is the province of God or his emissary the prophet (II Kgs. 4:19-37; 20:7; Isa. 38:21). Jastrow believes that Asa did not consult with physicians but with the Rephaim, the shades or spirits of the dead, just as Saul, on the eve of his defeat at Gilboa, turned to the medium.¹⁹ That is, the Chronicler wrote rofeim ‘physicians’ but intended refaim ‘spirits of the dead.’ If we accept this interpretation it appears that the objection to the usage of refaim stems from the association between the art of healing with magic; so to avoid it the Chronicler used rofeim. However we believe that the usage of rofeim is the correct one. In the Bible we find the view that God is the supreme physician, I am the Lord your healer (Ex. 15:26), which is prevalent in Tanakh as well as that illness is divinely inflicted. Whether to rely on human physicians or God is found in the rabbinic dictum from the school of R. Ishmael “From this we learn that the permission has been given to the physician to heal” (TB Berakhot 60a). In Ben Sira, there is emphasis on the importance of the physicians and the medicines they use which are gifts from God (38:1-14). But from reading the Chronicler it appears that the author did not approve of Asa’s conduct.

Land of No Return

As we have seen, one possible understanding of the Rephaim are the dead who inhabit Sheol, the underworld. Sheol in Tanakh is a place of no return. Job, for example, said that none who descends to the underworld return: As a cloud fades away, so whoever goes down to Sheol does not come up; he returns no more to his home; his place does not know him (Job 7:9-10). The idea of no return is repeated: Before I depart- never to return- for the land of the deepest gloom (10:21). Because no man returns from the underworld, in Job we also find the idea that a person remains there forever, as implied by so man lies down never to rise (Job 14:12).

The underworld as a place of no return is mentioned in the Sumerian and Akkadian myth of the descent of the goddess of fertility (respectively, Inanna and Ishtar) to the underworld, that place is referred to as the “land of the dead,” the “land of no return,” and “the house which none leave who have entered it…the road from which there is no way back.”²⁰ The concept of the netherworld as a place from which there is no return developed against the background of the fear that the shades of the dead, which must be fed, might try to come back from the underworld, usurping the place of the living and harming them. In the Akkadian version of the myth, Ishtar threatens the guardian of the underworld: “If thou openest not the gate so that I cannot enter, I will smash the door, I will shatter the bolt, I will smash the doorpost, I will move the doors, I will raise up the dead, eating the living, so the dead will outnumber the living.”²¹

Sheol is a void. There is no connection between the dead and the living, and the dead know nothing about the living. There is also a disconnection between the dead and the Lord, whom they cannot praise. In the biblical view, the dead are in a condition of utter silence in Sheol and cannot praise the Lord. An echo of this can be found in If the Lord had not been my help, my soul would soon have dwelt in the land of silence (Ps. 94:17). The concept that the dead do not praise the Lord or extol his names recurs several times in the Bible (Ps. 6:6; 30:10; 115:17). In Psalms 115:17 we read: The dead cannot praise the Lord, nor any who go down into silence. Here the Psalmist seems to have used dumah intentionally to express the contrast between silence and a song of praise. The Talmud refers to the angel who guards the dead by the name Dumah. The soul of one who passes away before his allotted time wanders about until his years are complete, at which time he is finally consigned to Dumah.²² The Bible mentioned Sheol as the place of the dead Rephaim: He does not know that the shades are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol (Prov 9:18), or The shades tremble beneath the waters their denizens. Sheol is naked before him; Abdon has no cover (Job 26:5-6). This notion is repeated numerous times in Tanakh (Prov. 21:16; Isa. 26:14,19). By describing the Rephaim in Sheol the biblical narrator mocked them because they are in the land of no return.

Traces of Mythology

We believe the description of the race of giants or heroes are remnants or traces of mythology. Mythological motifs are found across the Tanakh. In Genesis, the mention of tehom suggests that it was a name of a mythical being like the Mesopotamian Tiamat (Gen. 1:2). Indeed, in Isaiah 51:10 tehom appears in a mythic context. The creation of the great sea monsters that are mentioned in Genesis 1:21 is anti-pagan polemic. In the Ugaritic text tnn and ltn (cognate with Leviathan) represent mythical chaos monsters as the Hebrew tannin. Ugaritic text mentions tnn which is another name for Yamm (sea) who is the enemy of Baal. Anat describes how she crushed tnn. Outside of Genesis, in some poetic passages, there are references to Yahweh who battled with draconic monsters and destroyed them. It is believed that those passages relate to the creation of the world. Among the monsters that are mentioned are Yam, Nahar, Tannin Leviathan, Rahab, and the elusive Serpent and Twisting Serpent (Isa. 27:1; 51:9-10; Jer. 5:22; Hab. 3:8; Ps. 74:13-14; 89: 10-11; 104:6-9; Prov. 8:27-29; Job 7:12; 9:13; 26:10-13; 38:8-11). This suggests the existence of different myths from different origins. By God creating the great sea monsters it strips them from divinity. Mythological motifs that are found in Tanakh were adopted and transformed to coincide with the biblical worldview. Originally the Rephaim referred to a legendary hero of antiquity who descended to the netherworld. Thus, the later description of the Rephaim in Sheol who appear as shades, came to mock those legendary heroes. This is explicitly described in the words of Isaiah: Sheol below was astir to greet your coming, rousing for you the shades (Rephaim) of all earth’s chieftains, raising from their thrones all the kings of nations (14:9). According to the prophet Isaiah, in death all are equal.

Summary

In the Bible, the word Rephaim has two meanings. The first, the Rephaim are an ancient race of giants or heroes, and the second meaning suggests that the Rephaim are the dead who dwell in Sheol. Originally the Rephaim were remnants of mythological motifs of an ancient race of giants and heroes. Tanakh with its monotheistic view transformed this motif. It mocks the giants or heroes and describes them as powerless shades.