The story of Giants
in Tanach
Aryeh Klein (photo above - Aryeh learning in The Gush Beit Midrash)
Gush Shana Bet
Throughout tanach,
there are a whole bunch of individuals who are mentioned as being giants,
either explicitly by the pesukim, or by midrashim surrounding
them. There are a few different approaches among the rishonim as to, who
or, what these giants were and based on that perhaps we can understand what the
Torah is doing by including them in tanach.
As a background
there are three groups of giants in the tanach. The first set is Sichon
and Og, the brothers who led their people in war against the Jews as the
Jews travelled from Egypt towards Israel. The pasuk by Og says explicitly
that he slept in an iron bed[1] nine cubits long implying that he was a giant.
The second set are shashay, talmi, achiman, and their
giant father who is not mentioned by
name in the pesukim, who are first mentioned by Rashi as the
reason behind the name of the city Kiryat Arba[2]. It
was called Kiryat Arba, explains Rashi, because of these four
giants who inhabited the city. Based on the mefarshim, these are also
the giants that the spies encountered when they scouted out the land of Israel
and returned with the report "Bnei Anakim Rainu Sham"[3], that
we saw the children of the giants as we scouted. This set of giants makes their final
appearance in Sefer Yehoshua where they are driven out of the land first
by Kalev[4]
and then by shevet Yehuda[5].
The third set of giants is the famous Goliat who was defeated by David,
and his three brothers who in Sefer Shmuel are defeated by David's lieutenants[6]. In Divray
Hayamim 5:5 they are referred to as the children of Harpah, who the gemara in
sotah says this is the same person as Orpah, Ruth's sister who
separated from her and her mother in law following the death of Machlon
and Kilyon. The Ruth Rabba explains that on the night that she
separated from Naomi, Orpah slept with 100 uncircumcised men and
according to some even a dog, and from that night she gave birth to 4 giant
sons as a reward for the 4 mil she accompanied Ruth and Naomi.
The question that
arises from all of this is, from where do these giants come from and were they
really giants.
Perek vav of Bereshit
says:
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א וַיְהִי
כִּי-הֵחֵל הָאָדָם, לָרֹב עַל-פְּנֵי הָאֲדָמָה; וּבָנוֹת, יֻלְּדוּ לָהֶם.
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1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on
the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
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2 that the sons of God saw the daughters of men
that they were fair; and they took them wives, whomsoever they chose.
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3 And the LORD said: 'My spirit shall not abide in
man for ever, for that he also is flesh; therefore shall his days be a
hundred and twenty years.'
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4 The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and
also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and
they bore children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old,
the men of renown. {P}
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These nefilim
mentioned in pasuk daled are the first time giants are mentioned in tanach
and the mefarshim understand these pesukim in a few different
ways. The first approach is that of the midrashim brought down by Rashi.
Rashi here and more explicitly in Parshat Shalach writes how
these nfilim are angels who fell from heaven during the generation of Enosh.
The midrash explains that when the angels saw Man beginning to sin they
immediately came before God claiming that God should never have created Man, as
he is so prone to sin. God responded by saying that the Yetzer Hara is
so strong that even you angels could not have done better. Hashem sent the
angels down to Earth, and immediately the angels succumbed to their Yitzrei
Hara and began sinning with the daughters of man. The children they had
from these relationships were the nefilim mentioned in pasuk daled
and these were the forerunners of the giants mentioned later in the Tanach.
The Malbim
takes a completely different approach. The Malbim starts off quoting the
medrashim quoted by Rashi that Bnei Elokim refers to
angels who literally fell from Heaven. He expands this opinion saying that some
people go so far in it, claiming that this is the source behind people viewing
the rulers of the Egyptians as semi-divine. He then completely rejects this
whole approach. Instead, he translates the nefilim and Bnei Elokim
as just a term for great people, the leaders of the generation, similar to how
we use the word idolize nowadays about people we respect. Why then are they called
nefilim? Because they caused the world to fall. These people were the
leaders of the generation, and they did not lead their people properly. The Malbim
in general throughout tanach would view these giants as giants in
stature, and not necessarily giants in physique.
The Ramban
has a third approach similar in that to the Malbim. Instead of viewing
these nefilim as some type of supernatural creatures as the midrashim
do, the Ramban translates Bnei Eolkim as additional children of
Adam and Chava. The pesukim say by Adam and Chava that they had more
children after giving birth to their first three that are mentioned by name,
and this pasuk is referring to those children. Adam and Chava were
created בצלם אלקים and it would reason to claim that their
children were just more perfect then other humans as they were directly
descended from those that God had created himself.
To summarize so
far, we have seen three approaches as to how we view these supposed Giants. Rashi
supported by the Midrashim views them as actual Giants. Born from both man and
angel, these beings were just stronger, larger, and greater than normal humans.
The Malbim holds that these are just the leaders of the world. They were
people that were looked up to, and when they failed to lead their generation
properly, their entire generation fell. The Ramban in a similar vein
says that they were normal humans, just slightly better ones due to their
genes.
I believe that no
matter which way you go here in regards to who these giants were, the Torah is
teaching us a valuable lesson. If you go in the direction of Rashi that
these are angels and descendants from angels, then we see even angels succumbing
to the Yetzer Hara despite the fact that they are a lot closer to
perfect than Man. If so, the question arises why did God create Man if they are
bound to fail? To answer this question I want to relate an idea that Rav Bick
gave over in a shiur on teshuva. He posed the question “What was the
world missing that perhaps was a catalyst for Gods creation of humans”? The
answer he gave was the idea of improvement. God is perfect, and as such there
is no idea of improvement or progress. We as humans, who are far from perfect,
can, and should, always work on ourselves to improve. This is one lesson that
can be derived from the Giants appearance in these pashiyot.
If you take the
view of the Malbim and the Ramban a completely lesson comes forth
from these pesukim. The Torah here is telling us that in the generations
of Enosh, Moshe, and of David there were leaders in the world that
people looked up to and respected. These leaders had tremendous potential to do
well and lead their people in the right direction. However, they failed, and
failed so badly that the Torah refers to them as nefilim. They were the
ones who brought the world around them crashing to the ground. The Torah
expects leaders and those with leadership potential to take responsibility for
people around them and events around them. Those who don’t are literally
causing the world around them to fall and crumble to the ground.
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