Do modern children know the story of Jack and the Beanstalk? It is really quite scary, far too scary for little ears in my opinion. “Fee, fie, foe, fum; I smell the blood of an Englishman; be he alive or be he dead, I’ll break his bones to make my bread!” Yikes! Get me outa here! A cannibalistic giant! Yet, there were such monstrous creatures on the earth. The Bible tells us of them: “There were giants in the land...” And yes, it is scarier than the fairytale.
Go back in history to about 1400 BC, round about the time when the children of Israel were leaving Egypt and heading for the land God promised Abraham.
The land was not empty; it was full of giants!
The Bible tells us some of their tribal names - the Emim, the Anakim, the Zamzumin; the Rephaim, the Amorites –and some of the battles to defeat them. Genesis 14:5, Numbers 13::32,33; Numbers 21; Deuteronomy 2:10,11; Deut 3:11; Joshua 11: 21,22.
The Amorites were said to be as tall as cedars and strong as oaks (book of Amos 2:9,10).
And don’t forget Og, King of Bashan, up in the north, whose bed was 13.5 feet long!
They were so scary that the children of Israel would not at first go in to take the land God promised them. God punished Israel by sending them back to the wilderness for 40 years until the next generation was grown up and straining at the leash to get back and bash those giants!
Personally, I am very glad that the giants were almost all wiped out by Joshua, Caleb and the valiant sons of Israel, or we might have to contend with them today!
Only a small number were left in three towns in what is now Gaza. Some of those last giants, including Goliath and his four brothers, were still around at the time of King David, 1000 BC, but David, his family, and friends took care of them. And I for one am very grateful. Otherwise they would have gone on breeding!
So there really were giants around, and good riddance to them all!
They may even have been cannibals, like the giant in the fairytale. There is a scripture in which the Israelites were afraid of being “devoured”. Numbers 13:32
The children of Israel had seen God’s mighty miracles as He delivered them out of Egypt, parting the Red Sea for them to cross over - and then drowning the pursuing army! He could do anything and He had promised to drive the evil tribes out of the land!
But the thought of facing the giants was just too much for the children of Israel and, aside from Joshua and Caleb, fear took over.
Could God really have driven out the giants? Well, I just love that one little scripture when He said: “I will send the hornet.” (Deut 7:20) Wow. A hornet would send a giant screaming down the road. A cloud of hornets could clear out a whole town of giants in just a few minutes!
Joshua 24:12 tells of one occasion when God did actually send hornets, including driving out two kings of the Amorites.
How great is our God! Don’t you just love Him? He is so completely, so absolutely wonderful! Don’t you just know that you can trust Him to take care of any little old giant problem in your life?
If only the children of Israel had remembered that one promise, that He would send the hornet. They could have marched straight in!
Yet, aren’t we just as cowardly? I know I am. Fear is the real enemy, worse than any giant.
But please, dear friends, stick to the scriptures on this exciting subject of giants. Scripture is sufficient. Other sources are not reliable. For instance, the Book of Enoch makes the giants about 1400 feet tall, which is absurd!
Some people today claim to have seen living giants or excavated graves of giants. I’m afraid we do not believe any of these tall tales, even when they are accompanied by carefully constructed photos.
And you have probably heard of the American soldier in the Middle East who allegedly encountered a giant, which was secretly flown to the States.
Just another tall tale.
The giants did exist, but they are not here now, not since King David and his buddies went in and mopped up the last few.
But where did they come from? Were they human? Extraterrestrial?
We have been discussing giants in the time of the Exodus, about 1400 BC. But way before that, nearly a thousand years earlier, about 2350 BC, was the Flood of Noah, and there was a different type of giant that had infested the world and that God was wiping out.
We know from Genesis 6:4 that some of the fallen angels (“sons of God, bene elohim in Hebrew) had relations with human women, and the hybrid offspring were the gibborim, mighty men, men of renown.
The offspring were also called Nephilim, and the Nephilim were all destroyed in the Flood of Noah. The fallen angels who fathered them were all chained up in a compartment of hell called Tartarus (2 Peter 2:4).
So if the Nephilim, the human/fallen angel hybrid monsters, were all drowned in the Flood, how could there be giants in the land a thousand years later when the children of Israel were at the borders of the promised land?
There are different theories about this. Some might say that a new bunch of fallen angels tried the same thing and made new monstrous hybrids. This is most unlikely, since all the fallen angels would have seen the terrible fate of the first lot.
What we do know is that several races or tribes of giants were infesting the land we know as Israel, and possibly other parts of the world as well in about 1400 B.C.
It tells us in Numbers 13:22,28,33 that some of those giants were descended from one man, Anak, son of Arba (which is Hebrew for the number four, don’t know if this is significant).
Some Bible teachers believe that they were not unnatural hybrids like the Nephilim, but that they were a group of very large, dominant, powerful people. And the Bible also tells us that they were extremely wicked. Those particular Anakim giants lived around Hebron.
They had to go. God simply would not allow them to continue to be a threat to normal men.
Other Bible teachers believe that the giants of Joshua’s day were indeed some sort of hybrid monster, not truly human, but with perverted, modified DNA. They say that is the reason God told Joshua to wipe them out completely, man, woman and child, and even their animals. As non-human humanoids, they could not be tolerated.
The lesson is that God does not allow tampering with the engines of His creation! We are made in His image and we had better not try to alter the genetic building blocks, as some are foolishly attempting today.
Getting back to the giants -although they were scary, it may well have been that they were scared also! After all, they must have seen that they were losing every battle as the Israelites advanced. And when they heard about the hornets, well ! Collapse of stout party!
That is why some believe that frightened giants fled the land, infesting other continents and possibly driving out human populations in many areas across the globe. They say this could account for the massive structures around the world which mystify us now and which date back to the time of the Exodus.
One day we will know everything, but for now, we have the Bible which tells us all we need to know.
Thank God for His holy word , which makes us wise!
***And just in case anyone reading this has not heard the gospel, please think! We don’t have a giant problem now; we have a sin problem! We have all done things wrong. We are not the good people we want to be. The Bible says ALL of us have sinned, every person. (Romans 3:23)
We don’t have giant DNA, but we have sin DNA! We are descended from Adam, the first man, and when he sinned, that was it. We all inherited a sinful nature.
And the Lord Jesus, God Himself, became a man so that He could shed His holy blood as a sacrifice for our horrible sins.
Repugnant? Yes, it is, but the Bible says that there is no forgiveness without the shedding of blood (Hebrews 9:22). Sin is so repugnant to God that only the lifeblood of a creature can begin to balance His scales of perfect justice.
That is why animals were sacrificed in the Old Testament. People confessed their sins over the animals, which were then slaughtered, and the blood was sprinkled as a sacrifice.
Not fair? No, of course not! The animal was innocent and the person was guilty. The blood of the animal paid the penalty for the person’s sin.
This was all pointing toward the great pinnacle of history, when the Lord Jesus, the innocent Lamb of God, willingly shed His holy blood for the sins of anyone who will commit themselves to Him and accept His sacrifice as the complete and total, one time only, payment for every sin for everyone who will come to faith in Him.
Jesus Christ, Savior of the world, said He will never turn anyone away. Even me. Even you. Gospel of John 6:37
Won’t you come to Jesus today and ask Him to forgive your sins and be your Lord? Or you can harden your heart and say you are a good person, as so many people have responded.
You can either stand before God in your sins and tell Him what a good person you are as He condemns you to hell - or you can stand before Him in the righteousness of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ ,who has died for you, taken your sins on Himself, and given you His righteousness.
You choose.
‘Happy is the man whose sins are forgiven!’ Psalm 32
You see the criteria is clear. You die and face the judgement. God does not weigh your good deeds against your bad deeds. He sees if you belong to His Son or not.
Jesus warned us in John 3:18 that you can either accept Him and win eternal life with Him, or you can reject Him and be condemned.
Does this make you mad? Well, don’t be mad. Just think of all that the Lord went through just for you.
Do you know anyone who would endure being scourged – for you? Do you know anyone who would agree to be beaten, stripped naked, and nailed to a cross - for you?
Has anyone else offered you an eternity of unimaginable bliss?
Think long and hard. Accept Jesus as your Savior now and wow, what adventures He has in store for you, dear friend! Life with Jesus in your heart is never boring! You cannot even begin to imagine the doors He will open for you and the doors He will shut.
A sample prayer: Lord Jesus, You said You came for sinners. I am a sinner. I believe that You died on the cross for my sins, You were buried, and You rose from the dead on the third day. Please forgive my sins (name any that come to mind). Please make me one of Your people.
Now get a Bible and read it every day. Ask the Lord to direct you to knowledgeable Christians who can help you understand. Try to find a good church where they teach verse by verse through the Bible. Ask the Lord what your gift is and how to use it for His glory, not yours.
Hope to see you in Heaven, dear friend!
Note: You don’t need faith to believe in Noah’s Flood. You just need a brain. The evidence is all over the world.
