Gibborim

“Giborim – Rabbi Abba bar Kahana said, in the name of Rabbi Yoḥanan: The marrow of the femur of one of them measured eighteen cubits.” Bereshit Rabbah 26:7

As established when discussing the Nephilim, the misnomer of their status as angels comes from their title ‘fallen’ which many take to mean fallen angels on the surface. We have seen how in reality the ‘fallen angels’ were actually the Elohim - and their descendants the Bene Elohim - who intermarry with the daughters of men, to produce further offspring who themselves interbreed with the Nephilim, to produce what are known as the Gibborim.

We have so far separated the Nephilim into two groups: antediluvian giant beings who survive the Flood in some capacity through their descendants the Gibborim, and the later Canaanite giants referred to with the title ‘Nephilim’, but actually being descended of the Gibborim. This means really there is a third ‘classification’ of Nephilim, in addition to that of the Gibborim.

If we were to describe this later group of the “Anshay/Ish Middot/Middah/Middon” - translated simply as the ‘men of stature’, or ‘men of measure’ - with a single term we could call them something like the Middonim keeping with the plural ‘im’ ending in the former two groups. I will therefore sub-divide those titled ‘Nephilim’ into three groupings: Nephilim, Gibborim, and Middonim. The latter two of these groups descended from the Bene Elohim making them faintly ‘angelic’.

This group of Middonim are typified by the figure Goliath, who will be discussed in the next section, but the Gibborim are traditionally associated with both the leaders Nimrod and Og - two very important biblical figures we have already extensively covered. What has emerged is a picture of different Nephilim groups of varying racial ‘purity’ with the purest of the Nephilim having been wiped out by the Flood; these would be the Nephilim referred to with the title in Genesis.

There is an interesting connection to the Nephilim and Gibborim found throughout Ezekiel with the first important reference being 32:12 “With the swords of the mighty I shall cause your multitude to fall, all of them the strong of the nations, and they will plunder the pride of Egypt, and all its multitude will be destroyed.” There is a lot going on here, and unraveling the mysterious of even a single paragraph can take books to describe without strong foundation in Torah, but we will stick to the application of this line to the historical concept of the Gibborim, and steer away from the most mystical interpretations; for now.

The first thing that jumps out is the term “mighty” which is ‘gibborim’ in the Hebrew next to a cognate of nephilim as the meaning of fall. Later on the term ‘gibborim’ is used again in line 21 “The strongest of the mighty men shall speak of him from the midst of the Grave and with his helpers; the uncircumcised, those slain by the sword, descended and lay down.” This time the phrase is used alongside the term “sheol” meaning grave, or underworld with the implication that the Gibborim, who are in the grave, will be involved in this process.

Finally, line 27 really gives us a smoking gun “But they will not lie with the mighty men, [for they are] inferior to the uncircumcised who descended to the Grave with their weapons, and they laid their swords under their heads and their iniquities were upon their bones, for the destruction of the mighty was in the land of the living.” This time ‘gibborim’ is directly next to the term nephilim, in Hebrew “גִּבּוֹרִ֔ים נֹֽפְלִ֖ים”. These two terms usage next to each other show a precedence for the term nephilim as a persistent modifier for the groups such as the ‘gibborim’, and other giants.

Effectively this explains how in the era of Ezekiel - sometime around 500 BCE - the Nephilim and Gibborim were long dead, in Sheol, as purely spiritual figures. The usage of the terms is also more literal without the implication of a ‘living group’ as it appears in the lines from Genesis and Numbers. It’s obvious that by the time of Ezekiel, both the Nephilim and Gibborim were long extinct groups, but there could be a faint genetic lineage of the ‘Giants’ through one of the later Middonim groups who are much smaller in physical height.

One may tentatively read lines about height, size, or stature with relative meaning, but there doesn’t seem to be a pattern with how these terms are used. They don’t appear to describe the actual height of these groups, and it seems certain Gibborim were a similar height to the Middonim. From Deuteronomy 3:11  “For only Og, king of Bashan, was left from the remnant of the Rephaim. His bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbah of the children of Ammon? Nine cubits was its length, and four cubits its breadth, according to the cubit of a man.”¹ We learn here that Og’s bed was nine cubits - something close to 13.5ft - and it would therefore be reasonable to assume Og was not reaching the very end of his bed, making him likely around twelve feet in height.

We have a problem; there is a Rabbinic debate around how to interpret this line, from Rashi first “according to the cubit of a man: I.e., according to the cubit of Og”² Here, Rashi measures the cubit as a cubit relative to Og, with a cubit in the ancient world being from the elbow to the end of the middle finger. If the cubit is relative to Og’s size, we don’t know the measurement of this cubit.

Ibn Ezra dissents in a reasonable fashion saying “AFTER THE CUBIT OF A MAN. After the cubit of a normal person. Observe, Og was double in size. It is unlikely that the Torah is speaking of Og’s cubit, for if this were so, then what is Scripture trying to teach? Furthermore, he would not have the image of a person at all.” Ibn Ezra is very brief, but states overtly he is only “double in size” making him something around that twelve foot mark. He does so on the basis that scripture would not state the size of Og’s bed if the cubit was ‘unknown’ to the reader. The reader would have to ‘know’ the size of that cubit, making it closer to a standard measurement.

This dispute between Ibn Ezra and Rashi is not clear, but Ibn Ezra supplies an interesting support “he would not have the image of a person at all”.³ Brilliantly, Ibn Ezra is pointing out that if Og was something like twenty, thirty, even fourty plus feet then he ‘would not have the image of a man’ and the Torah would likely have pointed out this extreme size difference between him and the similar giant Goliath. Since there is no language that implies from a viewer perspective a drastically different view between these two people, it appears Og would be a realistic twelve feet tall.

1. Deuteronomy 3:11

2. Rashi Devarim 3:11:2

3. Ibn Ezra Devarim 3:11:1