How Were There Giants After the Flood?
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The question has reference to Genesis 6:4 which says, “There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.” The word for “giants” in the Hebrew language is NAPHIL. The plural of this Hebrew word is NEPHILIM. The word can refer to giant human beings. It can also have reference to a bully or tyrant. The word is used here in Genesis 6:4, but it is also used in Numbers 13:33, “There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.” This was in the bad report that the 10 spies brought back. They said, “The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature.” Notice this description in verse 32. They called them “men of great stature.” So, these were men who were very tall.
Numbers 13 also tells us that they were the sons of Anak. This was a child of a man named Arba after whom they named one of their cities (Joshua 15:13), which God gave to Caleb as his inheritance. Caleb fought against three of the sons of Anak and drove them out.
There is another word for “giants” in the Hebrew language. It is the word REPHAIM. This word describes the family of Goliath the giant from Gath (2 Samuel 21:18). There was also a man named Og who was the king of Bashan counted among these giants. Deuteronomy 3:11 says that his bed was nine cubits in length and four cubits in width. This would be about 13 ½ feet long by 6 ½ feet wide. He was probably smaller than his bed, but he would have been a very tall person nonetheless. Goliath was said to measure six cubits and a span which would be about 9 ½ feet tall (1 Samuel 17:4).
Goliath and Og are the only two men in the Bible described as “giants,” for whom we have measurements. While these were very tall men, they are not outside of the range of possibility. Even in modern times there have been tall people. Rober Pershing Wadlow, born in 1918, is on record as being the tallest in modern times. He was 8 feet and 11 inches or almost 9 feet tall. From this man we learned about a condition known as gigantism. These individuals have high levels of growth hormones in their bodies which cause them to grow very tall. The tallest people on record without gigantism can grow to about 7 feet and 9 inches. So, to answer the questioner, there were giants on the earth after the flood because of conditions like gigantism. There was also the possibility that among Noah, his wife, and his daughters-in-law, there was the genetic possibility for individuals to grow very tall.