Rapha

The name Rapha (also spelled Raphah, and parallel to Rephaiah in one Chronicles list) belongs in the UPDV to three distinct figures: a son of Benjamin, a Saulide descendant of Jonathan, and the eponymous Philistine "giant" of Gath whose sons fell to David and his men. The first two are bare links in genealogies; the third anchors the cluster of Davidic single-combat narratives in 2 Samuel 21 and 1 Chronicles 20.

Rapha, Fifth Son of Benjamin

The Chronicler's roster of Benjamin's sons sets Rapha at the end of the first generation: "Nohah the fourth, and Rapha the fifth" (1Ch 8:2). Beyond the name and ordinal position, the UPDV gives no narrative detail about him; the verse functions only to close out Benjamin's immediate offspring before the genealogy turns to the lines of Bela and Ehud.

Raphah in the Saulide Line

A second Rapha appears further down the same Benjaminite genealogy as a descendant of Jonathan, son of Saul. The UPDV preserves the Chronicler's parallel listings with a spelling shift between Raphah and Rephaiah. In 1 Chronicles 8 the name reads Raphah: "And Moza begot Binea; Raphah was his son, Eleasah his son, Azel his son" (1Ch 8:37). The duplicate roster a chapter later substitutes Rephaiah at exactly the same position: "and Moza begot Binea; and Rephaiah his son, Eleasah his son, Azel his son" (1Ch 9:43). The flanking names — Moza, Binea, Eleasah, Azel — match across both lists, identifying the two as the same figure under two forms of his name.

Rapha, the Giant of Gath

The third Rapha is not a personal actor in any UPDV narrative but a remembered ancestor: the "giant" (Hebrew ha-rapha) whose surviving sons fight Israel in two paired roster passages. The UPDV translates the title as "the giant" rather than transliterating the name, but the cluster is the same.

In 2 Samuel 21 the giant's first son comes against David himself. "And Ishbibenob, who was of the sons of the giant, the weight of whose spear was three hundred [shekels] of bronze in weight, he being girded with a new [sword], thought to have slain David" (2Sa 21:16). A later verse adds the marked-out Gathite: "And there was again war at Gath, where was a man of great stature, that had on every hand six fingers, and on every foot six toes, four and twenty in number; and he also was born to the giant" (2Sa 21:20). The summary verse ties the four duels together: "These four were born to the giant in Gath; and they fell by the hand of David, and by the hand of his slaves" (2Sa 21:22).

The Chronicler retells the same campaign with parallel notices. The Gezer engagement reads, "And it came to pass after this, that there arose war at Gezer with the Philistines: then Sibbecai the Hushathite slew Sippai, of the sons of the giant; and they were subdued" (1Ch 20:4). The six-fingered Gathite reappears: "And there was again war at Gath, where was a man of great stature, whose fingers and toes were four and twenty, six [on each hand], and six [on each foot]; and he also was born to the giant" (1Ch 20:6). And the Chronicler's closing summary matches Samuel's: "These were born to the giant in Gath; and they fell by the hand of David, and by the hand of his slaves" (1Ch 20:8).

Across both retellings the pattern is consistent: a named champion is identified as a son of the giant of Gath, and a Davidic fighter (David himself, Sibbecai the Hushathite, or one of the others not separately quoted here) brings him down. In the UPDV verses for this third Rapha, the giant figures as a patronymic — "of the sons of the giant," "born to the giant" — rather than as a direct actor in the combat.