Rephaim

The Rephaim appear in two distinct registers in the UPDV. They are an ancient people, named alongside the older Canaanite and Transjordanian populations and remembered for their unusual stature; and they are a valley, a fertile bowl on the seam between Judah and Benjamin that becomes the staging ground for two of David's early Philistine campaigns. The same Hebrew name covers both, and the two senses sit side by side in the topography of Joshua: the same border line that crosses Judah's northern edge runs along "the valley of Rephaim," while the kingdom east of the Jordan is "the land of Rephaim."

A People in the Land Grant

When Yahweh names the nations Abram's seed will dispossess, the Rephaim are listed with the other inhabitants: "and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Rephaim" (Gen 15:20). They are not described there; they are simply on the roster of peoples already in the land. A few chapters earlier, the four-king coalition under Chedorlaomer had already swept through their territory: "And in the fourteenth year came Chedorlaomer, and the kings who were with him, and struck the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim, and the Zuzim in Ham, and the Emim in Shaveh-kiriathaim" (Gen 14:5). The cluster of names in that verse — Rephaim, Zuzim, Emim — matters: the UPDV preserves a Transjordanian set of related peoples whose names shift by region but whose identity overlaps.

Deuteronomy makes the overlap explicit. Of the Emim east of the Jordan: "these also are accounted Rephaim, as the Anakim; but the Moabites call them Emim" (Deut 2:11). Of the Zamzummim further north: "(That also is accounted a land of Rephaim: Rephaim dwelt in it previously; but the Ammonites call them Zamzummim," (Deut 2:20). The pattern is one name across a wide territory and three local labels. Alongside these stand the Anakim, "a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you have heard it said, Who can stand before the sons of Anak?" (Deut 9:2), and described already at Deut 2:10 as "a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakim." The scouts at Kadesh fold the older Genesis vocabulary back in: "And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight" (Num 13:33). The reputation that the Rephaim and their kin carry into the conquest narrative is the reputation Genesis attaches to "the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown" (Gen 6:4).

Og of Bashan: The Last of Them

The Rephaim's most concentrated appearance is in the figure of Og king of Bashan. Deuteronomy treats him as the closing chapter of an old people: "(For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the Rephaim; look, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in Rabbah of the sons of Ammon? Nine cubits was its length, and four cubits the width of it, after the cubit of a man.)" (Deut 3:11). The bedstead detail is the text's one concession to spectacle — nine cubits long, made of iron, kept on display in Ammonite Rabbah.

The territory itself is named for the people. After Moses gives Bashan to the half-tribe of Manasseh, Deuteronomy adds a parenthetical gloss: "and the rest of Gilead, and all Bashan, the kingdom of Og, I gave to the half-tribe of Manasseh; all the region of Argob, even all Bashan. (The same is called the land of Rephaim." (Deut 3:13). Joshua's catalogue of defeated kings repeats the identification twice. Of Og: "Og king of Bashan, of the remnant of the Rephaim, who dwelt at Ashtaroth and at Edrei" (Josh 12:4). And again: "all the kingdom of Og in Bashan, who reigned in Ashtaroth and in Edrei (the same was left of the remnant of the Rephaim); for these Moses struck, and drove them out" (Josh 13:12). The double phrasing — "remnant of the Rephaim," "left of the remnant of the Rephaim" — frames Og as the tail end of an ethnic line that the Mosaic conquest closes out east of the Jordan.

West of the Jordan: A Frontier Forest

West of the Jordan, the Rephaim show up not as a kingdom but as a residual population in marginal hill country. When the sons of Joseph complain that their allotment is too small, Joshua sends them to clear forest land: "And Joshua said to them, If you are a great people, go up for yourself to the forest, and cut down for yourself there in the land of the Perizzites and of the Rephaim; since the hill-country of Ephraim is too narrow for you" (Josh 17:15). The Rephaim here are paired with the Perizzites and located on a forested frontier that Ephraim and Manasseh are told to enlarge themselves into. That strand of the tradition — Rephaim alongside Perizzites in pre-conquest land — runs back to the Genesis 15 list (Gen 15:20).

The Valley near Jerusalem

The second sense of the name shifts from a people to a place. The valley of Rephaim is a topographic feature on the boundary between Judah and Benjamin, attached to Jerusalem on its southwest side. Judah's northern border is described running by it: "and the border went up by the valley of the son of Hinnom to the side of the Jebusite southward (the same is Jerusalem); and the border went up to the top of the mountain that lies before the valley of Hinnom westward, which is at the uttermost part of the valley of Rephaim northward;" (Josh 15:8). Benjamin's southern border touches the same line from the other side: "and the border went down to the uttermost part of the mountain that lies before the valley of the son of Hinnom, which is in the valley of Rephaim northward; and it went down to the valley of Hinnom, to the side of the Jebusite southward, and went down to En-rogel;" (Josh 18:16). The valley sits at the seam where Hinnom meets Rephaim on the lip of Jerusalem.

David's Battles in the Valley

Once David takes Jerusalem, the valley becomes the obvious avenue for a Philistine counter-thrust, and 2 Samuel records two distinct engagements there. The first: "Now the Philistines had come and spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim" (2Sam 5:18). The second, a separate incursion: "And the Philistines came up yet again, and spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim" (2Sam 5:22). The same wording — "spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim" — anchors both. The Chronicler condenses the same campaign in his own idiom: "Now the Philistines had come and made a raid in the valley of Rephaim" (1Chr 14:9).

A later episode at the same location stands behind one of David's mighty-man stories. While Philistines hold the valley, David is at Adullam: "And three of the elite troops went down, and came to David in the harvest time to the cave of Adullam; and the troop of the Philistines was encamped in the valley of Rephaim" (2Sam 23:13). The Chronicler's parallel: "And three [the elite] of the thirty chief men went down to the rock to David, into the cave of Adullam; and the host of the Philistines were encamped in the valley of Rephaim" (1Chr 11:15). The valley's role in the David traditions is consistent — open ground next to Jerusalem where Philistine armies stage, and where David's campaigns and his elite warriors meet them.

Harvest in the Valley

The valley's other character is agricultural. Isaiah uses it as a stock image for productive land emptied out: "And it will be as when one gathers the harvest of standing grain, and his arm reaps the ears; yes, it will be as when one gleans ears in the valley of Rephaim" (Isa 17:5). The reference works as a simile only because the valley was known for grain harvest near Jerusalem; the figure measures Jacob's diminishment against a familiar scene of stripped fields.

Giants in the Old Memory

The old reputation of the Rephaim — and of the Anakim, Emim, Zamzummim, and Nephilim alongside them — leaves a residue in the narratives of giant warriors. Hebron's story preserves it directly: "Now the name of Hebron formerly was Kiriath-arba, which was great among man of Anakim. And the land had rest from war" (Josh 14:15). Caleb clears the city: "And Caleb drove out from there the three sons of Anak: Sheshai, and Ahiman, and Talmai, the children of Anak" (Josh 15:14). And in summary: "And Joshua came at that time, and cut off the Anakim from the hill-country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, and from all the hill-country of Judah, and from all the hill-country of Israel: Joshua completely destroyed them with their cities" (Josh 11:21). The giant clans of the conquest narrative are tied by Deuteronomy back to the Rephaim, so Caleb's and Joshua's victories at Hebron belong on the same shelf as Moses's victory over Og.

The motif persists into the David cycle. Goliath of Gath stands "six cubits and a span" (1Sam 17:4). His kinsmen at Gath include "Ishbibenob, who was of the sons of the giant, the weight of whose spear was three hundred [shekels] of bronze in weight" (2Sam 21:16) and a six-fingered, six-toed warrior "of great stature… and he also was born to the giant" (2Sam 21:20). Sirach remembers David's victory in those exact terms: "In his youth he slew the giant, And took away the reproach from the people; When he slung his hand with the sling, And broke the pride of Goliath" (Sir 47:4). 1 Maccabees keeps the vocabulary alive in a different register, describing Judas Maccabeus: "And he got his people great honor, And put on a breastplate as a giant, And girt his warlike armor about him in battles, And protected the camp with the sword" (1Ma 3:3). Where the conquest narratives close out the Rephaim east of the Jordan and the Anakim in the Judean hills, the Philistine giants near Gath and the warrior memory of Sirach and 1 Maccabees keep the older imagery in circulation.

What the Name Holds Together

Across the UPDV, the name "Rephaim" pulls together a coherent set of references without ever being explained as a single thing. They are an ancient population in the land grant of Gen 15:20. They are a Transjordanian people with three local names — Rephaim, Emim, Zamzummim — and a kinship to the Anakim. They are the kingdom of Og, "the land of Rephaim" east of the Jordan, closed out by Moses. They are a residual frontier population in the forested hills west of the Jordan that Joshua tells Joseph's sons to clear. And they are a valley at Jerusalem's edge — Judah's and Benjamin's shared border, the Philistines' staging ground against David, and the figure of harvest fields stripped bare in Isa 17:5. The double sense of the name — a people and a place — holds the entry together.