The Rephaites (NIV), or Rephaim (NRS, NKJ; KJV has 'giants,' or 'Rephaims,' which is erroneous for it pluralizes an already plural noun), were a tribe of people who were natives of Canaan and parts of the Transjordan before the arrival of the Israelites.
They are first mentioned in the wars between the alliances of the kings of Shinar, Ellasar, Elam and Goiim against those of the kings of Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim and Zoar during which Lot was taken captive and had to be rescued by Abraham and his men (Gen 14). The land "from the river of Egypt to the great river, Euphrates" that Yahweh promised He would give to Abraham and his descendants was described as "the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites" (Gen 15:18-21).
The Rephaites were also known to the Moabites as the Emites (Deut 2:11), and to the Ammonites as Zamzummites (Deut 2:20). The most famous Rephaite king, from the Bible's view-point, was Og king of Bashan, "one of the last of the Rephaites" (Jos 12:4). The last time we hear of a Rephaites was the killing of "Sippai, one of the descendants of the Rephaites" by Sibbecai during the reign of King David (1 Chron 20:4).
It is tempting to link the Rephaites to the Nephilim of whom the spies sent out to reconnoitre the land from Kadesh-Barnea reported, "We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them" (Num 13:33). Nothing in the Old Testament, however, permits such a link.
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