The Rephaim—Biblical Memories of West Semitic Ancestral Giants and Shades

Genesis^[1] narrates that four kings entered the Levant with their armies and cleared out various peoples of the Transjordan from north to south, including the Rephaim:

^{בראשית יד:ה} וּבְאַרְבַּע עֶשְׂרֵה שָׁנָה בָּא כְדׇרְלָעֹמֶר וְהַמְּלָכִים אֲשֶׁר אִתּוֹ וַיַּכּוּ אֶת רְפָאִים בְּעַשְׁתְּרֹת קַרְנַיִם וְאֶת הַזּוּזִים בְּהָם וְאֵת הָאֵימִים בְּשָׁוֵה קִרְיָתָיִם.

^{Gen 14:5} In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him came and defeated the Rephaim at Ashterot-karnaim, the Zuzim at Ham, the Emim at Shaveh-kiriathaim. (RJPS)

Ashterot-karnaim is located in the Bashan region, Ham south of the Sea of Galilee, and Kiryatayim on the northern point of the Dead Sea. In Deuteronomy, we hear again that these regions of the Transjordan held these peoples, and we are told that all these groups of Rephaim were of superhuman size. This time, the list begins from the south:

^{דברים ב:י} הָאֵמִים לְפָנִים יָשְׁבוּ בָהּ עַם גָּדוֹל וְרַב וָרָם כָּעֲנָקִים. ^ב:יא רְפָאִים יֵחָשְׁבוּ אַף הֵם כָּעֲנָקִים וְהַמֹּאָבִים יִקְרְאוּ לָהֶם אֵמִים.

^{Deut 2:10} It (=Moab) was formerly inhabited by the Emim, a people great and numerous, and as tall as the Anakites (“Giants”). ^2:11 Like the Anakites, they are counted as Rephaim; but the Moabites call them Emim (lit., “Scary Ones”).

^{דברים ב:כ} אֶרֶץ רְפָאִים תֵּחָשֵׁב אַף הִוא רְפָאִים יָשְׁבוּ בָהּ לְפָנִים וְהָעַמֹּנִים יִקְרְאוּ לָהֶם זַמְזֻמִּים. ^ב:כא עַם גָּדוֹל וְרַב וָרָם כָּעֲנָקִים וַיַּשְׁמִידֵם יְ־הֹוָה מִפְּנֵיהֶם וַיִּירָשֻׁם וַיֵּשְׁבוּ תַחְתָּם.

^{Deut 2:20} It (Ammon), too, is counted as Rephaim country. It was formerly inhabited by Rephaim, whom the Ammonites call Zamzummim,^[2] a people great and numerous and as tall as the Anakites. ^2:21 YHWH wiped them out, so that [the Ammonites] dispossessed them and settled in their place.

The Bashan, to the north of Transjordan, is also acknowledged to have once been Rephaim territory:

^{דברים ג:יג} ...כֹּל חֶבֶל הָאַרְגֹּב לְכׇל הַבָּשָׁן הַהוּא יִקָּרֵא אֶרֶץ רְפָאִים.

^{Deut 3:13} … the whole Argov district,^[3] all that part of Bashan that is called Rephaim country.

Here too the Rephaim seem to have died out, except for the local king, who is the last one standing:

^{דברים ג:י} כֹּל עָרֵי הַמִּישֹׁר וְכׇל הַגִּלְעָד וְכׇל הַבָּשָׁן עַד סַלְכָה וְאֶדְרֶעִי עָרֵי מַמְלֶכֶת עוֹג בַּבָּשָׁן. ^ג:יא כִּי רַק עוֹג מֶלֶךְ הַבָּשָׁן נִשְׁאַר מִיֶּתֶר הָרְפָאִים...

^{Deut 3:10} All the towns of the Tableland and the whole of Gilead and Bashan as far as Salcah and Edrei, were the towns of Og’s kingdom in Bashan. ^3:11 Only King Og of Bashan was left of the remaining Rephaim.^[4]

Notably, a Ugaritic text (KTU 1.108) locates a deity called Rapiu as “enthroned in Athtarat (=Ashtherot), the god who rules in Edrei.”^[5] The north Transjordanian and Hermon‑adjacent localities were important for Ugaritic religion, and it would seem that the authors of Genesis 14 and Deuteronomy 2–3 located memory about Rephaim in this same region.

In sum, Rephaim in the Torah refer to primordial giants, inspiring a sense of antiquity and might.^[6]

The Meropes Men in Greek Tradition: Rephaim?

In Meropis—a Greek poem from the 6^th century B.C.E. preserved only in fragments of papyrus—the demigod and hero figure Heracles (=Latin Hercules) battles the Meropes, a group of gigantic immortals who live on the island of Cos.^[7] Michael Astour (1916–2004), Professor of History at Brandeis University, argued that this unusual term derives not from Greek, but from West-Semitic ר.פ.א (r.p.ʾ) in the present participle form merappê’,^[8] and that they are related to the mysterious reference to giant Rephaim in the Bible, a term deriving from the same root.

In one of the extant passages of the poem, Heracles is about to be overcome by an invincible giant named Asteron, whose tough skin causes Heracles’ arrows to simply bounce off him. Luckily, the goddess Athena comes to his aid:^[9]

Then he [Heracles] went into the multitude of the Meropes. But she [Athena] drove her spear straight forward right through his [Asteron's] breast, and he poured out; for immortal wounds are not like those of mortals upon the earth. He fell prone [...] and a black shadow pressed upon his eyes, and his shameless spirit departed to Hades.^[10]

Elsewhere, in early Greek epic poetry, the term “meropes men” seems to be a fossilized expression,^[11] usually translated as “mortal men”^[12] or “earth-born men”;^[13] its original meaning was probably already lost when the Homeric epics were composed.^[14]

Ancient Healers

Further evidence for the connection of Meropes to the West-Semitic root ר.פ.א, is that in West Semitic, the term means “healer,” and indeed, Greek literature associates the name Merops with mythological persons who practiced healing:

Healers—Lucian of Samosata, a Syrian writer and rhetorician from the second century C.E. wrote the mock tragedy Podagra (“gout”), in which the disease appeared as a goddess. The word meropes occurs in the play three times (lines 50, 193, 320) denoting the devotees or priests of Asklepios, who provide healing.^[15]

Machaon the Healer—the leader of Thessalian army during the Trojan war was a highly valued surgeon and medic. He was a son of the healer god Asklepius, but an alternative tradition in a commentary to Iliad 4: 195 assigned his paternity to a certain Merops.^[16]

Healing Island—The Sifnos island had two ancient names Akis, from the Greek for “remedy” or “cure” and Meropie, which is likely a synonym from the West Semitic root.

So we have a Greek term that refers both to a group of gigantic people from the past with powers, and to healers, deriving from a Semitic root, and likely connected to the biblical Rephaim, also a race of ancient giants, also with a name deriving from this same root.^[17]

Rephaim as Netherworld Spirits

Elsewhere in the Bible, however, rephaim denotes the shades in Sheʾol, the netherworld:^[18]

^{ישעיה יד:ט} שְׁאוֹל מִתַּחַת רָגְזָה לְךָ לִקְרַאת בּוֹאֶךָ עוֹרֵר לְךָ רְפָאִים...

^{Isa 14:9} Sheʾol beneath is stirred up to meet you, rousing the rephaim to greet your coming…

^{ישעיה כו:יד} מֵתִים בַּל יִחְיוּ רְפָאִים בַּל יָקֻמוּ...

^{Isa 26:14} They are dead; they will not live; the rephaim—they will not rise…

Proverbs associates the house of the seductress with “the rephaim” and death:

^{משלי ב:יח} כִּי שָׁחָה אֶל מָוֶת בֵּיתָהּ וְאֶל רְפָאִים מַעְגְּלֹתֶיהָ.

^{Prov 2:18} Her house sinks down to death and her course leads to the rephaim.^[19]

Similarly, the Psalmist asks:

^{תהלים פח:יא} הֲלַמֵּתִים תַּעֲשֶׂה פֶּלֶא אִם רְפָאִים יָקוּמוּ יוֹדוּךָ סֶּלָה.

^{Ps 88:11} Do You work wonders for the dead? Do the rephaim rise to praise You?

In these verses, rephaim are the dead as a class—liminal, powerless, and separated from YHWH’s realm of life.

How can the same word name both ancient benevolent giants and the impotent dead? The answer lies in a broader Levantine background that the Bible employs even when it speaks polemically against it.

Ugaritic Rapi’uma: Royal Ancestors and Chthonic Powers

The ancient city state Ugarit (Ras Shamra) on the Mediterranean Sea coast during the late Bronze age (ca. 1550–1200 B.C.E.) produced many literary and ritual texts that survive in cuneiform alphabetic script. Some of these texts from Ugarit employ the term Rāpi’ūma (rpʾum, singular rpu) for a group of deified royal ancestors:

A royal liturgy (KTU 1.161)—These Rāpi’ūma are summoned up—together with the council of the Ditanu/ Didanu (see appendix)—to partake in offerings and to bless the dynasty and land of Ugarit:

qritm rpu arṣ You are invoked, O Rāpi’ūma of the underworld,

qbitm pḫr Ddn You are summoned, assembly of Didan^[20]

The text moves quickly between speaking of the Rāpi’ūma as ancestral kings and as active, numinous presences who can heal, bless, and legitimate the reigning house.

Kirta Epic (KTU 1.15. III. 13–15)—In presenting the origin of the city’s royal house, Kirtu is praised:

mid. rm. Krt Let Kirtu be greatly exalted

btk rpi arṣ in the midst of the Rāpi’ūma of the earth

bpḫr. qbs. Dtn in the gathering of the assembly of Ditānu

Epic of Aqhat (KTU 1.17–19)—a childless landholder Danilu is called “man of the Rapi’u,” which emphasizes his semi-divine origin and status.

The Rāpi’ūma, then, are an ancestral body of great importance, and it is praiseworthy to be described as descending from them or among. The Canaanite god Baal was called rpu in Ugarit (KTU 1.108) and alternatively later bʿl mrpʾ “Healer Baʿal” in a Phoenician inscription from Cyprus.^[21] Both participle nouns were derived from the same Semitic root ר.פ.א “to heal.”

How Rephaim Came to be Giants and Shades

The Ugaritic background helps to clarify why ancient giants, royal heroes, and shades of the dead came to be represented with the single word Rephaim in Bible, and why this group had fallen out of favor for biblical authors. If heroic ancestors—the founding warrior‑kings of an earlier epoch—were ritually installed as chthonic (underworld) benefactors, then the same class could be remembered both as mighty forebears in life and as underworld powers in death.

The Bible inherits that vocabulary but reframes it theologically. The powerful Rephaim ancestors became frightening giants removed by YHWH, and the resourceful Rephaim of the underworld became powerless shades of dead in the Bible. In Israel’s prophetic and wisdom traditions, the underworld was a realm outside YHWH’s cultic praise:

^{תהלים ו:ו} כִּי אֵין בַּמָּוֶת זִכְרֶךָ בִּשְׁאוֹל מִי יוֹדֶה לָּךְ.

^{Ps 6:6} For there is no praise of You among the dead; in Sheol, who can acclaim You?^[22]

Isaiah, as quoted above (14:9–11 and 26:14), polemicizes against ancestor veneration by declaring the rephaim inert, and turns the concept of powerful ancestral spirits into a praise of the only God by underscoring that only YHWH—not ancestral powers—can wake life from death:

^{ישעיה כו:יט} יִחְיוּ מֵתֶיךָ נְבֵלָתִי יְקוּמוּן הָקִיצוּ וְרַנְּנוּ שֹׁכְנֵי עָפָר כִּי טַל אוֹרֹת טַלֶּךָ וָאָרֶץ רְפָאִים תַּפִּיל.

^{Isa 26:19} Oh, let Your dead revive! Let corpses arise! Awake and shout for joy, You who dwell in the dust!—For Your dew is like the dew on fresh growth; you make the land of the Rephaim come to life.

It may be surprising that ancient Greek poetry echoes similar ancestral and chthonic profiles when using the words meropes, but the Greek epic formula had its origin in the West Semitic concept of Rephaim, whence the first adjective part (meropes) acquired its original meaning.^[23]

A Shared Mythic Concept

The biblical Rephaim, the Ugaritic Rāpi’ūma, and the Greek Meropes collectively preserve a remarkably consistent Bronze Age Levantine and eastern Mediterranean memory of ancestral kings and warriors who bridged the worlds of the living and the dead. Each tradition recalled a primordial generation of mighty rulers whose power endured after death in chthonic and spiritual form.

Israel reshaped this older pattern by denying the efficacy of ancestral spirits, while still echoing their legacy in conquest traditions and some poetic depictions. Ugaritic ritual preserved the clearest image of royal ancestors as active benefactors, and early Greek poetry mirrored this structure in its own mythic genealogies. Together, these traditions reveal a shared cultural logic in which the ancient dead remained potent, liminal, and foundational to cosmic and social order.

In both ancient Greek and Israelite cultures, however, this term for ancestral elites with beneficial powers transformed. In the Bible, the once powerful Rephaim—likely anchored in older royal ancestor lore—became a generic way to say “the dead” or “the powerless shades,” which is already visible in Proverbs and Isaiah. In Greek tradition, meropes, which once have marked primordial tribes and heroes, flattened to “mortals” or more specialized “healers.”

This semantic “democratization” was precisely what can be expected when a living practice—ancestor veneration—is forgotten or actively resisted. On the biblical side, scholars have long argued that the semantic flattening of terms connected to the dead reflects Israel’s polemical suppression of ancestor veneration.^[24] Classical Greek religion gradually established Olympian hierarchies while domesticating the chthonic powers in civic cult and philosophy; Israel’s prophets combatted necromancy and ancestor cult, and thus relegated the Rephaim to the realms of primordial times and the underworld.

Appendix

Titans, Also West Semitic in Origin

The council of Ditanu, which parallels the assembly of the Rāpi’ūma in Ugaritic texts, appears to be the origin of the Greek term Titanes. The term Titānu(m) or Ditānu(m) originally signified a wild bovine (“aurochs”), which has long since gone extinct in the Middle East.

In the poems of Hesiod (ca. 700 B.C.E.)—Theogony and Works and Days—titans were children of the primordial Heaven and Earth (Uranus and Gaia), older than the Olympian Gods. Led by Kronos, they overthrew their father Uranus, and later the Olympian Zeus defeated them.

Their cosmic war ended with the Titans cast and locked into the depths of the netherworld Tartarus “at the end of vast earth” (Theogony 729–735). They were primeval rulers who became chthonic prisoners—mighty in origin yet relocated to the underworld for a permanent and gloomy existence.^[25]

The Titans were bound beneath the earth and are invoked in the contexts of oaths that threaten terrible, underworld sanction against perjury (cf. Theogony 729–735; 793–806). The sense that ancient, defeated powers still exercise juridical potency resonates with the role of ancestral spirits as cosmic witnesses—precisely how some West Semitic traditions presented their royal dead.

However, the chthonic is not merely terrifying; it can also be protective and fruitful. Greek ritual often associates earth‑bound powers of ancient heroes with agricultural blessing.^[26] Similarly, Ugaritic ancestor liturgy solicits fertility and prosperity from the Rāpi’ūma. In both corpora the dead—when properly treated—secure life for the living. Unlike the meropes, whose significance was soon lost to Greek authors, Titans remained well known, but their cosmic importance receded as Olympian religion became established.