Fearsome Opponents, Faithful God: Israel’s Encounters with Giants

This post is part of the series “Giants in the Bible”

1. Giants in the Bible: The Story Begins

2. Fearsome Opponents, Faithful God: Israel’s Encounters with Giants 👈 you are here

Genesis introduced rumors of giants, and the spies in Canaan seemed to confirm them, but now we’ll see them step onto the stage with armor of bronze and beds of iron.

As we saw last time, the giants that ancient Israel contended with—known collectively as the Anakim—were said to be descendants of the still-more-ancient race of giants known as the Nephilim, about which we know almost nothing except that they were mythical warriors possibly descended from angels.

The fireside tales are over. The giants are here, and they’re not staying politely in the storybooks.

As promised, we’ll see those giants, still fearsome warriors, defeated by Moses, Joshua, and a little boy you may have heard of named David.

The Last Giant of Bashan: Og and the Sixty Cities

The second-most-famous giant in the Bible is named Og. He lived in the time of Moses, and he was the king of Bashan, the northernmost part of Canaan east of the River Jordan, just northeast of the Sea of Galilee.

Og is primarily famous for his massive iron bed: 9 cubits long and 4 cubits wide, according to Deuteronomy 3:11. A cubit was about 18 inches, so that’s a 13.5-foot-long, 6-foot-wide bed! That’s the same width as a modern California king, but nearly twice the length. An average American male is about 69 inches tall, so if the bed is proportionate, Og would have been more than eleven feet tall.

Og, who ruled over the sixty cities of Bashan from his capital of Ashtaroth, is said to have been the last of the Rephaim, a race of giants related to the Anakim (Deuteronomy 3:11; Joshua 13:12). Before the Israelites arrived, the Ammonites had defeated the Rephaim and taken their land; only Og remained (Deuteronomy 2:20-21)¹.

As Israel wanders northward at the command of God, they pass the land of Mount Seir and the land of Moab, and they encounter the Amorites, led by King Sihon. When Sihon rejects Moses’s request for Israel to pass peacefully through his land, God instructs Israel to destroy the Amorites and take their land. After defeating the army at Jahaz, they capture and destroy all the cities of the Amorites, leaving no survivors.

After that great victory, they come to the land of Bashan, and Og brings his army out against them. They had defeated King Sihon’s army, but he was an ordinary human. Despite their success against Sihon, imagine the Israelites’ mood facing an army led by an infamous giant, the last of his race, who alone survived a genocide: he must be the strongest of the Rephaim… and he’s not alone.

Would they have chuckled at the reports of his massive iron bed? Or would that have amplified their fear, knowing that he needed custom-built furniture even to sleep on?

Would their recent victory give them courage? Or would the stories of Og overcome their faith? This man from legend, come to life before their eyes at the head of yet another army.

God assures them of victory (Deuteronomy 3:2), and indeed they have it: they meet Og and his army at Edrei and defeat them, capturing and destroying all their cities, again leaving no survivors.

When legends walk the earth, remember Who wrote the story. There’s no mention in Deuteronomy, as there was in Numbers, of terrified spies urging Israel to turn back. The Israelites would do well to remember, because they will see giants again.

The Giants Who Waited Forty Years: Joshua’s Long-Delayed Battle

Speaking of spies, the twelve men from Numbers 13 encountered giants called Anakim, descended like Og from those ancient Nephilim. Their report of the giants scared Israel so badly that they forfeited despite God’s command to go up and defeat them. The consequence was the forty years of wandering—long enough for the entire generation that escaped from Egypt to die before stepping foot in the Promised Land they feared to enter.

I guess they got what they wanted.

But when forty years had passed, and God sent the people into Canaan under Joshua, the Anakim were still there; they hadn’t gone anywhere, and Israel still had to defeat them.

There’s a lesson here about how running from your fears, even for forty years, doesn’t make them disappear. It just delays the inevitable confrontation.

Joshua waged an immense campaign of war against the inhabitants of Canaan. With God’s help, he defeated them one after another, sometimes facing single rulers and sometimes massive coalitions and alliances. Every foe of Israel fell.

Eventually, there was only one tribe left that Joshua had not conquered. You guessed it: their old friends, the Anakim.

When the army of Israel came to the land of the Anakim, the fears of those forty years must have weighed heavily on Joshua’s mind. Would Israel turn and flee as they had before? He had always believed God would go with them; he had stood with Caleb against the ten faithless spies. And all those who tried to turn back had died—the giants were just stories to this army until they reached the field of battle.

His faith was right on target: the army rolled on, and the defeat of the Anakim, a race of giants who sent Israel on a forty-year trek, occupies barely two verses (Joshua 11:20-21).

God kept His promise from way back in Numbers 13, and what terrified a faithless generation was conquered by the next.

Here’s my question for Joshua. He, Joshua, had faith in God, the first time Israel got to Canaan. But what about his army? Did they have faith because God is faithful? Or did they have faith because they had fought and won over and over and over? Was their courage against the Anakim based on faith or experience?

It’s easy to trust a God who has always given you victory. In Job 1, Satan makes exactly this complaint: a rich man has every reason for faith! It’s much harder when you have known loss and grief, when things don’t go your way, when your fears loom over every thought and anxieties darken your days.

God is not diminished in those circumstances, nor is His power lessened by your worry. But it can be harder to hear His promises when your experience is oppression in Egypt rather than victory in Canaan.

The story of Joshua and the Anakim shows us that we can depend on God regardless of where we are in our journey. He would have defeated them as easily the first time as He did the second time. The difference wasn’t God; it was the people.

The Shepherd Boy and the Champion of Gath

King David is perhaps the most complex person in the Bible. A deeply flawed man—adulterer, murderer, vacillating between insecurity and hubris—who nonetheless faithfully executes the offices of king, priest, prophet, warrior, and even poet. But he didn’t start out that way.

The story of David and Goliath is so familiar it has escaped the Bible and found its way into popular culture. Here’s how it goes: King Saul of Israel is fighting the Philistines, and David’s older brothers are in the army. They get stuck at Socoh, near the Valley of Elah, because the Philistines have found a champion: a nine-foot-tall giant from Gath named Goliath who had challenged Saul to single combat.

Every day, Goliath comes out wearing his massive gleaming bronze armor and carrying a spear tipped with more than 13 pounds of jagged iron. And every day, Saul, the handsome, tall, regal, God-chosen, Samuel-appointed, beloved first king of Israel—cowers in his tent.

One day, David’s father Jesse sends him from the fields down to the camp with a care package of bread for his brothers and some cheese for their commanding officer. David immediately starts asking questions about this giant, wondering aloud why the army of God lets Goliath defy them. His oldest brother Eliab tells him to pipe down, that he’s embarrassing them. David, like every annoying younger brother ever, says, “I didn’t do anything! I was just asking questions!”

But eventually Saul hears about David’s questions and summons him. Thinking to quell the dissent, Saul tells David in no uncertain terms that he can’t possibly fight Goliath, because the Philistine champion is not only a giant but a trained soldier, and David is just a shepherd. David, totally innocent and undeterred, says he’s fought lions and tigers and bears² to defend his sheep, and he’s not afraid of Goliath.

For inexplicable reasons, Saul believes David, and dresses him in armor for the battle. In a slapstick scene, David can’t even move under all the armor. Instead, he takes off the armor, grabs a staff and a sling, chooses a few smooth stones from a nearby stream, and strides out to fight.

Goliath makes fun of him just like his brother Eliab and his king Saul had: “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” David rebukes him in the name of God and slings his first stone right into Goliath’s forehead, killing him instantly. He’s not even carrying a sword, so he takes Goliath’s sword and cuts his head off.

The Philistines immediately flee before this mighty warrior who defeated their champion without even a sword, and the army pursues. David takes the head to Jerusalem as a trophy, keeps the armor for himself, and takes a position in Saul’s court³.

Like Joshua and Caleb before him, David sees giants differently. They weren’t blind to the dangers of the Anakim, and David couldn’t help but see Goliath’s power. But in the light of God, even giants appear small. The timeless refrain of Israel appears now in David’s mouth: “the battle is the Lord’s”.

And so it is with us: the battle is not ours, but the Lord’s. Look at your enemies, your struggles, your fears, with the eyes of God, and see how small they are. Not that they disappear—Joshua still faced an army of giants, and David faced a nine-foot-tall warrior in single combat—but that God turns certain defeat into certain victory.

Why Giants Fall and Faith Stands Tall

These giants—Og, the Anakim, and Goliath—were real giants faced by Moses, Joshua, and David. They were all undefeated until they faced the faith of the people of God. We don’t have giants today, but the fears of giants remain as shorthand for challenges that are too big for us.

Don’t get me wrong: we cannot defeat the giants. If David had stepped onto that field with a sling and a stone and all the confidence of Achilles, Goliath would have crushed him like a bug. I don’t know what a thirteen-pound spear tip does to an unarmored young man, but I bet it’s not pretty.

This story occurs over and over again in Scripture. My favorite version comes much later than David, when King Jehoshaphat of Judah faces three armies all at once. He cannot possibly win—except that God tells him, “Don’t fear. Just fight. The battle is not yours, but mine.” Jehoshaphat prays a mighty prayer and then charges into battle against an enemy a thousand times more powerful. Like Esther against the emperor Ahasuerus, he had no chance. But Joshua, and Esther, and David, and Jehoshaphat, all trusted that God’s will could not be thwarted. And it wasn’t.

We can have that confidence today. When God sends you into battle, you’re the one in the fight, but you’re not the one fighting.

Before You Go: The Giants Still Walking Our Roads

We’ve walked the ancient battlefields—Bashan, Canaan, the Valley of Elah—and watched the giants fall one by one. But the stories don’t end there. The world still feels full of giants: not the kind that swing spears or sleep on iron beds, but the kind that stalk our minds and hearts—fear, shame, temptation, despair.

Next time, we’ll leave the dust of Canaan behind and look closer to home. What do these old battles teach us about the ones we fight today? How do we stand when the enemy isn’t twelve feet tall but feels just as unstoppable?

The fire’s still warm, the stories aren’t done, and the giants are waiting. Stretch your legs, refill your drink, then grab your seat again—we’ll face them together.

1. The Ammonites, remember, despite being enemies of Israel, were descended from Abraham’s nephew Lot. ↩

2. Oh my. But to be clear, no tigers were harmed in David’s defense of his sheep. Just lions and bears. ↩

3. There’s a weird chronological quirk here: Jerusalem was not yet Israelite at this time (David conquers it later during his reign as king), so it’s possible the author is compressing the timeline a little. ↩

This post is part of the series “Giants in the Bible”

1. Giants in the Bible: The Story Begins

2. Fearsome Opponents, Faithful God: Israel’s Encounters with Giants 👈 you are here