The return of the Nephilim?
And to Haydock comment for Numbers 13:
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859 edition.
NUMBERS - Chapter 13
Relevant passage from Gary Bates:
The descendants of Anak (the Anakim/Anakites) were obviously a group of large people. However, in verse 28 the spies also reported that many of the other people in the land were “strong”. There are several other passages that refer to the Anakim as a powerful group of people (Deuteronomy 9:2, for example), but verse 33 in Numbers 13 is the only passage that suggests any Anakite relationship to the Nephilim. Once again, it should be remembered that these Anakim were descendants of post-Flood people. They could not be descended from the pre-Flood Nephilim. Chapter 10 of Genesis records the “Table of Nations”; that is, the descendants of Noah’s sons, and there is no mention of Anak or the Nephilim, post-Flood.
A lying report
It should be noted that the spies brought back a bad, or “evil” (Hebrew dibbah, “to slander, whisper, or defame”) report. That report included a parenthetic insertion that the large people known as the sons of Anak were descended from the Nephilim. The NIV simply puts it as:
“We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim) …” (Numbers. 13:33).
Of the 12 spies, only Joshua and Caleb, trusting God, were keen to enter and take possession of the land
At first reading, this may seem like a factual account, but it is part of the quoted false report of the spies. Of the 12 spies, only Joshua and Caleb, trusting God, were keen to enter and take possession of the land; the other 10 did not want to.
Relevant passage from Haydock comments:
Ver. 33. Spoke ill, &c. These men, who, by their misrepresentations of the land of promise, discouraged the Israelites from attempting the conquest of it, were a figure of worldlings, who, by decrying or misrepresenting true devotion, discourage Christians from seeking in earnest and acquiring so great a good, and thereby securing to themselves a happy eternity. (Challoner) --- Devoureth, by being exposed to continual wars from the Arabs, Idumeans, and from its own inhabitants, the monsters of the race of Enac. With this God had threatened the Hebrews, if they proved rebellious, Leviticus xxvi. 38. See Ezechiel xxxvi. 13. (Calmet)
Ver. 34. Monsters. Hebrew, "giants." --- Locusts, or grasshoppers. So much inferior in size were we to them. Hebrew insinuates that the spies entertained these sentiments when they beheld the giants, and the latter seemed to look down upon them with contempt; "and so we were in their sight." These wicked men scrupled not to exaggerate in order to fill the people with dismay. (Haydock) --- Their suggestions tended to make them distrust the goodness or the power of God; and therefore he would not suffer them to enjoy the sweets of the land, chap. xiv. 23, 29. (Worthington) See Deuteronomy i. 28., and Isaias xl. 21.
Thanking Gary Bates very much for the correction.
Rob Skiba has a point about the one argument here:
Once again, it should be remembered that these Anakim were descendants of post-Flood people. They could not be descended from the pre-Flood Nephilim.
He would have answered that Ham's wife might well and Japheth's wife possibly too have had some Nephelim ancestry from before the Flood.
As I have argued in another place that the events of Mahabharata could have been brought to India from descendants of Ham whose wife might descend from the deified charioteer known as "the black one" (Krsna or Krishna in the later Sanskrit version). On top of them fitting with the fact that Cainite dynasty was hardly doing just seven generations same time as Sethite lineage was doing ten and Biblical dynasty of Cain ends with a king who has two wives and with one two sons with other a son and a daughter. The conflict in Mahabharata is between cousins, i e royalty whose fathers were brothers.
But the Amorites need not have been Nephelim, that may have been a slander on the part of the ten spies. Agreed.
Hans-Georg Lundahl
Versailles
St Demetrius the Myrrhoblite
26-X-2013
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