Chapter 6. Second Incursion
Rephaim, Zuzim, and Emim inexplicably surface as mystery races in the underexplained war of giants recorded in Genesis 14, tribes unaccounted for in the table of nations. Moreover, Rapha’/Rephaim surfaces twenty-five times in the Old Testament Hebrew to describe a tribe of giants, an individual giant, and places named after these giants of old.
Rephaim and their associated tribes were enigmatically recorded in the Old Testament from the time of Abraham until the time of kings David and Solomon. Rephaim tribes impacted the early postdiluvian world in ways akin to the Nephilim before the flood. Scripture does not provide a clear, smoking-gun verse as to how giants appear after the flood, only narratives that clearly demonstrate that they did. Scripture does not directly explain whether Rephaim giants were created before the flood like Nephilim and somehow survived, or were created after the flood but were somehow distinct from the Nephilim. Scripture does, though, make obscure references to a Second Incursion after the flood through the otherwise baffling details in those narratives—narratives like the war of giantsin Genesis 14, and the accounting of the lands God promised to Abraham’s descendants in the Genesis 15 passage above. As such, and as the “days of Noah and Lot” end-time sign encourages believers to inquire about Noah’s life both before and after the flood, one is enticed to investigate the “days of Lot,” Rephaim, and the pentapolis city-states of the plain centered at Sodom that were destroyed. The five-city alliance was listed in Genesis 14:2 and 8 as Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboiim, and Bela/Zoar in the war of giants.
Keeping with the adages of days of Noah and the idea that nothing is new under the sun at top of mind, consider that Genesis 6:4 mysteriously recorded that Nephilim were on the earth in “those days,”—the days of violence described before the flood, followed by the restating of the birth of Noah’s sons. Genesis 6:4 goes on to note that giants were on the earth in those days and also after that when angels bore children with human females, possibly indicating other incursions took place before the flood, after, and/or both….
