Rephaim

There are a handful of places in the Hebrew Bible where God’s judgment on the Rephaim as a banishment to the grave is referenced.

These Rephaim, the surviving spirits in the realm of the dead, are associated with the Nephilim and the giant warrior kings whose origins all go back to the spiritual rebellion of the sons of God in Genesis 6. That these Nephilim/Rephaim are corrupted spiritual beings is confirmed later in the Bible, when Peter and Jude refer back to these beings.

Peter and Jude are here reflecting on Genesis 6:1-4 and merging its ideas with the depictions of the Rephaim as spirits of the dead. Notice how Jude verse 7 has connected the two stories of the sons of God in Genesis 6 and the men of Sodom in Genesis 19.

NOTES:

Heiser, Michael S.. The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible. Lexham Press. Kindle Edition.

The Rephaim of the Transjordan in the days of Moses were associated not only with Bashan but also Ashtaroth and Edrei, two cities that, in the literature of Ugarit, were considered as marking the gateway to the underworld. In David’s time, the Rephaim were also associated with death in a more peripheral, but conceptually similar, way. There are nearly ten references in the Old Testament to a place known as the Valley of the Rephaim. On several occasions the Philistines are described as camped there (2 Sam 5:18, 22; 23:13).15 Joshua 15:8 and 18:16 tell us that the Valley of the Rephaim adjoined another valley—the Valley of Hinnom, also known as the Valley of the Son of Hinnom.16 In Hebrew “Valley of Hinnom” is ge hinnom, a phrase from which the name gehenna derives.