4
¶ There were giants in the earth in
those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the
daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men
which were of old, men of renown. 5 And
GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every
imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
The resultant offspring of these sons of God and human
women were giants, famous as heroes in myth and legend. The mythologies of the
world have brought us stories of these great men of renown with various names and in various forms. The phrase and also after that shows that this was
an ongoing problem even after the Flood. I will not go into the many websites
about and books written on findings of giant remains in graves and tombs as it
is difficult to distinguish fact from fancy and outright fraud. Sticking with
the Bible account, though, we have many references that would render some of
the modern stories about archaeological finds understandable and believable.
Here are a few examples of the many references to giants with the measurement
given so that we see these were not just National Basketball Association (NBA)
style large men.
Deuteronomy 3:11 For only Og king of Bashan remained of the
remnant of giants; behold, his bedstead was a bedstead of iron; is it not in
Rabbath of the children of Ammon? nine cubits was the length thereof, and four
cubits the breadth of it, after the cubit of a man. [that
is between
13 ½ to 18 feet long depending on the actual length of
a cubit]
1Samuel
17:4 And there went out a champion out
of the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six
cubits and a span. [Goliath was between around 9 feet plus
and 12 feet tall]
Other references to show that there were places where
such giants were common are;
Numbers
13:33 And there we saw the giants, the
sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as
grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.
Deuteronomy
2:10 The Emims dwelt therein in times
past, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims; 11 Which also were accounted giants, as the
Anakims; but the Moabites call them Emims.
Deuteronomy
3:13 And the rest of Gilead, and all
Bashan, being the kingdom of Og, gave I unto the half tribe of Manasseh; all
the region of Argob, with all Bashan, which was called the land of giants.
Joshua
15:8 And the border went up by the
valley of the son of Hinnom unto the south side of the Jebusite; the same is
Jerusalem: and the border went up to the top of the mountain that lieth before
the valley of Hinnom westward, which is at the end of the valley of the giants northward:
God saw that the pre-Flood people were extremely
wicked and we can see in this passage by way of similar phrasing with word
substitution that evil here is
synonymous with wickedness. The
definition of a word is based on the context, particularly the word evil.
In the following verse evil means intent on doing harm, malicious;
Genesis
37:33 And he knew it, and said, It is my
son’s coat; an evil beast hath
devoured him; Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces.
Here it is disaster and calamity, the opposite of peace as darkness is the opposite of
light;
Isa
45:7 I form the light, and create
darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
Here it is the trouble we face from day to day;
Matthew
6:34 Take therefore no thought for the
morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof.
Here is the damage to a Christian’s faith that comes
from greed;
1Timothy
6:10 For the love of money is the root
of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith,
and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
It is then impossible to rationally think of evil as always meaning the same thing.
Just was we say, “I love pizza,” we say, “I love my mother.” Certainly, the
context makes love mean two different things in these phrases. Use your brain.
In this context the pre-Flood world was wicked and man’s
thoughts matched his deeds, as being evil. Mankind is hopelessly degenerate and
only a simpleton believes we are basically good and would do right if only
given the chance.
Jeremiah
17:9 The heart is deceitful above all
things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
The Founding Fathers of the United States were
students of The (so-called) Enlightenment and believed that people were
basically good and that the best way to keep evil from happening as each man
pursued his own self-interest was to pit opposing forces against each other as
a sort of check. One belief of the early republic was “vox populi vox dei” or the
“voice of the people is the voice of God.” This was something that politicians,
such as Abraham Lincoln, believed, that God’s will was done by the electorate
as they voted for someone or something.
This rubbish thinking has been the source of a great
many “evils” in our history from slavery and the oppression of minorities to
the wholesale theft of Native American land all the way to the modern
welfare/warfare state so beloved by both Democrats and Republicans.
People are not basically good. They are basically
evil, at their core, and desperately need the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Here, Christ even speaks of His own disciples;
Luke
11:13 If ye then, being evil, know how
to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father
give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?
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