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REPHAIM

(Heb. rĕpāʾîm)

The Rephaim have been repeatedly identified as the deified, dead, royal ancestors and thereby exemplary of the early Israelite belief in the supernatural beneficent power of the dead. This in turn has generated a virtual consensus that the biblical Rephaim reflect an underlying Canaanite-Israelite royal ancestor or death cult designed to manipulate the powers of those dead. Modern interpreters suppose that it is against such a background that the biblical writers aim to convince their audiences that the dead possess no power nor are they worthy objects of religious performance. More likely, however, the Rephaim simply represent the weakened, common dead — the lot of all mankind, a perpetual weakened existence in a shadowy netherworld. Only later, with the development of beatific notions of the afterlife in the Hellenistic period, did such a state of insignificance come to be abhorred and eventually replaced by the belief in the eternal reward of the righteous and punishment of the wicked.

Etymology of the term is commonly explained as derived from rpʾ, “to heal,” thus “healers” (cf. LXX Ps. 88:11; Isa. 26:14), but this healing aspect is marginal at best. Biblical and extrabiblical texts might better support another Semitic root rpʾ (˂ rbʾ), “to be great, large,” thus “the Mighty Ones,” referring to their memorable feats while living or as portrayed in legend. Some scholars have pointed out the possible connection with Heb. rph, “to become weak” (cf. references in the historical narratives to them as “descendants of the Weak One”); this probably reflects a popular etymology designed to diminish rhetorically the power of the living or legendary Mighty Ones.

Old Testament

The OT testifies to two distinct traditions with regard to the Rephaim: (1) the ancient, autochthonous populations of Palestine as depicted in the narratives of the Pentateuch and Deuteronomistic history (e.g., Gen. 14:5; 15:20; Josh. 12:4; 13:12); (2) in the prophetic, psalmic, and sapiential traditions, those Rephaim who, as weakened shades of the dead, inhabit the netherworld (e.g., Isa. 14:9; Ps. 88:10[MT 11]; Job 26:5). The biblical traditions themselves never explicitly associate the “prehistoric ethnic” Rephaim and the Rephaim who are shades. Nevertheless, in the history of interpretation some organic connection between the two has been assumed: what were once living entities from the distant past died and then came to inhabit the netherworld. 1 En. 6–14 elaborates upon Gen. 6:1-4 by describing how the giants or Nephilim — which came to include the Rephaim of the OT historical narratives — were cast into the netherworld.

The status of the biblical Rephaim as shades finds analogy in the funerary contexts of two 6th-century b.c.e. Phoenician inscriptions (cf. the phrase “. . . a place of rest with the rpʾm”). Neither the biblical nor Phoenician texts indicate that they possessed the social status of royalty or the powers of lesser gods. Isa. 14 has been cited as an exception, but the Rephaim in v. 9 are parallel to “Sheol,” here representative of the common dead; only beginning with v. 14 are the deceased from among the social elites introduced with mention of “the leaders of the earth” and “kings of the nations.”

Ugaritic Texts

The once common view that the Phoenician and biblical references to the Rephaim as shades preserved an older Canaanite tradition now, according to many, finds direct confirmation in the alphabetic cuneiform texts discovered at Late Bronze Age Ugarit. The consensus is that these texts refer to the Rephaim or Rapiʾuma (rpʾum) as epitomizing the powerful, Canaanite, royal dead on behalf of whom an ancestor or death cult emerged at Ugarit. Accordingly, the texts indicate that the Rapiʾuma were once a living collective reality, then a mythologized, heroic group, long before they became inhabitants of the netherworld as the powerful dead. This reconstruction of the Ugaritic traditions is routinely cited in support of the notion that a similar set of circumstances underlies what must have been the original connection between the Rephaim as gigantic autochthons and the Rephaim as the powerful dead in Hebrew tradition.

The major datum for the Rapiʾuma as the deified dead is the Shapsh hymn that concludes the Baal-Mot cycle (KTU 1.6 VI, 5-49). The central evidence for their deceased, royal, ancestral status is KTU 1.161, a royal litany on the occasion of a new king’s coronation to which all living warriors and social elites are summoned, including the mighty ones or rpʾum. The litany does include some minor elements that are mortuary in nature and associated with the death of the new king’s predecessor, but the dead mentioned in the text, the ancient Mighty Ones (rpʾim qdmym), are portrayed as weak and are required only to receive the newly deceased king’s throne as it ritually descends to them below in the netherworld.

The Shapsh hymn mentions four entities: the rpʾim (“mighty ones”), ʿilnym (“divinities”), ʿilm (“gods”), and mtm (“men, mortals”). The cycle nowhere presents humanity as dead or deified. Humanity is threatened with the prospects of its annihilation, but it is never actualized. Likewise, the goddess Shapsh is nowhere located in the netherworld. Instead she assists Anat in retrieving Baal’s corpse at the edge of earth and netherworld, in the outback or steppe. Elsewhere in the cycle she is portrayed as possessing wisdom and authority to fix the fates of both gods and mortals alike by restricting the powers of Mot, god of death. The aim of these lines is to underscore the goddess’ all-encompassing authority to decide the fates, above and below on the earth, of humanity, mortal heroes, lesser divinities, and the gods.

The Rephaim of the OT are ghosts of inconsequential power and in need of care. They are not the supernatural beneficent ghosts of the dead, nor is such a status polemicized against anywhere in the biblical traditions. There is no ancestor or death cult underlying the Rephaim traditions. At most, a commemorative cult might underlie the references in the historical narratives as these traditions presuppose these Rephaim to be legendary living heroes of immense size and stature. They are described as “the descendants of the Weak One” in an attempt to negate their former powers. If an anti-Rephaim polemic exists anywhere, it appears here in the narrative contexts where the rph base is associated with the prehistoric ethnic Rephaim.

Bibliography. C. E. L’Heureux, Rank among the Canaanite Gods. HSM 21 (Missoula, 1979); T. J. Lewis, Cults of the Dead in Ancient Israel and Ugarit. HSM 39 (Atlanta, 1989); B. B. Schmidt, Israel’s Beneficent Dead (Winona Lake, 1996).

Brian B. Schmidt

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

REPHAIM

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)