Was Og, King of Bashan, a Giant or a Ghost?

In tomorrow’s Torah reading of Dvarim (Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22), Moses recounts the Israelites’ defeat of Og, king of Bashan, previously described in the book of Numbers. Here the text notes that “only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the r’fa’im”—a turn understood by the King James Version and by most rabbinic commentators to mean “giants.” According to this interpretation, Og was part of a race of antediluvian giants who once lived in the southern Levant, and Bashan a kingdom in what is now northwestern Jordan or the Golan Heights. A number of modern scholars, however, have noted that a word nearly identical to r’fa’im means “shades” or “ghosts” in ancient languages closely related to Hebrew, and have gathered other evidence to support the contention that Og was the ruler of a mythical land of the dead.