It's true that ancient people may have had the same type of reaction when they saw the towering walls of Jericho or the ruins after it was destroyed. "What kind of monsters lived in there? How big were these people?!" But it would be a mistake to assume people only imagined giants lived there because of the enormous walls. 

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Hendel is not the only scholar who recognizes Jericho's connection to giants. Jewish Encyclopedia confirms that Jericho was even nicknamed "City of Giants" (b). I later learned this is actually mentioned in the Qu'ran (the word Jabbārīn, often translated as "tyrants", usually referred to physical giants). But from a biblical point of view, I wondered, is this just an Arab tradition or is this also what the Israelites believed? Another scholar has the answer.

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There's nothing that directly states that Jericho was crawling with giants, but that doesn't mean it's not in the text. It can still be inferred.  The key is hidden in the battle plans God gave to the Israelites during the conquest of Canaan. Whenever God sent the Israelites to a city occupied only by humans, He told the people to drive the occupants out of the land. But whenever God sent the Israelites to a city occupied by giants, He gave them a different command: to"devote to destruction" everything in the city. It was a command intended to contain the giant outbreak. Check out what Dr. Michael Heiser said in his blog (c) on the Conquest of Canaan:

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“the command of to 'devote to destruction' (the Hebrew word ḥerem/kherem) was focused on the giant clans (denoted by words like Anakim, Rephaim, and, occasionally, Amorites). That is, I believe the rationale for the ḥerem was to eliminate the Anakim, the vestiges (descendants) of the giants called nephilim.)" -Dr. Michael S. Heiser

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Bingo. It takes serious work, but if you look for all of the cities in scripture that God commanded to be devoted to destruction, you'll find that the descendants of the Nephilim are found at the majority of these locations. Dr. Heiser inferred that the goal of these battles was to eliminate the giants. We can then infer that since God commanded Jericho to be devoted to destruction (herem) in Joshua 6:17 that giants were likely the target of the Israelites.​  It's not guaranteed, but there's enough evidence to theorize that the Israelites went to Jericho because they were hunting giants.​ 

 

But there's more. We summarized all of the historical evidence of giants at Jericho from top scholars in one 3-page PDF called The Jericho Files: Classifed Evidentiary Dossier. You can get it for free by entering your info in the form below.

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