Goliath and the Nephilim: Who Was the Giant David Killed?

Everybody knows the Sunday-school version: a shepherd boy, a sling, one stone, and a giant hits the dirt. On Nephilim Death Squad, the question is always the next one. Where did a man like Goliath come from? In “In the Shadow of Goliath,” David L. Corbo (the Raven) and TopLobsta sat down with author William Blesch, whose book of the same name treats Goliath as a leftover of the Nephilim and his taunts at Israel as a rebellion that never really ended. Here’s what the Bible says, what the manuscripts disagree on, and what Blesch and the hosts made of it.

This article follows the Nephilim Death Squad episode “In the Shadow of Goliath w/ William Blesch” (above). Views below are the guest’s or the hosts’ unless we say otherwise.

Who was Goliath? The text

Goliath shows up in 1 Samuel 17. The Philistines and Israel face each other across the valley of Elah, and out steps “a champion… named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span” (1 Samuel 17:4, KJV). He wears a bronze helmet and a coat of mail, and the head of his spear alone weighs six hundred shekels of iron. For forty days he dares Israel to send out one man to fight him.

Gath matters. Joshua 11:22 says that after Joshua’s campaigns the Anakim, the giant clan Israel’s spies were terrified of in Numbers 13, were left only in Gaza, Gath and Ashdod. And 2 Samuel 21:15–22 lists more giants killed by David’s men, ending with “these four were born to the giant in Gath.” So Goliath isn’t a one-off. He comes from a town the Bible keeps connecting with giant bloodlines.

How tall was Goliath: 9'9" or 6'9"?

Early in the episode the Raven brings up something he’d been reading that morning: in some of the earliest manuscripts, he said, “maybe the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Goliath is about 6'9" instead of 9'9". And of course, he joked, the internet responded with a lot of guys deciding they could have taken him.

The difference he’s describing is real. The traditional Hebrew text (the Masoretic Text, behind the KJV) reads “six cubits and a span,” roughly 9'9". The Greek Septuagint and a Samuel scroll found among the Dead Sea Scrolls read “four cubits and a span,” roughly 6'9". Scholars still argue about which reading is original. Either way, a 6'9" man in full bronze armor, in a world where most men were much shorter, is a giant. And the text still ties him to Gath and the giant clans.

Goliath as a Nephilim remnant

Blesch explained the idea behind his book this way: Goliath “was a remnant of the Nephilim,” the hybrid offspring of rebel angels and human women described in Genesis 6. (We covered that passage in depth in Who Were the Nephilim?) In Blesch’s view, the arrogance and hatred Goliath threw at Israel was the same cosmic rebellion speaking through him. “Goliath himself was defeated and got his head cut off,” he said, “but that same rebellion is still here,” and all of us are born into “the middle of this ongoing cosmic war.” That’s the “shadow” in the title.

TopLobsta asked whether Goliath’s challenge was really aimed at God and not just at Israel’s army. Blesch remembered the line as “I defy the God of Israel.” The KJV has Goliath say “I defy the armies of Israel this day” (17:10). But David answers that he comes “in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied” (17:45). So by David’s reading, defying Israel’s army was defying God, and that’s the point Blesch was making.

Where demons come from, in this view

Blesch, who describes himself as Jewish and a follower of Yeshua, walked through the Jewish sources he draws on: Genesis 6, then the Enoch literature, which “greatly expands on that story,” then later commentary and midrash. In that literature, he said, “demons are the disembodied spirits of the dead Nephilim.” They were never in heaven. He pointed to the Gadarene demoniac in the Gospels. The spirits ask Jesus if he has come to torment them “before the time,” and they beg not to be sent into the abyss.

This is the same view Matt Hepner lays out on Straight Bible (see the Nephilim article), and it’s why Goliath is a big deal for NDS. If the giants were hybrids, the story of David and Goliath is part of a much bigger war, not just an underdog story.

Giants, hybrids and disclosure

The Raven brought the conversation into the present. He mentioned the recent online chatter about alleged hybrid programs in deep underground bases (he credited Matt Gaetz with raising it and Anna Paulina Luna with expanding on it). He also said plainly that the claims are “unfounded” and “unproven” so far. His point: “what else is a Nephilim if not a hybrid?” To him, the hybrid theme is biblical and is coming back “under the guise of alien phenomenon.”

Blesch took a firmer line than you might expect. First, he said, if women really are being forcibly bred underground, that’s rape, and nothing about it is benevolent. Second, he wants evidence. Much of what’s circulating is “second or third-hand testimony,” and he quoted the biblical standard that a matter be established by two or more witnesses who are named and willing to stake their reputations on it. If the claims are true, he said, the obvious questions are which beings are involved and which government people are involved. He also offered what he called “pure speculation”: maybe the so-called tall whites of UFO lore are a hybrid species from Earth rather than visitors from somewhere else.

Blesch also argued that Christians shouldn’t be thrown by talk of “disclosure.” Scripture is full of non-human beings: powers, thrones, dominions, cherubim, seraphim, unclean spirits. He noted that Job 38:7 has the “morning stars” singing when the earth was made. As he put it, the Bible “never says” we’re alone. If there is a crisis, he thinks it belongs to religious tradition, not to Scripture.

The tomb of Goliath

Near the end, Blesch described the valley where Israel faced the Philistines. According to him, there’s a huge mound (a “tell”) that local tradition identifies as the tomb of Goliath, with a ruined Byzantine church nearby where pilgrims were once shown the spot. He said the Israel Antiquities Authority won’t excavate it because of religious concerns about human remains, and that it has been left alone for a thousand years or more. “I would like to do that,” he said. “Let’s see if Goliath’s bones are actually inside.”

That’s Blesch’s account. Whether the mound holds anything connected to Goliath is UNKNOWN. By his own admission, the pilgrim-era priests may not have “really known” either.

Why the story still matters

Take away the height debate and the underground-base rumors, and the episode keeps coming back to one idea: Goliath stood for the attitude that looks at God’s people, and at God, and says I defy you. The hosts see the same attitude all over the culture today. Blesch sees the whole thing as the continuation of a war that started in Genesis 6. And the answer in 1 Samuel 17 is still the same: a kid with a sling who went out “in the name of the LORD of hosts.”

Watch the full episode above. It also covers Blesch’s thoughts on parasites and spiritual oppression, altered states, and why he thinks channeled “ascended masters” fail the biblical test of testing the spirits.

Wear the lore

The Skull of Goliath design is Nephilim Death Squad’s take on 1 Samuel 17: a young slinger facing an armored skeleton giant, in yellow and black. Grab the Skull of Goliath T-Shirt, or see the rest of the giant-themed designs, like Visit Mt. Hermon, in NDS Bible & End Times.

Episodes cited

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