Annotatio LXXVI

”But there were giants upon the earth.” — Genesis 6:4

Origen — as Gennadius, Bishop of Constantinople, reports in the Greek Catena on the Octateuch — weighing this passage in the Tomes on Genesis, judged that the Giants were not men who exceeded others in unusual bodily size, but certain wicked and impious men, despisers of God, and plainly atheists.¹ This opinion, Origen’s name being suppressed, Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus, disapproves, in question 48 on Genesis, in these plain words: “Some say that the Giants are haters of God, and men who are adversaries of God — [those] who have understood these things thus do not say that they had bodies larger than other men. But I, when I hear Scripture saying of Og that he was descended from the Giants, and that his bed was of iron, having a length of nine cubits and a breadth of four cubits [Deuteronomy 3:11];² when I hear the explorers narrating that they were, in the sight of the Giants, as locusts [Numbers 13:33];³ and of Goliath, that he had a length of six cubits and a span [1 Samuel 17:4]⁴ — I judge that there were certain very-huge men, God wisely dispensing this: that they might know God, as omnipotent, to have distributed so great a measure to men. For it was very easy for him to create even larger men; but, that he might cut off pride and restrain arrogance, he did not give men the greatest bodies. For if, endowed with small bodies, they lift themselves up not only against one another but against God the Creator, what would they not have committed, if they had been allotted the greatest bodies?” These things Theodoret. We have written more fully on this matter in the volume of Physical Questions which we have gathered upon the divine scriptures.⁵