Rephaim

Summary

At Ugarit the Rephaim are kings who died and became a company that is invoked and honoured. The tablets write them rpum and rpim, singular rpu, and Wyatt translates the name "the saviours". In the Hebrew Bible the rĕpāʾîm have two senses: the spirits of the dead in Sheol, and a people of giants who lived in the land before Israel. Most scholars now hold that the Ugaritic Rephaim are the royal ancestors made divine, who watch over the continuity of the dynasty and give the king offspring.

The fullest surviving account of them is on three broken tablets, KTU 1.20, 1.21 and 1.22. Someone calls them again and again: "Come to my house, Rephaim; to my house I invite you, into the midst of my palace I summon you." They hurry to his sanctuary, harness the chariots, hitch the horses and mount, and travel a day and a second; at sunrise on the third they reach the threshing floors and the orchards. Oxen and sheep, calves and kids are slaughtered for them, there are olives and dates, and wine from the heights of Lebanon, and they eat and drink for six days in the lofty banqueting house on the summit of Lebanon; the tablet breaks off on the seventh day. The tablet names among them "Thamaq, the Rapiu of Baal, the warrior of Baal and the warrior of Anat", and "Yahipan", prince of eternal kingship. At the head of one tablet someone is told: "Behold your son.. behold your grandson at your sanctuary." Wyatt, Religious Texts from Ugarit, KTU 1.20–1.22, pp. 314–323, Rouillard, pp. 692–693.

In KTU 1.161, a royal funeral text from the last years of Ugarit, around 1200 BCE, a priest calls the Rephaim by name: "You are invoked, Rephaim of the earth; you are summoned, assembly of Didan", then calls the dead kings Ammithtamru and Niqmaddu, and orders the throne of Niqmaddu, his footstool and his table to be mourned. Then he says: "Go down, Shapsh, go down, great luminary", and to the dead king: "After your lords go down into the earth, and fall into the dust", to the ancient Rephaim and the kings before him. Seven offerings follow, and the priest ends: "Peace on Ammurapi, peace on his house, peace on Ugarit and on her gates." Ammurapi was the last king of Ugarit.

The idea the stories of the Rephaim turn on is that a king does not die alone: he joins a company of the kings before him, and that company returns to the living to bless the throne. They are invited to a feast of grain, oil and wine, asked for a child for the new king, called when a king dies to receive him, and the rite closes with peace on the king who follows. The throne passes from the dead to the living through them. The Hebrew Bible keeps the same picture and turns it around: in Isaiah the Rephaim are dead kings who rise from their thrones in Sheol to meet the king of Babylon when he dies, and say to him: "You too have become weak as we are; you have become like us." Isaiah 14:9–10.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. The Canaanite essay reads the Rephaim from r-p-ʾ with the sense "the weak, the shades", so that the Rephaim are "the weak ones" or "the ghosts". This is the sense the Hebrews heard in the word when they took it from rāpâ, to sink and slacken, and the dead say it of themselves in Isaiah. But the Ugarit tablets and the Phoenician inscriptions write the third letter as a glottal stop, so the word is r-f-ʾ, Arabic rafaʾa: rafaʾa al-thawb, he mended the garment and closed its tear; rafaʾa bayna al-qawm, he made peace between the people; rafaʾa al-rajul, he calmed the man's fear. From it comes the old Arab wedding wish bi-l-rifāʾ wa-l-banīn, "with concord and sons". At Ugarit the Rephaim are called to give the king a son, and in Hebrew the same root gives rāpāʾ, to heal.

Linguistic Root

The Rephaim and rifāʾ

The Canaanite essay takes the root to be r-p-ʾ with the sense "the weak, the ghost, the feeble spirit", cites Arabic rafā "he became weak" and rifāʾ "weak", and treats the final -îm of the Hebrew word as the plural ending. The three letters are in their places: r is r, f answers the soft p of Ugaritic and Hebrew, and the glottal stop is written in Ugaritic with a letter of its own. BDB says that most scholars derive the Rephaim, the shades, from the Hebrew verb rāpâ, to sink and slacken, "as sunken, powerless ones". That is the essay's sense.

But the last letter of rāpâ in Hebrew is h, while the last letter of the Rephaim is a glottal stop in Ugaritic, Phoenician and Hebrew alike. So Rouillard says the most probable root is r-p-ʾ, whose Hebrew sense is "to heal", and BDB gives its Arabic counterpart as rafaʾa and rafā, to darn, mend, repair and pacify, and Ethiopic "to stitch together, mend". In Lane, rafaʾa al-thawb is to close what was torn in a garment; rafaʾa baynahum is to make peace between them; rafaʾa al-rajul is to calm a man and still his fear; raffaʾa is to say to a newly married man bi-l-rifāʾ wa-l-banīn, and rifāʾ is close union and concord. From the same root come arfaʾa ilayhi, he took refuge with him, and murfaʾ, the place where ships come to rest.

These senses fall on what the Rephaim do in the texts. They give offspring: in the story of Kirta El blesses the king with seven sons and with daughters and says to him: "Be greatly exalted among the Rephaim of the earth, in the convocation of the assembly of Ditan", and in KTU 1.22 the son and the grandson are presented to the company. Rouillard says that there is near agreement that the Rephaim were believed to watch over the dynasty's continuity, granting offspring when needed, so that in this sense they were "healers". The Arabic wedding wish joins the two things in one word: concord and sons. And Proverbs says that the one who strays from the path of understanding "will rest in the company of the Rephaim", rest and refuge being senses of arfaʾa.

The reading we settle on joins the two senses at two levels: the word itself is rafaʾa, mending, bringing together and offspring, and it is in the tablets; the weakness in the essay is what the Hebrews heard in the word when they brought it near rāpâ, and what the dead say in Isaiah. Rouillard notes that some scholars thought the word held both senses because of its ambiguity, and that the Talmud and the Midrash derived it from weakness.

"The shades"

KTU 1.161 calls those for whom it offers, in its first line, ẓlm, which Wyatt says most scholars understand as "the shades". Ugaritic ẓ is Arabic ẓ, so the word is Arabic ẓilāl, letter for letter. In Lane ẓill is the light of the sun without its rays, anything the sun has not fallen on. And in this same tablet the dead king goes down after his lords into the dust, and Shapsh goes down with him.

Set aside after the dictionary check: rafā in the sense "he became weak", which Lane gives under neither r-f-ʾ nor r-f-w; the nearest is rafuha ʿayshuhu, his life was easy and ample, and rafaha, he found rest after fatigue.

Shifts used: Ugaritic and Hebrew p is Arabic f; the glottal stop stays; Ugaritic ẓ is Arabic ẓ.

Key Mythic Narratives

Shapsh, queen of the Rephaim

The Baal Cycle ends with a hymn to Shapsh: "Shapsh, you rule the Rephaim; Shapsh, you rule the gods of the underworld. Your company are the gods, mortals are your company. Kothar is your associate, and Hasis your companion." The sun, who goes down under the earth every night, is mistress of the dead, and with her is Kothar-wa-Khasis the craftsman.

Rapiu, king of eternity, in Ashtaroth and Edrei

KTU 1.108 is a prayer said over poured wine: "May Rapiu, king of eternity, drink, the god enthroned in Athtarat, the god who rules in Edrei", who is hymned with lyre and flute, drum and cymbals, "among the goodly companions of Kothar"; then his strength, help, rule and splendour are asked to be "in the midst of Ugarit, throughout the days and months, and the gracious years of El". In the Bible Ashtaroth and Edrei are the two towns of Og, king of Bashan, "one of the last of the Rephaim".

Danel, man of Rapiu

Danel, the father of Aqhat, is called in his story mt rpi, "man of Rapiu" or "man of healing", and in KTU 1.20 he is the one who answers when the Rephaim reach the threshing floors. Some scholars take the Rephaim tablets to continue the Aqhat story, with the dead invoked after the son's murder; others take them as separate texts.

The Rephaim in Sheol

In the Hebrew Bible: "The dead can never live, the Rephaim can never rise"; "Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the Rephaim rise to praise you?"; "The Rephaim tremble beneath the waters and their denizens". Further on Isaiah says: "Let your dead revive", and ends the verse with an obscure phrase which Rouillard takes to mean that the earth casts out the Rephaim. At Sidon the kings Tabnit and Eshmunazar curse whoever opens their tombs: may he have no resting place with the Rephaim. And on a tombstone from North Africa in Neo-Punic and Latin, the Latin Dis Manibus, "to the gods the Manes", answers the Punic "to the gods the Rephaim".

The Rephaim as giants

In the historical books the Rephaim are a tall people east of the Jordan: the Moabites call them Emim and the Ammonites Zamzummim, "a people great and numerous and as tall as the Anakites". Of them Og king of Bashan was left, whose iron bed was nine cubits long, and all Bashan was called "the land of the Rephaim". Near Jerusalem lay "the Valley of Rephaim", and at Gath there were men "descended from the Raphah" who fought David. The Greek Septuagint sometimes renders the Rephaim as "the giants", and in 2 Samuel calls the Valley of Rephaim the valley "of the Titans".

Symbolic Reading

The Canaanite essay makes the Rephaim the spirits of the dead and the giants, the mighty ancestors who live in the underworld, sometimes hold power over the world of the living, and are named in religious festivals and banquets, so that they are a link between the two worlds.

The essay that rereads the Canaanite myths reads "the land of no return" as underground grain stores, cold and dark, where grain is buried until the next season. In their tablets the Rephaim come up from under the earth to the threshing floors and orchards, the places of grain and fruit, and eat for six days.

Rouillard reports Caquot's view that the blessing the Rephaim bring is not first the fertility of the land but the fertility of the king they bless with offspring. On this view the ancestors come back to the table so that the king will have a son to set the table for him after his death, since, as Wyatt notes after Schmidt, the firstborn son is essential for the due performance of his father's funeral rites, which is why Kirta asks for sons before anything else.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In KTU 1.161 the dead king goes down "after his lords into the earth" with Shapsh going down beside him, and in Isaiah the pomp of the king of Babylon is brought down to Sheol, so the Rephaim belong with the descent to the underworld. Rouillard sees in Isaiah's "the Rephaim will not rise" an answer to a belief that associated the Rephaim with Baal, who dies in the drought and returns with the rain, which ties it to the dying and rising god. Rouillard, pp. 695–696.

In Sumer Gilgamesh sees in a dream before his death that he will be counted among the Anunna gods and become governor of the netherworld, passing judgments, and that the elders of his city will come out to meet him; see Gilgamesh. The Greek Septuagint calls the Valley of Rephaim the valley "of the Titans", and the Titans in Hesiod are the defeated gods shut up in Tartarus beneath the earth. On the Punic and Latin tombstone the Rephaim answer the Manes, the Roman spirits of the dead, whom the master of the house sends out of his home at the Lemuria, as told under Remus.