The Anakim — the “sons of Anak” — are the legendary race of giants who, in the Hebrew scriptures, dwelt in the land of Canaan and so terrified the spies of Israel that a whole generation lost heart at the sight of them. Towering and dreadful, they are the giants of the promised land, descendants in tradition of the antediluvian [nephilim].
The Terror of the Spies
When Moses sent twelve spies to scout the land of Canaan, ten returned in dread, and the cause of their terror was the Anakim. “We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.” So great was the fear they spread that the people of Israel refused to enter the land, and for that failure of nerve the whole generation was condemned to wander forty years in the wilderness. The Anakim were thus the giants whose mere existence turned back a nation.
The Sons of Anak
The Anakim took their name from Anak, son of Arba, after whom the city of Kiriath-Arba (later Hebron) was named — Arba being called “the greatest man among the Anakim.” Three of their number, Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai, are named as dwelling in Hebron. They were a people “great and tall,” spoken of in the same breath as the [rephaim] and the other giant clans of the land, a byword for stature and might against whom no ordinary man could stand.
The Giants Driven Out
In the end the Anakim were broken. It was Caleb, one of the two faithful spies, who in his old age claimed Hebron as his portion and drove out the three sons of Anak, and Joshua who cut off the Anakim from the hill country, “so that none of the Anakim were left in the land of the people of Israel; only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod did some remain” — a remnant from whom, tradition holds, later giants like Goliath of Gath would come. In the Anakim, Hebrew tradition preserved the memory of a giant race that tested the faith of a nation, and whose fall marked the triumph of courage and trust over the terror of overwhelming size.