Hebrew רְפָאִים. Also called Refaim, Anakim, Emim, Sons of Anak.
A tall people east of the Jordan — and the same word, elsewhere, for the dead.
The Rephaim are a people, and the text is specific about them: Og of Bashan is the last of them, and his iron bedstead is given as thirteen feet by six, which is the sort of detail Deuteronomy offers as evidence rather than as legend. Related names cluster round them — Anakim, Emim, Zamzummim — each the local word for the same tall population. The same consonants elsewhere mean the shades of the dead, which is a separate and probably unrelated use that has caused a good deal of confusion.
Deuteronomy offers the bed as evidence of how big the Rephaim were, and says it could still be seen in Rabbah. “After the cubit of a man” means the ordinary cubit, so this is drawn with one of 18 inches. Some read the “bedstead of iron” as a basalt sarcophagus; the size is the same either way.
Disputed. The word is used both for a people and, in poetry, for the dead. Whether the two senses are related is disputed. The Anakim, Emim and Zamzummim are given as local names for the same group.