Names
- Emim
- Emites
The Emims beside the Anakims
The Emims dwelt therein in times past, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims;
Deuteronomy 2:10, KJV
Deuteronomy 2 places the Emims in the land the LORD gave “unto the children of Lot for a possession” (Deuteronomy 2:9, KJV), the land of the Moabites. The next verse says they “also were accounted giants, as the Anakims; but the Moabites called them Emims” (Deuteronomy 2:11, KJV). Emim was the Moabite name for the people the Hebrew text counts among the Repha’im.
The Emim are described in the Book of Deuteronomy, particularly in chapter 2, as a formidable and populous people. Deuteronomy implies that the Moabites took their land. Deuteronomy tells a matching story of the Zamzummims, giants “great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims,” whose land the Ammonites took (Deuteronomy 2:20 to 21, KJV). See also the Anakim.
Genesis names the Emims among the peoples struck by Chedorlaomer and his allied kings, “the Emims in Shaveh Kiriathaim” (Genesis 14:5, KJV). See Chedorlaomer killed the Nephilim.
Rashi, the medieval Jewish commentator, explains the name Emim from the Hebrew אימה, dread, because the dread of the Emim lay upon the people. J. H. Hertz, in The Pentateuch and Haftoras (1936), renders Rashi’s reading as “the dreaded ones,” and give the singular Ema or Emma (אימה) the meaning “horror” or “terror.” Albert Barnes held that the Moabites gave the people this name.
