The counting rule matters more than the raw number. If you include whole peoples, the question gets fuzzy fast. The Anakim, Rephaim, and the sons of Rapha all matter to the biblical landscape, but they are not the same thing as individually referenced giant figures. I wanted the narrower count: named people first, then specific unnamed individuals, but no group labels.
The five names I would count
| Figure | Main passage | Why I think he belongs in the count |
|---|---|---|
| Goliath | 1 Samuel 17 | The most explicit and famous named giant in Scripture. |
| Ishbi-benob | 2 Samuel 21:16 | Listed as one of the descendants of Rapha and presented as a specific giant opponent. |
| Saph, called Sippai in Chronicles | 2 Samuel 21:18; 1 Chronicles 20:4 | The same giant figure appears under a variant name across the parallel accounts. |
| Lahmi | 1 Chronicles 20:5 | Chronicles explicitly names him as the brother of Goliath. |
| Og king of Bashan | Deuteronomy 3:11 | The text identifies him as the last of the Rephaim and points to his oversized bed as evidence of unusual stature. |
That gives me five named giant figures.
The two specific giant figures who are not named
| Figure | Main passage | Why I would still count him |
|---|---|---|
| The six-fingered, six-toed warrior from Gath | 2 Samuel 21:20; 1 Chronicles 20:6 | He is a clearly individualized giant opponent, even though the text does not preserve a personal name. |
| The Egyptian killed by Benaiah | 2 Samuel 23:21; 1 Chronicles 11:23 | The man is singled out and described as unusually large, with Chronicles giving the memorable five-cubit detail. |
On that narrower rule, I land at two specific but unnamed giant references, which brings the total to seven individual giant figures.
The count is not hard, but the edge cases are real
The part that makes this worth writing down is not the arithmetic. It is the textual texture around the arithmetic.
The cleanest example is Lahmi. In 1 Chronicles 20:5, Elhanan kills Lahmi, the brother of Goliath. But 2 Samuel 21:19 has the well-known textual difficulty where the line can read as though Elhanan killed Goliath himself, which is why many readers notice the tension immediately. Chronicles looks like it preserves the more clarified version. So if someone says, "I do not want to count Lahmi until I sort out the Samuel-Chronicles relationship," I understand the hesitation. I still think Lahmi belongs in the count because Chronicles names him plainly.
The Benaiah passage is another judgment call, though a smaller one. The text does not use the same labeling style it uses with Goliath. But it does single out an Egyptian of extraordinary stature and places him in the same broad cluster of giant-like warrior material. If the question is "which individuals are specifically presented as giant figures rather than normal combatants," I think he still belongs on the list.
The bigger exclusion is deliberate: I am not counting collective labels. The Anakim matter. The Rephaim matter. The sons of Rapha matter. But those are categories, clans, or peoples, not one-by-one tallies of individual giant figures. Once those are removed, the biblical data gets much smaller and much easier to map.
Where I land for now
My current answer is straightforward: five named giants, two additional specific unnamed giant figures, and seven individual references altogether if the goal is to count persons rather than peoples.
I do not think that settles every textual question around the giant traditions in the Old Testament. It does clarify something useful, though. Scripture has a real giant tradition, but it is much more concentrated than people often assume. Once you stop counting whole populations and start asking for actual individuals, the list becomes short enough to inspect passage by passage instead of relying on vague memory.