Power Under Heaven: The Ethics of Rule in Biblical Giants

Not a carnival of monsters; a sober walk through Scripture.
Power Under Heaven: The Ethics of Rule in Biblical Giants asks what the Bible is doing with Nephilim, Rephaim, the Watchers, Og, and Goliath. It answers in the classic Jewish order of learning: Tanakh; Chazal and classic mefarshim; Zohar and Arizal with care; Second Temple literature as non-canonical context; Ancient Near Eastern philology and archaeology; modern science as analogy.

Menachem Clausen shows how Genesis 6 centers ḥamas, social predation, rather than spectacle; how the spies' rhetoric manufactures "giants" by language; how Deuteronomy's map of Og, Emim, and Zamzummim teaches proportion; how Daniel's Watchers humble kings rather than license angelic biography; and why Babel warns against speech and power homogenization. Kabbalistic images such as middot and shevirah-tikkun are welcomed with the fences our sages modeled. Enoch and Jubilees are read as illuminating literature that does not move the goalposts of halachah.

You will find deep dives on Og's iron bed, Goliath's gear and speech, Rephaim and rpum in poetry, and investigative interludes on how attention markets turn mystery into myth. With a full bibliography and glossary, this book aims for awe without hype and for mysticism without drift, so that curiosity serves covenant.

For readers: students of Tanakh and Jewish thought; rabbis and educators; Bible-and-ancient-world readers who prefer sources over sensationalism.
Promise of the book: a larger reverence for Torah, a cooler eye for spectacle, and a sturdier ethic for wielding power in shul, at home, and in public life.