Former UCLA Economics Professor and now a leading Messianic Jewish theologian, and a man whose judgment I respect, David Stern, in his 1998 book, The Complete Jewish Bible: An English Version of the Tanakh (Old Testament) and Brit Hadashah (New Testament), translated Isaiah 26:14 as

“The dead will not live again; the ghosts will not rise again for you punished and destroyed them and wiped out all meaning of them.”

The King James Version of Isaiah 26:14 is

“The dead will not live again; the deceased spirits will not rise”

The interesting fact is that the word dead in both is the Hebrew word Rephaim (giants) which actually refers to a people.

“It is also regarded as the land of Rephaim where people are as great and numerous and tall as the Anakim.” (Deuteronomy 2:20-21).

“There also we saw the Nephilim. The sons of Anak (Anakim) are part of the Nephilim and we became like grasshoppers in their presence” (Numbers 13:33).

These people, the Rephaim and Anakim were an offshoot of the Nephilim. Dead Rephaim, or dead Nephilim, have no souls and thus may have roamed the earth in ghostly bodies as Patrick intimated. Thus we humans have souls and await judgment in the end of days and cannot wander as ghosts, but soulless Nephilim (Rephaim) possibly could. Consequently, maybe so called ghosts in the Bible and in other places past and present are in reality dead Nephilim (Rephaim) who will never be resurrected and wander the earth aimlessly? These soulless entities are demonic in nature and thus share with their father, Satan, the power, ability and will to deceive us humans. These ghosts try to deceive us that our family and friends are still accessible to us from beyond the grave which goes against Scripture and ultimately denies the need for a Savior.

Who again are these Nephilim/Rephaim?

When the sons of God (fallen angels, possibly extraterrestrials) mated with the human daughters of men (Genesis 6:2) and their offspring the Nephilim (Genesis 6:4) were on the earth in those days and also afterward (Numbers 13:33). The New Testament tells us a great deal more about these actions that took place during these days of Noah. It speaks of angels who did not keep their own abode and whom God has kept in eternal bonds under darkness (Jude 6) for pursuing strange (human) flesh (Jude 7). God did not spare these (fallen) angels when they sinned and sent them to hell (2 Peter 2:4). The extra biblical book of Enoch called these fallen angels Grogori and stated that 200 of these so called Watchers descended to earth. They are also discussed in the Dead Sea Scroll, Genesis Apocrophon, and other Apocryphal and pseudopigraphal writings.

Therefore, there must have been hundreds or maybe thousands of offspring generated from these unholy unions which God destroyed in the Great flood (Genesis 7:23) to prevent the contaminating of the Messianic bloodline to come. But as discussed earlier we saw later eruptions of these hybrid soulless children later called the Rephaim and Anakim as more fallen angels descended to earth. The apostle Paul continued to warn women thousands of years later to cover their heads so not to tempt these fallen angels (1 Corinthians 11:10) When these Rephaim (Nephilim) offspring died, their souls were condemned not to live again or to rise (resurrection) as humans will.

As a consequence, the only way that Job could experience a spirit passing by his face causing the hair of his flesh to bristle up (Job 4:15) was if it were a soulless dead Nephilim (Rephaim) wandering the earth in a ghostly body. Patrick may have been correct, but even if he were, it was unfortunately for the wrong reasons.

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