Kherem: Eliminating Nephilim Bloodlines in Canaan

Kherem means devoting something to destruction. It is a ritual term before it is a military one.
The question is what was being devoted, and the conquest accounts answer it themselves. When Joshua sums up the campaign, the measure is that there are no more Anakim in the land. The giant clans, tied in Numbers 13 to the Nephilim of Genesis 6, are what the narrative keeps counting.
Two framings sit side by side in the sources, and both are worth knowing. One reads kherem as targeting a specific supernatural problem rather than a race. The other, Walton's, reads it as removing what belongs to the sphere of chaos. Neither reads it as genocide, and the text agrees: Rahab lives, the Gibeonites live.
Scripture links:
- Genesis 6:1-4 - the Nephilim.
- Numbers 13:32-33 - the spies tie the sons of Anak to them.
- Joshua 11:21-23 - the conquest scored by the removal of the Anakim.
These accounts are not about clearing a country. They are about what had to be cleared out of it.