Who Were the “SONS OF GOD” and NEPHILIM?
Genesis 6 speaks of the mysterious “sons of God” and the Nephilim (NEF-ah-lim). Let’s look at the key verses in this chapter with the understanding that these events take place just before the Noahic flood:
1When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. 3 Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
Genesis 6:1-4
The Nephilim
The “Nephilim” were “heroes of Old, men of renown” and evidently literal giants, as the KJV translates it (see below). The Hebrew term nephilim refers to a race of people and is from a root word meaning “to fall, lie” which possibly suggests that they were mighty men who “fell” on their prey in the sense of easily subjugating them due to their inherent formidableness. It also suggests that they were fallen in nature for reasons that will be obvious.
The wording in the NIV (above) doesn’t properly indicate that the Nephilim were the product of “the sons of God” procreating with women. The rendering in the KJV is more faithful to the Hebrew text:
There were giants [Nephilim] in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
Genesis 6:4 (KJV)
When the “sons of Gods” coupled with the “daughters of men” it produced a super race known as the Nephilim, a angelic-human hybrid (or, more specifically, a demonic-human hybrid). In short, there really were beings on the Earth in ancient times who were half-human and half-supernatural, which likely influenced Greek mythology (later ripped off by the Romans).
While some respectable theologians/ministers say the Nephilim are not the offspring of the sons of God & the daughters of men, many others teach that they are due to the evidence, including me, with further support considered below.
For those interested in comparing the different theories, see this interesting thread.
The truth of the matter comes down to the question…
Who Were the “Sons of God” in Genesis 6:1-4?
Who were these “sons of God”? In the Hebrew the phrase is ben Elohim and refers to angels, as shown here:
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels (ben Elohim) shouted for joy?
This poetic verse is an example of synonymous parallelism wherein the second line repeats the first line in different words. As such, the “morning stars” in the first line and the ben Elohim* in the second are both references to angels. While the NIV translates ben Elohim as “angels,” most English translations render the words literally as “the sons of God.”
* Elohim is pronounced eh-loh-HEEM (but I also hear eh-LOH-him a lot).
In any case, the context of this verse is when God created the Earth (Job 38:4), which was before Satan’s rebellion and subsequent fall. As you can see, all the angels—the “sons of God” (ben Elohim)—were rejoicing at the LORD’s awesome creation of the physical Universe.
Yet even after Satan & his angels fell from Heaven they were still the “sons of God,” the ben Elohim. We observe this in Genesis 6:4 above wherein the “sons of God” are contrasted with the “daughters of men.” This suggests that the former are angelic in nature whereas the latter are human.
The following two passages also show that the ben Elohim refer to angels:
One day the angels (ben Elohim) came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them.
On another day the angels (ben Elohim) came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them to present himself before him.
Which angels came to present themselves before the LORD? Neither verse says but it was likely the archangels—the ruling angels—reporting to God, like Michael and Gabriel. Both verses add “and Satan also came with them,” as if to say that it wasn’t just the heavenly archangels who reported to God on this occasion, but the disgraced archangel as well. This shows us that, fallen or not, Satan still has to regularly report to the Sovereign LORD and give account.*
* See 2 Chronicles 18:18-21 for another fascinating example where the angels appear before the LORD’s throne in Heaven, both good and bad spirits. The angels on this occasion, however, are not limited to chief archangels. (This event is also chronicled in 1 Kings 22:19-22).
I should add that the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha* also interpret “the sons of God” in Genesis 6:1-4 as angels.
* The Apocrypha (ah-POK-rah-fah) and Pseudepigrapha (soo-doh-PIG-ra-fah) are collections of uninspired books written during the intertestamental period after the cessation of Old Testament prophecy. Not one of them was written in the Hebrew language.
A variant position is that the “sons of God” of Genesis 6 were not the angels who fell with Lucifer, but rather heavenly angels who came down and had relations with women as humanity was multiplying. Those who support this view argue that these angels fell due to lust rather than already having fallen due to partnering with the devil’s rebellion. While I don’t embrace this view and wonder if those who support it watched City of Angels one too many times, I’m sharing it as an alternative possibility for you to consider in your studies.
Either way, the mixing of angelic DNA with human DNA produced offspring with tainted blood.
Some oppose this interpretation on the grounds that Christ indirectly said that angels “neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Luke 20:34-36), but this is different than saying that angelic beings can’t marry or can’t have sex. Furthermore, Jesus was talking about heavenly angels, not fallen angels; the latter would obviously rebel against any such moral constraints by the very nature of their fallen-ness.
By the way, angels can appear in the natural in human form, as verified by the two angels who appeared to Lot as men; moreover, the perverted men of Sodom wanted to have “sex” with them (Genesis 19:1-5). The fact that these angels appeared as men shows that they weren’t necessarily genderless, which is corroborated by Mark 16:5.
Why Did the “Sons of God” Copulate With Women?
Assuming the “sons of God” refer to the fallen angels who rebelled with Satan, why did they procreate with women? We can only speculate from the biblical data and it leads to the sound conclusion that they wanted to taint the human bloodline in order to block the “seed” that the LORD prophesied would come through the female and “crush” Satan’s head (Genesis 3:15). The “seed” is a reference to Christ, the Anointed One, who came “to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8).
This satanic plot resulted in God’s judgment and the corresponding flood:
The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. 6 The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. 7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” 8 But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
Genesis 6:5-8
It stands to reason that these verses (and the rest of Genesis 6, as well as Genesis 7) are somewhat related to what took place in verses 1-4 (cited above). The LORD thus flooded the Earth with only eight human survivors, through whom the anointed seed would eventually come and destroy the devil’s work, providing redemption for humanity.
In order for this to never happen again, God condemned the “sons of God” who committed this act:
For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell [tartaroó in the Greek, not Hades, aka Sheol], delivering them in chains to be held in gloomy darkness until their judgment;
And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling — these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day.
We know that this particular judgment only came upon the fallen angels who “sinned” and not to all fallen angels because there are evil spirits active on Earth to this day (Ephesians 6:12). This is supported by the fact that Jude 1:6 (above) is solely referring to the fallen angels who “abandoned their proper dwelling.” What does this mean? It’s likely a reference to them leaving the spiritual realm—their natural habitation—to manifest in the physical realm in physical form for the purpose of polluting the human bloodline and thereby preventing the birth of the Anointed One.
Remember, evil spirits are “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” The dark heavenlies are their proper dwelling and so to appear on Earth and have sex with women they’d have to abandon both their spiritual dwelling and spiritual nature in order to accomplish it. (See The Three Realms—Heaven, Earth and the Underworld for related insights).
So that this would never happen again to pollute the human bloodline God imprisoned these wicked angels in tartaroó (tar-tar-OH) to await their judgment and banishment to the lake of fire, which the LORD “prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).
Were the Nephilim in the Promised Land?
The so-called Nephilim mentioned in Numbers 13:33 by the ten doubting Hebrew spies were not necessarily Nephilim since the Nephilim that existed before the flood obviously perished in it. This put an end to the Nephilim altogether, unless one of Noah’s daughter-in-laws carried the Nephilim DNA to to post-flood world. Another possibility is that some fallen “sons of God” copulated with women again after the flood, but the Bible doesn’t indicate this.
Keep in mind that the doubting spies are the ones speaking in Numbers 13:33 and therefore they are the words of disobedient men struck with fear and trying to discourage the Hebrews from invading the Promised Land. No doubt there were some giant people in the land and surrounding regions—Goliath, for instance, was 9½’ tall—but they weren’t actual Nephilim.
The tallest human on record in modern times, incidentally, was Robert Pershing Wadlow, who stood one inch shy of 9’, which means he was only half a foot shorter than Goliath. He passed away in 1940. I bring up Wadlow to show that a person can be a giant, but this doesn’t mean he or she is a Nephilim. This was the case with Goliath.
This article was edited from Chapter 10 of…
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Related Topics:
Demons—Are they Fallen Angels?
How Old is the Earth? (The Gap Theory vs. Young Earth Creationism)
Created in the Image of God — What Does it Mean?
Why is this World so Messed Up?
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