“In those days, and even later, there were giants on the earth who were descendants of human women and the heavenly beings. They were the great heroes and famous men of long ago” (Gen 6:4 GNB).

“One of the most amazing facts revealed by paleontology (the study of fossilized remains of creatures which inhabited the earth in a former age) is that nearly all modern animals were once represented by larger ancestors.  One thinks of the mammoths and cave bears, giant cockroaches and dragonflies, and huge reptiles like the dinosaurs.  Along with them are occasionally found giant human footprints, suggesting indeed that ‘there were giants in the earth in those days’.  Not only in the Bible, but in numerous other ancient books, are preserved traditions of giants….The children of the unions of the demonically controlled men and women of this period are the ones said to have become the ‘giants’, the mighty men of old” (Morris, H. 1976, p. 172).

Introduction

The Apostle Peter, and Jude the brother of James, give us a glimpse of a mysterious prison in which angels are incarcerated.  These angels must have sinned in a particularly grievous manner because their punishment happened in ancient times, and would not wait until the judgment of all things at the end of time.  What could this sin be that God wouldn’t wait until the appointed time of  the Day of Judgment, and which provoked him to immediate and severe action? 

The Sin revealed

Peter wrote: “For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment….” (2 Pet 2:4).  He goes on to describe other acts which offended God so deeply that he drowned the whole world in a universal deluge not long, relatively speaking, after he had created it: “….and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly….and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority” (2 Pet 2:5-10).

Peter gives us a hint, a partial revelation, as to what the sin was; it was some kind of indulgence of the flesh in depraved lust (v 9).  The judgment of the Flood on the corrupt world destroyed every living thing except Noah and his family (eight people) because of Noah’s righteousness (v 5). 

But this isn’t the half of it.  Jude reiterates what Peter said, but reveals clearly what the sin of these angels was which hastened their punishment: “And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day” (Jude 6).

The sin of these angels was that they didn’t remain in their “proper domain”, their “own abode”.  These can only be the angels in Genesis 6:4, described there as the sons of God.  The term “sons of God” in the Old Testament always refers to angels due, no doubt, to the fact that God created each one of them directly and uniquely (Heb 2:14-17); unlike human beings who are conceived and born by a man and a woman and who inherit the characteristics of their parents, the process continuing in unbroken line with each succeeding generation.

Some objections

It is objected by some that a spiritual being can neither conceive nor impregnate.  And they “prove” it from scripture, even from Jesus’ words when he talked about the resurrection of believers: “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels of God in heaven” (Matt 22:30).  Their objection is that angels in heaven don’t marry, presumably because they are sexless; that angels are incapable of marrying and of impregnating either another angel or a human female.  There are problems with this objection:

• Jesus didn’t say that angels can’t marry, only that they don’t.  And only the angels in heaven.  Consider also that angels ought not to be able to consume food and drink and digest it, but they did (Gen 18:8).
• The passage in Genesis 6:4 says that the fallen angels on earth did marry and impregnated human women (6:2, 4).  They thus left “their proper domain”. Their progeny were giants, beings called both Nephilim and giants in scripture: “…those were the mighty men which were of old, men of renown” (Gen 6:4). 
• We can identify some of these Nephilim as historical beings – Goliath of Gath (1 Sam 17:23), a warrior who was 10 feet tall; four giants named and killed by some of David’s “mighty men” – Ishbibenob, Saph (spelled Sippai in 1 Chron 20:4), and two unnamed giants, all of whom were sons of “the giant” i.e.  Rapha (KJV margin v. 16); and Lahmi, the brother of Goliath the Gittite (1 Chron 20:5). And King Og, last of the descendants of the Rephaim, a family of the Nephilim, whose bed was 14 feet six inches long and 6 feet wide (Deut 3:11; Num 21:33-35).
• There were whole nations of giants in Canaan before the Israelites conquered the land and destroyed them (Num 13:33; Deut 2:10-11; Deut 2:20-21; and Josh 11:21-22).
• There were likely other nations of giants that aren’t clearly specified as such.
• The bible takes pains to identify Samson’s parents as being human, and that his prodigious strength was due to the power of the Spirit of God, thus ruling him out as of the Nephilim.

Sons of Seth?

The popular belief among many conservative Christians is that the sons of God were the children of Seth and the daughters of human beings were the children of Cain, an idea proposed by Julius Africanus (160-240 CE).  But apart from the fact that there is no scripture to directly support this view, even remotely, the idea that the whole line of godly men married the whole line of ungodly women, or that the men of the godly line of Seth only married women from the ungodly line of Cain, is preposterous.  Adam and Eve had other sons and daughters who also had sons and daughters so why didn’t the “godly” men of Seth marry at least some women from these other lines – especially when there were likely to be godly women amongst them.  It is as unlikely that every man of Seth was godly and every woman of Cain was ungodly as that every person who goes to church today is godly and every person who doesn’t go to church is ungodly. And where do people get the idea that the whole line of Seth was godly anyway?  And why does the text say that they married human women?  Why would anyone say that if the men of Seth were also human?  It only makes sense to identify the women as human if the sons of God were not human. 

The only scripture support the idea that all the sons of Seth were godly can claim is Genesis 4:26: “And as for Seth, to him also a son was born; and he named him Enosh. Then men began to call on the name of the Lord”.  But as far as scripture is concerned, all of humanity has been born in sin from the time of the fall of Adam and Eve (Rom 5:12, 15-19; Eph 2:1-9; Ps 51:5; Rom 3:9-18).  And all who are saved are saved by grace.  Even Seth was born with a sinful, fallen, nature: “Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth”(Gen 5:3).  And every human being who has been born since that time, and every human being yet to be born, is born with a sinful nature, just like our father, Adam.  We are all conceived in sin (Ps 51:5); we are all enemies of God from our conception (Eph 2:1-9).  So the sons of Seth were also born as enemies of God – but for some of them, as with all of humanity, God intervened and saved them (Eph 2:4-9).  And although the text doesn’t specify, God would most certainly have saved other descendants of Adam and Cain.

Divine kings

Another proposal is that the sons of God were kings, and that “they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose” indiscriminately.  There are several examples of this in the Old Testament and it was a well-known practice of kings throughout the ancient world, so why would Moses point out that these imagined kings chose out of the daughters of Cain those whom they preferred and married them?  If this was a common practice, why focus on it in this passage as if it was unusual?

But these kings, so the theory goes, were divine, as were all kings of the time – they were all sons of God or gods.  But in reality it was only the kings of Egypt that were the sons of God, specifically of Ra, and were thus gods on earth.  The Mesopotamian kings had kingship given to them by the gods and were not literally or inherently divine sons of God or regarded as such.

The gods

Besides, the passage does not say that they were kings, even though called sons of God.  Moses tells us that God put each nation under the authority of a “son of God” or angel or heavenly being.  He writes: “When the Most High divided their inheritance to the nations, When He separated the sons of Adam, He set the boundaries of the peoples According to the number of the children of Israel.  For the Lord’s portion is His people; Jacob is the place of His inheritance” (Deut 32:8-9). 

Furthermore, the prophet Daniel tells us of the angel Gabriel who was delayed in bringing God’s answer to Daniel’s prayer.  He explains: “But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days; and behold, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I had been left alone there with the kings of Persia” (Dan 10:13); “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12).

Presumably, these heavenly beings were the gods of the ancient world.  “God stands in the congregation of the mighty; He judges among the gods….I said ‘You are gods….And all of you are children of the Most High.  But you shall die like men, And fall like one of the princes’” (Ps 82:1, 6-7).  There are other such mentions of “divine councils”, e.g. Job 1:6 and 2:1 and 1 Kings 22:19-22.

The wickedness of sexual relations between angels and human women

Besides, the fact that giants were born of these perverted unions tells us that this was a monstrous aberration, an abomination, something that is corrupt and totally unnatural, so much so that it is singled out for mention in scripture.  “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth” (Gen 6:11-12).  So extensive, so widespread, so common to all, was the sinfulness on the earth, and so utterly hateful to God, that God told Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth” (Gen 6:13).  But this one sin, the sons of God marrying human women and producing the vilest and most detestable progeny – monsters both in size and corruption – is the one which the Holy Spirit chose to record for all time.  It was so heinous that God could not – would not – allow it to continue.   

And in a world filled with corruption and violence, those monsters, who were intrinsically evil, were feted as heroes: “… the mighty men who were of old, men of renown” (Gen 6:4).  Prowess in warfare, bloodshed, and violence were regarded as desirable, and these Nephilim were universally known for such.  Ancient Greek mythology abounds with heroic characters, demigods, who were sons of gods or goddesses and humans, and who performed incredible deeds, fought and killed fierce and hideous monsters; heroes in the pagan mind, such as Heracles, son of Zeus; Theseus, son of Poseidon; Perseus, son of Zeus; Achilles, son of Thetis, a sea goddess; Jason, great-grandson of Hermes; to name a few.  Likewise, fierce monsters like the hydra, the gigantic Cyclops, the gorgons, the Minotaur, and other hideous creatures, all dangerous and hostile, were born of gods and humans.  These characters, although mythical, no doubt have their origins in the stories of the Nephilim, who were likewise demigods and “mighty men of renown”. 

The Nephilim

The belief that the sons of God described in Genesis were angels or heavenly beings was common among the Church Fathers, partly because they used the Septuagint as their bible; our two earliest codices, Alexandrinus and Vaticanus, have the reading “angels” for “sons of God”. The term “sons of God” in the text can only mean “angels of God”, or spiritual beings of some sort, because every other time it is used in the Old Testament, it refers to angelic or spiritual or heavenly beings. 

The early Church also regarded “the apocrypha” as canonical Scripture, and there are several references to the giants therein.  One example is that found in Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Sirach): “He did not forgive the ancient giants who revolted in their might” (Sir 16:8 NRSV-CE).  Another is: “The giants were born there, who were famous of old, great in stature, expert in war.  God did not choose them, or give them the way to knowledge; so they perished because they had no wisdom” (Baruch 3:26 NRSV-CE).  Again: “For even in the beginning, when arrogant giants were perishing, the hope of the world [Noah] took refuge on a raft, and guided by your hand, left to the world the seed of a new generation” (Wisdom of Solomon 14:6 NRSV-CE).  These books, whether one regards them as scripture or not, reflect the understanding of pre-Christian Jews, and therefore should not be dismissed.

The Book of Enoch

Then there is the non-canonical “The Book of Enoch”, from which much information about the “sons of God” is gleaned – how much of this information is true I don’t know but it is the major source, after the bible, from which most authors get their ideas about the Nephilim.  The Book of Enoch has canonical status in the Ethiopian church and some branches of Eastern Orthodoxy. 

The physical size of the giants

The stature of the Nephilim was truly intimidating.  Goliath (and probably, his brothers) was about 10 feet tall; and King Og’s bed was 14 feet 6 inches wide.   And in Numbers, when Moses sent the twelve men to spy out the land as a preparation for invasion, they returned in terror, saying, “There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight” (Num 13:33).  Several other references in Deuteronomy and Joshua also mention these same giants.

The height of the giants given in Enoch 7:2 would make them 22,500 feet tall (3000 ells ch 7:2), according to some calculations.  But while the Titans in ancient Greek mythology were said to be so tall that they could stand in the ocean and the water would only come up to their knees, and the stars get tangled in their hair, I don’t think we can equate this with the height of real giants, the Nephilim in Enoch 7:2.  The most likely explanation is that in the Ethiopic text the height given is a scribal corruption, and the Greek text is more likely to be the correct version, not having any height of the giants specified at all.

Giants in modern history and Christian folklore

Some of the genes of the various tribes and nations of the races of giants somehow survived the Flood of Genesis.  This is evidenced not only by the recorded events in the bible, such as the giants in Canaan at the time of the Hebrew conquest, but by much more recent reports, with photographs, of the discovery of giant skeletons in North America; and of the accounts of North American Indian tribes, particularly the Pawnee, of warfare between them and a race of redhead giants.  And in Central and South America the mythology, based on sightings, abounds with descriptions of giants.  These are usually treated with scorn by those who haven’t read the relevant books about them. 

’10-foot-tall people’ discovered by archaeologists in Nevada cave

Mediaeval European folklore had stories of sexual spirits which invade human beings as they slept; stories most likely based on Genesis 6:4 and some of the early Church Fathers.  These were the succubus, a female demon which seduces human males; and more pertinent to our discussion, the incubus, which is more violent, and has sex with human females.

However, this article is not about proving these accounts but simply to bring together what the bible has to say about the Nephilim.  Despite the biblical references, the response of many Christians to them is also scornful unbelief and a frantic search for more acceptable explanations because it threatens their theology; this has led to stretched explanations such as those discussed above.

Whether their survival from pre-Flood to post-Flood was because human women were once again impregnated by fallen angels after the flood; or whether they came from one or both of the two wives of Lamech, Adah and Zillah (Gen 5:17-24), who were corrupted by the fallen angels; or whether Ham, Noah’s son, married a daughter of one of these wives – none of it can be established. 

Why did the fallen angels want to marry human women?

One likely reason is because of the curse God placed upon Satan for bringing Adam and Eve into the bondage of sin and death: “I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel” (Gen 3:15).  The seed of the woman is Jesus and he will destroy Satan and the fallen angels, and rescue fallen humanity.

The Satanic plan was to so corrupt and dilute the race of humanity as quickly as possible that it would be impossible for the seed of the woman to be born at all, and this would forestall the destruction of Satan and his hosts.

But while it’s interesting to speculate on such things – this example may well be true though – the scripture gives us a more mundane reason – i.e. sexual lust.  “Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose” (Gen 6:1-2).

The Book of Enoch backs this up: “….when the children of men had multiplied in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters.  And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another, ‘Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men and get us children’” (Enoch 6:1-2).

Last word

Finally, there is no end to the number of Christian books which have the Nephilim returning in the last days to take part in the final battle at Armageddon, at which time they will join forces with the beast and the false prophet.  One collaboration of authors, one of whom is Thomas Horn, speak of portals to other dimensions, and Nephilim waiting on the planet Mars to take their role in the final battle at Armageddon.  One only has to go to Amazon website and type in “Nephilim end times” to see pages of such books.  But there is no mention of any of this in scripture. 

The original fallen angels who copulated with human women are bound in eternal chains in fiery Tartaros forever (Jude 6); their mighty progeny, who terrorised the world of their day, are all dead. King Sihon and King Og are dead, along with their people, killed by the Israelites under Moses’ leadership. The several nations of giants mentioned in the book of Numbers are all dead, killed in the Israelite conquest under Joshua’s leadership, as described in the book of Joshua.  Goliath and his brothers and their sons are all dead, killed by King David and his mighty men, as described in the books of Samuel and Chronicles.  The giants in North America are all dead, killed by a coalition of Pawnee and other local indigenous tribes, and the cave where the last of them fled into were smoked to death after fleeing into their deep cave – the Pawnee made a great fire at the cave’s entrance to finish off the last of the giants once and for all.  And that cave has apparently since been rediscovered, the walls at the entrance blackened by flames and smoke.  The fearsome giants in Middle and South America are all dead.  And the giant skeletons found and photographed in caves in the 19^th century are all dead, as is obvious in the fact that they, being now skeletons, were once living.

There are no more giants, no more Nephilim.  They are all dead, every last one of them.  And they are not coming back!  Their spirits are now languishing in torment and flames day and night forever, as will all of God’s enemies (Rev 20:10).  And Jesus went to hell and proclaimed his victory over them (1 Pet 3:18-20).  And as the rider of the white horse – the Faithful and True, the Word of God, King of Kings and Lord of Lords – he will fight the final battle and gain ultimate victory over all his enemies, all those living who gathered together against him at Armageddon (Rev 19:11-16; Ps 2).

The Christian books which look for the return of the Nephilim are not only pure fiction and wishful thinking but false theology.  And the theology they espouse, i.e. Dispensational Premillennialism, is a false gospel which bypasses the finished work of Christ on the cross by having Him reigning over a universal world empire centred in Jerusalem, with the re-establishment of a fully restored Levitical priesthood and temple with animal sacrifices and burnt offerings for the sins of the people (Ezekiel chs 40-48).  I’ve dealt with this in several articles on this website and readers can check them out for further details.

References

Morris, H. “The Genesis Record”, Copyright 1976 Henry M. Morris, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, USA

All scripture references in this article are taken from the New King James Version, online at BibleGateway.  BibleGateway.com: A searchable online Bible in over 150 versions and 50 languages.

Succubus vs. Incubus: How They Prey on Humans in Different Ways – English Study Online

The Book of Enoch 2^nd edition, Guadeloupe Baptist Theological seminary Press edition, 1995, 2000 by Ronald K. Brown.  Originally published in 1997 by James C. Winston Publishing Company, Inc.