# Nephilim and the Sons of God ## Intro Genesis 6:1-4 is one of the strangest and most contested passages in the Hebrew Bible. In four short verses the text describes "sons of God" (*bene ha-elohim*) taking the "daughters of men" as wives, the Nephilim being on the earth in those days and also afterward, and "mighty men of old, men of renown" being born of these unions. The flood narrative follows immediately. The same Nephilim word resurfaces only once more in the canon, at Numbers 13:33, where the Israelite spies report that "the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim." The Anakim later become the Philistine giants of Gath, the family Goliath would come from. Three readings of the Genesis 6 "sons of God" have circulated in Jewish and Christian exegesis for over two thousand years: the **angelic / Watcher view** (the oldest), the **Sethite view** (developed by Augustine and dominant in much of Western Christianity for over a millennium), and the **royalty / dynastic view** (modern). The angelic view has been gaining ground again in recent academic and evangelical scholarship, most influentially through Michael Heiser's divine-council framework. This page is the codex's hub for the question. It lays out the three views, the post-flood giant clans (Anakim, Rephaim, Emim, Zamzummim), the Second Temple Watcher tradition, the New Testament echoes in Jude and 2 Peter, and the apologetic and theological stakes. Goliath of Gath is treated as the canonical case study. ## In full A doctrinal-historical hub on Genesis 6:1-4 and its canonical sequel: the identity of the *bene ha-elohim*, the nature of the Nephilim, the survival of giant-clans through and after the flood (Anakim, Rephaim, Emim, Zamzummim), the Second Temple Watcher tradition (1 Enoch, Jubilees), the New Testament receptions (Jude 6; 2 Peter 2:4-5), and the apologetic significance of the chain that ties the antediluvian Nephilim to the post-flood Anakim of Gath and ultimately to Goliath. Three interpretive views are treated comparatively: the angelic / Watcher view (the oldest, supported by the Second Temple Jewish corpus and recovered in modern scholarship by Michael Heiser's Divine Council Worldview), the Sethite view (Augustine and dominant in Western Christianity from the 4th to the 20th century), and the royalty / dynastic view (modern). The hub is the canonical-context anchor for related pages on the conquest of Canaan, the Goliath narrative, and the broader supernatural-rebellion arc the Bible names from Eden to the cross. ## The source text: Genesis 6:1-4 **Genesis 6:1-4** (NASB95): *"Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then the LORD said, 'My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.' The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown."* The Hebrew terms in dispute: - **bene ha-elohim** ("sons of God" / "sons of the gods"), the phrase elsewhere in the Old Testament (Job 1:6; Job 2:1; Job 38:7; Psalm 29:1; Psalm 89:6; Deuteronomy 32:8 in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Septuagint readings) refers consistently to **supernatural beings in God's heavenly court**. The phrase is never used elsewhere of human beings. - **Nephilim**, from the Hebrew root *nfl* ("to fall"), traditionally rendered "fallen ones" or "those who cause others to fall." The Septuagint translates it *gigantes*, "giants," and the English "giants" rendering follows the Septuagint via the Vulgate. The translation "giants" is plausible but not the only possibility; "fallen ones" is closer to the root. - **gibborim** ("mighty men"), and *anshe ha-shem* ("men of renown" / "men of the name"). These describe the offspring, the warrior-aristocracy of the antediluvian world. ## The three interpretive views ### 1. Angelic / Watcher view (the oldest) The "sons of God" are members of God's heavenly court (the divine council; see [Michael Heiser](/codex/michael-heiser/)), supernatural beings who rebelled by taking human women and producing hybrid offspring (the Nephilim). This is the **uniform Second Temple Jewish reading** (1 Enoch; Jubilees; Genesis Apocryphon from Qumran; Philo's *On the Giants*; Josephus, *Antiquities* 1.73). The earliest Christian witnesses (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen) all hold this view. The New Testament echoes the framework explicitly: - **Jude 6** (NASB95): *"And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day."* - **2 Peter 2:4-5** (NASB95): *"For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly..."* Both texts link a unique angelic sin (not Lucifer's primeval fall, which is not described as keeping or abandoning a "domain") with the time just before the flood. The structural parallel to 1 Enoch's Watchers tradition is exact. The angelic view explains the elements the other views struggle with: - Why the offspring are called "Nephilim" / *gibborim* / "men of renown" (a class, not just godly children). - Why the language *bene ha-elohim* matches its use everywhere else in the Old Testament for heavenly beings. - Why the episode is the trigger for the flood judgment. - Why Jude and 2 Peter treat a pre-flood angelic rebellion as a settled fact. ### 2. Sethite view (Augustine onward) The "sons of God" are the godly line of Seth; the "daughters of men" are the ungodly line of Cain; the intermarriage produced moral corruption that triggered the flood. The Nephilim are then merely "mighty men" of mixed-line ancestry, not hybrid offspring of supernatural beings. This view was developed by Julius Africanus (3rd c.), adopted by Augustine in *City of God* 15.23, and dominated Western Christianity from the 5th century through most of the 20th. Its appeal was anti-mythological: it removed the embarrassing supernatural-mating element after the church became uncomfortable with the more vivid Second Temple imagery. Its weaknesses: - The terminology problem. *Bene ha-elohim* is never used elsewhere in the Old Testament for Sethites or any human group. The Sethite reading requires a unique-to-this-passage meaning for the phrase. - The Cain-Seth dichotomy assumed by the view is not in the text. Genesis 4-5 does not describe one line as godly and the other as ungodly; both lines have a mix. - The "daughters of men" is universal language (*benot ha-adam*), not specifically Cainite. If the sons of God are Sethites, who are the daughters? Only Cainite women? The text says nothing of the sort. - The view does not explain why the offspring are *Nephilim* or *gibborim*. Why would mixed-line moral compromise produce a categorically distinct class of mighty men of renown? - It cannot explain Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4 without dismissing them as referring to a different angelic rebellion. ### 3. Royalty / dynastic view (modern) The "sons of God" are ancient kings or dynasts (claiming divine sonship in the ANE pattern of royal apotheosis); the "daughters of men" are commoners; the offspring are heroic warrior-elites. This view was developed by Meredith Kline and others in the 20th century to provide a non-supernatural alternative to the Sethite view without resorting to angelic mating. Its strengths: it engages real ANE royal-ideology data; it makes the Nephilim a sociological category (warrior-aristocracy) rather than a biological one. Its weaknesses: - Like the Sethite view, it requires a unique-to-this-passage meaning for *bene ha-elohim*. - It does not explain why this episode triggers the flood; bad kings exist throughout the OT without flood-level judgment. - It cannot explain Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4. - It is anachronistic; the royal-divine-sonship ideology it appeals to is mostly attested in later Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources, not the protohistoric period Genesis 6 describes. ## The flood and the post-flood giant clans Genesis 6:4 contains the cryptic note: *"The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward..."* If the flood was universal and total, post-flood Nephilim require either (a) **recurrence** via the same mechanism (the angelic view's preferred reading; the Watchers' offense was repeated, not unique), or (b) **survival through Noah's family** in some way (speculative, sometimes argued through one of the wives of Noah's sons carrying the line). Whatever the mechanism, the text consistently describes post-flood giant clans across the conquest period: - **Anakim**, the sons of Anak. Centered around Hebron. Caleb's faith story turns on the Anakim ([Numbers 13](/codex/numbers-13/); Numbers 14:6-9; Joshua 14; Joshua 15:13-14). Joshua's clearance is recorded at **Joshua 11:21-22** (NASB95): *"Then Joshua came at that time and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab and from all the hill country of Judah and from all the hill country of Israel... There were no Anakim left in the land of the sons of Israel; only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod some remained."* - **Rephaim**, a generic term for the giant peoples and possibly a specific clan. Og of Bashan is the named exemplar (**Deuteronomy 3:11**: *"For only Og king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim. Behold, his bedstead was an iron bedstead; it is in Rabbah of the sons of Ammon. Its length was nine cubits and its width four cubits by ordinary cubit."*). Place-names: the Valley of Rephaim (Joshua 15:8; 2 Samuel 5:18). 2 Samuel 21:15-22 and 1 Chronicles 20:4-8 describe four Philistine champions from Gath as *yelidei ha-rapha*, "born to Rapha" (descendants of the Rephaim); these are Goliath's clan. - **Emim**, in Moab (**Deuteronomy 2:10-11**: *"The Emim lived there formerly, a people as great, numerous, and tall as the Anakim. Like the Anakim, they are also regarded as Rephaim, but the Moabites call them Emim."*). - **Zamzummim / Zuzim**, in Ammon (**Deuteronomy 2:20-21**: *"It is also regarded as the land of the Rephaim, for Rephaim formerly lived in it, but the Ammonites call them Zamzummin, a people as great, numerous, and tall as the Anakim."*). The Deuteronomy 2 passage is significant: it treats Emim and Zamzummim as **other names for the Rephaim**, the giant-clan groupings overlapping ethnically and linguistically across the Transjordan and Canaan. ## The Nephilim-Anakim identification The decisive text linking the Nephilim to the post-flood giants is the spy report in **Numbers 13:32-33** (NASB95): *"So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, 'The land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size. There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and we were so in their sight.'"* This is the only post-flood use of the Nephilim word in the Hebrew Bible. The parenthetical "the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim" makes the explicit identification: **Anakim are Nephilim**. The Israelite spies, observing the Anakim, identified them with the antediluvian Nephilim. Two interpretive questions follow: 1. **Is the spy report's identification authoritative?** The report is embedded in inspired scripture but it is "a bad report" that God rebuked (Numbers 13:32; 14:36-37). The interpretive question is whether the inspired-narrator's framing endorses the spies' equation or merely records it. Most readers who take the angelic view treat the equation as substantively correct; those skeptical of the angelic view often read it as the spies' hyperbolic terror talk. 2. **If Anakim are Nephilim, where did they come from?** This is the post-flood-Nephilim question above. On the angelic view, either the Watcher mechanism repeated or some Anakim ancestry passed through the flood. ## The Anakim-Gath-Goliath chain The chain that places Goliath in the Nephilim lineage: 1. **Anakim survive in Gath** (Joshua 11:22): after Joshua's clearance, the Anakim remnant fled to three Philistine cities, Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod. 2. **Goliath is from Gath** ([1 Samuel 17](/codex/1-samuel-17/):4). 3. **Goliath's brother Lahmi and three other Gath champions are explicitly "descendants of Rapha"** (2 Samuel 21:15-22; 1 Chronicles 20:4-8). The Hebrew is *yelidei ha-rapha*, "born to the giant" (the Rephaim line). The named champions: Ishbi-benob (2 Samuel 21:16); Saph / Sippai (21:18); Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite (21:19; 1 Chronicles 20:5); and an unnamed giant with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot (21:20). 4. **Anakim and Rephaim overlap as related giant-clan terminology** (Deuteronomy 2:10-21). So Goliath sits in a Philistine city that was the Anakim refuge, his clan is explicitly Rephaim, and the Anakim are explicitly identified by the spies as Nephilim. The chain works; whether you label Goliath himself "Nephilim" depends on how tightly you treat the Anakim-Rephaim-Nephilim equations. See the dedicated person page at [Goliath](/codex/goliath/) for the full case. ## Second Temple Watcher tradition The Watcher tradition is the Second Temple Jewish elaboration of Genesis 6:1-4. Its main literary witness is **1 Enoch** (chapters 6-16, the *Book of the Watchers*, 3rd century BC). The narrative names 200 angels, led by Shemihazah and Asael, who descended on Mount Hermon, took human wives, taught forbidden knowledge (metallurgy, weapons, sorcery, cosmetics, astrology), and fathered the Nephilim. Their offspring were giants whose violence filled the earth; the flood judgment was God's response. The Watchers themselves were bound in chains under the earth until the day of judgment. The Watcher tradition was widely known in Second Temple Judaism. **Jubilees** (2nd c. BC) elaborates it. The **Genesis Apocryphon** from Qumran (1QapGen) presupposes it. **Sirach** (16:7) references "ancient giants." Josephus (*Antiquities* 1.73) describes the antediluvian giants as offspring of angelic-human union. Philo discusses the question in *On the Giants*. Both **Jude 6** and **2 Peter 2:4** are best read against this background. Jude in fact quotes 1 Enoch directly two verses later (Jude 14-15 quotes 1 Enoch 1:9), confirming that he knew and treated the Enochic tradition as authoritative on this episode (without canonizing 1 Enoch as a whole). The Watcher framework was the lens through which Second Temple Jews and first-century Christians read Genesis 6. The early church fathers down to about the late 4th century broadly held the angelic view. It was only with Augustine's *City of God* 15.23 that the Sethite view became dominant in the Latin West, and it remained dominant until the 20th century. The 20th and 21st centuries have seen a substantial recovery of the older reading, both in academic Hebrew Bible scholarship (Michael Heiser, Brian Godawa, Amy Richter, Annette Yoshiko Reed) and in evangelical popular-scholarly works. ## Why this matters apologetically The Nephilim question is not arcane. It is load-bearing for several apologetic frames: - **The Canaanite conquest.** The conquest narrative repeatedly targets specifically the giant-clan strongholds (Anakim of Hebron; Og of Bashan and his Rephaim kingdom). The conquest's intensity becomes more legible when the targets are understood as a post-flood continuation of the Genesis 6 rebellion against the divine order, not merely as ethnically Canaanite humans. See [Canaanite Conquest Objection Defeater](/codex/canaanite-conquest-objection-defeater/). - **The flood as judgment.** Genesis 6:5 (universal violence) is the surface trigger of the flood. Genesis 6:1-4 (the Watcher rebellion and Nephilim offspring) is the deeper cause that gives the surface violence its corruption. The flood becomes legible as judgment on a comprehensive supernatural-and-human rebellion, not merely on bad behavior. See [Flood Genocide Objection Defeater](/codex/flood-genocide-objection-defeater/). - **The Goliath narrative.** David vs. Goliath becomes more than a folkloric underdog story when Goliath is read as the last named descendant of the Anakim-Rephaim-Nephilim line, a representative of the giants the conquest set out to clear. David becomes the post-conquest finisher of the unfinished business of Joshua. See [Goliath](/codex/goliath/). - **The supernatural-rebellion arc.** From Eden's serpent through the Watchers and Nephilim, through the Babel allotment of the nations to lesser *elohim* (Deuteronomy 32:8-9 on the Dead Sea Scrolls + Septuagint reading), through the conquest of the giant-clan strongholds, to Christ's victory over the rulers and authorities at the cross (Colossians 2:15) and his proclamation to the imprisoned spirits (1 Peter 3:19-20, which references the days of Noah explicitly), the Bible carries a continuous narrative of supernatural rebellion that the divine-council framework makes coherent. See [Michael Heiser](/codex/michael-heiser/). - **NT exegesis.** Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4-5 are obscure on the Sethite view and clear on the angelic view. The choice between views is not just an Old Testament curiosity; it determines whether substantial New Testament passages are intelligible on their own terms. ## See also - [Genesis 6](/codex/genesis-6/), the source-text passage page. - [Michael Heiser](/codex/michael-heiser/), the load-bearing modern source for the divine-council framework and the academic-evangelical recovery of the angelic view. - [Jude 6](/codex/jude-6/), the New Testament's clearest reference to the angelic rebellion of Genesis 6. - [Goliath](/codex/goliath/), the canonical case study for the Anakim-Rephaim-Nephilim chain. - [Canaanite Conquest Objection Defeater](/codex/canaanite-conquest-objection-defeater/), where the giant-clan targets become apologetically significant. - [Flood Genocide Objection Defeater](/codex/flood-genocide-objection-defeater/), where Genesis 6:1-4 supplies the deeper cause behind the surface violence. - [Tower of Babel Objection](/codex/tower-of-babel-objection/), where the divine-council framework reads the Babel judgment as the apportioning of the nations to subordinate *bene ha-elohim*. - [Goliath Inscription Tel es-Safi](/codex/goliath-inscription-tel-es-safi/), the archaeological attestation of the Goliath-type Philistine name at Gath in the right period. ## Common questions this page answers **Q: What are the Nephilim in the Bible?** The Nephilim are the offspring of the union between "sons of God" (*bene ha-elohim*) and "daughters of men" described in Genesis 6:1-4, the verses immediately preceding the flood narrative. The Hebrew root *nfl* means "to fall," so the term is often translated "fallen ones"; the Septuagint translates it *gigantes*, "giants," which is where the English-Bible "giants" rendering comes from. The Nephilim are described as "mighty men of old, men of renown," a class of warrior-aristocrats. The word reappears only once in the Hebrew Bible, at Numbers 13:33, where the Israelite spies report that the Anakim of Canaan are "part of the Nephilim." **Q: Who are the "sons of God" in Genesis 6?** Three main views have circulated for two thousand years. The **angelic / Watcher view** (the oldest, supported by Second Temple Jewish literature, the early church fathers, and Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4) holds that the "sons of God" are supernatural beings of God's heavenly court who rebelled. The **Sethite view** (developed by Augustine, dominant in Western Christianity from the 5th to the 20th century) holds that they are the godly line of Seth marrying the ungodly line of Cain. The **royalty / dynastic view** (modern, developed by Meredith Kline) holds that they are human kings claiming divine sonship in the ANE pattern. The angelic view has been recovering ground in modern scholarship, most influentially through Michael Heiser's Divine Council Worldview. **Q: Did the Nephilim survive the flood?** Genesis 6:4 says "the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward." If the flood was universal and total, post-flood Nephilim require either recurrence via the same mechanism (the angelic view's preferred reading, that the Watcher rebellion repeated after the flood) or survival through Noah's family in some way (speculative). The post-flood giant clans are documented across the Hebrew Bible: the Anakim (sons of Anak, around Hebron), the Rephaim (Og of Bashan and the four Gath champions of 2 Samuel 21), the Emim (Moab), and the Zamzummim (Ammon). Numbers 13:33 explicitly identifies the Anakim as "part of the Nephilim." **Q: Was Goliath a Nephilim?** Goliath's direct textual identification is as a Rephaite ("descendant of Rapha"), per 2 Samuel 21:22 and 1 Chronicles 20:8, where his brother Lahmi and three other Philistine champions from Gath are explicitly called *yelidei ha-rapha*. The indirect chain to the Nephilim works through three steps: Goliath is from Gath (1 Samuel 17:4); Gath was one of three cities where the Anakim remnant survived Joshua's clearance (Joshua 11:22); and the Anakim are equated with the Nephilim by the Israelite spies (Numbers 13:33). On the angelic view of Genesis 6, the chain holds and Goliath is properly counted as a Nephilim descendant. On the Sethite or royalty view, the term "Nephilim" doesn't carry bloodline weight and the chain becomes a matter of label overlap. See the [Goliath](/codex/goliath/) page for the full case. **Q: How do Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4 fit in?** Both texts describe a unique angelic sin that triggered judgment. Jude 6: "angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day." 2 Peter 2:4-5: "God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness... and did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah." Both texts pair the angelic sin with the flood, exactly the pattern of Genesis 6:1-4 read on the angelic view. Jude in fact quotes 1 Enoch directly two verses later (Jude 14-15 quotes 1 Enoch 1:9), confirming that he knew and used the Watcher tradition. The Sethite view has to explain these texts as referring to a different angelic rebellion not described elsewhere in scripture; the angelic view reads them as natural commentary on Genesis 6. **Q: Why does the Nephilim question matter for apologetics?** Four reasons. **First**, the conquest of Canaan repeatedly targets specifically the giant-clan strongholds (Anakim of Hebron, Og of Bashan and his Rephaim kingdom); the conquest's intensity becomes legible as judgment on a continuation of the Genesis 6 rebellion, not merely as displacement of ethnically Canaanite humans. **Second**, the flood judgment becomes coherent as a response to a comprehensive supernatural-and-human corruption rather than to bare moral failure. **Third**, the David-and-Goliath narrative becomes more than folkloric underdog when Goliath is read as the last named descendant of the Anakim-Rephaim-Nephilim line, with David finishing the unfinished business of Joshua. **Fourth**, the New Testament references in Jude and 2 Peter become intelligible on their own terms.