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[Exact Change]

Can you explain the "nephilim" or "sons of god" in Genesis? I'm having trouble trying to understand what these are. Are they human or some kind of demon/human cross breed I'm confused.

[jimwalton]

No one can explain the Nephilim. It's an enigma that has yet to be figured out, and there is no shortage of theories.

Since they show up in Num. 13.33, we can safely say they were not destroyed in the flood.

Gn. 6.4 says "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days." Ah, the good old days when the Nephilim were around. The Hebrew root of the word is npl, which possibly means giants, but more likely something like tyrants, or invaders. The translation "giants" is in the Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, but "mighty men" or invaders goes along better with Number 13.33, where "Nephilim" is used again. There the word shows up in connection with Anak, who were all basketball players, er, seemed to have been a people group "specializing" in height. That doesn't mean they were giants, per se, but possibly taller than other people groups around them.

Now, let's go to another people group. Gn. 14.5 mentions a group called the Rephaim, which also could be translated as giants, but again it's most likely a proper noun. The Rephaim, however, are also to be identified with Anak (Dt. 2.10-11). The Anakim lived west of the Jordan River, and when the Israelite spies saw them, they reported they saw giants in the land (Num. 13.32-33).

Now, to add a little interest, in about 1200 BC the Philistines conquered the Anakim in Gath. Gath, of Goliath fame. Yes, the Anakim merged with the Philistines and in time came to be considered Philistines (1 Chr. 20.6-8).

Now, lest we start imagining Jack and the Beanstalk here, let's talk cubits. The average person in about 1000 BC was about 5' tall or a little taller. Assuming David was about 5' tall, and his hand span was about 7.5", that would put the giant Goliath at about 5'8"—way taller than David and the rest of the people. (It seems short to us nowadays, but we have to put ourselves in their culture.) If, on the other hand, we use a standard Mesopotamian cubit of about 17.5", Goliath would have been about 6'6", a monstrous size for their culture. A "standard" 18" cubit would put Goliath at about 6'9". Gigantic, right? Absolutely. (The 9'9" reading of Goliath's height in the Bible is from a particular reading of the Masoretic text and is likely not accurate.)

"Giant" is obviously relative. Some tall friends of ours (she is about 5'11", and he's about 6'2") recently spent 3 years in Hong Kong and felt like absolute titans. On a recent trip to Guatemala, we took a 6'6" teenager with us who absolutely dwarfed the Guatemalan citizens. Well, he dwarfed most of us Americans, too.

So they're probably not giants, and they're probably not angels, either. The problem with interpreting the sons of God as supernatural beings is that the NT is solid (from the mouth of Jesus) on the fact that angels don't marry (don't reproduce; Mt. 22.30). Also, cohabitation of angels and humans has no immediate connection with the purposes of Genesis. The text is most likely not referring to an unnatural offspring between divine and human sex partners.

Some commentators think the "sons of God" are descendants of Seth and that "the daughters of men" are the descendants of Cain, but nowhere else in the OT are the Sethites and Cainites referred to like that, so it just seems like somebody's working hard to make sense out of the text.

Some people think the "sons of God" are dynastic rulers, like royal aristocracy, mating the common women. The sin, then, would be polygamy. But that can't be right. Something like that doesn't set up the flood story, there's nothing evil about royalty marrying commoners, and polygamy is not forbidden in the OT.

A final common interpretation is that the "sons of God" are the "heroes of old, men of renown." But again, where does THAT take us? Nowhere, though that may be a logical interpretation.

The term "sons of God" is used elsewhere in the OT for angels (powerful messengers/servants of God), but it's also used for the nation of Israel, and for kings, so that doesn't clear things up. In the ancient Near East, kings were routinely understood as being sons of God, and in other cultures were often considered to have been engendered by deity—divine descent. But then, again, where the sin here, especially to set up the flood? I don't see it.

They are accused of marrying "any of them they chose." But that can't be talking about polygamy, again, because polygamy was practiced in ancient Israel.

Also, there are no examples from Akkadian or Northwest Semitic mythological texts of divine beings shacking up with human women, so this doesn't seem to be "borrowed" from any neighboring mythologies.

So I think we can clearly say the whole thing is unclear, we don't make any doctrinal statements based on this text, nor arrive an conclusions that are unwarranted. Until something else is discovered or figured out, the text is a puzzle. We can pretty sure rule out supernatural being/human cross-breeding interpretations.