Who Were the Nephilim? The Sons of God, Genesis 6 and the Giants

Genesis 6 spends four verses on one of the strangest scenes in the Bible, and people have been arguing about it for more than two thousand years. The “sons of God” take wives from the “daughters of men,” their children are called the Nephilim, and a few verses later comes the flood. Nephilim Death Squad is named after these guys, so this one is personal. Here is what the text says, what the phrase “sons of God” means, the main ways Christians have read it, and where the hosts of our shows land.

Most of this article follows Matt Hepner’s breakdown of Jude 5–7 and Genesis 6 in “Strange Flesh: Part 2” (above).

The text: Genesis 6:1–4

In the King James Version it reads: “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose… There were giants 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.”

The word the KJV translates “giants” is the Hebrew nephilim. It shows up in only one other place, Numbers 13:33, where Israel’s spies report seeing “the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers.” Other Hebrew words also end up as “giants” in English, like rephaim, and gibborim is the word behind “mighty men” in Genesis 6:4. So the Bible talks about giants a lot more than it uses the word Nephilim.

What does “sons of God” (bene ha-Elohim) mean?

The Hebrew phrase is bene ha-Elohim, “sons of God.” On the episode, Matt points out that in the Old Testament the phrase only shows up here and in Job (Job 1:6, 2:1, and the similar “all the sons of God shouted for joy” in 38:7), and in Job it clearly means heavenly beings who come before the Lord.

His way of explaining the phrase: a “son of God” is a direct creation of God. Adam had no human father, so Luke 3:38 calls him “the son of God.” Angels don’t reproduce, so each one is a direct creation. And in the New Testament, believers become sons of God by being born again, not by natural birth (John 1:12–13; Romans 8:14; 1 John 3:1–2). In Genesis 6, Matt reads the sons of God as angels, set against “men” and “daughters of men,” words the passage keeps repeating.

TopLobsta even has a design named after the phrase: the Beneha Elohim tee (a TopLobsta design, not an NDS one), with a small three-eyed winged figure and BENE-HA / ELOHIM lettering.

The three main views

Christians have read Genesis 6 in three main ways:

• Angels (the “angelic view”). Fallen angels took human wives, and their children were the Nephilim. This is the oldest recorded reading. It’s all through the Book of Enoch and other Jewish writings from before the time of Jesus, and it’s the view Straight Bible teaches and Nephilim Death Squad is built around.
• The line of Seth (the “Sethite view”). The godly descendants of Seth married the ungodly descendants of Cain. Matt says plainly that “great men of God” he loves and has learned a lot from hold this view.
• Rulers or kings. Powerful men (the Hebrew elohim can sometimes mean judges or rulers) took whatever women they wanted. Our shows didn’t cover this one, but you’ll run into it in commentaries.

Matt’s questions for the Sethite view are simple. If it was just two groups of humans, how did those marriages produce giants? If these men were so godly, why were they going after ungodly women? And if the giants came from Seth’s line, where do all the giant tribes after the flood come from? He puts them forward as questions, not a mic drop: “Doesn’t mean I’m right.”

Jude 6–7: the New Testament connection

This is the core of the episode. Jude 6 talks about “the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation,” reserved “in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” Matt breaks down two words:

• “First estate” is the Greek archē, meaning their beginning, their position or principality. They had a rank and walked away from it.
• “Habitation” is oikētērion. The only other place it appears in the New Testament is 2 Corinthians 5:2, where it means the body. So Matt reads Jude as saying these angels left their position and their proper body.

Then Jude 7 says Sodom and Gomorrah, “in like manner,” went “after strange flesh.” Matt’s point is that the angels’ sin in verse 6 is the same kind of sin as Sodom’s in verse 7, and the only passage in Scripture that spells out a sin like that for angels is Genesis 6. Second Peter 2:4–6 makes the same move, going from angels who sinned to Noah’s flood to Sodom.

What about Matthew 22:30, where Jesus says angels in heaven don’t marry? Matt’s answer: that verse is about God’s angels in heaven. Genesis 6 and Jude are about angels who rebelled and left heaven.

Giants after the flood

Genesis 6:4 says the Nephilim were on the earth “in those days; and also after that.” That’s why giants keep showing up after the flood. There are the sons of Anak in Numbers 13, and Deuteronomy 2 lists whole peoples that “were accounted giants”: the Emims, the Zamzummims, and the Anakims. Matt points out a detail that rarely gets mentioned. It wasn’t only Israel that fought giants. The Lord destroyed giant peoples ahead of the children of Lot (Moab and Ammon) and the children of Esau too (Deuteronomy 2:9–12, 19–22).

How giants came back after the flood, the Bible doesn’t say. Matt is fine with the idea that angels did the same thing again after the flood, but he doesn’t make it a test of faith. L.A. Marzulli, a guest on L.A. Marzulli on Straight Bible, argues for several “incursions.” In his view, the first group of fallen angels (the Watchers) is locked up in Tartarus (the Greek word behind “hell” in 2 Peter 2:4), and later giants like Og of Bashan and Goliath came from later incursions. That’s his view as a guest, and he’s the first to admit “the Bible is silent” on the details. Giant fans can pick up the story with the Skull of Goliath design, and the Watchers’ mountain from the Book of Enoch gets a travel-poster tribute in Visit Mt. Hermon.

What happened to the Nephilim, and where do demons come from?

The flood wiped out the pre-flood world (Genesis 6:5–8). Matt’s own take, which he clearly labels as his take, is that the Nephilim were hybrids that were never supposed to exist. When they died, their spirits had nowhere to go: not where angels go, not where humans go. Those roaming spirits are the demons that try to get into people’s bodies. The Book of Enoch says something similar (1 Enoch 15), though it isn’t in most Bibles. As Matt puts it: “If somebody disagrees, it’s no problem. I’m not starting a new denomination based on that.”

Why Nephilim Death Squad cares

The Nephilim are where Nephilim Death Squad starts. David L. Corbo and TopLobsta built the show around Genesis 6 and everything that grows out of it, and they bring on guests who come at the topic from every direction. Straight Bible, Matt Hepner’s verse-by-verse show, walks through the same passages slowly and in context. Watch the episode above for the full breakdown, including Jude 5’s warning about Israel in the wilderness, which is really the point of the whole passage: people who had it and walked away.

Wear the lore

If Genesis 6 is your favorite rabbit hole, the Nephilim designs live in NDS Bible & End Times, from Visit Mt. Hermon to Skull of Goliath. For the classic, grab the Nephilim Death Squad logo tee with the yellow NDS skull, or browse all Nephilim Death Squad merch.