As many people begin their journey through the Bible this year, many will encounter puzzling details that provoke questions about the meaning of the Scriptures. Occasionally, as I encounter such scenarios in the Scripture, I will post thoughts and comments from world-class scholars that have wrestled with these questions. My goal is not to endorse a particular position or understanding of a passage of Scripture. Instead, my goal is to make the scholarship available to you and encourage you to dig deep into God’s Word.
The first question deals with the identity of “the Nephilim” that are mentioned in Genesis 6. Who were the Nephilim in Genesis 6? A few questions come up when we attempt to understand this passage.
First, we need to ascertain the relationship between “the Nephilim” and “the sons of God” who “went to the daughters of humans and had children by them.” Second, we need to determine whether the “heroes of old, men of renown” refers to the “children” that were born from the relationship between “the sons of God and the children of humans” or whether the phrase “heroes of old…” refers to “the Nephilim.”
The term “Nephilim” is only used in two places in the Scriptures: here in Genesis 6:4 and Numbers 13:33. In Numbers 13:33, some of the men who had gone into the promised land with Joshua and Caleb to scout it out are reported as saying, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”
Numbers 13 provides us with a little more detail about the Nephilim. According to the explanatory note in parenthesis, the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim. The descendants are also known as the Anakim. The Anakim people are mentioned in Deuteronomy 2:10 and described as “tall.” In Deuteronomy 9:2, it is obvious that the people of Anakites intimidated the Israelites. The Anakim are once again described as “tall” and “great.” The Israelites asked, “Who can stand against the Anakim?”
The Anakites are mentioned again in Joshua 11:21 and 15:13. In Joshua, however, we find that the Israelites have defeated the Anakim people and that Caleb (who believed that the Israelites could defeat the Anakim people) is preparing to receive an inheritance in the promised land. According to Joshua 15:13, Caleb received a portion in Hebron, which was formerly known as Kiriath-arba. Kiriath-arba was named after Arba, the father of Anak. Arba is described elsewhere in the Old Testament (Joshua 14:15) as “the greatest of the Anakites.” In other words, Caleb inherited the land that would have been inherited by the Anakim people from their forefather, Arba. The God of Israel, however, had other plans. Caleb’s belief in God’s power to defeat the powerful Anakim people is rewarded with a great inheritance. Judges 1:20 highlights Caleb’s inheritance in relationship to the Anakim people as well.
After Joshua and the Israelites drove the Anakites out of the promised land, we are told (Joshua 11:22) that some Anakites only remained in three places: Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod. During the time of the conquest of Canaan (which depends on how you date the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt), Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod were considered places that were inhabited by the Philistine people. While we cannot know with certainty, it is possible that Goliath was a descendant of the Anakites.
In summary, then, the descendants of the Nephilim who are mentioned in Genesis 6 are the Anakim (AKA, Anakites) people who were feared by the Israelites because they were very tall and perceived to be very powerful. It is probably fair to assume that these descendants were great warriors.
With a brief survey of the descendants of the Nephilim completed, we can now look back at Genesis 6 and wrestle with the text.
There are basically three major interpretations regarding the identity of Nephilim, which is inextricably related to how one understands the identity of the “sons of God.” All of the following interpretations assume that the Nephilim are the children who were born as a result of the relationships between the “sons of God” and the “daughters of humans.” At this point, I am indebted to Victor Hamilton’s NICOT commentary on Genesis 1-17 for the following categories and explanations of the major interpretations of Genesis 6. Here are the major interpretations:
The sons of God are angels.
Many of the ancient versions so understood it, as witnessed by LXX ángeloi toú theoú. The major support for this interpretation is that elsewhere in the OT the expression “sons of God” does indeed refer to heavenly beings. Examples come from both prose (Job 1:6; 2:1) and poetry (Job 38:7, where “sons of God” parallels “morning stars”; Ps. 29:1; 82:6; 89:7 [Eng. 6]; cf. also Dan. 3:25, “a son of the gods”). Heb. benê-hāʾĕlōhîm is the same linguistically as Ugar. bn il, “the sons of El.” In Canaanite mythology bn il are major gods who form part of the pantheon of which El is the head. By contrast, “the sons of God” in OT thought are angels who are members of the Lord’s court and who expedite his bidding. They have no divine pedigree.
Some have simply dismissed this interpretation, labeling it “bizarre,” while others deny its possibility on the grounds that the NT teaches that angels do not marry (Matt. 22:29–30; Mark 12:24–25; Luke 20:34–36). The major contextual argument against this identification is that it has mankind being punished for the sins of angels. If the angels are the culpable ones, why is God’s judgment not directed against them? Why do the innocent suffer for the sins of the guilty, and why do the guilty go unjudged? This is not a conclusive argument, for in the very next event recorded in Scripture, the Flood, we are told that the sin of man (6:5) results in the divine annihilation of not only man but beast, creeping thing, and birds (6:7). Later on, King David protests that God ought not to direct his wrath against the innocent people but against David himself for his sin in taking the census (2 Sam. 24:17). Must the populace bear the consequences of the sins of their monarch?
This interpretation assumes that the angels took corporeal form, which has support elsewhere in Scripture. For example, one need only recall the bold anthropomorphisms that are associated with the epiphany of the “angel of the Lord.” On the darker side this idea extends into magic in which the incubus (or succubus) assumes a male (or female) body and has intercourse with the unsuspecting sexual partner.
Genesis 1–11 abounds with illustrations of human beings who were not content with being merely human. Accordingly they reached for divine status and attempted to overstep the boundaries that had been imposed on them. This story, with this approach, supplies another illustration of such transgression, albeit in the opposite direction. Here the divine or angelic world illegitimately impinges on the human world.
The sons of God are “dynastic rulers, an early royal aristocracy.”
The daughters of men, whom they took as wives, constituted the royal harems of these despots. The sin, then, is polygamy, along the lines of Lamech, who also “took wives” (4:19). A variation of this interpretation combines it with the first one, so that the sons of God are both divine beings and antediluvian rulers, much as Gilgamesh of Akkadian literature is both a historical figure (king of Uruk) and one about whom legendary features accrued (one-third human, two-thirds divine).
Meredith Kline especially makes much of the fact that in the Keret epic from Ugarit King Keret is called bn il. This is a significant part of the titulary of the pagan ideology of divine kingship. Kline also appeals to verses in the OT where those who administer justice are called ʾĕlōhîm (Exod. 21:6; 22:7, 8, 27 [Eng. 8, 9, 28]); and a son of David is called the son of God (2 Sam. 7:14 par. 1 Chr. 17:13; perhaps Ps. 82:6).
The major advantages of this view are that it removes Gen. 6:1–4 from any mythological or nonhistorical understanding; it allows the unit to serve as an appropriate introduction to the Flood story; and it attempts to be faithful to the immediately preceding context about Cainites and Sethites. The major weakness is that while both within the OT and in other ancient Near Eastern texts individual kings were called God’s son, there is no evidence that groups of kings were so styled.
The sons of God are “the godly Sethites and the daughters of humankind are the ungodly Cainites.”
The sin, then, is a forbidden union, a yoking of what God intended to keep apart, the intermarriage of believer with unbeliever. This approach is quite close to the previous one. But the objection aimed at the previous identification applies here too. Nowhere in the OT are Sethites identified as the sons of God. Again, this proposal forces on the word ʾāḏām in vv. 1 and 2 two different meanings. In v. 1 ʾāḏām would have to be “mankind” and in v. 2 ʾāḏām would be a specific group of men (“daughters of men,” i.e., “daughters of Cainites”).
In response we observe that while sons of God is indeed an enigmatic phrase, and appears here for the first time in the OT, notes about godliness abound in the context (4:26; 5:24, 29). Furthermore, the OT does not lack instances of a shift from a generic to a specific use of a word in one context. Thus, ʾāḏām as “mankind” in v. 1 and as “Cainites” in v. 2 is not impossible.
It is possible, however, to reverse this identification and see the daughters of men as Sethites and the sons of God as Cainites (really “Eveites”). For example, the birth of daughters occurs only among the Sethites of ch. 5. Again, the taking of wives for oneself (6:2) is paralleled by the Cainite Lamech (4:19). Could it be that here we have a replay of Gen. 3? As Eve the initiator led Adam astray, so the sons of God led astray the daughters of men.
In conclusion to his summaries of the interpretation of Genesis 6, Hamilton wrote, “Suffice it to say, it is impossible to be dogmatic about the identification of sons of God here. The best one can do is to consider the options. While it may not be comforting to the reader, perhaps it is best to say that the evidence is ambiguous and therefore defies clear-cut identifications and solutions.”
Other scholars, however, are not as reserved as Hamilton. For instance, in his WBC commentary on the Genesis 1-15, Gordon Wenham argued that Genesis 6 is “making use of well-known oriental ideas.” Wenham believed that Genesis 6 is referring to divine-human marriages (see the first view above). Kenneth Matthews, however, favors the third position, viewing the sons of God as descendants of Seth who intermarried with the nations, which results in moral degradation in society. For a recent video on this topic, see Peter Gentry’s explanation of the passage here. (Side note – While I am still working through Gentry’s explanation, on the surface, it appears fairly compelling. In brief, Gentry believes that Moses was demythologizing the origin story of the Nephilim. In other words, according to Gentry, the Nephilim were not the offspring of divine-human marriages, but instead, simply an ancient people who were feared in those days because of their size and power. Yet, even Gentry’s explanation is not without complications. He often assumes too much clarity in difficult New Testament passages that he believes alludes to the Genesis 6 account. I find some of his suggestions to be a stretch.)
Conclusion
How should Christians understand Genesis 6? In the end, a dogmatic conclusion about the exact identity of Nephilim and the sons of God evades all serious interpreters. When this happens, Christians should exemplify hermeneutical humility. In this life, we may never fully possess all the details that are necessary for interpreting the identity of the Nephilim and the sons of God. This, however, does not mean that we cannot benefit or truly know something significant about the passage. While full understanding might evade us, some partial understanding is possible and beneficial.
In the case of the Nephilim, we see that these people often provoked terror in other nations. They described as “tall” and “great” on several occasions. Yet, we also find that even though many people were fearful of the Nephilim and their descendants, some men like Joshua, Caleb, and David did not fear these “giants in the land.” Instead, they trusted in the LORD God to deliver them from evil. And, by trusting God while all others feared, they preserved the covenant people of Israel for the coming of the One who would crush the head of the serpent that threatens all mankind. Through the faithfulness of men like Joshua, Caleb, and David in the face of threatening giants, God kept His promise to bless all the nations of the earth through the seed of Abraham and make those trust in Jesus Christ become the true sons of God (Galatians 3:15-29).
CBH
