First off, we need to point out that the sons of God and the Nephilim are two different things. Sometimes people conflate the two, but they are separate. I’ll start by providing the three viewpoints of what is going on in the passage of Genesis chapter 6 and then talk about each one.
Let’s look at the passage. Genesis 6:1-4 (ESV) “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. 3Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 4The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.”
Right away, we can see in verse 4 that the Nephilim and the sons of God are two different groups, and it appears that the Nephilim are the offspring of the sons of God. The three theories of these two groups are as follows:
- The Nephilim were mighty ones in their time, the sons of mighty rulers and judges.
- The Nephilim were mighty people who were the sons of the godly line of Seth and the daughters of the ungodly line of Cain.
- The Nephilim were the offspring of fallen angels and the daughters of humans.
No one knows what the Nephilim are. The word has been translated as giants, fallen ones, and mighty ones. The reason we know the word Nephilim is because some translations have just transliterated the word nephiyl (H5303) into English as Nephilim because it’s simpler than trying to define it or translate it. Incidentally, Strong’s H5303 says that nephiyl means giants. It does not render the word as fallen ones or mighty ones.
Without spending much time on it, I’m just going to say that the first two theories don’t hold up under scrutiny. The biggest reason is that the Nephilim appear to be actual giants. After the Exodus, the Israelites fought many battles with foes over 14 feet tall. What would be unique about mighty rules and judges or even the godly line of Seth that their DNA would produce offspring that grew that tall? The Hebrew words also refute the first two theories, as do other passages in the Bible.
The phrase “sons of God” comes from the Hebrew “ben elohim.” Elohim (H430) means gods, mighty, rulers, or judges. “Daughters of men” comes from the Hebrew “bath ‘adam.” ‘Adam (H120) means mankind or human beings, not men. The Hebrew word for man is ‘iysh (H376), and for woman is ‘ishshah (H802). So, if verse 4 is saying that the sons of God had children with the daughters of humans, then, by contrast, the sons of God cannot be human, which brings us to the third and most supported theory. The sons of God were indeed fallen angels.
I heard a preacher that said nowhere in the Bible does it call angels the sons of God. He is in error.
Job 1:6 “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.” (And similarly in Job 2:1).
Job 38:7 “…when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”
Daniel 3:25 “He answered and said, “But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.””
In all of these passages, the sons of God are referring to angels. In Job 1 and 2, the sons of God are coming and going into the presence of God to report to Him. These are not humans. In Daniel 3, there was not a fourth human in the fire but an angel. In Job 38, the morning stars are the chief angels, and the sons of God are the other angels shouting for joy. Lucifer was a chief angel, a morning star that fell from heaven, as Isaiah says in 14:12 “How did you come to fall from the heavens, morning star, son of the dawn? How did you come to be cut to the ground, conqueror of nations?”
The confusion may come from New Testament passages that refer to the chosen ones of God (Israel) as sons of God. Or when Paul says that if we believe in the Messiah that we can become sons of God. So the belief is that the sons of God are those who follow God and believe in His Messiah. However, that’s a whole other topic and designation for the term sons of God. Nowhere in the Old Testament are humans called the sons of God. That always refers to angels.
It’s pretty obvious from the text that the sons of God are angels that had children with the daughters of humans in Genesis chapter 6. Their offspring produced a race of giants. And there is other Biblical evidence to support this.
2 Peter 2:4-5 (CJB) “For God did not spare the angels who sinned; on the contrary, He put them in gloomy dungeons lower than Sheol to be held for judgment. 5 And He did not spare the ancient world; on the contrary, He preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, and brought the Flood upon a world of ungodly people.”
In the first ten verses of chapter 2, Peter is warning about false teachers and that they will not be spared judgment, and then he lists scenarios in which God punished wickedness. First on the list are angels who sinned, followed by the Flood. That’s the same order as Genesis chapter 6. The angels who sinned were the fallen angels that had children with daughters of humans, and Peter says that those angels were bound until their judgment. Compare that to some demons that Yeshua was going to cast out, and they asked if they could be sent into some pigs and not be cast into the abyss because their time had not yet come. These demons were not the fallen angels that had sinned with human women, so they were free to roam the earth and not be held for judgment.
Jude says the same thing as Peter in verse 6 with more clarity in verse 7. “And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, He has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day— 7just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.” Jude is comparing Sodom and Gomorrah with the fallen angels saying that they “likewise” indulged in unnatural sexual immorality. Clearly, Jude is saying that the angels left their position to engage in sexual activities.
Some like to argue that angels cannot have sex based on Yeshua’s words in Matthew 22:30. He said, “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.” Since the angels in heaven do not marry, it is believed that they cannot have sex. But Peter and Jude both said that they have left their position (heaven), and Jude said they did so to have unnatural sexual relations. And both of them are talking about angels.
There is also extra-Biblical evidence to show that they believed the sons of God to be angels. Many writers of the first century, including Josephus and Philo, called the sons of God fallen angels that procreated with human women. It wasn’t until the 2nd century that the idea of the sons of God being the godly line of Seth was introduced. Coincidentally, that’s about the same time that the Hebrew Scriptures were suspected to have been altered by taking 650 years out of the genealogy of Genesis 11, and other changes were made to try and refute that Yeshua was the Messiah.
All the evidence points to the sons of God being the angels that left heaven to pursue the daughters of humans and have children with them. These children grew to be giants that we call the Nephilim. Moses made the point in verse 4 that the Nephilim were on the earth in those days and afterward. Meaning they were there before the flood and after the flood. As we’ll see later in the Torah portions, Moses and the Israelites fought giants that were said to be descendants of the Nephilim.
Now take a look at the English translation of Genesis 6:1-4 from the Septuagint.
Genesis 6:1-4 (LXX) “And it happened when humans began to become numerous upon the earth, and they had daughters, 2the angels of God, having seen the daughters of humans, that they were beautiful, took for themselves women from all whom they picked out. 3The Lord God said, “My breath will certainly not reside in these humans for very long because they are flesh, but their days will be one hundred and twenty years. 4Now giants were upon the earth in those days, and after that, whenever the sons of God entered into the daughters of humans, they fathered children for themselves; those were the giants who were from long ago, the people of renown.”
Just on a side note, Roman and Greek mythology is replete with stories of the gods having children with human women. These children were more exceptional than all other humans because they were demigods. Where do you suppose they got the ideas for those stories? If it was known long ago that angels, who they would have thought to be gods, came and had children with human women, and those children were giants among other humans, then it’s not a stretch to see the possible origins of all mythology.
One last thing. On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest would take two goats. One was for sacrifice, and the other one was released into the wilderness for Azazel. Who or what is Azazel? The Book of Enoch is included in the Septuagint, or rather, portions of it. Enoch describes the situation before the flood in more detail. He says that a chief angel named Azazel came down and deceived men and angels. He taught witchcraft and sorcery to humans, and he enticed the angels with the daughters of men. For their rebellion, God bound these fallen angels and banished Azazel to the sands of the wilderness. The goat sent to Azazel on the Day of Atonement was the scapegoat that held all the sins of the people. God sent the sins to the wilderness just as He banished Azazel for the sins he caused the people to commit. Take it or leave it, but the prevailing through from centuries ago was that the sons of God were angels who had children with human women.