Troublesome TopicWERE THE NEPHILIM THE OFFSPRING OF ANGELS THAT MARRIED HUMAN WOMEN?

No! Here are my reasons.

  1. It violates the principle of reproduction in nature which always occurs “according to their kind.”

The Bible, especially Genesis, is clear that living beings can only reproduce “according to their kind.” The way God established the laws of nature, reproduction cannot happen outside of a created kind.

Jesus clearly stated that Angels do not participate in marriage: “For in the realm of the resurrected they don’t get married, neither are they given in marriage by a father, rather they are like the angels of God in heaven” (Mt 22:30). He probably meant they do not marry among themselves, which leads us to believe it is even less likely with humans. This is a powerful argument against the possibility of this being a reference to angels.

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Jesus said, “Flesh gives birth to flesh and spirit gives birth to spirit” (Jn 3:6). This seems to negate any possibility of angels making babies with human women.

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I Cor 15:39 says, “All flesh is not the same: People have one flesh, animals have another, birds and fish another” (NET).

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This means creatures have different DNA which does not allow for reproduction across certain lines. In order for angels to reproduce with human women they would need human DNA, making them humans, not angels. I think the only way for them to have human DNA is if God altered their make-up to include human DNA because we know they were created as spirit-beings, not as humans with human DNA. If God altered them by giving them our DNA, then He was complicit in wickedness, which is contrary to His character.

Others believe that lesser deities had enough power to manipulate nature to the degree necessary to make possible such reproduction across the barrier of kinds. I argue that this violates another principle in Scripture which is never stated clearly but is exemplified in several ways. That principle is that if God gives something (such as life) only He can take it away; if He established something, only He can dismantle it or replace it (such as replacing the Old Covenant with the New Covenant). In other words, if they could change the rules of nature or do their own “creating”, it raises them to the same level or close to the same level of power which the Creator God possesses.

2. If the Nephilim were the children of demons and humans, How did they exist both before and after the flood without being on the ark? Genesis 6:4 says that “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days (and also after that),” meaning after the flood. Since they were not on the ark, does that mean that angels came down to marry human women again after the flood? It is easy for some to say that it happened again, but I am convinced the answer is an emphatic No! The Bible does not even hint in that direction. Therefore, such a shallow answer is based on two flimsy foundation points, first they need it to be true, and secondly, they think it did happen once. That is not a good interpretive method to use when studying the Bible.

The best answer is that they were humans that were great big bullies. The DNA of Noah and his family members was rich enough to produce a small percentage of giants in the generations after the flood. Once again, the term Nephilim was a proper noun which could be used to indicate a specific bloodline, or as a title pointing to a group of people who were similar in ways that did not include their bloodline. I am convinced it is the latter.

3. “sons of Elohim” does not mean demons. If spirit-beings came to earth to do something contrary to God’s will, they were no longer angels, but demons, and using the phrase “sons of Elohim” to refer to demons is questionable. Some people on the internet say “Elohim” can refer to any spirit being, including demons, but I don’t see that in any lexica I trust. In the Bible I have never seen “Elohim,” or “sons of Elohim,” used in a way that clearly refers to demons.

4. Whenever a theological position rests solely on one verse of the Bible, there is a huge problem. If the interpretation of that one verse directly or indirectly contradicts the rest of Scripture, there is a huge problem. That is the case with seeing “sons of Elohim” in this passage as a reference to angels and saying that angels married women and had children by them. To the best of our understanding of Scripture, that’s just not the way things work. Therefore, we are obliged to ask ourselves, “Is there a different interpretation that is viable?” There is. In fact, the idea of angels marrying human women is the weakest and most problematic of the interpretations possible for this passage. To base a theological position on such a dubious interpretation is irresponsible!

5. Dr. Tim Chaffey has made this helpful observation – “The Bible never definitively states that fallen angels can manifest in physical form, but they seem to require a body to possess” (https://answersingenesis.org/bible-characters/battle-over-the-nephilim/). Therefore it appears that one of the limits that God has placed on demons is that they cannot fully take human form, which would make their reproduction with human women impossible.

Heiser presents a confusing picture of the Nephilim. He talks of the Nephilim while they were on this earth as having a body that was their own, not a borrowed and not stolen, a body that can be killed. But then they became disembodied the way demons would, which is different from being killed. However, the Bible does not support either of those ideas. All of that stuff about demigods, or mortal beings becoming immortal beings is straight from pagan mythology.

6. A number people have pointed out that Jesus became a human in order to save us humans by being a substitutionary sacrifice for us. How would Jesus be able to save the Nephilim since they were something other than human? If they were the product of two beings that were created by God, but were not eligible for salvation, that would seem to go contrary to the nature of God.

The next lesson in this series is THE NEPHILIM WERE HUMAN GIANTS WHO WERE BRUTAL GENIUSES.

Footnotes

1

Michael Heiser, in his book The Unseen Realm, argues that Jesus said they do not marry, not that they cannot marry. I would argue that the principle of reproduction according to their kind does indeed indicate that they cannot marry humans. Heiser never addresses the principle of “according to their kind.”

2

Michael Heiser does not mention this verse.

3

Michael Heiser does deal with this passage in his book Unseen Realm, but he does not address it in relation to the reproduction that brought about the Nephilim. Rather he uses it to show that humans will become divine.