Genesis6:4

Nephilim sounds like a proper name and is used either as a name or a title. But we don’t read anything about someone with a name like it who founded a group of people who followed after him. Therefore it is possible that Nephilim is a title that the righteous gave the powerful wicked rulers. That title was expanded and became more popular the more individuals from various bloodlines lived up to the reputation that accompanied that word.

Most Hebrew scholars say the plural noun Nephilim comes from the verb NPHL (Naphal) which means “to fall down, to bow down, to force others to fall, to down people in battle,” and related ideas. It came to be used of ruthless giants who used their strength to “down/flatten” people in any type of confrontation. Thus, the term does not really mean “giants” but it came to be used of giants who were known for flattening people. It was common for a word meaning one thing to gain a usage over time which pointed a slightly, or largely different direction. In my opinion, the root meaning should always be considered or kept somehow connected to the usage, even if that usage seems totally other than the root meaning.

But Michael Heiser disagrees about the word Nephilim coming from the Hebrew verb which means “to fall or something related to falling”. He says the significance of the fact that the second place we see the word Nephilim (Numbers 13:33) uses the spelling Nephiylim is that it must be the plural of another noun. He says it comes from the Aramaic noun naphiyla. The equivalent noun in Hebrew would be naphiyl, but it is never used in the Old Testament as a singular noun. It only appears in the plural form Nephiylim (pages 106 & 107).

However, in the group of languages called semitic languages, the group which includes both Hebrew and Aramaic and a few others, the nouns are usually derived from the verbs because the verbs are the most basic form of the word. So I looked on the internet to see what the root verb behind the Aramaic noun naphiyla was. It took me only about 5 seconds to find the answer. Because Hebrew and Aramaic are cousin languages, I was not surprised at all to see that the root verb is NPHL, probably pronounced Nephal in Aramaic, which is similar to Naphal in Hebrew. Like Hebrew, Nephal means “to fall,” and other words related to falling or forcing others to fall.

I feel like Michael Heiser is being dishonest here. He knows that the nouns come from the verbs in both Hebrew and Aramaic, and surely he knows the meaning of the Aramaic verb Nephal is the same as the meaning of the Hebrew verb Naphal. Yet he chooses to point to another noun as its origin, one which had already come to be used of giants.

I find that interpretation to be spiritually dangerous and physically impossible. 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.

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.

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

I believe the word Nephilim refers to people of great size who used their strength to their advantage in order to subdue and rule over others. It need not refer to a specific race of people. We can assume that there was great diversity among humans and animals of that time because of the richness of the gene pool. Therefore, there were probably many people of great size to be found in a variety of family lines. Some of them were farmers or merchants who happened to be extra-large. In those cases they were not highly concerned with producing offspring that were also very large, so they married women for other traits, not their size. However, those who wanted to use their size to control others were very interested in producing offspring of great size and so they would only marry women who were also very large. This would begin to produce certain family lines that were larger than others. But I am convinced that the term Nephilim refers to any people of great size who used their size to bully others.

There is reason to believe that Adam and Eve and others that lived before the flood were very intelligent. Their population would have had a higher percentage of geniuses than ours does. If you add genius to the traits of size and ruthlessness, you end up with a person who wants to dominate others, will do anything to get what he wants, and has the brains and the physical strength to get others to do his will. For the purpose in mind, the types of genius that would be most advantageous would be a political genius, and a military genius. It also appears that a genius at inventing machinery and building physical structures was used by some leaders to convince people to follow them in order to have a more advanced society. They were the “perfect storm,” if you will.  (For more on the topic of inventing and building things, see my study called Advanced technology in ancient times …)

This appears to be the beginning of the problems for which God said, “My Spirit shall not govern man forever” (Gen 6:3). Polygamy started out as an uncommon thing which slowly grew to be the norm. These verses are describing the point in time in which mankind as a whole had moved away from the original concept of family in order to do whatever they wanted to do. As they did so they became more aggressive in taking what they wanted by force. As aggressiveness became more common, size and strength became more important. When even the righteous started playing the game of seeking advantage through size and strength, corruption and godlessness propelled them quickly down the spiral of sin. And that is why God punished the human race with a world-wide flood.