Genesis 6:2
2the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.
The hybrid view reads these unions as a crossing between heavenly and human categories.
Who Were the Nephilim in the Bible?
The Nephilim appear only in Genesis 6:4 and Numbers 13:33, and neither verse defines the name. The Septuagint translated it with the Greek word *gigantes*, which led to "giants" in English Bibles. The Hebrew may mean "fallen ones," though the etymology is uncertain. Readers variously understand them as the offspring of the sons of God, a formidable people already present in the story, or violent warriors of a violent age.
The passage: Genesis 6:4
4The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
Compare translations: Genesis 6:4
The name
Most modern Bibles transliterate Nephilim instead of translating it because the meaning is uncertain. The usual proposal connects the word to the Hebrew root naphal, “to fall.” That could mean people who have fallen or people who fall upon others. Both senses are possible, but neither is defined in Scripture. Another proposal traces the word to an Aramaic term for a giant.
The translation “giants” is ancient. The Septuagint used gigantes, and the King James Version followed that tradition. In Greek mythology, gigantes were earth-born offspring of gods who fought the Olympians; the word carried more than a simple claim about height. Its use therefore reflects an interpretation of Genesis 6:4 as mixed parentage. English translations that print “giants” inherit some of that interpretive history.
The two verses
Genesis 6:4 says the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humankind, and that those unions produced the gibborim, the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. Numbers 13:33 has the scouts returning from Canaan reporting that they saw the Nephilim there, that the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim, and that they themselves felt like grasshoppers.
Those two sentences make up the entire biblical record. One sits within a scouting report that the surrounding narrative treats as a failure of courage. Every fuller account draws inferences from these verses or imports details from another source.
Genesis 6:4 says the Nephilim were present but never calls them the offspring. The reader must decide whether the mighty men in the final clause are the same group named at the beginning, and the Hebrew allows either conclusion. The answer depends heavily on who you think the sons of God were, and that question is argued on evidence of its own.
The company they keep
Whatever the Nephilim were, the Hebrew Bible surrounds them with named peoples and ordinary geography. The Anakim are descendants of Anak living around Hebron, and the scouting account names three of them. The Rephaim are a category that gathers several groups: Deuteronomy 2 says the Moabites called one of them Emim and the Ammonites called another Zamzummim, and that both were reckoned Rephaim, tall as the Anakim. Og of Bashan is described as the last of that remnant, remembered for an iron bed or sarcophagus nine cubits long.
These peoples have territories, kings, and eventually defeats. Joshua’s campaign leaves Anakim only in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod. Generations later, Goliath comes from Gath. The narrative describes these groups through the ordinary categories of peoples, places, warfare, and survival.
Where the rest of it comes from
The detailed Nephilim of popular imagination are largely the giants of the Book of the Watchers, which expands Genesis 6 into a full narrative: angels descend, take wives, teach metallurgy and cosmetics and sorcery, and father giants who consume everything and turn on humanity until the earth cries out. Jubilees tells a compatible version. Josephus mentions the tradition and compares the offspring to the Greek giants. Several deuterocanonical books, including Sirach, Baruch, and Wisdom, refer to the giants of the old world as a settled fact their readers would recognize.
These works aren’t part of Genesis, but they belong to the interpretive world known by New Testament writers. Jude can quote a prophecy of Enoch to a Christian audience and expect readers to recognize it. The literature provides valuable evidence for how ancient Jewish readers filled Genesis 6:4’s gaps. It can’t establish that their reconstruction was correct.
The 3 main readings, compared
The offspring of the sons of God
The Nephilim are the children born from the unions between the sons of God and human women. Their origin explains why Genesis first mentions them in this paragraph.
Genesis 6:5
5The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.
The verdict that follows immediately. Read with the hybrid view, the severity of the flood is a response to a corruption that had stopped being merely human.
Jude 1:6
6And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day.
Angels who left their proper dwelling and are held until judgment. Jude provides the New Testament's closest connection to the tradition, though he never mentions any offspring.
2 Peter 2:5
5if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others;
Peter moves from the angels who sinned straight to the flood and the rescue of Noah, following the order of events in Genesis.
What supports it
A straightforward reading of the sentence can connect the Nephilim with the children just described, and the earliest recorded interpreters made that connection. The Book of the Watchers identifies giants as children of descending angels. The Septuagint's word *gigantes* also carried the Greek association of earth-born children of gods, not merely unusual height. Verse 4 places the Nephilim, the unions, and the mighty men in one sentence, so the final clause can be read as naming what those unions produced. This view also treats the flood as a response to corruption beyond ordinary human violence.
The strongest objection
The Hebrew stops short of making that identification. It says the Nephilim were present "in those days, and also afterward," then says the unions produced *gibborim*, mighty men. Reading the Nephilim and *gibborim* as one group is possible, but it remains an inference. The words "also afterward" create another difficulty because offspring of pre-flood unions shouldn't remain after a flood that killed everything breathing.
Held by: This view appears in the Book of the Watchers, Jubilees, Josephus, and most early Jewish and Christian interpretation. The Septuagint's rendering in the third or second century BC already seems to assume it.
A people group the verse only dates
Genesis 6:4 uses the Nephilim to identify a time, "in those days," while calling the offspring of the unions mighty men. The Nephilim are a known, formidable people already present in the story.
Numbers 13:33
33We 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.”
The only other verse in the Bible that uses the word. The scouts report Nephilim in Canaan and connect them to the descendants of Anak, which assumes that the audience recognizes the name.
Deuteronomy 2:10-11
10(The Emites used to live there—a people strong and numerous, and as tall as the Anakites. 11Like the Anakites, they too were considered Rephaites, but the Moabites called them Emites.
The Emim are described as tall as the Anakim and counted among the Rephaim, with a Moabite name for them. The description resembles the Bible's treatment of neighboring peoples.
Deuteronomy 9:2
2The people are strong and tall—Anakites! You know about them and have heard it said: “Who can stand up against the Anakites?”
The Anakim have a reputation for great height and military strength, presented as common knowledge.
Joshua 11:22
22No Anakites were left in Israelite territory; only in Gaza, Gath and Ashdod did any survive.
After Joshua's campaign no Anakim remain in Israel except in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod. Named remnants in named cities fit the description of a human population.
1 Samuel 17:4
4A champion named Goliath, who was from Gath, came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span.
Goliath comes from Gath, one of the three cities Joshua left standing. His height is given as six cubits and a span in the traditional Hebrew text and four cubits and a span in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Septuagint. Either measurement makes him formidable, and the story treats him as human.
Amos 2:9
9“Yet I destroyed the Amorites before them,
though they were tall as the cedars
and strong as the oaks.
I destroyed their fruit above
and their roots below.
Amos remembers the Amorites as tall as cedars and strong as oaks. The Hebrew Bible can use extraordinary physical language for an ordinary people without making a claim about supernatural parentage.
What supports it
This reading follows the grammar closely. Verse 4 begins with the Nephilim already on the earth, while the unions produce a group called mighty men. The sentence never explicitly joins those groups. The phrase "also afterward" also fits the report in Numbers 13, where Nephilim appear in Canaan long after the flood. The associated Anakim, Rephaim, and Emim are described as tall and formidable peoples with towns, kings, borders, and military defeats, much like other ancient nations.
The strongest objection
This view can make the reference feel disconnected. If the Nephilim have no relationship to the unions, their appearance in the middle of this paragraph is hard to explain. It also differs from every surviving ancient interpretation and offers only a broad description of who the people were.
Held by: Widespread in modern commentary, and reflected in study notes and translation choices that keep the two groups in verse 4 distinct.
Violent men, not another species
The name describes violent character: "fallen ones" or people who fall upon others. The Nephilim are warlords from a violent age.
Genesis 6:11
11Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.
The earth is corrupt and filled with violence. This is the diagnosis Genesis gives immediately after the Nephilim sentence without naming a supernatural cause.
Genesis 6:13
13So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.
God's stated reason for the flood is the violence people have filled the earth with. The verse doesn't identify hybrid offspring as the problem.
Genesis 4:23-24
23Lamech said to his wives,
“Adah and Zillah, listen to me;
wives of Lamech, hear my words.
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for injuring me.
24If Cain is avenged seven times,
then Lamech seventy-seven times.”
Lamech boasts to his wives about killing a man for wounding him. The escalation Genesis has been tracking since Cain is already producing the kind of violent figure this reading finds in Genesis 6.
Genesis 10:8
8Cush was the father of Nimrod, who became a mighty warrior on the earth.
Nimrod is called a gibbor, the same word Genesis 6:4 uses for the mighty men. He is clearly human, so the term itself makes no claim about ancestry.
What supports it
The surrounding context emphasizes human wickedness and violence. A few verses later, God gives the earth's violence as the reason for the flood. The word *gibborim* commonly refers to warriors and champions, including Nimrod, without implying supernatural ancestry. This reading also follows naturally if the sons of God are Sethites or ancient kings: powerful men who take whatever they want create a culture of violent warlords.
The strongest objection
The etymology is uncertain. Connecting *nephilim* to *naphal*, "to fall," is plausible but contested, and no biblical writer defines the word that way. Numbers 13:33 also uses the name while describing people of extraordinary size, suggesting a physical association beyond character.
Held by: This is the usual result when interpreters identify the sons of God as Seth's line or human kings, since either view removes mixed supernatural parentage.
Where the evidence leaves it
The two biblical references support a limited conclusion. The Nephilim were a group the first readers apparently recognized, associated with the period before the flood and later with Canaan, and remembered as formidable. Further conclusions depend heavily on the separate question of who the sons of God were. If they were heavenly beings, a hybrid interpretation follows easily. If they were Sethites or kings, it doesn't. Many confident claims about the Nephilim therefore rest on an interpretation of Genesis 6:2 that the passage itself leaves disputed.
Limits and common misreadings of Genesis 6:4
The Bible uses the word only twice. Specific heights, names, numbers, and stories about how the Nephilim died come from later sources, especially the Book of the Watchers and related literature. Those writings show how ancient Jewish readers interpreted Genesis 6; they don't add details to the biblical text itself.
Numbers 13:33 sits inside a scouting report that the narrative itself treats as a failure of nerve, and the previous verse calls what the scouts spread a bad report. The text may be discrediting the Nephilim claim or preserving it as a true detail within a faithless report. Caleb and Joshua saw the same land and never mention them.
Genesis never calls the Nephilim evil or demonic and never makes them the reason for the flood; verse 5 places the blame on human wickedness. No biblical text gives them wings, extra fingers, or a height in cubits. The six-fingered man of 2 Samuel 21 is descended from Rapha and is never called a Nephilim. The enormous measurements found in popular accounts come from Enochic literature.
Photographs said to show giant skeletons are hoaxes. Many are digital composites traceable to image-manipulation contests. No excavation has produced remains of the kind popular accounts describe. That archaeological claim has no support in either the biblical text or credible physical evidence.
Common questions about the Nephilim
Were the Nephilim giants?
"Giants" comes from the Septuagint, which translated nephilim with the Greek gigantes, and from the King James Version following it. The Hebrew does not say how tall they were. Numbers 13:33 does associate them with people of extraordinary size. The scouts say they felt like grasshoppers by comparison, but that is a report, not a measurement, and the Bible gives no figure anywhere. The specific heights people quote come from the Book of Enoch.
How did the Nephilim survive the flood?
Genesis 6:4 says they were on the earth in those days "and also afterward," and Numbers 13:33 puts them in Canaan centuries later, so the question is real. Three answers circulate: that a second incursion happened after the flood; that the Nephilim were never the flood's target because they were an ordinary people; or that the scouts in Numbers were exaggerating. The popular idea that one of Noah's daughters-in-law carried the bloodline has no basis in any biblical text.
What does the word Nephilim mean?
"Fallen ones" is the most common proposal, based on the Hebrew root *naphal*, "to fall," but that connection is reconstructed and debated. Some scholars propose an Aramaic word for giant. Others understand the sense actively as people who fall upon others, or raiders. No verse defines the term, so most modern translations leave it as *Nephilim*.
Are the Anakim and Rephaim the same as the Nephilim?
Numbers 13:33 links the descendants of Anak to the Nephilim, and Deuteronomy 2 groups the Anakim, the Emim, and the Zamzummim together as Rephaim under different regional names. So the Bible relates them, but it never says they are identical. *Rephaim* in particular can also function elsewhere as a word for the dead. The likeliest reading is that Anakim and Rephaim were actual peoples whom Israelite tradition associated with an older, half-remembered reputation.
Was Goliath a Nephilim?
The Bible never says so. Goliath is a Philistine champion from Gath, one of three cities where Joshua 11:22 says Anakim remained, which is the only thread connecting him to any of this. His height is given as six cubits and a span in the traditional Hebrew text, around nine feet, but the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint, and Josephus all read four cubits and a span, closer to six feet nine. Either way, 1 Samuel treats him as a man.
Are the Nephilim mentioned in the New Testament?
Not by name, and not at all as a group. Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4 describe angels who abandoned their assigned place and are held for judgment, which is the tradition the Nephilim story belongs to, but neither writer mentions offspring. The New Testament focuses on the angels and their judgment.