Nephilim Featured

There were GIANTS in those days

Seth Vandebrooke

Nov 14, 2022 • 6 min read

Genesis 1:1
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

God, in fact, made everything. Everything that existed was created by Him and Him alone, that is until His heavenly children defied Him and the order of things by creating something of their own.

Genesis starts by describing all that God had made, and it was good, but in chapter 6 we see the creation of something that is not. Something that left a permanent mark on God's creation. The giants of the antediluvian world.

At circa 460 years of Adam's life (according to Second Temple Period Jewish texts) the "sons of God" married human women and had supernatural children, known Biblically as the Nephilim.

Genesis 6:1-2
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.

The "sons of God" is a phrase used to describe what modern societies call angels, generally high-ranking ones at that. Some make the claim that this phrase is referring to people of the line of Seth (known as the Sethite view). This claim is easily proven impossible by the following passage.

Job 38:4-7
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. 5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know!Or who stretched the line upon it? 6 On what were its bases sunk,or who laid its cornerstone, 7 when the morning stars sang togetherand all the sons of God shouted for joy?

This passage quotes God questioning Job, and in doing so describing the sons of God as shouting for joy at the creation of the world. This phrase clearly refers to angelic beings, some of which found themselves fathers of giants in Genesis 6.

Genesis 6:3
Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.”

God was displeased with this unholy copulation. He started a one hundred and twenty year count down for the great flood that would destroy all manner of flesh upon the earth because of it.

Genesis 6:4
The 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.

These Nephilim were infamous mighty men, known by all. Ancient Babylonian texts refer to them as Apkallu, the Greeks called them demi-gods, part human part divine. Indeed almost every culture around the world has its own ancient tales of giants before and after the great deluge of judgment. This judgment, however, included more than just the waters of the flood.

Jude 1:6-7
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— 7 just 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 describes the sin of the angels who fathered the Nephilim as being chained in gloomy darkness until the day of judgment and likens it to the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah. 2 Peter chapter 2 echoes these statements.

2 Peter 2:4-6
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment; 5 if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; 6 if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly;

Peter uses the narratives of Genesis 6 and 19 as related and extreme examples of God's judgment upon dark wickedness. Indeed Genesis 6 describes great wickedness to an extreme degree, causing God Himself to regret even making mankind in the first place. Such a scene should be viewed soberly, with the weight it naturally bares.

Genesis 6:5-7
The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.”

Evil spread so far and wide, corrupting all flesh to the point of almost no return.

Genesis 6:8
But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

Luckily for humanity, and all other living things, God saw Noah and chose him and his family (his wife, his sons Shem, Japheth, Ham, and their wives) as the new beginning the earth was in dire need of. Unfortunately, however, the giants came back. Whether by more sons of God having children with women, or merely through the genetics of Ham's wife, many of Ham's descendants become tribes and sometimes even whole nations of giants feared by all.

Genesis 10:6
The sons of Ham: Cush, Egypt, Put, and Canaan.

Genesis 10:15-17
Canaan fathered Sidon his firstborn and Heth, 16 and the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, 17 the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, 18 the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites.

Canaanites were known for having many tribes of giants but one of the most infamous was the Amorites (appearing 86 times in the old testament).

Amos 2:9-10
“Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars and who was as strong as the oaks; I destroyed his fruit above and his roots beneath. 10 Also it was I who brought you up out of the land of Egypt and led you forty years in the wilderness, to possess the land of the Amorite.

Amos 2:9-10 quotes God reminding his people that the promised land was once ruled by the Amorites, a people as tall as the cedars.

When Moses led God's people out of Egypt they encountered the giants of Canaan, including Amorites and many other tribes of giants, and they were afraid to go any further.

Numbers 13:28-33
However, the people who dwell in the land are strong, and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. 29 The Amalekites dwell in the land of the Negeb. The Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites dwell in the hill country. And the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and along the Jordan.” 30 But Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.” 31 Then the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we are.” 32 So they brought to the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying, “The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. 33 And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”

This passage lists tribes of giants and even points back to the Nephilim of the antediluvian world.

This theme of giants standing in the way of God's people continues throughout the old testament. Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and David all face giants and conquer them in God's name, but the references to giants don't stop there. There are literally hundreds of verses in the Bible that reference tribes of giants, name specific giants, or simply mention people groups that were known to contain them (Giant Statistics). The Bible isn't alone either, thousands of ancient documents speak of the giants that once roamed the earth. It's a true part of history that has long since turned into myth. But if the ancient historians are telling the truth, they were more than just tall. They were mighty warriors, kings, and builders of the greatest and most mysterious wonders of the world. To many they were the gods, demi-gods and heroes of old: "the men of renown."

The evidence abounds, one need only seek to find.

Recommended Reading