I had a man at work come up to me to talk to me about the Nephilim (Genesis 6:1�6
Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God (bene Elohim) saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.
Then the LORD said, �My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.�
Some believe the sons of God were the result of fallen angels who overtook ungodly men to breed with women.
My friend said to me a sobering statement � this is why G-d had to destroy the earth with the flood.
My first response was simple if G-d did not destroy the earth because of sin but because there were hybrids of demon-human than that negates all of the rest of Scripture, that sin is death and G-d will destroy the earth again by fire because of sin. Secondly, Number 13:30�33
Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, �We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will surely overcome it.� But the men who had gone up with him said, �We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.� So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, �The land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size. There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.�
This is well after the flood. So what are Nephilim? If they are demon/human hybrids does that mean G-d will destroy the earth with fire because of sin or to get rid of them again (according to my friend), or is sin even real? My friend is a Christian what are the real dangers of what is being taught toady in the church?
I believe that the "nephilim" are simply humans that retained much of their vitality that we were originally endowed with at creation. The conditions before the flood were much different than those we have today. If you look at the fossil record and if you believe Genesis, then it's quite apparent that things used to be bigger and live much longer. When Daniel was brought to Babylon, he refused to eat the Kings portion, choosing instead to eat the simple and healthy diet that God prescribed before the flood and was found much wiser and stronger than all the other princes in Babylon. I believe that the "Sons of God" were humans that choose to follow God and His ways and stayed closer to what Adam and Eve were like. Other humans left God's ways, and over time, their descendants lost the vitality God created them with. The Sons of God started intermarrying with people who weren't following God, much like Israel did many times, and they lost the protection and guidance of God and were left to deprave themselves like the rest of humanity was doing. I think God describes that in His frustration and identifies the "nephilim" as "men" when he notes that He won't always strive with the "Sons of God" because they are "also" flesh like the "Sons of Men", prone to the same failings. Now, Canaan was discovered to have giant fruit and apparently more nephilim, so I wonder if the conditions in Canaan were more like what the earth was like before the flood, and the humans living there retained a lot of the characteristics and strength of their pre-flood ancestors. That would explain why God wanted His people to live there.
I don't think there is any real evidence that the nephilim were demon hybrids, I've heard lots of arguments, but the bible lacks any support for them. There are many mentions of giants, but they all described like men. If angels and demons were breeding, I think God and the bible writers might have mentioned it more often and less vaguely. The only place they use to prove their points is the reference to the "Sons of God", but that does not mean it's angels and obviously it's not demons. Christians and believers in the bible are referred to as the "sons and daughters of God" and "children of God" all the time, there's no reason to believe that it means they were angels and demons. Honestly, it just sounds like someone is trying to turn the bible into a comic book and justify all kinds of weird superstitions and dark age lore based on one phrase. One guy I know believes that the nephilim are living on mars and are trying to get back here, so Satan is trying to get us to send space ships to go pick them up. It's ridiculous.
I think that from the very beginning of Genesis when Adam is taken out of the population of the earth and Eve is made for him that God intended that there be a pure race of people that would be the lineage of the Messiah.
I agree that the sons of God were not demons. The Hebrew in these verses specifies that they are specifically mankind. The Hebrew for both the men that were multiplying and those with whom he strove is adam (awdawm).
I think it is very probable that the sons of God may have been from another region. They may have been larger than the men spoken of in Genesis 6:1 either by design or through selective breeding. That is, where they come from the bigger, stronger men were preferred over smaller men and so many of them would have carried the genes of larger humans. So it seems natural that they would have children that grew to be larger than the men of the region where the story takes place.
The flood was about sin. The sin here is that the men who were the descendants of Adam and Eve and of whom it might have been required that they keep their race pure were allowing another race to take their women. As long as these men would allow this they were not keeping their purpose in focus and had forgotten what God had created them for. It's possible then that the purpose of the flood was to start over, with descendants of Adam and Eve in order to start the lineage of the Messiah again with the intention of keeping it pure.
As for the Nephilim seen by Caleb and the spies, I think they encountered the Philistines. These people have been traced to an island off the coast of what is now Greece. It is believed that archaeological evidence shows that they moved to Palestine. Their could have been many reasons for their migration though. Considering the common lore among the Hebrews about the Nephilim it only stands to reason that they might think they were encountering them and would fear them because of their size. The Nephilim were known to have been mighty men, gibbor, that is, powerful warriors.
Goliath for example was 9 - 10 feet tall, maybe taller. It seems that he was large enough that he had a hard time seeing David because David was so small in comparison. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver's beam, which is a pole that is used to roll carpets on. It would have weighed around 17 lbs and had a 16 pound spear head on it. His coat of mail weighed 125 lbs. His helmet and breastplate another 125 or so lbs. Some speculate that his armor and weapons weighed more than 300 lbs and some as much as 500 to 700 lbs. This would have to have been a very large and powerful man. He was not alone. He had four brothers and there may very well have been several other Philistines that were this large.
I agree to think Nephilim are demonic-hybrids is far off.
G-dly men, such as some of the men listed in the Bible from Seth�s line (perhaps some on other lineages as well), were called the �sons of G-d� in keeping with literary context. So, sons of G-d were merely G-dly men of the time. G-dly men (sons of G-d) were marrying women who were not G-dly (daughters of men), such as Cain�s (or others of Adam�s) descendants, including unG-dly people from Seth�s line, thus resulting in Nephilim because they fell away from G-d�s favor. the Hebrew word Nephilim is related to the verb series �to fall.� For example, we know Cain fell away, and Lamech (descendant of Cain) and many other men and women had fallen away. The Nephilim could easily have been people who had fallen or turned from G-d in a severe way. This would also make sense as to why some of Canaan�s descendants (descendants of Anak were Canaanites) were called Nephilim in Numbers 13.
If you recall, Sodom and Gomorrah were so sinful that they were destroyed with direct intervention by G-d (Genesis 18:20, 19:24). This reminds me of the Flood�G-d Himself had a direct hand in destroying them (Genesis 6:13, 17). When Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, it is logical to assume that many descendants of those people who were not living in the area any longer were not destroyed. In fact, the Bible doesn�t say that all of the descendants of these places were completely destroyed. Therefore, it is logical that there could have been descendants living out away from the plain, such as Hebron, which is where the Anakites came from (Joshua 15:13).
The Bible indicates that the Anakites were descendants of the Nephilim, but it couldn�t have been those wiped out in the Flood, since G-d destroyed all land flesh. Therefore, it had to be group a people that were post-Flood. If the Nephilim had fallen so far pre-Flood that G-d Himself destroyed the earth as a result of their sin, then it makes sense that the post-Flood account of similar but smaller scale destruction in Sodom and Gomorrah may well have been the Nephilim. With the Anakites, who were Canaanites like those in Sodom and Gomorrah, they may very well have been their descendants.
