The Nephilim: What Genesis Actually Says

A plain-language look at Genesis 6:1–4
By Sidney Louis Davis Jr.

If you spend any time online, you have probably run into stories about the Nephilim. Some videos call them giants. Others call them half-angel, half-human monsters. A few even say they were aliens. All of it comes from four verses in the Bible, Genesis 6:1–4:

When people began to multiply on the earth, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful. They took as wives any of them they chose. Then the LORD said, “My spirit will not stay with humans forever, because they are flesh. Their days will be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they had children by them. These were the mighty men of old, the men of renown.

Many people read this as a story about angels marrying women and fathering giants. Genesis does not say that. Read on its own terms, the passage describes human beings: men taking wives, women bearing children, and a world marked by power and violence.

Read Genesis Before the Legends

The angel story comes mainly from a later book called 1 Enoch, written a few centuries before Jesus.¹ In it, angels called “Watchers” come down, marry women, and father giants. The book is ancient and shows what many Jewish people believed at the time. But a retelling is not the original. You do not use a movie to decide what the novel it was based on says. The plain meaning of the Torah—what Jewish tradition calls peshat—comes first.

“They Took Wives”

Genesis says the sons of God “took wives.” That is the normal Hebrew way of saying “got married.” It is the same wording used for Lamech, who “took two wives” (Genesis 4:19).² Nothing in the passage describes a strange new kind of birth. It describes marriages and children.

The words “any of them they chose” draw attention to the men’s power to choose. Genesis has already shown Lamech taking two wives and then bragging about killing a man. The phrase may picture powerful men taking women without restraint.

Who Can Be Called “Sons of God”?

“Sons of God” sounds heavenly, but the Bible calls human beings God’s children. God calls Israel “my firstborn son” (Exodus 4:22). Moses tells Israel, “You are the children of the LORD your God” (Deuteronomy 14:1). The prophet Hosea calls Israelites “children of the living God” (Hosea 2:1).³ God even tells Moses, “I have made you a god to Pharaoh” (Exodus 7:1). The Hebrew word there is elohim, the same word used for God. Here it describes a man given authority by God.

The book of Job does use “sons of God” for heavenly beings (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7).⁴ But the meaning of a phrase depends on its setting, the way “court” means one thing in basketball and another in a trial. Job’s scene is God’s heavenly court. Genesis 6 is about human families and human marriages. And even in Job, those beings never marry or have children.

Many Jewish interpreters read the sons of God as powerful men. Onkelos, the classic Aramaic translation of the Torah, calls them “sons of the great ones.” Genesis Rabbah, an early collection of rabbinic teaching, records Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai calling them “sons of judges.” The medieval commentators Rashi and Radak explain them as the sons of princes, judges, and rulers.⁵

Mighty Men and Men of Renown

Genesis calls the children of these unions “the mighty men of old, the men of renown.”

“Mighty men” is the Hebrew gibborim, meaning warriors. Genesis uses the same word for Nimrod, who “began to be a mighty man on the earth” (Genesis 10:8–9). Nimrod was a human being.

“Men of renown” describes reputation. Being famous and powerful is not a kind of biology.

“Nephilim” is often connected with the verb naphal, “to fall.” It can be understood as “fallen ones” or as those who fall upon others as attackers. None of these meanings, however, means “half-angel.”

Did the Unions Produce the Nephilim?

Look at the order of verse 4. It first says, “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days.” Only then does it describe the sons of God coming in to the daughters of men and the women having children. The verse names the Nephilim before it describes the unions that supposedly produced them.

That order does not prove the Nephilim were there first. But it does mean Genesis never directly says these unions produced the Nephilim. The verse does say the children “were the mighty men.” Even if the children, the mighty men, and the Nephilim were all the same group, they would have angelic fathers only if the sons of God were first shown to be angels.⁶

Can Angels Father Children?

This is the angel view’s biggest problem. Yeshua (Jesus) said that people raised from the dead “neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30). He was answering the Sadducees, who had posed a test case: a woman married seven brothers, one after another, under the law that a man should marry his brother’s widow. Whose wife would she be in the resurrection? Their question assumed that life after the resurrection keeps the same marriage arrangements as life now. Yeshua rejected that idea. Those raised from the dead no longer marry and can no longer die, because they are like the angels (Luke 20:34–36).⁷

The idea was not new with Yeshua. First Enoch 15:4–7 already draws a line between mortal humans, who were given marriage and children, and immortal heavenly spirits, who were not given wives. That shows the distinction was known before Yeshua’s time. It does not prove that he borrowed it from Enoch, or that everyone who heard him understood it the same way.

The deeper issue is what angels are. Scripture calls them “ministering spirits” (Hebrews 1:14), and Yeshua said, “A spirit does not have flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39). Human marriage, by contrast, makes two people “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24), a phrase Paul uses for physical union (1 Corinthians 6:16). Genesis 6 describes taking wives, intercourse, and childbirth—all things that require a body. So the argument is not just that angels are not allowed to marry. It is that angels, being spirits, do not have the kind of body that marriage and childbearing require. Angels may appear as men, and in Genesis 18 they even eat a meal, but appearing human does not prove they have a human body capable of sexual union and reproduction.

So the angel view must prove three things:

The sons of God were angels.
Those angels had real bodies capable of sex.
Those bodies could father children with human women.

Proving the first does not prove the other two. The question is capacity, not merely permission. Calling them rebel angels does not explain how they got bodies able to consummate a marriage or father children. Leaving heaven or breaking a rule does not create a bodily power they did not already have. Nor does appearing in human form give them human reproductive anatomy. Assigning sex and childbirth to spirit beings, without first showing they have that kind of body, mixes up two different kinds of existence. The human reading needs none of these extra claims, because human men already marry and father children.

Two New Testament letters are often cited in support of the angel view. Jude 6 mentions angels who “left their proper home,” and 2 Peter 2:4–5 mentions angels who sinned before mentioning the Flood.⁸ Neither passage says that angels acquired bodies, married women, fathered children, or produced the Nephilim. Even if Jude draws a sexual comparison, that comparison does not by itself prove angelic fatherhood. The angel view still has to show the bodily capacity it assumes. Scripture says plainly that angels do not marry. The further point—that as spirits they lack the body needed for the marriage bed—comes from the whole picture Scripture gives, not from any single verse.

“And Also Afterward”

Genesis says the Nephilim were on the earth “in those days, and also afterward.” That phrase places them in two periods, but it does not say “after the Flood,” nor does it explain how they appeared later. When Israel’s scouts later reported seeing Nephilim in Canaan, they linked them with the tall descendants of Anak (Numbers 13:33). Their report describes huge warriors. It says nothing about angels, survivors of the Flood, or a second descent from heaven.⁹

The Flood Judges Human Violence

If angels had caused the problem, you would expect the judgment to fall on angels. It does not. God says humans “are flesh” (Genesis 6:3). He sees that “the wickedness of humankind was great” (6:5). He names the reason for the Flood: “The earth was filled with violence” (6:11). Genesis has been building to this since Cain killed his brother and Lamech bragged about killing a man (4:23–24). The Flood judges a human world ruled by the strong.

Conclusion

The Nephilim make great legends, but Genesis tells a more human story. “Took wives” is marriage language. “Sons of God” can describe human beings. “Mighty men” and “men of renown” describe human warriors. Genesis never directly says the unions produced the Nephilim, and Scripture never shows that angels have the bodily capacity to consummate marriage or father children. The Flood judges a human world filled with violence.

Being called a son of God does not make someone an angel. Looking human does not mean being able to father children. And an ancient story about supernatural parents should not be confused with what Genesis actually says.

Words to Know

1 Enoch: An ancient Jewish book that tells of angels called Watchers fathering giants. It is part of the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible but not the Jewish Bible.

Elohim: The Hebrew word usually translated “God.” Depending on context, it can also refer to heavenly beings or to a human acting with God-given authority.

Genesis Rabbah: An early collection of rabbinic teachings on Genesis.

Gibborim: Hebrew for “mighty men” or warriors.

Nephilim: The figures named in Genesis 6:4 and Numbers 13:33. The word probably means “the fallen ones” or “those who fall upon others,” but it does not by itself tell us who their parents were.

Onkelos: The traditional Aramaic translation of the Torah.

Peshat: The plain, contextual meaning of a Bible passage, read before later interpretations.

Radak: Rabbi David Kimhi (about 1160–1235), a medieval Jewish Bible commentator.

Rashi: Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki (1040–1105), one of the most important Jewish commentators on the Bible and Talmud.

Tanakh: The Jewish Scriptures: the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings.

Torah: The first five books of the Bible, Genesis through Deuteronomy.

Watchers: The heavenly beings in 1 Enoch who come down and take human wives.

Yeshua: The Hebrew name of Jesus.

Primary Source Notes

1 Enoch, R. H. Charles translation, especially chapters 6–7 and 15–16. An ancient Jewish interpretation of Genesis 6; it is not part of the Tanakh. ↩
Genesis 4:19–24; 6:1–13. ↩
Exodus 4:22; Deuteronomy 14:1; Hosea 2:1 (1:10 in most English Bibles); Exodus 7:1. ↩
Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7. ↩
Onkelos, Genesis 6:2; Genesis Rabbah 26:5; Rashi, Genesis 6:2; Radak, Genesis 6:2. These are later Jewish interpretations, not direct evidence of the Torah’s original meaning. ↩
Genesis 6:4; Genesis 10:8–9. ↩
Matthew 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:34–36; 1 Enoch 15:4–7; Hebrews 1:14; Luke 24:39; Genesis 2:24; 1 Corinthians 6:16. ↩
Jude 6–7; 2 Peter 2:4–5. ↩
Numbers 13:33. ↩