Who Were the Nephilim?

The Nephilim were a group mentioned briefly in Genesis 6:4 and again in Numbers 13:33. The best-supported reading, both linguistically and historically, is that “Nephilim” refers to unusually tall, powerful humans. The term is likely a loanword meaning “giants,” and the biblical text itself describes them as “mighty men of old, men of renown.” However, there is no biblical or other historical basis for believing them to be aliens, as some have claimed.

Genesis links the Nephilim to the union of the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men.” The oldest Jewish and Christian interpretation holds that “sons of God” refers to angelic beings who rebelled, fashioned temporary bodies for themselves, took human wives, and produced offspring who were large in size and possessed super-human strength. This reading was standard in ancient Judaism and appears in some apocryphal texts like 1 Enoch.

Genesis 6:4 explicitly notes that the same kind of unions happened again “afterward,” which explains why the Israelites later encountered tall peoples in Canaan who were identified with the Nephilim. In brief, the Nephilim were human giants, and Scripture ties their origins to illicit unions between fallen angels (demons) and human women. This is an interpretation that best fits the language of the text and the earliest historical understanding of it.

For more information, including another perspective on who the sons of God in Genesis 6:4 may be, please see this resource of ours.