Under consideration is the article The Story Of Flood You May Not Know, parts 1 and 2, by Professor Julia Blum, MA degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The article seeks to discern “Does Nephilim mean ‘Giants’?” which is an issue with which I deal quite a bit. Prof. Blum writes, “Remarkably, some translations have here the word ‘giants’, instead of ‘Nephilim’…As if to make this story even more complicated, scripture also mentions Nephilim after the flood: in the well-known story in Numbers 13” and she importantly points out that such was “an evil report” (or, “bad” in other translations). She notes, “Once again, King James Version translates the word ‘Nephilim’ here as ‘giants.’”
Regarding Genesis 6’s reference to “the sons of God” and seeking to identify to whom this refers. Prof. Julia Blum writes, “We have “the sons of the princes” in Targumim, and “the sons of the Judges” in Midrashim – in fact, the ‘angelic interpretation’ (that they were angels, or some kind of divine beings) is almost non-existent in Judaism.” FYI: Targumim are Aramaic paraphrases (some very, very lose) of the Old Testament (in whole or in part) dating from pre-BC to the 600s AD. Midrashim refers to a collection of homilies which includes some biblical interpretations: Prof. Blum cites, Genesis Rabbah 26:5 which you can find linked to in my Early commentaries on Genesis 6: Angels or not? – interactive chart in which you can also see which view other Jewish authors took as Prof. Blum added, “It’s important to note, though, that for a long time, ‘the angel view” had been predominant in many extra-biblical Jewish writings.”
In order to ascertain the meaning of the key term, Prof. Blum cites and quotes, “Job 1:6: Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them…Job 2:1: Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD.”
She notes that these refers to “angels, who are meeting with God” and further references, “Job, in chapter 38. Speaking about the creation of the universe, God is saying: I laid the foundations of the earth… When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.”
She writes, “every use of the term: b’nai ha Elohim or b’nai Elohim in the Old Testament, is, in fact, a reference to angelic beings. Thus, we can conclude that ‘the sons of God’ in Genesis 6 also refers to angels.”
She asks and answers:
We might note here that, if they were simply the sons of the rulers, or of the nobles, who took simple girls as their wives, their parents, the nobles and the rulers, might not have been happy with these unions – but why God? God doesn’t care about social differences and different statuses.
This is an interesting point as non-Angel views of the Genesis 6 affair, as I term it, logically divide the participants into human male sons of God and human female daughters of men. Yet, this creates a problem which compounds the one just noted: why only male rulers or nobles and only female simple girls but no admixture of the two? Well, the Angel view clears this up since biblically Angels look like human males (no wings or halos) and so it would be solely male Angel sons of God and solely female human daughters of men.
Now we come to the Numbers 13 “evil report” issue as that is the only other usage of the actual term Nephilim in the whole Bible. Prof. Julia Blum quotes, “We 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.”
She asks, “what does it mean that the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim?…The original text says….bnei Anak min-haNephilim. The Hebrew word ‘Anak’ (קנע) – simply transliterated as ‘Anak’ in the English text – means ‘giant’. So, our Hebrew text literally says: ‘We saw giants from the Nephilim.’”
I wonder why she states that Anak means giant? Firstly, Anak means “long neck” so that it is fascinating that even after all of this time and so many languages away anak essentially still means “a neck.” Secondly, giant only means taller than the average (and the average Hebrew male of those days was 5.5 ft.).
Prof. Blum focuses on this portion of the reply that was made by Joshua and Caleb, “… do not rebel against the LORD. And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will devour them. Their protection is gone, but the LORD is with us. Do not be afraid of them.”
She comments, “parts of the ‘bad report’ were challenged by Joshua and Caleb, they did not challenge the information about giants…It seems that these ‘giants from the Nephilim’ were indeed in the Land, if Joshua and Caleb didn’t dispute the fact.”
I am going to state that this seems to be a bit too much of a conclusion. After all, this was not a formal debate wherein each specific point receives a specific counterpoint. In fact, considering the contextual circumstance, Caleb’s counterpoint focuses on the main issue which is that God told them to move into the land but the spies were dissuading the people from doing so.
You see, when Caleb relates this event later in his life he affirms that they saw Anakim in the land (stating nothing about their height) but states nothing about Nephilim. Thus, when Caleb even generically touches upon this point he refers to a people group or tribe, the Anakim (which are named after Anak who was the son of Arba)—period. For more details on this text, see here.
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