Walt Roderick (“serious student of Scripture for more than thirty years…Bachelor of Biblical and Theological Studies and am currently completing my Master of Divinity in Theology and Pastoral Counseling at Liberty University”) wrote an article titled Nephilim in the Bible: Who They Were and Why It Matters.
He quotes what I term the Gen 6 affair thusly:
Genesis 6:1-4 — “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the LORD said, ‘My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall 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 man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.”
He, too generically, notes:
The Nephilim appear again in Numbers 13:33, when the Israelite spies return from Canaan and report — “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.”
Two appearances. One before the flood, one after. Both describing something unusual in size or power. Both connected to the phrase “sons of God.”
HI say, “too generically” since it wasn’t generically, “the Israelite spies” who said that, it was the 10 unreliable ones out of 12. Thus, “Two appearances” can only refer to words in a text but not to being alive on the ground since Nephilim didn’t make it past the flood in any way, shape, for form since God didn’t fail, didn’t miss a loophole, the flood wasn’t much of a waste, etc., etc., etc.
It’s misguided to claim of, “The Hebrew word Nephilim…The Septuagint, the early Greek translation of the Old Testament, rendered it as gigantes — giants” since that only begs these questions: what’s the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word “giants” in English Bibles? What’s Roderick’s usage? Do those two usages agree? These are important especially since gignates literally means earth-born.
We then get a review of, “The Three Interpretations:
The oldest interpretation — found in ancient Jewish writings, the early church fathers, and a significant number of modern scholars — is that the sons of God were heavenly beings who crossed a boundary God had established, took human wives, and produced offspring of unusual power.
The textual support is strong. Everywhere else “sons of God” appears in the Old Testament it refers to members of the divine council — heavenly beings, not humans. Job 1:6 — “the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD.” Job 38:7 — “the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” In both cases the reference is clearly to heavenly beings.
The New Testament connections reinforce this. 2 Peter 2:4-5 — “God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell… if He did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah.” Jude 6 — “the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority… He has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment.” Both passages place angelic sin in the era of Noah. The connection to Genesis 6 is not explicit but it is close enough that most scholars who take the text seriously acknowledge the link.
Indeed, the original, traditional, and majority view among the earliest Jewish and Christian commentators, starting in BC days, was the Angel view as I proved in my book On the Genesis 6 Affair’s Sons of God: Angels or Not?: A Survey of Early Jewish and Christian Commentaries Including Notes on Giants and the Nephilim.
I will add that Jude and 2 Peter 2 combined refer to a sin of Angels, place that sin to pre-flood days and correlate it to sexual sin which occurred after the Angels, “left their first estate,” after which they were incarcerated, and there’s only a one-time fall of Angels in the Bible. So, if they’re not referring to the Gen 6 affair, we’ve no idea to what sin they’re referring.
The second interpretation is:
…sons of God as the descendants of Seth — Adam’s godly line — intermarrying with the daughters of Cain’s ungodly line. Covenant compromise leads to corruption, which leads to judgment.
This view is attractive because it keeps everything within the human sphere and fits the broader biblical theme of God’s people mixing with the ungodly and losing their distinctiveness. It also avoids the difficulty of heavenly beings reproducing with human women.
Its fatal weakness is the offspring. If the sons of God are simply godly men from Seth’s line marrying ungodly women from Cain’s line, why do their children become the Nephilim — mighty men of renown, beings of unusual power and size? Ordinary intermarriage between human lines, however spiritually compromised, does not produce that result. The Seth view cannot account for what the text says about the offspring without significantly straining the narrative logic.
The language problem compounds this. The phrase “sons of God” simply does not refer to human beings anywhere else in the Old Testament. Forcing it to mean “descendants of Seth” requires the phrase to work differently here than it does everywhere else it appears.
The Sethite view is a late-comer based on myth and prejudice since, for example, there’s no indication of, “descendants of Seth — Adam’s godly line” nor, “Cain’s ungodly line.”
It’s not a good counter argument to go into, “beings of unusual…size” since the dirty little secret is that since we’ve no reliable physical description of Nephilim then their height is a non-issue and that alone debunks 99% of un-biblical pop-Nephilology—the modern branch of which is just un-biblical neo-theo sci-fi tall-tales.
Lastly, “Interpretation 3 — Powerful Human Rulers”:
The third interpretation reads the sons of God as powerful kings or rulers — men who treated themselves as godlike and took any woman they wanted, exercising coercive power in the way ancient Near Eastern rulers commonly did.
This view has some cultural support — ancient kings were regularly described as sons of the gods in the surrounding cultures. The language of “took as their wives any they chose” does carry the flavor of unchecked power.
But it shares the Seth view’s fatal weakness. Powerful human rulers taking women by force does not explain Nephilim offspring. The text is making a claim about the nature of the children, not just the behavior of the fathers. Human rulers, however powerful, do not produce beings described as “mighty men of renown” in a way that requires specific explanation.
This view is actually among the oldest but never got much support.
Roderick’s view is that, “The fallen angel interpretation is the one that best fits what the text actually says”:
The language of “sons of God” in the Old Testament consistently refers to heavenly beings…
The whole reason Genesis 6:1-4 requires explanation is that something unusual happened…
The New Testament connections in Peter and Jude place angelic sin in Noah’s era…
The Matthew 22:30 objection — that angels do not marry — is real but not decisive. Jesus is describing angels in their proper state in heaven. The beings in Genesis 6 are precisely those who abandoned that proper state. An angel functioning within God’s design does not marry. That says nothing about what an angel in rebellion against that design might do.
Virtually all who appeal to Matthew 22:30 ignore Jesus’ qualifying terms and make all-encompassing generic assertions about all Angels in all places at all times and in all circumstances rather than, “angels in their proper state in heaven” as Roderick rightly put it.
He then get into and were the article takes a turn to making good points to falling for a deception:
What Happened to the Nephilim
Genesis 6:4 notes that the Nephilim were on the earth “in those days, and also afterward” — which means some survived into the post-flood period. Numbers 13:33 confirms this, with the Israelite spies describing the inhabitants of Canaan as Nephilim.
How did Nephilim survive the flood if the flood was global and only Noah’s family survived? The text doesn’t explain this directly. The most straightforward reading is that the same conditions that produced Nephilim before the flood — fallen beings interacting with human women — could produce them again afterward. The Numbers 13 reference to the sons of Anak as Nephilim suggests this happened in Canaan, which would explain why God’s instructions for the conquest were so total. Deuteronomy 2 and 3 contain references to the Rephaim — another group of giant warriors — which the text connects to the same general category.
Joshua’s conquest was not simply about punishing Canaanite sin. It was the elimination of a corrupted line that had no place in the land God was giving his people.
Note that he only concluded, “some survived into the post-flood period” after cutting v. 4 in half—and just before it told us to what days it’s referring. Yet, he already quoted it in full and it states, “those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them.”
Well, it can’t mean anything about the flood since:
1) the flood’s not even mentioned for the very first time until a full 13 verses later.
2) the ONLY post-flood reference to Nephilim is from an “evil report” by 10 unreliable guys whom God rebuked.
3) God didn’t fail, He didn’t miss a loophole, the flood wasn’t much of a waste, etc.
Gen 6:4 states, “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.”
The question becomes: when were those days?
Well, Gen 6:1 told us, “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose.”
The next question becomes: when was afterward?
Since it was after those days then it was simply after, “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them…”
Thus, they began doing it then and they continued to do it but that’s all pre-flood.
Also, “some survived into the post-flood period” contradicts the Bible five times (Gen 7:7, 23; Heb 11:7; 1 Peter 3:20 & 2 Peter 2:5) since that’s how many times God told us who survived the flood but Nephilim aren’t mentioned.
That view also implies that God failed, that He missed a loophole, that the flood was much of a waste, etc., etc., etc.?
And just how did Nephilim get past the flood, past God?
Note that he also came to that false view due to misprinting the only verse to which he could refer which is Numbers 13:33. It does not confirm that and was not, “the Israelite spies describing the inhabitants of Canaan as Nephilim.” Rather, that was stated within an evil report by 10 of the 12 and God rebuked them.
Anyone appealing to Num 13:33 needs to mention that they’re relying on:
1. One single unreliable sentence
2. From strictly non-LXX versions (since that version’s version of that verse doesn’t even mention Anakim)
3. Of an unreliable “evil report”
4. By 10 unreliable guys
5. Whom God rebuked—to death
6. Who made five mere assertions unbacked by even one single other verse in the whole Bible
7. Who contradicted Moses, Cable, Joshua, God, and the rest of the whole entire Bible
8. Then post-flood Nephilologists have to invent un-biblical fantasy tall-tales about how Nephilim got past the flood, past God.
I could go on but see my post Chapter sample: On the Post Flood Nephilim Proposal—which I’m currently updating.
Thus, asking, “How did Nephilim survive the flood” is the wrong primary question to ask, the right one is, “did Nephilim survive the flood” the biblical answers to which are no because God didn’t fail, didn’t miss a loophole, the flood wasn’t much of a waste, etc., etc., etc. and there’s literally zero reliable indication that they did. That’s, “The most straightforward reading.”
That, “the same conditions…could produce them again afterward” is just another way of implying that God failed, missed a loophole, the flood was much of a waste, etc., etc., etc. and Jude and 2 Peter 2 tell us that those sons of God/Angels were incarcerated. Now, they don’t tell us when but since the flood was when God was cleaning house, as it were, then it would have been during the flood or before it.
As for, “why God’s instructions for the conquest were so total” God told us many times why He commanded such things but never said one single word about Nephilim. Roderick move the goalpost and so committed a category error that violates the law of identity by pivoting to Rephaim—and biblically contextually, “another group of giant warriors” would mean, “another group of Rephaim warriors” and they can’t be, “same general category” since Nephilim were strictly pre-flood hybrids, Rephaim were strictly post-flood humans, and there’s zero correlation between them.
And also since we can’t correlate Nephilim to Rephaim via something vaguely generic about subjectively unusual height of some unknown level above the parochial average (and yes, that is how useless the common parlance usage of that modern English word is) since, again, we’ve no reliable physical description of Nephilim.
Also, the usage of the vague, generic, subjective, multi-usage and modern English word giants in English Bibles is that it merely renders (doesn’t even translate) Nephilim in 2 verses or Repha/im in 98% of all others and so never even hints at anything to do with any sort of height whatsoever.
Walt Roderick then gets into, “What the Nephilim Are Not” which includes:
The text does not describe the Nephilim as demons. Whether fallen angels and demons are the same category is a question Scripture doesn’t fully resolve — but it’s worth noting that the Bible does not depict all fallen angels as confined…
Satan himself roams…So the picture Scripture gives is not all fallen angels in chains…
Some early theologians argued that demons are the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim…
The “ancient aliens” reading of Genesis 6 imports a framework the text has no interest in. The passage is not describing extraterrestrial visitors. It is describing the consequences of heavenly beings violating the boundary God established between the spiritual and human realms.
The text does not tell us how tall the Nephilim were, what they looked like, or how long they lived. Scripture gives us the shape of the story without satisfying every curiosity the story raises. Reading more into the text than it says produces bad theology regardless of how interesting the speculation is.
That, “The text” does, “describe the Nephilim as demons” is historically unknown: that’s only held by a few uninformed modern people.
Here he commits another law of identity category error which leads him to a non-sequitur since, “Satan himself roams” has nothing to do with, “not all fallen angels in chains” since Satan’s not an Angel, he’s a Cherub (Ezek 28). Jude and Peter referred to the Angels that sinned and not only some of them.
That demons are the spirits of dead Nephilim is just folklore from centuries, if not millennia, after the Torah. For a biblical view, please see my article Demons Ex Machina: What are Demons?
“The ‘ancient aliens’ reading” is only accurate if Angels are to be described as, “extraterrestrial” which they are by definition. Yet, we know that people who claim this are referring to biological personages from other planets.
The issue of that the, “text does not tell us how tall the Nephilim were” is applicable to Num 13 since that’s unreliable.
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