Who Were the Nephilim? What the Bible Actually Says
There is a sentence in Genesis 6 that most Bible readers pass over on their way to Noah. “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days — and also afterward — when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.”
Two verses. Enormous implications. And almost no explanation.
Who were the Nephilim? Where did they come from? Why does the text say *also afterward* — implying they survived the flood, or that the pattern repeated? And why does the Bible treat them as if the reader already knows the backstory?
The answer to that last question is probably: because they did. The backstory is in the Book of Enoch.
What Does the Word Mean?
Nephilim most likely derives from the Hebrew root *naphal* — to fall. Fallen ones. Or, in some interpretations, those who cause others to fall. Either way, the name carries weight before you even get to what they did.
The Septuagint — the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible used widely in the first century — translates Nephilim as *gigantes*. Giants. Which is where the popular image comes from.
Who Were Their Parents?
Genesis 6:2 describes the fathers of the Nephilim as *bene ha’elohim* — the sons of God. This phrase appears elsewhere in the Old Testament exclusively to refer to angelic beings: Job 1:6, Job 2:1, Job 38:7. The context is always the heavenly court.
The Book of Enoch develops this in full. Two hundred angels — called the Watchers — descended on Mount Hermon, took human wives, and fathered the Nephilim. Their leader was Semyaza. The account names each of the twenty leaders and their specific transgressions.
This is the reading held by most Second Temple Jewish writers, most early church fathers, and the plain reading of the text itself. The alternative — that the sons of God refers to the righteous line of Seth — emerged later and sits less comfortably with the Hebrew.
What Did the Nephilim Do?
They filled the earth with violence.
Genesis 6:11-13 is direct: *”Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence… God said to Noah, ‘I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.'”*
The Book of Enoch expands this considerably. The Nephilim consumed the earth’s resources, then turned on humanity. Their fathers taught forbidden knowledge — the forging of weapons, sorcery, astrology. The corruption they introduced was the reason the flood came.
Did They Survive the Flood?
Genesis 6:4 contains a phrase that has puzzled readers for centuries: *”The Nephilim were on the earth in those days — and also afterward.”*
*Also afterward.* The flood was supposed to end them. Yet when the Israelite spies enter Canaan in Numbers 13, they report seeing the Nephilim there. *”We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”*
How? Two possibilities. Either some survived, or the pattern of the Watchers repeated — more angels, more offspring. The Book of Enoch implies the latter. The text of Genesis implies the former.
Was Goliath a Nephilim?
The description of Goliath in 1 Samuel 17 — his height, his armour weight, his origin in Gath — matches the Anakim, who are explicitly connected to the Nephilim in Numbers 13:33. And 2 Samuel 21:15-22 describes Goliath’s brothers — four of them — as descendants of *the Rapha* in Gath, which is the same lineage.
Many scholars believe Goliath and his brothers were Nephilim descendants. David’s victory over Goliath, in this reading, was not just a military upset. It was the final elimination of the giant bloodline from the promised land.
What Does This Mean for Today?
The Nephilim raise questions that don’t stay comfortably in the ancient world. Questions about the mixing of categories, the corruption of the human, the introduction of forbidden knowledge. Those questions have a modern resonance that is hard to ignore.
That’s one of the reasons I wrote *The Watchers* — a novel that takes the Book of Enoch seriously as a theological document and asks what its story means for the present moment. It releases August 14, 2026.
If you want to go deeper on the Watchers, the Nephilim, and why the Book of Enoch was left out of the Western Bible, read the full background post here: