The were beings described in 6:1–4 as the offspring of "the sons of God" and "the daughters of men" — powerful figures who appeared on the earth before the flood. Whether they were supernatural hybrids, legendary warriors, or something else entirely, the honest answer is that Christians have debated this passage for over two thousand years, and no single interpretation commands universal agreement. What we can say with confidence is that the text treats them as a sign of the deep corruption that preceded flood.
What the Text Actually Says {v:Genesis 6:1-4}
The passage is brief and deliberately cryptic:
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 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 Hebrew word nephilim likely derives from a root meaning "to fall" — hence some translations' rendering as "fallen ones." The text emphasizes their reputation as mighty, celebrated figures. But the identity of the "sons of God" is where interpretation diverges sharply.
The Three Main Views
The angelic view is the oldest and most widely attested in ancient sources. In this reading, "sons of God" refers to angelic beings — likely rebellious ones — who crossed a boundary they were never meant to cross. The book of Job uses the same phrase to refer to heavenly beings (Job 1:6, 2:1), and the New Testament letters of Jude and 2 Peter seem to reference angels who "did not stay within their own position of authority" (Jude 6). The Nephilim, on this view, were a monstrous result of that transgression — and one reason God's judgment through the flood was so severe.
The Sethite view became dominant in the early church and among many Reformation-era theologians. Here, "sons of God" refers to the godly descendants of Seth intermarrying with the ungodly descendants of Cain. The Nephilim were simply the spiritually compromised offspring of that mixed heritage. The strength of this view is that it avoids what some find theologically troubling — angelic beings capable of physical reproduction. Its weakness is that the text seems to emphasize something more dramatic than mixed marriage.
The ruler/tyrant view reads "sons of God" as a title for powerful human kings or warlords, echoing Ancient Near Eastern usage where rulers were called sons of the gods. The Nephilim were their warrior offspring — celebrated and feared, exactly as the text describes.
Giants in Canaan {v:Numbers 13:33}
The word reappears once more in the Old Testament. When Moses sent spies into Canaan, they returned with this report:
And 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.
Whether this is a literal genealogical connection or a rhetorical comparison — the spies invoking a legendary category of terrifying warriors — is itself disputed. Goliath and his brothers are sometimes connected to this tradition, though the text doesn't use the word directly.
What This Means for Us
The theological weight of Genesis 6 isn't ultimately about the nature of the Nephilim — it's about the pattern of human (and perhaps cosmic) rebellion that made the flood necessary. The text frames the Nephilim as evidence of a world coming apart at the seams, where boundaries set by God were being violated on every level.
Across all three interpretive views, that point holds. Whatever the "sons of God" were, their actions contributed to a world of which God said, "every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5). The Nephilim are a symptom. The disease is the same one Noah was rescued from — and that the rest of Scripture traces all the way to the cross.
Faithful Christians can hold different views on who exactly the Nephilim were. What isn't in dispute is why the story is told: to show how desperately the world needed saving.