Giants in Those Days: Genesis 6:1-4 and the Nephilim
Short answer: Genesis 6:1-4 reports that when men multiplied and daughters were born, the sons of God took wives from them, and that giants were on the earth in those days and afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children. The Hebrew word rendered giants is Nephilim, a term whose meaning is debated. The passage does not explain the origin of the Nephilim, does not say they were the offspring of the sons of God and daughters of men, and does not command us to build a detailed angelology or demonology from it. It is a short, sober narrative note placed just before the flood, and it functions chiefly to show how deeply human rebellion had spread before judgment came.
The Four Verses and What They Actually Say
Genesis 6:1-4 is one of the shortest and strangest passages in the Bible. It begins, When men began to multiply on the surface of the ground, and daughters were born to them, (Genesis 6:1). The narrative then reports that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and took wives for themselves. The Lord responds by limiting the human lifespan, and the passage closes with a note about giants and mighty men of old. Before any interpretation, notice how little the text explains. It names actors, an action, a divine response, and a consequence. It does not define sons of God, does not name the Nephilim, and does not say why God acted as he did. Careful readers should feel the weight of that silence.
The word rendered giants in most English translations comes from the Hebrew Nephilim. Its meaning is not certain. Some connect it to a root meaning to fall, whether the fallen or those who cause others to fall. Others suggest a meaning like the mighty ones. The text does not give the etymology, and translations that choose giants are interpreting as much as translating. This matters because popular teaching often treats the word as a technical term with a fixed definition. It is not. It is a rare Hebrew word that appears only here and in Numbers 13:33, where it describes the people the spies saw in Canaan. That limited usage means we should be cautious about building large systems on it.
The verse also links the Nephilim to a specific time: in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them (Genesis 6:4). The grammar is important. It does not clearly say the Nephilim were the children of that union. It says they were on the earth in those days and also after that, and it mentions the union in the same breath. The second half of the verse describes the offspring as mighty men who were of old, men of renown. Whether the Nephilim and the mighty men are the same group, overlapping groups, or different groups is not stated. Honest reading requires us to admit the ambiguity rather than resolve it by assumption.
Placing this section in Genesis matters. It comes after the genealogies of chapter five and before the flood narrative of chapters six through nine. The immediate context is the spread of human wickedness on the earth. Genesis 6:5-6 says that the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually, and that it grieved him at his heart. Whatever else verses 1-4 are doing, they serve that larger argument. They show that the corruption before the flood was not a small matter, but a deep disorder reaching into human marriage, human reputation, and human generations. The giants are part of the setting of judgment, not a side curiosity.
Who Were the Sons of God?
The central interpretive question in Genesis 6:1-4 is the identity of the sons of God. Three main views have been held by faithful readers across church history. The first is the angelic view: the sons of God are fallen angels or heavenly beings who took human wives. The second is the human view: the sons of God are the godly line of Seth, and the daughters of men are the line of Cain. The third is a royal or dynastic view: the sons of God are kings or rulers who seized women at will. Each view has real strengths and real weaknesses, and none is free from difficulty. A teacher should present them honestly rather than pretend the question is settled.
The angelic view draws on the fact that the phrase sons of God in the Hebrew Bible usually refers to heavenly beings. It appears this way in Job 1:6 and Job 2:1, where the sons of God present themselves before the Lord. If that is the sense here, the passage describes a gravely disordered union between the heavenly and the human. The chief difficulty is that Jesus says angels do not marry, in Matthew 22:30. Defenders of the view reply that this statement describes the resurrected state and not the conduct of rebellious spirits. Still, the view requires us to accept that angels somehow fathered human children, which the text does not explicitly claim. It says the sons of God took wives and that the women bore children, but it never states that the Nephilim were those children.
The human view reads sons of God as the covenant line descended from Seth, and daughters of men as women from the line of Cain. On this reading, the sin is intermarriage that dissolves the distinction between the godly and the ungodly. The strength of this view is that it fits the pattern of Genesis, where lines of descent and their spiritual character matter. Seth's line in Genesis 5 is marked by calling on the name of the Lord, while Cain's line in Genesis 4 is marked by violence and self-exaltation. The weakness is that the phrase sons of God is nowhere else used of human beings in the Hebrew Bible. Calling members of Seth's line sons of God is possible, but it is not how the phrase is normally used, and the text does not identify them that way.
The royal or dynastic view reads the sons of God as rulers who took women by force, practicing a kind of tyrannical polygamy. This view connects the passage to the ancient Near Eastern idea of kings as sons of deity, and it explains the emphasis on mighty men and men of renown. On this reading, the sin is the abuse of power by the strong against the vulnerable. The weakness is that this reading depends heavily on cultural background rather than on the wording of Genesis itself. Because the text does not identify these figures, no view can be proven from these four verses alone. Christians have differed here, and they will continue to differ. What matters is that we do not turn a debated question into a test of orthodoxy, and that we do not claim certainty the text does not give.
The Nephilim in Numbers and Deuteronomy
If we want to understand the giants in those days, we should follow the word Nephilim to its other appearance. In Numbers 13, the spies return from Canaan and give a discouraging report. They say, The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that eats up its inhabitants; and all the people who we saw in it are men of great stature, (Numbers 13:32). The next verse adds that the spies saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, and that they were like grasshoppers in their own sight. Two things stand out here. First, the report is explicitly called an evil report, which means the spies were discouraging Israel from obeying God. Second, the Nephilim are located in Canaan at the time of the exodus, long after the flood.
That second point is important. Genesis 6:4 says the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also after that. The report in Numbers shows that a people called Nephilim were still being described in Moses' day. Some readers take this to mean that the Nephilim survived the flood, perhaps through the line of Ham or through giants mentioned later. Others think the spies were using an old and fearsome name for the tall peoples of Canaan, much as we might use a legendary label for something frightening. The text does not settle the question. But it does show that in Israel's memory, Nephilim were associated with tall, imposing peoples who made God's people feel small.
Deuteronomy fills in more detail. Deuteronomy 2:10-11 says of the region of Moab, The Emim lived there before, a great and numerous people, and tall as the Anakim. The passage then notes that these too are counted as Rephaim, like the Anakim. The Rephaim appear elsewhere as a tall people associated with the land before Israel. Deuteronomy 3:11 gives a striking detail about Og king of Bashan, the last of the remnant of the Rephaim, whose iron bedstead was nine cubits long and four cubits wide. Whatever the exact measurement, the point is that Og was remembered as a giant of unusual size. These texts show that the Bible consistently presents certain pre-Israelite peoples as unusually tall and formidable.
Putting these passages together, we see that the word giants in Genesis 6:4 belongs to a wider biblical pattern of tall, powerful peoples who opposed God's purposes. The Nephilim, the Anakim, the Emim, and the Rephaim are connected in the text, though not always clearly identified with one another. What matters for the reader is not a detailed taxonomy but the theological point. When God's people face the land of promise, they face enemies who seem too big for them. The spies conclude they cannot win. Joshua and Caleb conclude that God is able. The giants in Scripture are not primarily a puzzle about ancient biology; they are a test of whether we trust God when the opposition looks overwhelming.
Goliath and the Later Giants of Israel's Story
The most famous giant in the Bible is not the Nephilim but Goliath. First Samuel 17:4 describes him: A champion out of the camp of the Philistines named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span went out. At roughly nine or ten feet by ancient measures, Goliath was a terrifying sight. His armor, spear, and shield are described in detail, and the narrator wants us to feel the imbalance between him and the shepherd boy David. The giant is not a mythical figure in a distant age; he is a Philistine warrior facing Israel in a real battle, and his challenge is a direct insult to the God of Israel. This is the context in which the word giant does its real theological work.
Second Samuel 21 continues the theme. It records further battles with the Philistines in which descendants of the giants of Gath are struck down by David and his servants. The chapter names several of them, including Ishbi-benob, Saph, and a man of great stature with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. These details are given matter-of-factly, as historical records rather than legends. The point is that David's kingdom had to contend repeatedly with these formidable enemies, and that God gave victory. The giants are not merely a curiosity from before the flood. They are part of the ongoing struggle of Israel against the nations, and their defeat is credited to the Lord who strengthens his king.
It is worth noticing how the Bible speaks of these men. It does not treat them as demigods or as supernatural beings worthy of worship. It treats them as enemies of God's people, however large and strong. Their size is described, their weapons are described, and then their defeat is described. The narrative never invites us to fear them or to speculate about their spiritual powers. Instead, it invites us to see that no enemy, however imposing, can stand against the purposes of God. When David says to Goliath that the battle is the Lord's, he is not making a general inspirational point. He is stating a fact about how God works in history, and the rest of the chapter proves it.
This pattern should shape how we read Genesis 6:1-4. The giants in those days are part of a biblical theme: human pride and power arrayed against God, and God bringing it down. The Nephilim, whoever they were, belong to that theme. They are not the center of the story. They are a reminder that from the beginning, human beings have tried to make a name for themselves, and that God is not impressed by size. The same chapter that mentions giants also says that God saw the wickedness of man and was grieved. The giants are not the point; the grief of God over human sin is the point, and the judgment of the flood is the result.
What the Passage Does Not Say
Much of what is commonly said about the giants in those days goes beyond the text. Genesis 6:1-4 does not say that the Nephilim were the offspring of angels and humans, though many assume it. It does not say that they were demons walking the earth. It does not say that they were the cause of the flood, though the wickedness of humanity is given as the cause. It does not give a number, a genealogy, or a description beyond the word mighty men. It does not explain how they survived the flood or whether they did. These are all questions the passage raises without answering, and responsible teaching should say so. When we fill the gaps with speculation, we teach our own ideas as though they were Scripture.
The passage also does not command us to seek out giants today. Some popular teaching uses Genesis 6 as a launching point for elaborate theories about modern Nephilim, hidden bloodlines, or end-times conspiracies. Nothing in the text supports this. Genesis 6:1-4 is a short narrative note in one of the oldest parts of Scripture, written to explain the moral condition of the world before the flood. It is not a code to be cracked, and it is not a warning about our own generation in particular. When we treat it as a puzzle to solve, we miss its plain function: to show that human sin had become pervasive and that God's patience was reaching its limit before judgment fell.
One common misreading is to make the passage the foundation of a whole system of spiritual warfare in which believers are called to identify and battle modern giants. That is not what the text says. Another misreading is to treat the Nephilim as a separate race of beings whose existence proves that the Bible contains mythology borrowed from other religions. But the Bible treats them as part of the historical narrative, not as myth, and it does not present them as divine. A third misreading is to use the passage to justify racial theories or claims about superior bloodlines. The text says nothing of the kind, and the Bible elsewhere insists that God shows no partiality and that all nations are made of one blood. Any reading that produces pride in ancestry has already gone wrong.
The most honest thing we can say is that Genesis 6:1-4 is difficult, brief, and deliberately unclear about many details. It gives us enough to know that something deeply disordered was happening before the flood, that powerful figures arose, and that God took notice. It does not give us enough to construct a full account of who the Nephilim were or what became of them. Faithful teaching admits this. We can hold the passage with confidence because it is God's word, and we can refuse to press it further than it goes. That posture is not weak; it is the fear of the Lord applied to interpretation, and it protects both the teacher and the hearer from error.
Why This Passage Still Matters
Genesis 6:1-4 matters because it shows us the world that God judged. Before the flood, the earth was filled with violence and corruption, and the boundaries God had established for human life were being broken. The taking of wives apart from God's design, the rise of men of renown who made a name by strength, and the presence of giants all point in the same direction. Humanity was exalting itself, and God was about to act. The passage is a warning that God sees human pride and does not ignore it forever. It is also a comfort, because it shows that no matter how large the rebellion becomes, God remains sovereign over it.
The passage also matters because it prepares us for the gospel. The Bible's pattern is that God saves his people from enemies they cannot defeat on their own. The giants of Genesis and the giants of the conquest and the giant of Gath all serve that pattern. David could not defeat Goliath by strength, and Israel could not defeat the Anakim by numbers. Victory came from the Lord. In the same way, our greatest enemies are not flesh and blood, and our greatest problem is not the size of our opponents but the size of our sin. The gospel answers that problem, not by making us stronger than the giants but by giving us a Savior who has already won the victory on our behalf.
Finally, the passage matters because it teaches us to read Scripture carefully. It is short, it is strange, and it has been the subject of endless speculation. When we read it as it is written, we learn to distinguish between what God has said and what we have inferred. We learn to hold difficult passages with humility and to reject the temptation to make everything fit a system. We also learn that the parts of Scripture we do not fully understand are still profitable. Genesis 6:1-4 is profitable because it shows us the condition of the human heart, the seriousness of sin, and the certainty of judgment, and it points us forward to the mercy of God that appears again and again in the story that follows.
For teachers and parents, this passage is an opportunity to model honest Bible reading. We can tell our hearers what the text says, what it does not say, and where faithful Christians have differed. We can resist the pressure to have an answer for every question. We can point to the clearer passages that interpret the harder ones, and we can trust that God knew what he was doing when he gave us this text. The giants in those days are a reminder that God's word is deeper than our systems, and that our job is not to master it but to be mastered by it.
Biblical fidelity check
What Genesis 6:1-4 establishes is narrower than many treatments suggest. It establishes that a group called the sons of God took wives from the daughters of men, that God responded by limiting human lifespan, and that Nephilim were on the earth in those days and afterward. It also establishes that the offspring of that union included mighty men of old, men of renown. It does not establish that the Nephilim were the children of that union, that they were the cause of the flood, that they were angels in any defined sense, or that their story continues into the modern world. The text is silent on all of these points, and a faithful teacher should be silent where the text is silent. Where the text speaks, we speak; where it does not, we say so.
A common misreading is to treat Genesis 6:1-4 as a self-contained explanation of the origin of evil or of a race of giants, and then to build a whole spiritual worldview on it. This is wrong first because the passage does not claim to explain the origin of evil; that story begins in Genesis 3 with the serpent and the man and the woman. It is wrong second because the passage does not describe a race of giants but a people group whose tall stature is noted. It is wrong third because it ignores the wider context, which is human wickedness and divine grief leading to judgment. When we read this text through the lens of the flood narrative that surrounds it, the emphasis falls where it should: on the sinfulness of humanity and the righteousness of God, not on the size and origin of the Nephilim.
Other passages that speak to Genesis 6:1-4
The themes of this passage connect to the wider narrative of Scripture. The creation account in What Do the Creation Days in Genesis 1 Mean? establishes the order God made and the dignity he gave to human beings, which helps us see why the disorder of Genesis 6 is so serious. The opening of Israel's story in 1 Samuel 1: Hannah's Prayer and Samuel's Birth shows God raising up a deliverer in a time of national decline, a pattern that echoes the way God works when human strength fails. The rise of Israel's first king in 1 Samuel 10: Samuel Anoints Saul and Signs Confirm shows how quickly human greatness can go wrong, a warning that fits the mighty men of Genesis 6. And the rescue at Jabesh Gilead in 1 Samuel 11: Saul Rescues Jabesh Gilead and Renews Kingdom shows God giving victory through unlikely means, the same lesson the giants teach when they fall before David and his men.
Frequently asked questions
Who or what were the giants in Genesis 6:4?
The Hebrew word is Nephilim, and its meaning is uncertain. The text does not define it or explain its origin. It says they were on the earth in those days and also after that, and it associates them with mighty men of old. The same word appears in Numbers 13:33, where it describes the tall people the spies saw in Canaan. Beyond that, Genesis gives no details, so any full explanation goes beyond what the passage actually states. Teachers should present the main views without claiming certainty.
Were the Nephilim the children of angels and human women?
Genesis 6:1-4 does not say that. It says the sons of God took wives from the daughters of men, and they bore children, and it mentions the Nephilim in the same context. The grammar does not clearly identify the Nephilim as that offspring. Some readers infer an angelic origin from the phrase sons of God, while others read it as the line of Seth or as rulers. Because the text does not state it explicitly, this remains a debated question among faithful Christians rather than a settled doctrine.
Did the giants survive the flood, and do they exist today?
Genesis 6:4 says the Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also after that, and Numbers 13 places them in Canaan after the flood. Some readers take this to mean the Nephilim continued through other lines, while others think the later use of the name is a familiar label for tall peoples. The Bible does not explain how they relate. It also gives no basis for claims about modern giants or hidden bloodlines. We should avoid building teaching on what the text does not say.
