Q. Who were the Nephilim? Offspring of angels? Or is that theory completely wrong?
The Nephilim appear in the Bible early in Genesis, and they seem in some way to have helped bring about the flood. Their story is told this way:
“When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.’
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.
The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created . . .’”
I believe that here the biblical author is intending to describe marriages that are best understood as unions of human women and some sort of male supernatural beings. These marriages produced offspring who were “the heroes of old, men of renown.” That is, the offspring were capable of prodigious deeds. But as a result they also threw off restraint and led the entire world into “great wickedness.” God became so “deeply troubled” by this wickedness that he “regretted that he had made human beings” and decided to destroy them in the flood.
This passage naturally poses many problems for interpretation. If it really is describing marriages between humans and supernatural beings, how are we to account for its claim that such marriages not only took place, but actually produced offspring?
In light of this difficulty, many interpreters posit that the “sons of God” in view here are not actually supernatural beings, but rather the descendants of Seth, the son born to Adam and Eve after Cain killed Abel. He founded a line that “called upon the name of the Lord.” These godly Sethites, in the understanding of these interpreters, were corrupted by intermarriage into the culturally accomplished but godless line of Cain, which would be called here the “daughters of men.” Such dilution and compromise of the godly line led to unrestrained wickedness throughout the human population, these interpreters suggest.
But if this is the case, it is difficult to understand, for one thing, why intermarriage should only have been between Sethite men and Cainite women, rather than also between Sethite women and Cainite men.
Moreover, this interpretation requires that the term ‘adam, which to this point in the book has always had a generic meaning (“humanity”), suddenly and without indication be used to signify only a certain line of human descent (not “the daughters of humans” but “the female descendants of Cain”). But the generic meaning is clearly required again where God says “my Spirit will not contend with humans forever,” while the specialized meaning would be needed once more in the second reference to the “daughters of humans [Cainites?],” and the generic meaning would be needed again where God observes the wickedness of the “human race” and regrets making “human beings.” And yet there is nothing in the text to guide the reader in making these shifts of meaning.
Finally, the contexts of the other biblical occurrences of the phrase “sons of God” all call for a supernatural meaning. The term occurs near the beginning and ending of Job, for example, where the NIV translates it as “angels.” While it is true that the chosen people, to whom the Sethites would correspond at this point, are referred to metaphorically as God’s “sons” from time to time, the precise phrase “sons of God” is never used to describe them.
There is an alternative non-supernatural interpretation, first offered by Meredith G. Kline, in which the “sons of God” are kings. Kline argued that this passage actually describes human corruption in the form of institutionalized polygamy: “The sinfulness of the marriages described in [this passage] was not that they were . . . a mixture of two worlds . . . . The sin was that of . . . polygamy, particularly as it came to expression in the harem, characteristic institution of the ancient oriental despot’s court.”
But while this explanation accounts for why no marriages between the “daughters of God” and “sons of men” are described, it is still vulnerable to the same objections based on the shifts required in readers’ understanding of the term ‘adam (here it would have to mean “commoners” sometimes and “humans” the rest of the time) and the meaning of the phrase “sons of God,” which does not signify kings anywhere else in biblical Hebrew.
For all of these reasons, we should accept that the author’s intention is to refer to marriages between humans and supernatural beings, as difficult as this might be to square with our conceptions of those beings. As Derek Kidner notes at this point in his commentary on Genesis, “If the [supernatural] view defies the normalities of experience, the [non-supernatural] defies those of language (and our task is to find the author’s meaning).”
If this passage does describe marriages between humans and supernatural beings, however difficult it may be to understand how those could have taken place, this would actually fit well into the developing argument of the early narratives of Genesis, which explain the trouble-fraught human condition as a departure from an original paradisal state in consequence of measures God took to prevent human grasping after divinity.
The first pair are expelled from the Garden of Eden, for example, so that, having already become “like God” in “knowing good and evil,” they will not also “take from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” At the end of these early narratives, God divides the human community into contending factions through the confusion of languages, in order to frustrate its project of building a tower with its “top in the heavens.” In the same way, as Kidner observes, this passage “could well belong to the series [of human overreachings] as an attempt, this time on angelic initiative, to bring supernatural power, or even immortality, illicitly to earth.”
Even if the initiative was angelic, however, it appears that human consent was required, since the formal phrase for contracting a marriage is used in the passage: “to take a wife.” But we can imagine that this consent was granted only too willingly, since the prospect of semi-supernatural grandchildren would have suited perfectly the aspirations to “supernatural power” of the “men” who arranged these marriages for their daughters.
(The term Nephilim appears once more in the Bible, in the book of Numbers, at the place where the spies report back about the land of Canaan. But there the term probably just means “giants,” not semi-supernatural beings: “We saw the Nephilim there . . . We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”)
Good Question 
No, No, and no. Nobody seems to get this right. This issue has been taught totally wrong, ever since. One fact: The word nephilim (נְּפִלִ֞ים) appears twenty times – not twice – in the old testament.
The word Nephilim occurs as a proper noun (that is, as a name) in just two Old Testament passages, in Genesis and Numbers, as described in this post. In its other occurrences, nephilim is the participle of the Hebrew verb N-P-L, which means “to fall.” The participle is “nominalized,” that is, it’s used as a noun. It’s clear from the context in those other passages that a verbal noun, not a name, is in view. For example, a passage in Ezekiel twice uses the expression “fallen by the sword,” clearly meaning “slain in battle.” The meaning is the same in the book of Joshua when we hear that twelve thousand men of Ai “fell” (were killed), and in Judges when we hear about those from the tribe of Benjamin who “fell” (were killed) in the battle with the other tribes. Nephilim can also mean “fallen away” in the sense of “deserted”; Jeremiah uses it to describe those who “deserted” (“fell away“) to the Babylonians; the same expression is used in 2 Kings. Finally, the word can also mean “fallen” in the sense of “downcast,” that is, in difficult circumstances and discouraged. It’s used that way in Psalm 145, where one version translates, “The Lord lifts up people who have fallen. He helps those who are in trouble.” So these additional occurrences of the word nephilim as a verbal noun really don’t add anything to our understanding of what it means as a name.
Christopher, thank you for taking time and effort for your reply. I’ve also taken two semesters of Biblical Hebrew, realising that mistranslation and misinterpretation are all over the so-called Old Testament.
Exchange the “names” of the groups and it appears that the nephilim have nothing to do with the other groups, they were only contemporaries, and also existed after the flood.
The NEPHILIM were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the BENE ELOHIM came in to the BENOTH eADAM, and they bore children to them. Those were the GIBBORIM who were of old, men of renown.
There are the daughters of Adam, what about the sons of Adam? What about the daughters and sons of Cain?
I’m learning a lot from you. My mind is blown.
May God increase your knowledge and understanding.
Thank you for your kind words and good wishes!
Christopher, thank you for sharing your knowledge in these posts. They are very informative. I do, however, have two questions. 1) If it was supernatural beings that came and took wives from the human race, why is it that only man[kind] was punished? Would these “supernatural beings” not be more intelligent and powerful than humans? Even if man[kind] was willing (which is something that has to be “read into” the text), could you blame them for desiring to marry these, so called, angelic like creatures? And 2) You say at the beginning of your post that the term “adam” cannot have two different meanings without an “indication in the text to guide the reader into these shifts of meaning.” However, do you not do the same thing at the end of your post with the term “Nephilim?” You say that it means some kind of human-angel hybrid in one place but that it only means giants in another. Can you tell me what “indication in the text” led you to this shift of meaning?
1) The Genesis text is only telling us the human side of things. There may have been punishment for the supernatural beings as well, but it could not be observed from an earthly perspective. 2) The change in meaning of “Nephilim” is due to a change in historical and cultural context between Genesis and Numbers. The two passages are far apart not only in the pages of the Bible but in place and time.