Many by now will know of the apocalyptical
Hebrew text, the Book of Enoch, a text that is ascribed to the patriarch Enoch,
who was the great grandfather of Noah. Whilst the book contains events that coincide with biblical
understanding, such as the flood, it also contains many aspects that are not considered biblically
canon - or at least aspects that the average reader would not have considered, because the
bible alone doesn’t deem it necessary to explain. Of course, I’m mainly talking about the Watchers
- the ‘Sons of God’, who were essentially angels who in the book of Enoch, go against God’s wishes
and impregnate the mortal women. The Watchers, who in retrospect are fallen angels, are not
exactly acknowledged by the bible, but in the Book of Enoch, they are key characters that serve as
a catalyst for both the terrible things that come to plague the earth and also the reason why God
sends a flood at all. As the Watchers impregnate the mortal women, this unholy union leads to the
women producing monstrous offspring - giants with insatiable appetites and rageful tendencies. They
are known simply as Nephilim. In today’s episode, we’ll be exploring what exactly happened to the
Nephilim across multiple stories including the Book of Enoch, the Book of Giants (which is a
fragmented Jewish follow up to the Book of Enoch that details the Nephilim’s fate), and the bible
- which interestingly, does show us in several subsequent chapters that the giants remained on
the earth in the days after Noah, which means that somehow… they either survived the flood
or were put back on the earth for some reason. According to Enochian legend, the Nephilim are
born to the Watchers, courtesy of their human mothers, who were either seduced or arguably
raped by the fallen angels during those times. Whilst it is not detailed if these Nephilim
were born as ‘giant babies’ or somehow born fully grown, we do know that they are monstrous,
esurient, wicked beings that not only consume all the crops, trees and animals, but also consume the
mortal men, women and at one point even themselves as they turned cannibal. The world was in distress
and the cry of the people reached the ears of God, who was displeased to learn of what had
transpired. His angelic Watchers had betrayed him and now, they’d brought forth a horde of
creatures that were destroying the earth itself. In order to restore balance, God sent down his
Archangels to purge the evil that had coalesced on earth. Archangel Michael was sent to battle
against Sumyaza - the leader of the Watchers who had not deterred his angels from committing
sin and transitioning into fallen angels. Archangel Raphael was sent to apprehend
Azazel, a Watcher who had also shared the secrets of heaven with mankind and taught
them how to fight and wage war on each other. Archangel Uriel is sent to warn Noah of what
is soon to happen - that there will be a great deluge and that he should hide himself until
then, because he and his family are the chosen ones to survive, whilst everything else on
earth will be destroyed and made new again. Archangel Gabriel meanwhile is sent to thin
the horde of the Nephilim, as God tells him, “Proceed against the bastards and the reprobates,
and against the children of fornication: and destroy [the children of fornication and] the
children of the Watchers from amongst men [and cause them to go forth]: send them one against the
other that they may destroy each other in battle: for length of days shall they not have. And no
request that they (i.e. their fathers) make of thee shall be granted unto their fathers
on their behalf; for they hope to live an eternal life, and that each one of them will
live five hundred years.” (Enoch Chapter 10) As we can see from these interactions, we learn
quite quickly that whilst the Nephilim did run riot on the earth, their days were numbered.
Indeed, Archangel Gabriel is seen to go on a killing spree as he reduces the number of
Nephilim that are running rampant. Any that he manages to miss are taken care of by the
flood which God sends to destroy all life on earth (except for Noah and his family).
Now, whilst all the giants do drown in the flood in this story, we are told that their
spirits survive and that from then onwards, they would be known as evil spirits that dwell
on the earth. Of these spirits, God tells Enoch, “And the spirits of the giants [will] afflict,
oppress, destroy, attack, do battle, and work destruction on the earth, and cause trouble:
they [will] take no food, but nevertheless hunger and thirst, and cause offences. And these
spirits shall rise up against the children of men and against the women, because they have
proceeded from them.” (Book of Enoch Chapter 15) So, indeed - the physical giants are destroyed
and they can no longer consume the landscape of the earth. They can no longer terrorise mankind,
nor can they go about their violent rampages. For all intents and purposes, the reign of
the giants ends here - but as God tells Enoch, they do remain on a spiritual plane where they
can oppress, destroy, attack and work destruction on the earth. Arguably, they are not dead at
all considering that in their spiritual form, they continue the exact same behaviour that
they did when they were physically living. So in this aspect, you might say that the
Nephilim did ‘survive’ the flood - just not as they had originally intended. We do know why
God keeps the Nephilim alive in this capacity and that’s to apparently punish mankind for their
involvement with the Nephilim’s production and fo the events that had transpired. The
men, as we learn from the Enochian legend, had fallen for the Watchers’ knowledge
and lapped up the secrets of heaven that the Watchers had revealed, whilst the women
had allowed themselves to be seduced by the Watchers (assuming we go with the idea that they
were seduced and not taken against their will). In effect, God kinda blames
mankind for the Nephilim too, so he allows the Nephilim to live in their spirit
form to punish mankind for their transgressions. These events coincide with the apocryphal
Jewish Book in the Book of Giants, though of course in this story, the perspective
is shifted to that of the Nephilim. Specifically, we see the giant Mahway come to
terms with nightmares that he and his fellow giants are experiencing, and they begin to fret
over the possibility that these dreams are signs that they have done terrible things and would be
punished for them. Eventually, Mahway is convinced to visit Enoch who they believe can interpret
the dreams, for which Enoch reveals is indeed a bad omen for the giants, who will pay for the
carnage they have amassed and never know peace. However, there is implied hope for the
Nephilim, because Enoch explains that if they change their ways and if they relinquish
the bonds of evil, they will be forgiven. Unfortunately, it would appear that either
none of the Nephilim were able to repent, or God wasn’t feeling particularly forgiving,
because none of them appeared to be spared. As with the Enochian legend, God does send
a flood to wipe out the Nephilim and those that are able to escape the flood
are hunted down by angels. In fact, in the manichaean version of the Book of Giants,
God actually sends the biblical monster Leviathan to mop up those who have escaped drowning.
Ultimately, both texts are so fragmentary that it is hard to come to a definitive conclusion,
though it is agreed that from what we have; the giants are destroyed by God - either in the
flood, or by the angels he sends to have at them. In the bible meanwhile, the
Nephilim are acknowledged as having existed as we are told in Genesis, “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.” (Genesis 6:4) As we can see here, the bible does not
go into the detail that the Book of Enoch does with the Watchers and just how
the Nephilim were created unto the world. Indeed, we are told that the ‘sons of God’ went to
the daughters of humans and had children by them, and this is closest we get to the suggestion
that angels had impregnated women. That is, if we go with the idea that the ‘sons of
God’ are not men, but actually angels. When the flood does arrive in the next
chapter, the bible does not subscribe to the idea that the Nephilim continue
to exist as evil spirits on the earth. Once the flood comes, it is implied that
they, amongst every other creature that didn’t make it onto the ark, were
destroyed in totality. We are told, “The waters rose and covered the mountains
to a depth of more than fifteen cubits. Every living thing that moved on land
perished—birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth,
and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.
Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; people and animals and the creatures
that move along the ground and the birds were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and
those with him in the ark.” (Genesis 7:20-23) So, with this in mind, it should be pretty much guaranteed that we’d never
see the Nephilim again, right? Well, not exactly. Several chapters later in Numbers, we are
told that Moses sends several men to scout and explore Canaan (which has been promised to
be given to the Isrealites by God), so that they might discover what the land is like, whether the
people who live there are weak or strong, whether the towns are fortified or unprotected, whether
the soil is fertile or poor and generally to find out what kind of resistance would await them. Now,
the scouts do go out across Canaan and learn many things; they find fruit of the land, they find
milk and honey, they research the people who live there - the Canaanites - and find them to be very
powerful, who live in cities that are large and fortified. But there is one discovery they make
in Canaan that they probably wished they hadn’t. The Nephilim had seemingly returned. The scouts report to Moses, “We can’t attack
those people; they are stronger than we are.” And they spread among the Israelites a bad report
about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living
in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the
descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and
we looked the same to them.” (Numbers 13: 31-33) So, how could this be if the Nephilim were
destroyed in the flood during the times of Noah? A simple, albeit baseless idea, is that the flood
wasn’t as thorough as we are led to believe and that perhaps, the Nephilim were able to navigate
the turbulent waters and somehow find their way to dry land once the water levels reduced. Another
similar idea is that the Nephilim, after being warned by Enoch of their fate (as they are in
the Book of Giants), went into hiding and were somehow able to escape the flood through either
some clever ingenuity or some archaic magic. Of course, these ideas seem two dimensional and
lack any real substance that is really convincing. They’re more akin to those bad star wars
movies where ‘Somehow Palpatine returned’, and likewise ‘Somehow the Nephilm returned’ too. So how do we come up with a more legitimate
explanation? Well, to do that, we’ll need to acknowledge that perhaps these aren’t the same
Nephilim from the days of Noah (because all of those were indeed wiped out in the flood),
but that these Nephilim are brand new, or at least, more recent. If we assume that
these more recent Nephilim were created the same way that the originals were, then it might be
suggested that there were other fallen angels who had fallen into the same trap as the Watchers, and
had come down to earth to lay with mortal women. The original Watchers, according to the Enochian
legend, were rounded up by the Archangels and actually cast down into an underground
prison thousands of miles beneath the desert, known as the Duadel. These angels, according
to the legends, are said to still be there now, where they undergo great suffering and torment
for their open rebellion against God and for their infringement upon his rules. As the events
of Numbers take place many years after the times of the Watchers (or the, sons of God), it
can be assumed that these were also brand new angels who fathered these Nephilim,
those who evidently did not learn from the mistakes of those who came before them, or
perhaps, didn’t know about them altogether. Another idea here is that indeed, the angels
(regardless of their time of existence) did know about the folly of the Watchers, but that
they were still unable to resist the temptation of mortal women - hence why Nephilim are
reported as being seen here in Canaan. But if we don’t think that the angels
would make the same mistake twice, there are some other ideas available, one of
which causes us to challenge the idea that the ‘Sons of God’ as mentioned in Genesis 6:4
applies to angels, or whether it applies to men. Now, if men are actually these ‘Sons of God’, then
men are the ones who bring forth the Nephilim by sleeping with women, but how can this be? Well,
again, there's a lot of speculation here, but one idea is that when Canaan (who is Noah’s son
and the first Canannite) is cursed by his father, his descendants become cursed too. The sons of
Shem and Japheth (these being Canann’s brothers and thus, the nephews of Canaan), may have at some
point intermingled with the daughters of Canaan, this being something of a violation in the eyes
of God. Time and time again we see God warn those a part of his covenant not to make wives out of
the Canaanite women, yet time and time again we see many of the covenant do exactly that. These
new Nephlim therefore can be seen as a direct consequence of the chosen people of Israel,
who have fornicated with the ‘cursed’ people of Canaan, furthermore exemplifying why the
two did not belong together, because together, they could only create something as abominable
as more Nephilim. Unfortunately, this is only a simple idea that cannot be substantiated and
it is indeed more likely that the ‘Sons of God’ refer to fallen angels, because man would be the
‘Son of Man’ - this ‘Man’, being Adam, not God. This brings me to the final idea I have on
this account from Numbers 13; the idea that the scouts hadn’t seen Nephilim at all, but either
mistook some of the tall men of Canaan for giants, or had been so afraid about invading Canaan, (with
its reinforced cities, strong fortifications and powerful men) that they made the whole thing
up to dissuade Moses from agreeing with Caleb, who wanted to go up into Canaan and take the
land by force. You’ll notice that Numbers tells us that the scout spread a ‘bad report’; which
implies that whatever he told Moses was either a misinterpretation down to sheer ignorance or
a complete fabrication made out of fear for the Canaanites. The idea that the scouts were fearful
of the Canaanites (leading them to make up the report about the Nephilim) can be legitimised by
the fact that the scout does declare to Moses that they cannot attack the Canaanites because he
believed they were so much stronger than them. On the other hand, the idea that the scout
had simply misinterpreted what he saw can also be legitimised by the scout’s
report that the descendants of Anak had come from the Nephilim and that these
were the giants he was supposedly seeing. Anak, a word believed to mean ‘giant’ in Hebrew,
was also a minor character in the bible and is named as being the progenitor of the Anakites - or
the Anakim - these being the people who inhabited Canaan before the arrival of the Israelites. Of
course, this just leaves us with more questions: How did these Anakim come into existence?
How tall were they? Were they as big and ferocious as their Nephilim forefathers,
or were they smaller and more docile? What was their nature in comparison to their
evil fathers and perhaps more importantly, were they a product of Nephilim–Human relations,
or were these the product of men sleeping with Canaanite women, hence why they existed after the
flood? Unfortunately, we may never really know. What we do know is that the biblical attitude
towards both Nephilim and Anakim is similar: both are living examples of sin and both
are destined to be removed from the earth. The Nephilim, as we know, were removed by the
flood - but the Anakim, as we later learn in the bible are all destroyed by Caleb and Joshua. We
are told specifically of this in Joshua’s chapter, “At that time Joshua went and destroyed the
Anakites from the hill country: from Hebron, Debir and Anab, from all the hill country
of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua totally destroyed
them and their towns.” (Joshua 11:21) Beyond Joshua’s encounter with the Anakim, we
don’t see the giants maintain any significant prominence that would indicate they were too much
of a problem. Indeed, we do see David run into what can be presumed as giants in the second book
of Samuel, where he and his mighty men face off against Ishbi-Benob - a giant wielding a spearhead
that weighed three hundred shekels, Goliath’s brother, and a ‘giant man with six fingers and six
toes’ who some scholars make effort to attribute to Gilgamesh. These giants are all believed to
have been descended from Rapha - those who take on the name ‘Raphaim’ to likely delineate themselves
from the likes of the Nephilim and the Anakim. So, by this logic, whether we’re talking about
Raphaim, Anakim or any other kind of giant in the bible, it’s not totally out of the realm
of possibility that they have at some point been simply grouped as ‘Nephilim’, because of how
big they were. Those who were said to see these giants in biblical times would not have lived
during the times of the flood, so they could not possibly have known whether the giants they saw
were Nephilim or not. Yet, because of how fierce and terrifying and abnormal they appear to be, the
word Nephilm is easily assigned to them, as we see the scout do in Numbers 13. Therefore, one can
suggest that the Nephilim never did survive the flood - these being the ones with the supernatural
heritage on the account of their fathers being angels. Every other giant since then however,
may have been simply misappropriated under the term ‘Nephilim’ - even though their fathers
weren’t fallen angels and they weren’t monstrous creatures. In fact, the only thing these second
generation giants had in common with the Nephilim was that they were on the losing side when it
came to God putting over his chosen people. As always guys, if you’ve enjoyed
today’s episode then don’t forget to give this video a thumbs up and don’t forget
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