Who are the Nephilim?

now let's turn our attention to Chapter six and a very challenging narrative chapter six begins when humans began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful and they took wives for themselves whomever they chose the Fallen ones or Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also after when the sons of God came into the daughters of humans and they bore children to them those were the mighty ones of old men of name well let's start with the Hebrew word the Hebrew word is nepheline who are the nepheline now if the term Nephilim were used in my Hebrew class my students would translate it fallen ones if Nephilim means fallen ones why did the Septuagint translate it gigantis or Giants that's an interesting question now in numbers chapter 13 we'll get there after a while the ten Scouts compare the large size Ana kites to the Nephilim actually they say the large Ana kites are nepheline now the problem in this case is that the narrator of number of numbers chapter 13 says that the ten Scouts are giving a bad report and in that case meaning they are giving it an intentional distortion of the facts so that really raises a question for us is I understand why the Giants from numbers 13 might be put into Genesis chapter 6 by the Septuagint 'el translators but it doesn't seem like a bad report that's intentionally distorted is a good reason to think that there's Giants here now when we look at Genesis chapter 6 for we realized that if we read it very literally well translation I gave you the passage characterizes the nephilim without respect to their size it says they are mighty heroes persons of name we might say persons of reputation from antiquity now they could be large sized warriors but not necessarily they're described here for their might their prowess and their fame now who are the sons of God and who are the daughters of humans that is literally the ha Adam the human race now some say that the daughters of humans are females from the line of Cain and the sons of God are males from the line of Seth now where this comes from is if we remember in Genesis chapter 5 which we looked at in this session Adam is the son of God and Seth is the son of Adam so in that sense the line of Seth that's spelled out in chapter 5 they could be the sons of God over and against the daughters of humans from the line of Cain that's one way to go and there's some other spins that could go a little bit of a different way but specifically the genealogies in Genesis chapter 4 and 5 are thought to maybe line up to these two peoples sons of God daughters of humans but others say that the sons of God are celestial beings sometimes we call them angelic beings fallen ones who are perverting the human race by seducing women now although Christian laity often enjoy debating these and other views one thing that's important for us to recognize is that the upshot in this passage in either case is that God saw the wickedness of the human race and decided to kill everyone well almost everyone except Noah so there's nothing wrong with these debates but we need to make sure that they don't obscure or eclipse the bigger story of what's happening whatever the perversion of the human race entails

Channel: zondervan

Views: 124,113

Rating: 4.4563427 out of 5

Keywords: nephilim, genesis 6, sons of God

Id: NOk5t28gUmI

Length: 4min 46sec (286 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 20 2018