Tool Beta
The Gods of the Bible
Every named divine being in Scripture, what the text calls it, and what the ancient world thought it was.
Nephilim
The giants of Genesis 6, born from the sons of God and human women.
Genesis 6:4, in every translation this tool compares.
The giants of Genesis 6, born to the sons of God and human women. Two verses in the entire Hebrew Bible, and one of them adds that they were around afterward as well, which is the clause the spies' report in Numbers 13 hangs on.
Two verses in the whole Hebrew Bible, with a third, disputed, at Ezekiel 32:27. Genesis 6:4 says they were on the earth in those days "and also afterward," the clause the report in Numbers 13 depends on. 1 Enoch 7:2 spells out the lineage, Watchers to giants to Nephilim to Elioud, a three-generation chain with no biblical parallel.
H5303 (נְפִילִים), 3 occ in 2 verses (Numbers 13:33 uses the word twice)
Anne Draffkorn Kilmer proposed identifying the Nephilim with the Mesopotamian apkallu, the antediluvian culture heroes who, according to Berossus, brought the arts of civilization to humankind; both traditions make the generation after the catastrophe hybrid and diminished.
1 Enoch 7 and Jubilees 7 both give the offspring reading, the oldest interpretation on record. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan names the fallen angels of Genesis 6 as "Shamhazai and Azael," where Targum Onqelos uses gbry', "mighty ones," to avoid the fallen-angel reading. 4QEnGiants 3:8 calls the offspring "the Nephilim of the earth" (npyly 'r'), stressing their earthbound activity despite their heavenly origin.
Whether nephilim comes from naphal, "to fall," or is a loanword is unresolved. A third proposal from pala', "extraordinary," has little support, and the term's precise meaning likely vanished with the pre-Israelite dialects that disappeared after the conquest. Heiser argues from spelling. The Hebrew has two forms, nephilim and nephiylim (Numbers 13:33), and the y in the second marks a long vowel that rules out naphal, which would give nephulim. He proposes an Aramaic loanword, naphiyla, "giant," picked up in the exile, which pluralizes in Hebrew to exactly the nephiylim spelling of Numbers 13:33 and explains why the Septuagint translators consistently rendered the word "giants."
Ancient-astronaut readings, and the Sethite reading that needs the word to mean nothing more than "fallen men."
- Genesis 6:4
- Numbers 13:33
- Ezekiel 32:27 (contested: *gibborim nophelim*, "the fallen warriors," may keep the mythic sense without naming the group)
- Peterson, "Nephilim," *Lexham Bible Dictionary*
- DDD s.v. "Nephilim," 618-619
- Heiser, *Unseen Realm*, chs. 12-13
- Heiser, *Reversing Hermon*, ch. 1, note-to-build: missing from entities.json
