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3 August 2022 Navigate 'up to the Genesis index: index-genesis.
Now, when humankind began to multiply upon the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, the bnei elohim saw the daughters of humankind, that they were beautiful, and took themselves wives of all they chose. And Yahweh said, My spirit will not [unclear terms] humankind forever, [unclear term(s)] is flesh. And his days will be one hundred twenty years.
The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the bnei elohim would go to bed with the daughters of humankind, and they gave birth. These were the warriors of antiquity, men of renown.
The gist of what is going on here, except for the bit with the unclear terms, is clear. If it seems unclear, it is because much of the ancient context is now alien to us. But it is not alien to the Bible.
Let us start with the bnei elohim. The Bible suggests, in many places, the existence of beings other than Yahweh, but more powerful than humans, and not seen in day-to-day life.[1] In some of these places these beings are called elohim ("gods") in others, bnei elohim (literally, "sons of God" or "sons of gods"). Whether the elohim and the bnei elohim are names for two different groups of divine beings or just two different terms for divine beings, I cannot say. I also can't say where these deities come from in the biblical scheme of things -- God already seems to not be alone when he says, "Let us make man in our own image."
But it is enough to say that there is a whole boatload of such things referenced in the Bible. Systematic coverage of them all can be found in the excellent Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. The Bible is monotheistic in the sense that it forbids the worship of these other beings; it does not deny their existence. Whether elohim, or bnei elohim, or melakhim, they're all over the place. Whether you want to call them by the English word "gods" or not is your choice.
Anyhow, these bnei elohim then interbreed with human women and produce nephilim: the famed warriors of antiquity. In contrast to the naturalistic viewpoint of many modern people, in which the world of humans becomes less impressive as one goes back in time toward Neanderthals, and homo erectus, and australopithecines, and reptiles. In ancient mythologies, the world tends to become more impressive as one goes back into the distant past. Things may be pretty mundane today, in the Persian province of Yehud, but they were better under Josiah. Josiah's kingdom is small potatoes compared to the splendid kingdom of Solomon. Further back, men lived hundreds of years, and a great flood covered the earth. Even further back, humans and deities mated, producing the Nephilim. Instead of moving upward, history moved downward.
The basic phenomenon is observable in other mythologies, as when the hero Gilgamesh[2] is described as part human and part God. In Greek mythology, there are Hercules and other demigods, offspring of mixed marriages producing larger-than-life figures.
There are attempts to avoid the uncomfortable picture painted by this passage. These include the idea that "sons of God" refers to the descendants of Seth, while "daughters of humankind" refers to the descendants of Cain. Their intermarriage, somehow, is supposed to lead to some kind of disaster. But this is all unsupported by the context. There's no indication that the male descendants of Seth would be called "sons of God". There's no reason to think the female descendants of Cain would be "daughters of humankind." There's nothing in the Bible to indicate they were not supposed to intermarry. There's no reason to suppose that such intermarriage, if it occurred, would lead to the creation of the Nephilim. The "demigods" explanation explains easily why "and also afterward" appears in the text: the existence of Nephilim in Canaan is to be explained in the same way as the pre-Flood Nephilim. But after the Flood, the idea of "Sethites" mixing with "Cainites" make no sense -- there's no Cainite lineage to speak of after the destruction of all but Noah's family.
See the article "Nephilim" in the Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible.
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