All Bible texts are from the King James Version.
"There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown." Genesis 6:4.
This text in Genesis has given rise to various interpretations, but let us look at this passage in an attempt to shed some light on the truth.
If we break the verse up into its main sections we will see a pattern.
- There were giants in the earth in those days
- And also after that
- When the sons of God
- Came in unto the daughters of men
- And they bare children to them - the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
1. There were giants in the earth in those days
The first part in saying that there were giants in the earth in those days did not say there were some giants, but that there were giants. People today have been educated with the idea that the age we live in is the best and the people living today have evolved to a much higher level than those of past ages. When in reality the reverse is the case.
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. . . . And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day." Genesis 1:26, 31.
God pronounced the words "very good" at the creation of man, and for God to say very good He would need to know what is good. The Bible says:-
"He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he." Deuteronomy 32:4.
"As for God, his way is perfect: the word of the LORD is tried: he is a buckler to all those that trust in him." Psalms 18:30.
We have a God that is perfect in all His ways. A God of truth. So at the end of the sixth day when God said "very good", we are left with no alternative but to accept that man came forth from the Creator's hands perfect in every way because God could not make or do anything that is not perfect.
Genesis 6:4 says that there were giants in the earth in those days. If God says it, it is so. We must accept that the people before Noah's flood were giants. As we will see later on in the study, hundreds of remains of giant people have been unearthed proving without a doubt that giants did live at the same time in the past.
2. And also after that
"And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." Genesis 6:3.
When the Lord had said that there were giants in the earth in those days, He had in the previous verse just set a time period that would end in a hundred and twenty years. So the sentence saying "and also after that" must refer to the same period of time. The hundred and twenty years of time the people of Noah's day were given was so that they could repent of their sins and come back to God. So after that would be after Noah's flood, the end of the 120 years.
As we know from God's word the hundred and twenty years did come and go, the earth was washed clean of sin, and Noah, his wife, and their three sons and their wives were all that survived the flood from the world before, and of course the animals that were on board the ark.
Noah and his family were giants not only in intellect and size, but in the years that they lived. But when we study the ages that men lived after the flood a shortened life span is soon obvious. Noah's three sons died in their six hundreds compared to Noah's nine hundred and fifty years. In just a few hundred years there was a sharp decrease. If we look at the life span of Abraham who lived 175 years and comparing that to Noah who died when Abraham was a young man and Shem who lived through to Isaac, we find a marked decrease in life spans. These people who lived after the flood were degenerating at a very fast rate some faster than other, and this became obvious when we find stories in the Bible of the Canaanites and Og the king of Ai, and also Goliath who David defeated. So here we are able to see that in a short period of time, of seven to eight hundred years, the human race had degenerated to little better that what we are today with the exception of a minority that mainly lived from the gulf of Arabia in the south and up the eastern side of the dead sea. This is recorded in the Scriptures when the children of Israel took the promised land with the reports of the giants that lived there. The spies compared themselves as grasshoppers beside the inhabitants of this land.
3. When the sons of God
This phrase has been interpreted in various ways. Ancient Jewish commentators, the early church fathers, and many modern expositors have thought these "sons" to be angels, comparing them with the "sons of God" of Job 1:6; 2:1; and 38:7. This view must be rejected because the punishment soon to be metered out was for the sins of human beings (see verse 3.) And not of angels. Further, angels do not marry (Matthew 22:30). The "sons of God" were none other than the descendants of Seth, and the "daughters of men" who were of the godless Cainites. God later spoke of Israel as His "first born son" (Exodus 4:22), and Moses called the people of Israel "children of the Lord your God" (Deuteronomy 14:1).
4. Came in unto the daughters of men
Among the manifold dangers for pious Sethites were the beautiful daughters of unbelievers. Wives were taken not because of their virtue but for the beauty's sake. With the result that godlessness and wickedness made heavy inroads among Seth's descendants.
God has ever warned His followers not to marry unbelievers because of the great danger to which the believer is thus exposed and to which he usually succumbs (Deuteronomy 7:3, 4; Joshua 23:12, 13; Ezra 9:2; Nehemiah 13:25; 2 Corinthians 6:14, 15). But the Sethites did not heed the warnings. Guided by the sense of attraction, they were not content with the beautiful daughters of the Godly race, and often preferred Cainite brides. Moreover the prevalence of polygamy seems to be suggested by the plural expression used, they took wives.
5. And they bare children to them - the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
The children born to these Cainite women were no different than any other children born at that time. The giants or nephilim, were not the product of mixed marriages of angels and men as some have indicated. The LXX translated the word 'nephilim' as 'gigantes', from which the English word 'giant' is derived. In Numbers 13:33 the Israelites said they felt like grasshoppers in the sight of the nephilim, which the KJV translates giants.Since in those days, that is before the flood, the entire human race was of great stature, there is reason to believe that this Hebrew word may come from the root word 'naphal' and that the nephilim were not only of giant stature but that they were 'violent or terrorists'. The antediluvians generally possessed great physical and mental strength. These individuals were renowned for wisdom and skill, but persistently devoted their intellectual and physical powers to the gratification of their own pride and passions and the oppression of their fellow men.
Conclusion
The nephilim were none other than the race of people that God had created, Adam and Eve being the first, made in the image of God. This image was marred by sin and even more so when Cain became the first murderer. For a time the sons of God, the Sethites, had remained separate from the sons and daughter of men, the Cainites. But eventually they, the Sethites, crossed over and took wives of the Cainites and the result was the sins and pagan worship practices of these heathen Cainites which were accepted by Gods people. Which in itself should be a warning for every sincere Christian today, don't marry anyone that is not a person of God.
© D & S Goeldner, 1999.
BIBLICAL ARTEFACTS AND STUDIES
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |