The short answer
The Nephilim were a people on the earth before the flood, tied in Genesis 6:4 to the union of the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men” and remembered as “mighty men” and “men of renown.” Who the “sons of God” were is the real question, and Scripture gives three main answers: fallen angels, the godly line of Seth, or powerful human rulers. The text itself is only four verses long, which is why faithful readers have landed in different places for centuries.
This piece walks through all three interpretations fairly, then steps back to the question underneath them. For the Divine Principle, the point of the passage is not finally the identity of the “sons of God” but what the whole scene reveals: a human lineage corrupting until God had to begin restoration again through Noah and the flood. The strangeness of the verses is real; so is their place in a much larger story.
What Genesis 6 actually says
The passage is brief and deliberately spare. Genesis 6:1-4 reports that as people multiplied on the earth, “the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive, and they took as their wives any they chose.” God then sets a limit on human lifespan, and the text adds: “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.” The very next verse records that “the wickedness of man was great in the earth,” and the flood narrative begins.
Two details shape every interpretation. First, the Hebrew word Nephilim is connected by many scholars to a root meaning “to fall,” giving the sense of “the fallen ones,” while ancient translators often rendered it “giants.” Second, the same word reappears much later, in Numbers 13:33, where the spies sent into Canaan report seeing “the Nephilim” and feeling like grasshoppers beside them. Whatever the Nephilim were, the Bible treats them as a byword for an age of overreaching human power, set down at the exact hinge where creation slides toward judgment.
View one: fallen angels
The oldest and most widely held interpretation is that the “sons of God” were angelic beings who rebelled and took human wives, and the Nephilim were the offspring of those unions. This reading was common in the first centuries of the church and draws support from the phrase “sons of God” elsewhere in the Old Testament, where in Job it refers to heavenly beings. Advocates also point to New Testament texts that speak of angels who “did not stay within their own position of authority” (Jude 6) and were kept in chains until judgment. One widely used reference guide notes that “the increasingly favored view is that the sons of God were fallen angels” (GotQuestions).
The strength of this view is that it takes the phrase “sons of God” in its most common Old Testament sense and explains why the episode is singled out as uniquely grievous. Its difficulty is theological: Jesus taught that angels do not marry (Matthew 22:30), and Scripture nowhere else describes angelic beings producing physical children. Readers who hold this view usually treat the pre-flood crossing of a boundary God had set as a one-off act of rebellion, not the normal nature of angels — which keeps the focus where Genesis puts it, on a creation-order violated.
View two: the line of Seth
A second major view holds that the “sons of God” were the godly descendants of Seth, and the “daughters of men” were women from the ungodly line of Cain, so the sin was the mixing and corruption of a faithful lineage. This reading follows naturally from the chapters just before it. Genesis 4 traces the violent line of Cain; Genesis 5 traces the line of Seth, the line of those who “began to call upon the name of the LORD.” On this view, Genesis 6 describes those two lines merging until the distinct, God-centred line was swallowed up and the whole earth filled with violence.
The strength of this view is that it keeps the story fully human and reads it in the flow of the surrounding genealogies, which are plainly about two diverging lineages. Its difficulty is that “sons of God” is not the usual way the Old Testament names the Sethites, and the view has to explain why intermarriage alone would produce the “mighty men of renown.” Yet it has deep roots in church history and points directly at a theme the Bible returns to again and again: the preservation or corruption of a chosen line. On why God so often works through a particular family rather than everyone at once, see why God works through chosen people.
View three: ancient rulers
A third view reads the “sons of God” as powerful human rulers or kings — tyrants who gathered harems and built dynasties of violence. In the ancient Near East, kings were frequently called sons of a god as a title of authority, and this interpretation takes “sons of God” in that royal sense. The sin, on this reading, is despotic men seizing women “any they chose” and amassing power, so the Nephilim are the renowned warrior-aristocracy such unions produced. The phrase “men of renown” fits a reading about fame, conquest and name-making.
This view has the advantage of needing no angels and no special category of beings; it simply describes human power turning predatory on a large scale. Its weakness is that it, too, must stretch the phrase “sons of God” beyond its most frequent biblical use. What all three views share, and what matters most, is the result: an age of concentrated, self-exalting power that filled the earth with corruption and set the stage for the flood. On that shared core the interpretations agree, however much they differ on the mechanics.
What the Divine Principle highlights: lineage
The Divine Principle does not hang the meaning of Genesis 6 on the identity of the “sons of God” but on what the scene reveals about lineage — the corruption of the human line that the Fall had set in motion. From the beginning, the Principle teaches, God’s providence runs through a lineage: the Fall was not merely a bad choice but the transmission of a false, self-centred nature from parents to children down the generations. By the days of Noah, that corruption had so saturated humanity that “the earth was filled with violence,” and the God-centred line that should have carried the promise was nearly extinguished. For why that inheritance passes down at all, see why we inherit Adam’s sin and why lineage is central to salvation.
Read this way, Genesis 6 is the moment the problem the Bible has been tracking since Eden reaches a breaking point. God’s response is telling: he does not abandon the project of creation, and he does not simply erase evil by force. He finds one man, Noah, “righteous in his generation,” and begins restoration again through a faithful line. The flood is judgment, but it is judgment in the service of a fresh foundation. This is why the Divine Principle treats Noah’s family as a renewed starting point in the long providence of restoration — the same pattern of a faithful remnant carrying the promise forward that will recur with Abraham, with Israel, and finally in the coming of Christ.
Why the passage still matters
Genesis 6:1-4 matters because it shows, in a few dense verses, that sin is not a private event but something that spreads through generations until it reshapes a whole world. Whichever reading of the “sons of God” a person finds most convincing, the passage testifies that a boundary God set was crossed, that human power turned corrupt and violent, and that the corruption ran deep enough to require both judgment and a new beginning. It refuses the comfortable idea that evil stays small and contained; left unaddressed, it compounds.
But the passage is finally hopeful, because it stands at the head of a rescue rather than only a ruin. God’s answer to a corrupted lineage is not to give up on humanity but to preserve and restore a faithful line through which blessing can flow again. That is the thread the whole Bible follows, from Noah to the One who comes to restore the lineage completely. On how that long work of rebuilding unfolds, see what restoration through indemnity means, and on the enemy behind the world’s corruption, see the fall of Lucifer.
Frequently asked questions
Who were the Nephilim in the Bible?
The Nephilim are named in Genesis 6:4 as a people on the earth in the days before the flood, offspring associated with the union of the “sons of God” and the “daughters of men,” and described as “mighty men” and “men of renown.” The Hebrew word is often translated “giants” and is linked to a root meaning “to fall” or “the fallen ones.” Scripture says very little else about them directly, which is why several interpretations exist.
Who were the “sons of God” in Genesis 6?
There are three main views. The angelic view holds that the “sons of God” were fallen angels who took human wives. The Sethite view holds that they were the godly line of Seth, who intermarried with the ungodly line of Cain. The ruler view holds that they were powerful human kings or despots. Each view reads the same four verses differently, and sincere Christians hold each one.
Were the Nephilim giants?
Many ancient translations rendered Nephilim as “giants,” and the same word reappears in Numbers 13:33, where the spies describe the inhabitants of Canaan as Nephilim beside whom they felt like grasshoppers. Whether the term means literal giants or simply “mighty, renowned men” is debated. The emphasis in Genesis is less on their size than on the corruption and violence of the age they belonged to.
What does the Divine Principle say about Genesis 6?
The Divine Principle reads Genesis 6 through the lens of lineage. The decisive crisis before the flood was not the size of a few men but the corruption of the whole human line as the God-centred and fallen lines mixed, until the earth was filled with violence. This is why God had to begin again through Noah, a man found faithful, to re-establish a lineage through which restoration could proceed.
Why does such a short, strange passage matter?
Genesis 6:1-4 sits immediately before the flood and explains why God grieved that he had made humanity. However one reads the “sons of God,” the passage marks the moment the corruption that began at the Fall reached a point requiring judgment and a fresh start. It matters because it shows that sin spreads through generations and that God works to restore a faithful line rather than abandon humanity.