The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 70-20, titled "Questions and Answers--Part 48."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. Copyright 2001 by John MacArthur Jr., All Rights Reserved.

Question

I want to ask you, in Genesis 6, if the Nephilim giants didn’t survive the flood, how come when Caleb and Joshua and the spies went to Canaan, they found the Nephilim giants there? And also, why are there so many interpretations of Genesis 6?

Answer

Well, the fact that there are so many interpretations of Genesis 6 means that a lot of people have gotten it wrong…right? Because there is only one proper interpretation. I understand that because there are some obscurities in the passage. It’s helpful to me, however, to know that most of the views that are different than the one that I hold have come later in history, that the earliest views of Genesis 6 that we can find (even among rabbis, to say nothing of early church fathers) viewed the “sons of God” as angels. So, by taking, as we did when I went through that, the “sons of God” as fallen angels-demons-who come down and possess men, who then take wives and really desire demon involvement, and have children-that’s to show the depth of the fallenness of man: he engages himself with demons willingly.

I think that in the context of what Satan was doing in Genesis 6 is the best interpretation. It’s consistent with what he tried to do in the garden as we pointed out at the time. But, it says that at that time there were “giants on the earth in those days” and it uses the word “Nephilim.” The term is from a Hebrew verb “to fall” and it has to do with powerful beings that crush somebody. This is not a race of people; this is just some powerful people, some powerful men who fell on others in the sense of overpowering them-that’s what I put in the note and that’s exactly what I believe is accurate.

They were already on the earth when children born of these unions of demonically possessed people came out. They were “mighty men.” It says, “The products of those unions were mighty men and men of renown.” There were in ancient times mighty men and men of renown born to those unions. But, there also were these Nephilim, these powerful, powerful conquerors. The idea is that they are threats and dangerous… It just describes them because we want to know something about the pre-flood society. There were oppressive, I suppose you could say even deadly, men in that day. They were powerful, I suppose you could call them conquerors or warriors.

And so that word “Nephilim” is describing them. Later on, when the spies went into the land and they came back to report what they had seen, they simply said, “There are Nephilim there.” They didn’t mean that they were the children of Nephilim, as if they were a race. “Nephilim,” because of its usage here, was sort of a word that they all knew was in the scripture and they knew that it referred to giants. And so when they came back and wanted to report that essentially the Canaanites were unconquerable, they simply said, “They’re Nephilim.” They just took that word in its generic sense-in its general meaning-rather than having it refer to some race. They couldn’t have been children of Nephilim; Nephilim was not a race, it wasn’t a tribe, and it couldn’t have had any children that lasted until that time, as you said, because the flood drowned everybody but eight people.

So, it’s just a term that has to do with warriors-powerful, deadly, fearful kind of men. In Joshua and Caleb’s day, the spies who didn’t believe they could conquer Canaan wanted to make their point as strongly as they could and so they said, “They’re like the giants, like the Nephilim that are mentioned in Genesis, chapter 6.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
Box 119
Columbus, New Jersey, USA, 08022
Websites: www.biblebb.com and www.gospelgems.com
Email: tony@biblebb.com
Online since 1986