Many by now will know of the apocalyptical Hebrew text, the Book of Enoch,
a text that is ascribed to the patriarch Enoch, who was the great grandfather of Noah. Whilst the
book contains events that coincide with biblical understanding, such as the flood, it also contains
many aspects that are not considered biblically canon - or at least aspects that the average
reader would not have considered, because the bible alone doesn’t deem it necessary to explain.
Of course, I’m mainly talking about the Watchers - the ‘Sons of God’, who were essentially angels
who in the book of Enoch, go against God’s wishes and impregnate the mortal women. The Watchers,
who in retrospect are fallen angels, are not exactly acknowledged by the bible, but in the Book
of Enoch, they are key characters that serve as a catalyst for both the terrible things that come
to plague the earth and also the reason why God sends a flood at all. As the Watchers impregnate
the mortal women, this unholy union leads to the women producing monstrous offspring - giants with
insatiable appetites and rageful tendencies. They are known simply as Nephilim. In today’s episode,
we’ll be exploring what exactly happened to the Nephilim across multiple stories including the
Book of Enoch, the Book of Giants (which is a fragmented Jewish follow up to the Book of Enoch
that details the Nephilim’s fate), and the bible - which interestingly, does show us in several
subsequent chapters that the giants remained on the earth in the days after Noah, which means
that somehow… they either survived the flood or were put back on the earth for some reason.
According to Enochian legend, the Nephilim are born to the Watchers, courtesy of their human
mothers, who were either seduced or arguably raped by the fallen angels during those times.
Whilst it is not detailed if these Nephilim were born as ‘giant babies’ or somehow born
fully grown, we do know that they are monstrous, esurient, wicked beings that not only consume all
the crops, trees and animals, but also consume the mortal men, women and at one point even themselves
as they turned cannibal. The world was in distress and the cry of the people reached the ears of God,
who was displeased to learn of what had transpired. His angelic Watchers had betrayed
him and now, they’d brought forth a horde of creatures that were destroying the earth itself.
In order to restore balance, God sent down his Archangels to purge the evil that had coalesced
on earth. Archangel Michael was sent to battle against Sumyaza - the leader of the Watchers who
had not deterred his angels from committing sin and transitioning into fallen angels.
Archangel Raphael was sent to apprehend Azazel, a Watcher who had also shared
the secrets of heaven with mankind and taught them how to fight and wage war on each other.
Archangel Uriel is sent to warn Noah of what is soon to happen - that there will be a great
deluge and that he should hide himself until then, because he and his family are the chosen
ones to survive, whilst everything else on earth will be destroyed and made new again.
Archangel Gabriel meanwhile is sent to thin the horde of the Nephilim, as God tells him,
“Proceed against the bastards and the reprobates, and against the children of fornication:
and destroy [the children of fornication and] the children of the Watchers from amongst men [and
cause them to go forth]: send them one against the other that they may destroy each other in battle:
for length of days shall they not have. And no request that they (i.e. their fathers) make of
thee shall be granted unto their fathers on their behalf; for they hope to live an
eternal life, and that each one of them will live five hundred years.” (Enoch Chapter 10)
As we can see from these interactions, we learn quite quickly that whilst the Nephilim did run
riot on the earth, their days were numbered. Indeed, Archangel Gabriel is seen to go on
a killing spree as he reduces the number of Nephilim that are running rampant. Any that
he manages to miss are taken care of by the flood which God sends to destroy all life
on earth (except for Noah and his family). Now, whilst all the giants do drown in the
flood in this story, we are told that their spirits survive and that from then onwards,
they would be known as evil spirits that dwell on the earth. Of these spirits, God tells Enoch,
“And the spirits of the giants [will] afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle, and work
destruction on the earth, and cause trouble: they [will] take no food, but nevertheless hunger
and thirst, and cause offences. And these spirits shall rise up against the children
of men and against the women, because they have proceeded from them.” (Book of Enoch Chapter 15)
So, indeed - the physical giants are destroyed and they can no longer consume the landscape of
the earth. They can no longer terrorise mankind, nor can they go about their violent rampages.
For all intents and purposes, the reign of the giants ends here - but as God tells Enoch,
they do remain on a spiritual plane where they can oppress, destroy, attack and work destruction
on the earth. Arguably, they are not dead at all considering that in their spiritual form,
they continue the exact same behaviour that they did when they were physically living.
So in this aspect, you might say that the Nephilim did ‘survive’ the flood - just not
as they had originally intended. We do know why God keeps the Nephilim alive in this capacity and
that’s to apparently punish mankind for their involvement with the Nephilim’s production
and fo the events that had transpired. The men, as we learn from the Enochian legend,
had fallen for the Watchers’ knowledge and lapped up the secrets of heaven that
the Watchers had revealed, whilst the women had allowed themselves to be seduced by the
Watchers (assuming we go with the idea that they were seduced and not taken against their will).
In effect, God kinda blames mankind for the Nephilim too,
so he allows the Nephilim to live in their spirit form to punish mankind for their transgressions.
These events coincide with the apocryphal Jewish Book in the Book of Giants, though of
course in this story, the perspective is shifted to that of the Nephilim.
Specifically, we see the giant Mahway come to terms with nightmares that he and his fellow
giants are experiencing, and they begin to fret over the possibility that these dreams are signs
that they have done terrible things and would be punished for them. Eventually, Mahway is convinced
to visit Enoch who they believe can interpret the dreams, for which Enoch reveals is indeed
a bad omen for the giants, who will pay for the carnage they have amassed and never know peace.
However, there is implied hope for the Nephilim, because Enoch explains that if
they change their ways and if they relinquish the bonds of evil, they will be forgiven.
Unfortunately, it would appear that either none of the Nephilim were able to repent,
or God wasn’t feeling particularly forgiving, because none of them appeared to be spared.
As with the Enochian legend, God does send a flood to wipe out the Nephilim and those
that are able to escape the flood are hunted down by angels. In fact,
in the manichaean version of the Book of Giants, God actually sends the biblical monster Leviathan
to mop up those who have escaped drowning. Ultimately, both texts are so fragmentary that
it is hard to come to a definitive conclusion, though it is agreed that from what we have;
the giants are destroyed by God - either in the flood, or by the angels he sends to have at them.
In the bible meanwhile, the Nephilim are acknowledged
as having existed as we are told in Genesis,
“The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when
the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them.
They were the heroes of old, men of renown.” (Genesis 6:4)
As we can see here, the bible does not go into the detail that the Book of
Enoch does with the Watchers and just how the Nephilim were created unto the world.
Indeed, we are told that the ‘sons of God’ went to the daughters of humans and had children by them,
and this is closest we get to the suggestion that angels had impregnated women. That is,
if we go with the idea that the ‘sons of God’ are not men, but actually angels.
When the flood does arrive in the next chapter, the bible does not subscribe
to the idea that the Nephilim continue to exist as evil spirits on the earth.
Once the flood comes, it is implied that they, amongst every other creature that
didn’t make it onto the ark, were destroyed in totality. We are told,
“The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits.
Every living thing that moved on land perished—birds, livestock, wild animals,
all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that
had the breath of life in its nostrils died. Every living thing on the face of the earth was
wiped out; people and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds were
wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.” (Genesis 7:20-23)
So, with this in mind, it should be pretty
much guaranteed that we’d never see the Nephilim again, right?
Well, not exactly.
Several chapters later in Numbers, we are told that Moses sends several men to scout
and explore Canaan (which has been promised to be given to the Isrealites by God), so that they
might discover what the land is like, whether the people who live there are weak or strong, whether
the towns are fortified or unprotected, whether the soil is fertile or poor and generally to find
out what kind of resistance would await them. Now, the scouts do go out across Canaan and learn many
things; they find fruit of the land, they find milk and honey, they research the people who live
there - the Canaanites - and find them to be very powerful, who live in cities that are large and
fortified. But there is one discovery they make in Canaan that they probably wished they hadn’t.
The Nephilim had seemingly returned.
The scouts report to Moses, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.”
And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said,
“The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of
great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim).
We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.” (Numbers 13: 31-33)
So, how could this be if the Nephilim were destroyed in the flood during the times of Noah?
A simple, albeit baseless idea, is that the flood wasn’t as thorough as we are led to believe and
that perhaps, the Nephilim were able to navigate the turbulent waters and somehow find their way to
dry land once the water levels reduced. Another similar idea is that the Nephilim, after being
warned by Enoch of their fate (as they are in the Book of Giants), went into hiding and were
somehow able to escape the flood through either some clever ingenuity or some archaic magic.
Of course, these ideas seem two dimensional and lack any real substance that is really convincing.
They’re more akin to those bad star wars movies where ‘Somehow Palpatine returned’,
and likewise ‘Somehow the Nephilm returned’ too.
So how do we come up with a more legitimate explanation? Well, to do that, we’ll need to
acknowledge that perhaps these aren’t the same Nephilim from the days of Noah (because all of
those were indeed wiped out in the flood), but that these Nephilim are brand new,
or at least, more recent. If we assume that these more recent Nephilim were created the
same way that the originals were, then it might be suggested that there were other fallen angels who
had fallen into the same trap as the Watchers, and had come down to earth to lay with mortal women.
The original Watchers, according to the Enochian legend, were rounded up by the Archangels
and actually cast down into an underground prison thousands of miles beneath the desert,
known as the Duadel. These angels, according to the legends, are said to still be there now,
where they undergo great suffering and torment for their open rebellion against God and for
their infringement upon his rules. As the events of Numbers take place many years after the times
of the Watchers (or the, sons of God), it can be assumed that these were also brand
new angels who fathered these Nephilim, those who evidently did not learn from the
mistakes of those who came before them, or perhaps, didn’t know about them altogether.
Another idea here is that indeed, the angels (regardless of their time of existence) did
know about the folly of the Watchers, but that they were still unable to resist the temptation
of mortal women - hence why Nephilim are reported as being seen here in Canaan.
But if we don’t think that the angels would make the same mistake twice,
there are some other ideas available, one of which causes us to challenge the idea that
the ‘Sons of God’ as mentioned in Genesis 6:4 applies to angels, or whether it applies to men.
Now, if men are actually these ‘Sons of God’, then men are the ones who bring forth the Nephilim by
sleeping with women, but how can this be? Well, again, there's a lot of speculation here, but
one idea is that when Canaan (who is Noah’s son and the first Canannite) is cursed by his father,
his descendants become cursed too. The sons of Shem and Japheth (these being Canann’s brothers
and thus, the nephews of Canaan), may have at some point intermingled with the daughters of Canaan,
this being something of a violation in the eyes of God. Time and time again we see God warn those
a part of his covenant not to make wives out of the Canaanite women, yet time and time again we
see many of the covenant do exactly that. These new Nephlim therefore can be seen as a direct
consequence of the chosen people of Israel, who have fornicated with the ‘cursed’ people
of Canaan, furthermore exemplifying why the two did not belong together, because together,
they could only create something as abominable as more Nephilim. Unfortunately, this is only
a simple idea that cannot be substantiated and it is indeed more likely that the ‘Sons of God’
refer to fallen angels, because man would be the ‘Son of Man’ - this ‘Man’, being Adam, not God.
This brings me to the final idea I have on this account from Numbers 13; the idea that
the scouts hadn’t seen Nephilim at all, but either mistook some of the tall men of Canaan for giants,
or had been so afraid about invading Canaan, (with its reinforced cities, strong fortifications and
powerful men) that they made the whole thing up to dissuade Moses from agreeing with Caleb,
who wanted to go up into Canaan and take the land by force. You’ll notice that Numbers tells
us that the scout spread a ‘bad report’; which implies that whatever he told Moses was either
a misinterpretation down to sheer ignorance or a complete fabrication made out of fear for the
Canaanites. The idea that the scouts were fearful of the Canaanites (leading them to make up the
report about the Nephilim) can be legitimised by the fact that the scout does declare to Moses that
they cannot attack the Canaanites because he believed they were so much stronger than them.
On the other hand, the idea that the scout had simply misinterpreted what he saw can
also be legitimised by the scout’s report that the descendants of Anak
had come from the Nephilim and that these were the giants he was supposedly seeing.
Anak, a word believed to mean ‘giant’ in Hebrew, was also a minor character in the bible and is
named as being the progenitor of the Anakites - or the Anakim - these being the people who inhabited
Canaan before the arrival of the Israelites. Of course, this just leaves us with more questions:
How did these Anakim come into existence? How tall were they? Were they as big and
ferocious as their Nephilim forefathers, or were they smaller and more docile?
What was their nature in comparison to their evil fathers and perhaps more importantly,
were they a product of Nephilim–Human relations, or were these the product of men sleeping with
Canaanite women, hence why they existed after the flood? Unfortunately, we may never really know.
What we do know is that the biblical attitude towards both Nephilim and Anakim is similar:
both are living examples of sin and both are destined to be removed from the earth.
The Nephilim, as we know, were removed by the flood - but the Anakim, as we later learn in the
bible are all destroyed by Caleb and Joshua. We are told specifically of this in Joshua’s chapter,
“At that time Joshua went and destroyed the Anakites from the hill country: from Hebron,
Debir and Anab, from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country
of Israel. Joshua totally destroyed them and their towns.” (Joshua 11:21)
Beyond Joshua’s encounter with the Anakim, we don’t see the giants maintain any significant
prominence that would indicate they were too much of a problem. Indeed, we do see David run into
what can be presumed as giants in the second book of Samuel, where he and his mighty men face off
against Ishbi-Benob - a giant wielding a spearhead that weighed three hundred shekels, Goliath’s
brother, and a ‘giant man with six fingers and six toes’ who some scholars make effort to attribute
to Gilgamesh. These giants are all believed to have been descended from Rapha - those who take on
the name ‘Raphaim’ to likely delineate themselves from the likes of the Nephilim and the Anakim.
So, by this logic, whether we’re talking about Raphaim, Anakim or any other kind of giant in
the bible, it’s not totally out of the realm of possibility that they have at some point
been simply grouped as ‘Nephilim’, because of how big they were. Those who were said to see these
giants in biblical times would not have lived during the times of the flood, so they could not
possibly have known whether the giants they saw were Nephilim or not. Yet, because of how fierce
and terrifying and abnormal they appear to be, the word Nephilm is easily assigned to them, as we see
the scout do in Numbers 13. Therefore, one can suggest that the Nephilim never did survive the
flood - these being the ones with the supernatural heritage on the account of their fathers being
angels. Every other giant since then however, may have been simply misappropriated under
the term ‘Nephilim’ - even though their fathers weren’t fallen angels and they weren’t monstrous
creatures. In fact, the only thing these second generation giants had in common with the Nephilim
was that they were on the losing side when it came to God putting over his chosen people.
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Until next time!