What were the Nephilim in Genesis 6?

The Nephilim were the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of the adam in Genesis 6 — and the Hebrew text refuses to tell us much more than that.

The word nephilim (הַנְּפִלִים, H5303) appears in only three places in the entire Old Testament, across only two verses. That is the complete biblical record:

"The Nephilim (ha-nephilim, H5303) were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of the adam and they bore to them — they are the gibborim (H1368, mighty ones) who are from of old, anshei ha-shem (men of renown)." — Gen 6:4 (MT)

"And there we saw the Nephilim — the sons of Anak from the Nephilim — and we were in our own eyes like grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes." — Num 13:33 (MT)

That's it. Three occurrences, two verses. Nephilim is not a stock word that takes on a special meaning in Genesis 6. It is a rare word that appears in exactly two passages of the Hebrew Bible and is not defined in either one.

What does the name mean?

This is where honesty matters. Most people have heard that nephilim means "the fallen ones" — from the Hebrew root naphal (H5307), meaning "to fall." That connection is real: the consonants match, and it is the reading behind 1 Enoch's story of Watchers who fell from heaven to take human wives. But the morphology does not require it.

A straightforward passive participle from naphal would yield a form like nephul, not nephilim. The database parses nephilim as a gentilic-class plural noun — a category marker, the kind of word you use for a people or a recognized class of being. Think of it like "Israelites" or "Philistines": it names them as a group, but it does not explain what the group name means. The Hebrew text does not gloss the word. The "fallen ones" etymology is an interpretive reading — most likely the Second Temple Jewish tradition's own folk etymology for why they were called what they were called.

What the text does say

Genesis 6:4 calls them gibborim (H1368) — the ordinary Hebrew word for "mighty man" or "warrior." It appears 159 times in the Old Testament: David's elite soldiers are gibborim (2 Sam 23:8-39), Joshua's veterans are gibborim (Josh 1:14), even YHWH himself is called a gibbor (Deut 10:17). The word describes extraordinary martial power. It does not describe size.

The verse also calls them anshei ha-shem — men of renown, men of the name (H582 + H8034). They were famous. Their reputation preceded them. The text does not say whether that reputation was good.

Numbers 13:33 and the Anakim

When the twelve spies return from Canaan and try to talk the people out of entering, they say the inhabitants are so large that "we were like grasshoppers in our own eyes." They identify the Anakim — a post-Flood people of notable stature — as descended from the Nephilim. The narrator presents this as part of the spies' fearful report, not as settled theology. But the word they reach for is the Genesis 6:4 word. Twelve generations after the Flood, "Nephilim" is still a live category.

What the LXX adds

The ancient Greek Bible (Septuagint, or LXX) translates nephilim as γίγαντες — "giants" (G1095). It does the same in Numbers 13:33. From that point forward, every Greek-speaking reader of the Bible — including the New Testament authors — read the word as giants, importing the whole framework of the Greek mythological giants (the gigantes of Hesiod's Theogony) who were offspring of heaven and earth, imprisoned under the earth after their defeat.

That translation choice is not a neutral act. It is the bridge between the terse Hebrew of Genesis 6:4 and the elaborate Second Temple expansion in 1 Enoch — and it is the path by which γίγαντες enters the NT authors' frame of reference for 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 1:6.

The full study examines the LXX translation decision and its consequences in detail in The Nephilim: What Genesis 6:1-4 Actually Says.