“1 Again there was a day when the Sons of God [bene ha’Elohim] came to present themselves before the LORD, and [the] Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD.”
(Job 2:1)
One could only imagine what exactly was going on in the courts of heaven when the Divine Council, the host of elohim, “presented themselves” before God, the singular elohim that held rule over them. Although these verses as well as other passages throughout scripture exist, and have meaning and purpose, it tells of a very different picture of the gods of the Bible, and a much murkier purpose behind the things that they did. Suddenly, the picture of the mythological Zeus holding court with the other Olympian gods, toying with the lives of humans while bartering with Hades, the god of the Underworld, starts to look at once not so unfamiliar or far-fetched. Again, we see the great mythologies of the world start to merge into a bigger, more mysterious story where the differing cast of characters blend and merge into one another.
The members of the Divine Council, known as the Watchers, who descended to the earth on the slopes of Mount Hermon, did so with great determination to make a pact among themselves. They were charged with the responsibility of watching over humanity, the children of God’s creation, but then left that responsibility behind when they looked down on humanity with desire, wanting to be one of them and experience the lustful, sensual, steamy, flesh-on-flesh experience of sexual contact. They wanted to create life that sprang forth from their own loins, experiencing what only the Creator himself had experienced. For this, they were condemned, stripped of their “god-ness,” and reduced to a fleshly life that would suffer the consequence of physical death—a thing that they, apparently, would not have had to suffer in their heavenly state.
But there is also the danger of ascribing too much non-malevolence to these beings. In a desire to make them seem “more human,” we can often times imbue them with attributes that they did not possess. In the Christian way of thinking, making something “good” that God has deemed “evil” can run the risk of heresy and blasphemous behavior, and apparently the elohim who stood in the midst of the elohim—the Divine Council—had the superior power to condemn them for their actions. Yet, in great speculation, it is curious to wonder how these lesser gods saw themselves, what they thought about, and how they rationalized a departure from their Creator. When mankind considers offending a holy God, we have nothing to register that against, save for words taught from scriptures and consciousnesses that have religious mores grafted into them. These members of the Divine Council who left their place in the courts of heaven and descended to the earth to cohabit with human women seemingly understood full well what consequences their actions would produce. Yet, they still did it. Was it because they didn’t believe that God had the power to condemn and destroy them? Or was it that they simply didn’t care? Because, unlike human beings who have no visceral, tangible connection to the presence of God save through faith alone, these beings had physical access, beings gods themselves, and could experience the presence of the Most high God on a firsthand basis.
Still, the Watchers chose to desert the Divine Council and make their own way among the humans. Perhaps their biggest mistake was in believing that they were princes who could float untainted by their actions, above the consequences, and impose rule over the inferior children of Adam, much as Moses believed when he saw himself as the deliverer and potential ruler of the Hebrews the day he murdered the Egyptian task master.
And That’s How I Met Your Mother…
The Nephilim are the children of the Sons of God, the offspring of the mixed blood of the bene haElohim and the benoth Adam, the daughters of men. But these offspring, according to scripture, were anything but normal children. There was no father-son stroll down the lane, fishing poles on shoulders, whistling a happy tune and skipping stones into the Euphrates River. We are told in the texts that the offspring of the sexual relations between the Sons of God and human women was like an experiment gone very wrong. The accepted view in academia is that the Nephilim are the offspring of angels, but that may be only part of the story, at least according to the text as rendered in the 1611 King James translation of the Bible, where the word Nephilim has been translated as “giants.”
As mentioned previously in this book, the generally accepted view of the word Nephilim is that it is derived from the Hebrew word nepahl (). The “-im” ending signified plurality. The most commonly accepted definitions for the word nephal are:
1. To fall (as if to the ground).
2. To fall (as if in battle).
3. To be cast down.
4. To desert a location.
5. To fail.
As Craig Hines suggests in his book, Gateway of the Gods, these definitions are most likely were in reference to “fallen angel” originates.11 But he goes on to ask which of the meanings most readily applies to the Nephilim, and does it refer to the angelic parents or the hybrid offspring? If we are to take the first definition of “to fall (as if to the ground),” it would seem that this could apply to angels who “fell from a state of grace to an evil fallen one”—an act of motion, moving from one place to another. But there are much better, more succinct words to describe this act, such as yarad (), which means “to come or go down, to descend,” and the “im” would have been added in some form to denote the plural aspect of the word.
Then there is the second definition, “to fall (as if in battle).” This definition denotes death. But we are told that these Sons of God and their offspring were very much alive. They were living, breathing, thinking, lusting, and having sexual intercourse and reproducing. Doesn’t sound very dead to me, unless, perhaps, later scribes were making reference to them at a much later date, viewing them as the “dead warriors” who had already been destroyed in the waters of the great deluge.
The third definition, “to be cast down,” seems to be a perfect fit if we are ascribing a fallen state to the Watchers and their offspring. They would have been seen as being cast down from heaven as a consequence of their rebellion against God. Yet, were this the only definition, it would exclude the many accounts of other cultures experiencing these beings as good, well-meaning teachers and beings of beneficent intent. Remember: The offspring of the Watchers were not all considered to be evil, but are written about as such in scripture as a collective.
The fourth definition speaks to desertion, a moving from one location to another with deliberate abandonment. In a real sense, this is what the Watchers did when they descended to the steepes of Mount Hermon and deliberately made a pact to willingly leave their godly estate on the Divine Council and dwell among the humans, one of the purposes of which was to experience the fathering of children with the human women.
The fifth definition is one of “failure,” which could easily be manipulated to fit the context in that the Watchers obviously failed to do their duty and fulfill their responsibility—which is, in part, the reason they are condemned in Psalm 82. You can also find this supported by the text in the Book of Jubilees, part of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
“15 And in the second week of the tenth jubilee Mahalalel took unto him to wife Dinah, the daughter of Barakiel the daughter of his father’s brother, and she bare him a son in the third week in the sixth year, and he called his name Jared, for in his days the angels of the Lord descended on the earth, those who are named the Watchers, that they should instruct the children of men, and that they should do judgment and uprightness on the earth.”
(Jubilees 4:15)
“1 And it came to pass when the children of men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born unto them, that the angels of God saw them on a certain year of this jubilee, that they were beautiful to look upon; and they took themselves wives of all whom they chose, and they bare unto them sons and they were giants. 2 And lawlessness increased on the earth and all flesh corrupted its way, alike men and cattle and beasts and birds and everything that walks on the earth—all of them corrupted thei
r ways and their orders, and they began to devour each other, and lawlessness increased on the earth and every imagination of the thoughts of all men (was) thus evil continually. 3 And God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt, and all flesh had corrupted its orders, and all that were upon the earth had wrought all manner of evil before His eyes. 4 And He said that He would destroy man and all flesh upon the face of the earth which He had created. 5 But Noah found grace before the eyes of the Lord. 6 And against the angels whom He had sent upon the earth, He was exceedingly wroth, and He gave commandment to root them out of all their dominion, and He bade us to bind them in the depths of the earth, and behold they are bound in the midst of them, and are (kept) separate. 7 And against their sons went forth a command from before His face that they should be smitten with the sword, and be removed from under heaven. 8 And He said ‘My spirit shall not always abide on man; for they also are flesh and their days shall be one hundred and twenty years.’ 9 And He sent His sword into their midst that each should slay his neighbour, and they began to slay each other till they all fell by the sword and were destroyed from the earth. 10 And their fathers were witnesses (of their destruction), and after this they were bound in the depths of the earth for ever, until the day of the great condemnation, when judgment is executed on all those who have corrupted their ways and their works before the Lord.”
(Jubilees 5:1-10)
Can you see the similarity that shines through in all of these texts, even from the books that were completely eradicated from scripture under the councils invoked by Emperor Constantine? This speaks to the fact that not all of these “non-canonical” scriptures were indeed rightfully eradicated from the Bible! (See Chapter 7.)
There are inherent problems, however, with the word Nephilim, and Heiser goes through great strides to demonstrate the differences between the Hebrew and the Aramaic, where a single “yod” (Hebrew vowel) can take the definition of the word in a completely different direction. Heiser ends up defining the word Nephilim as meaning “those who were fallen,” expressly meaning “those who fell/were fallen.”
However, though I have great respect for the linguistic work of Heiser, I would more align myself with the observations of Hines, who expresses a philosophy that seems inherent to the context of the Genesis 6 passage, wherein the Nephilim come across as, for all practical purposes, rather neutral. They are not defined by the evil of some fallen state of their parental lineage, but are rather set up in the Genesis passage by Moses as being “heroes of old” and “men of reknown.” They were obviously not all inherently evil in nature, and a study of these beings in the literature and scriptural writings of other cultures demonstrates that many of them were not considered to be malevolent. The Watchers may have descended to the earth in a desire to cohabitate with human women—a thing they knew had grave consequences for them in the Divine Council—but they came down to experience life as human beings and to procreate. Some of them may have had evil intent, as we will see, but others, obviously, bore no malicious, devilish intent. They taught humans the “forbidden knowledges” of such dastardly things as cosmetics, mirrors, and herbology and medicine, but some also took advantage of the humans by teaching the arts of making weapons, sorcery and waging war. It was their hybrid offspring who, it is said in the passages of Enoch, wreaked havoc and brought destruction to mankind. The Watchers’ inability to control what they had procreated seems to be the source of the corruption, and the sin of the Watchers themselves was the act of deserting their posts and fraternizing on the most intimate of levels with those whom they were appointed to watch over. The consequences were widespread and resulted in divine judgment.
Then again, you also have the viewpoint of Derek Kinder’s work, in which he says, “The craving of demons for a body, evident in the Gospels, offers at least some parallel to this hunger for sexual experience.”12
Again, for clarity and reference, the passage as written in 1 Enoch:
“1 It happened after the sons of men had multiplied in those days, that daughters were born to them, elegant and beautiful. 2 And when the angels,13 the sons of heaven, beheld them, they became enamoured of them, saying to each other, Come, let us select for ourselves wives from the progeny of men, and let us beget children. 3 Then their leader Samyaza said to them; I fear that you may perhaps be indisposed to the performance of this enterprise; 4 And that I alone shall suffer for so grievous a crime. 5 But they answered him and said; We all swear; 6 And bind ourselves by mutual execrations, that we will not change our intention, but execute our projected undertaking. 7 Then they swore all together, and all bound themselves by mutual execrations. Their whole number was two hundred, who descended upon Ardis,14 which is the top of Mount Armon. 8 That mountain therefore was called Armon, because they had sworn upon it,15 and bound themselves by mutual execrations.”
(1 Enoch 7: 1-8)
Hines sums it up best: “There is good and bad in everything, and it is through the actions of an individual (even an angel) that determines their nature.”16
It is my sincere belief that, in accordance with the language and the contexts surrounding the various appearances of the word Nephilim, they were not inherently evil in nature, and they are best described as the descendents of a race of beings who abandoned or left their place in the heavenly realms and the courts of the Divine Council, and descended to the earth in violation of the rules established by God.
“6 And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. 7 Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”
(Jude 6-7)
Once again we also see in this passage the reassertion of the prohibition against certain forms of sexual activity. As we saw with the serpent character in the Garden of Eden story, we see again in the account of the Watchers. Everything seemed to revolve around encoded sexual activity in its adulterous or fornication forms. And there is always an imposition of consequential judgment imposed after these rules are violated. In the case of the breeding of the hybrid race of Nephilim, God is “grieved” that He ever made man and sets about a great natural catastrophe to wipe them all out—mankind, Nephilim and every living creature on the planet, according to the Genesis and Enochian accounts. Save for one man and his family, and pairs of every known animal in creation that could not survive in an aquatic habitat.
“Perfect in His Generation”
Why Noah and his immediate family were seemingly the only ones immune from this great watery judgment of God is significant. Genesis 6:9 says, “Noah was a just man.” According to Judeo-Christian teaching, Noah stood out among the rest of humanity as an example of righteousness and godliness in a world that had gone completely insane with perverse corruption around him. Like Enoch before him, Noah also “walked with God.” This is where most commentators and bible teachers seem to come to a screeching halt, falling far short of—as the late, effervescent radio personality Paul Harvey used to say—the rest of the story.
There was another reason why Noah was spared. And this reason goes far deeper than the surface issue of merely following God or being a “good believer.” The greatest cause of frustration over this issue is the fact that it seems to have escaped most commentators either through ignorance of the language of the text, or lack of desire to broach these topics beyond the surface message. Genesis 6:9 says that Noah was “perfect in his generation.” Is the text implying moral and spiritual perfection? Not in the least. Genesis 9:20-23 disproves any such perfection:
“20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. 21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders
; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.”
(Genesis 9:20-23)
I Just Survived the Great Deluge, and Now I’m Going to DisneyLand!
What was the first recorded act of Noah in the Book of Genesis, after the events of the Great Flood? He got drunk. (And who wouldn’t?) I think that if I had just spent the last 120 years building a huge barge as a repository for every species of animal in the known world, and spent four to six months in those closed quarters with my wife and kids, tending to the menagerie, and watching the total and complete destruction of living thing on earth, the first thing I would most probably do when all the puddles had dried up is thank God for my salvation, and hit that bottle of 21-year-old single malt Highland Scotch stashed in my overnight bag. Noah was as predictably human as you and me.
So why does the biblical account call him “perfect”? What is the meaning of this word? The Hebrew word is tamiym []17 and comes from the primitive root word taman []. This means “complete, whole, entire, sound, without blemish” (see also: Exodus 12:5, 29:1, Leviticus 1:3). In its primary meaning, it does not refer to any moral or spiritual quality or superiority, but to physical purity. Noah was uncontaminated by the bloodlines of the Watchers and their offspring, the Nephilim. He was also of the line of Abel, the seed of Adam [] not of the serpent’s bloodline as carried through the descendents of Cain. Noah alone had preserved their pedigree and kept it pure, in spite of prevailing corruption brought about by the fallen angels.18 What the language is telling us in Genesis Chapter 6 is that Noah’s bloodline had remained free of genetic contamination, be it angelic or alien in nature. Noah was pure human being, through and through.
The Rise and Fall of the Nephilim Page 19
