WHO WERE THE NEPHILIM?

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“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.” Genesis 6:4

The Hebrew word Nephilim comes from the root naphal meaning to fall. Gesenius in his Hebrew Lexicon notes: “Those who used to interpret the passage in Genesis of the fall of the angels, were accustomed to render Nephilim fallers, rebels, apostates.” The Greek Septuagint (translated approximately 270 BC) translates the word as “the giants” (oi gigantes). This same word was used in classical Greek literature to refer to men or creatures that were half god and half man.

Jonathan M. Hall in his book Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity notes that gegenes in fact means “earth born”: “From the time of the Iliad, Erekhtheus was treated as a son of the earth, and Herodotus calls him gegenes (“earth-born”)” “gigantic” or “monstrous.” In Greek mythology the Giants (from gegenes) were the children of Heaven (Uranos ) and Earth (Gaea ) (though some would argue that their father was Tartaros (the hell pit). The giants of Greek mythology, or Gigantes (the earth-born) as they are called in the Greek tongue, were a class of oversized and ofttimes monstrous men who were closely related to the gods. Consider also Kekrôps, who according to Apollodorus (iii. 14. § 1, &c.) was the first king of Attica, was known as “a gêgenês, the upper part of whose body was human, while the lower was that of a dragon.”

If the translators of the Septuagint didn’t want us to think about demigods or men of enormous stature, they sure picked the wrong word! However, if by gegenes they understood hybrids between fallen angels (“the gods”) and women, then they chose the perfect word to describe these ungodly and unnatural creatures which parallels the biblical description of the sons of God (from the heavens) coming down to earth and fathering children. Considering the exposure those Alexandrian Jews must certainly have had to Greek literature and the numerous stories of giants; we would be completely ignoring their testimony if we were to understand the word as anything other than creatures who were hybrids of fallen angels and humans—who were also of colossal stature. In fact, in Greek mythology, these giants were sometimes thirty feet tall! If the translators had wanted to merely indicate that these men were the offspring of the godly line of Seth and the ungodly line of Cain, they should have chosen a different word.

Targum Jonathan translates Genesis 6:4: “Schamchazai and Uzziel, who fell from heaven, were on the earth in those days.” Shamchazai and Uzziel were fallen angels that we saw in the Book of Enoch as the ones that took the daughters of men. Targum Jonathan specifically adds “who fell from heaven” to testify how they understood the word Nephilim. Targum Onkelos similarly translates the verse: “Giants were in the earth in those days; and also, when, after that the sons of the mighty had gone in unto the daughters of men” (Targum Onkelos, Genesis 6:4). The interpretation of this verse is very consistent in the ancient witnesses: Demons came down from their habitation and took wives and from their sexual union came a race of giants which were hybrids: half-man and half-demon.

If one should ask how there could be Nephilim afterward when they were all destroyed in the flood, the answer is simple: the fathers of the Nephilim were demons. While it appears that the demons that crossed the line when mingling with humans were thrown into the pit, other demons must have taken women and had Nephilim with them after the flood. As a result, we discover Nephilim in the land of Canaan when the children of Israel came to take possession of their Promised Land. Upon seeing the Nephilim, they lost faith that God could win the battle for them and so they were taken back to the wilderness where they wandered for another forty years. When they came back to the land forty years later, the Nephilim were still there but the children of God trusted God that He would empower them to destroy them all.

Nephilim = Anakim. “And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim)” (Numbers 13:33)

Anakim = The Emim.

Rephaim = Emim. “The Emim formerly lived there, a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim. Like the Anakim they are also counted as Rephaim, but the Moabites call them Emim. (Deuteronomy 2:10-11)

Rephaim = Zamzummim = Anakim. “It is also counted as a land of Rephaim. Rephaim formerly lived there—but the Ammonites call them Zamzummim— a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim (Deuteronomy 2:20-21a)

Og, King of Bashan = Rephaim. Og the king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the Rephaim (Deuteronomy 3:11)

Bashan = Rephaim. “All that portion of Bashan is called the land of Rephaim “(Deuteronomy 3:13)

Sihon of the Amorites = Rephaim = Amorites. “For Heshbon was the city of Sihon the king of the Amorites” (Numbers 21:26)

Og, King of Bashan = Rephaim = Amorites. His land and the land of Og, the king of Bashan, the two kings of the Amorites, who lived to the east beyond the Jordan (Deuteronomy 4:47). “What you did to the two kings of the Amorites […] Sihon and Og” (Joshua 2:10)

Goliath and his brothers = Aimnakim = Rephaim “At Gath, where there was a man of great stature, […] and he also was descended from the giants [Rephaim, LXX reads: from the giants,], (2 Samuel 21:20).

“Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite [Gath]. […] at Gath, […] he also was descended from the giants [Rephaim, LXX reads: giants, .[…] These were descended from the giants in Gatt (1 Chronicles 20:5-6, 8)

“In the fourteenth year Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him came and defeated the Rephaim in Ashteroth-karnaim, the Zuzim in Ham, the Emim in Shaveh- kiriathaim (Genesis 14:5)

“In the land of the Perizzites and the Rephaim” (Joshua 17:15)

“For you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the Lord said” (Joshua 14:12)

“The name of Hebron formerly was Kirjath Arba (Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim) (Joshua 14:15).

After the battle, which Abram led to rescue his nephew Lot, God showed up and promised to Abram that he would have a son and would inherit the land. He mentions something very interesting concerning the Amorites: “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16). Notice that the reason that his descendants will come back in the fourth generation is because of the iniquity of the Amorites, suggesting that the Amorites, who were Nephilim, were performing great wickedness in the meantime.

After Israel received the Law at Mount Sinai. Within a year, God led them up to the border of the Promised Land and God specifically mentioned that His Angel would go “before you and bring you into the Amorites […] and I will cut them off.” (Exodus 23:23)

We find that the Amorites were still in the land into the time of Judges from the passage “do not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell” (Judges 6:10).

The fact that God commanded the Israelites to destroy man, woman, and child becomes logical if we understand that (as the text says) all people in the land were not merely sons of Adam but were a mix between the sons of God (demons) and human women just like in the days of Noah.

“The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great height. And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them” (Numbers 13:29-33)

The Nephilim are the reason why the children of Israel did not possess the land right after leaving Egypt. The presence of the Nephilim disheartened the spies who consequently gave a bad report despite God’s assurance that He would destroy the Amorites.

“Therefore, understand today that the LORD your God is He who goes over before you as a consuming fire. He will destroy them and bring them [the gigantic inhabitants] down before you; so, you shall drive them out and destroy them quickly, as the LORD has said to you.” Deuteronomy 9:3

“Yet it was I who destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was as strong as the oaks; yet I destroyed his fruit above and his roots beneath.” Amos 2:9

In the next post, we will look at ALIENS AND DEMONIC DECEPTION IN THE LAST DAYS

Much of the information in this post is extracted from Douglas Hamp’s book Corrupting the Image: Angels, Aliens, and the Antichrist.

SATAN’S NEPHILIM STRATEGY

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After the Fall, Satan and those angels who joined him lost their fiery covering and were trapped behind the veil, thereby limiting their influence in the realm of men. To combat this limitation, Satan enacted a plan: He would create human-angel hybrids that would provide them their very own biological suits for their embodiment and incarnation, to be the earthly habitations in which their spirits could dwell. It would be the best of both worlds— all the power, intelligence, and immortality of angels with a biological “tent” for their spirits to inhabit, making them gods in the flesh. The bodies would be created as human-angel hybrids, but the bodies would be void of a spirit and could therefore be inhabited by a fallen angel.

While we know ultimately from Revelation 12 that one-third of the angels followed Satan, we do not know the when and why. What we do know is that the “sons of God” did something so evil in the days of Noah that God would eventually send a flood to erase it all. It is entirely possible that many of the angels who followed Satan chose that path in the time around and before the Flood. Genesis 6 only tells us what they did, not whether they were bad before this action.

“When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose... The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.” Genesis 6:1-2, 4

Some clues suggest these angels had not yet committed iniquity; hence they had not yet fallen. Peter gives his interpretation of what happened in Genesis 6. He says, “The spirits in prison (1 Peter 3: 19), who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah” (1 Peter 3: 20). Notice that he speaks of the angels who were disobedient and sinned in the days of Noah. Jude gives a similar interpretation; and based on the context, it sounds like the angels had not yet joined Satan’s team (Jude 1:4-5). Mating with women was their inauguration into his kingdom. Referring to the angels who heeded the temptation, the book of Jude explains how they “did not keep within their proper domain [arkhen]” (Jude 1: 5a). That means they did not remain in the spiritual realm where they were authorized to be, “but abandoned their own place of residence [oiketerion]” (Jude 1: 5).

In Enoch, we get the following report: “It happened after the sons of men had multiplied in those days, that daughters were born to them, elegant and beautiful. And when the angels, the sons of heaven, beheld them, they became enamored of them, saying to each other, Come, let us select for ourselves wives from the progeny of men, and let us beget children.” (1 Enoch 7: 1-2)

By persuading angels who are still on God’s team to procreate, Satan solved a logistics problem. Fallen angels appear to be limited in their ability to freely enter this realm, whereas the good angels can come and go at will. The fallen angel’s inability to physically manifest in this realm appears to be due to their power problem; they need blood to energize themselves. When they have enough blood offered, like with an occultic event or séance, they seem to be more easily able to manifest into this realm.

When the angels procreated with women they must have left their own spirit-based body. The implication is they transferred their essence (DNA information code) into the bodies of the Nephilim. To understand this we need to consider where the soul of a newborn baby comes from? The transmission model of the soul makes the most sense. It teaches that the soul of a newborn comes from the parents— it is the immaterial information that is passed in the genes from both parents to the child.

If it takes two humans to form a new soul in the child, then a supernatural being + human being would not yield a human soul. It follows that the union of an angel and a human would have genetically created a physical body and that body would contain the seed of the fallen angel. What is inside of a seed? Information – a non-material entity. Jude says the angels “left their own abode (spiritual bodies).” They left them for the hybridized bodies we call Nephilim. There is no technical reason that angels could not pass on their seed. The bodies of the Nephilim would be human-angel hybrids and the indwelling spirit would be one hundred percent angel-spirit.

A son will inherit an identical copy of his father’s Y chromosome, and this copy is also essentially identical to the Y chromosomes carried by all his paternal forefathers meaning that all men throughout time have had a copy of Adam’s Y chromosome. Jesus did not have Adam’s Y chromosome and hence did not carry the defects or degeneration (sin), inherent in the copies of Adam’s Y chromosomes in every subsequent male descendent. In Jesus’ case, his spirit/soul (essence) must have been placed there. It was not transmitted because He is eternal. His soul/spirit did not originate from Mary and the Holy Spirit; He existed beforehand.

The fallen angels’ unrighteous action brought a curse of immense magnitude upon themselves and the world. “There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.” Genesis 6:4

The Book of Giants, a grouping of Aramaic fragments found with the Dead Sea Scrolls, corroborates Genesis 6 by noting the corruption the angels wrought upon the Earth. The fragments have missing gaps, but they have been interpreted as: [ . . . they defiled ] [ . . . they begot giants and monsters ] [ . . . they begot, and, behold, all the earth was corrupted] [ . . . with its blood and by the hand of] [ . . . giant’s which did not suffice for them] [ . . . and they were seeking to devour many] [ . . . the monsters attacked it], (4Q531)

Notice how the angel’s corruption also led to the creation of monsters which further corrupted the Earth.

The angels realized that once they crossed the line, they could never return to God’s kingdom. Their taking “wives for themselves of all whom they chose” (Genesis 6: 2) would be the point of no return; there was no going back. Ever. The eternal nature of their decision may be why they took an oath as recorded on an inscription on Mt Hermon “Their whole number was two hundred, who descended upon Ardis, which is the top of Mount Armon. That mountain, therefore, was called Armon, because they had sworn upon it, and bound themselves by mutual execrations“. Hermon (Armon) comes from ḫāram which means “a ban for utter destruction”, the compulsory dedication of something which impedes or resists God’s work, which is considered to be accursed before God. It is called “Hermon” because the angels committed to a curse upon themselves if they should not continue with their plan, which is another indication that when they came down upon Hermon, they still had a lot to lose.

“Then their leader Samyaza said to them; I fear that you may perhaps be indisposed to the performance of this enterprise; And that I alone shall suffer for so grievous a crime. But they answered him and said; We all swear; And bind ourselves by mutual execrations, that we will not change our intention, but execute our projected undertaking. Then they swore all together and all bound themselves by mutual execrations.” (1 Enoch 7: 2– 7)

This ancient event has lived in the memory of mankind for millennia. It has been called Hermon (laid under a curse) since the earliest of times (See Deut 3: 8; Josh 11: 13). The area south, southeast of Mt. Hermon was known as Bashan, which means snake-dragon. The mountain and surrounding area were considered the abode of the gods, both heaven and hell simultaneously, and home of the Rephaim, King Og, Enlil / Baal/ Satan.

Satan quite likely gloated in his “perfect plan” coming together in the land of Bashan. After all, the seed of the Messiah would never be able to stomp on his head if the image-bearers of God were destroyed, and if they were recast in his image instead! Mankind would become the ultimate slave by yielding up their flesh for Satan’s team to perpetually inhabit. When one considers Satan’s diabolical plan it is easier to understand why God had to destroy all of mankind except Noah and his family (their seed was uncorrupted) with a worldwide flood.