Genesis 6:1-7
I told you that the Bible is a book that compresses time and space. There is a great secret hidden in the compressed time and space. We are faced with an amazing problem in Genesis 6. The problem is, what caused God to be angry and exterminate the billions of people living at that time? Second, from God’s perspective, why did God have to exterminate mankind at that time? Third, the descendants of Seth in Genesis 5, the brothers of Lamech, Noah’s father, and Noah’s uncles, And Noah’s brothers and their children, Noah had many nephews and nieces living with him. Why did they not enter Noah’s ark or why couldn’t they? The problem is that there must have been some obstacle to their entry.
The reason we must deal with this problem is because Jesus said in Matthew 24:37-39, “As the days of Noah were, so will the coming of the Son of Man be.” God said that before Noah entered the ark, people ate and drank, married and gave in marriage, and then died in the flood. This is because God said that the problems of Noah’s time are our problems today. Since these problems are so big and heavy, we will approach them from the easy problems on the periphery and solve them while understanding the difficult central parts. That is why we will deal with the Nephilim.
The word Nephilim means ‘fallen beings.’ Genesis 6:1-4 says that the reason God judged Noah’s time with the flood was because the sons of God took the daughters of men and gave birth to Nephilim. According to our text, these Nephilim existed before the flood and after the flood. Now, we will trace the Nephilim in the land of Canaan after the flood.
The Nephilim in the land of Canaan after the flood
Genesis 6:4 says ‘The Nephilim were on the earth in those days -and also afterward- when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.’
Our Korean Bible translated it strangely. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days; and after that when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them: the same were the mighty men which were of old, men of renown Korean Version).
English version ‘The Nephilim were on the earth in those days; and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them: the same were the mighty men which were of old, men of renown.’
The English translation was correct. The reason why this is important is that the Nephilim existed before the flood and after that, that is, after the flood. However, such an important meaning was hidden in our Korean Bible.
From now on, we will look for traces of the Nephilim existing on this earth after the flood in the Bible.
First, in Genesis 14:5, “In the fourteenth year, Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him came out and struck the Rephaim in Ashteroth Karnaim, the Zuzim in Ham, the Emim in Shaveh Kiriathaim, and the Horites in their mountain Seir, as far as El Paran, which is near the wilderness,” which is a story that took place during the time of Abraham. In this verse, “Rephaim” refers to the Rephaim. The Rephaim are also mentioned in Genesis 15:20.
In Deuteronomy 2:10, “They were called Rephaim, like the sons of Anak,” which refers to the Rephaim as the sons of Anak.
In Deuteronomy 2:20, “This is also the land of the Rephaim, for the Rephaim formerly dwelt there. The Ammonites call them Zamzummim, a people strong and numerous and as tall as the Anakim. But the Lord destroyed them from before the Ammonites, and the Ammonites took their place and dwelt in their land, 22 just as he destroyed the Horites from before the children of Esau who dwelt in Seir. They drove out the Horites and dwelt in their place to this day.” The Rephaim, the Anakim, Horites, the Zuzim and Emites are descendants of the Nephilim.
In Genesis 14:5, we see that the land of Canaan at this time was filled with the Nephilim tribes.
So what tribes were the descendants of the Anakim? In Numbers 13:32-33, “… All the people we saw there were men of great stature. And there we saw the Nephilim, the descendants of Anak. We seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and we looked the same to them. Do you know what this verse says? Here it mentions the descendants of Anak, the descendants of the Nephilim who existed before the flood.
Go back to Genesis 14:5, “… and struck the Emites in Shaveh Kiriathaim,” and these Emites are also descendants of the Nephilim. In Deuteronomy 2:10, “The Emites dwelt there in former times, strong and numerous, and as tall as the Anakim; therefore they were called Rephaim, like the Anakim; but the Moabites called them Emim,” and we can see that the Emites are also descendants of the Nephilim.
Again in Genesis 14:5, “… and struck the Horites in their mount Seir, as far as El Paran, which is near the wilderness,” and the Horites are also descendants of the Nephilim. The Horites lived in the area of Mount Seir, but the Esau tribes drove out the Horites from Mount Seir, and the Esau tribes settled there.
Joshua 11:22 Then Joshua came and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel; Joshua utterly destroyed them with their cities. None of the Anakim were left in the land of the children of Israel; only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod some remained.
Joshua 12:4, 12, ‘And Og king of Bashan, who was of the remnant of the Rephaim, who dwelt in Ashtaroth and Edrei.
Deuteronomy 3:11, ‘(The remnant of the Rephaim was Og king of Bashan; his bed was an iron bed, which is now in Rabbah of the Ammonites; it is nine cubits long and four cubits wide, according to the standard cubit of a man.’) Og king of Bashan was said to be of the remnant of the Nephilim, the Rephaim. His bed was about 4.2 meters long and 2.1 meters wide. He must have been at least 4 meters tall.
Joshua 14:12, Caleb captures Hebron, the great city of the Anakim. ‘Give me this mountain, of which the LORD spoke on that day. You heard that day that the Anakim were there, and that the cities were large and fortified. If the LORD will be with me, I will drive them out, as the LORD said.’ In verse 15, ‘Hebron was formerly called Kiriath Arba. Arba was the greatest man among the Anakim. The land was free from war.’
Joshua 15:14 says, ‘… Arba was the father of Anak. Caleb drove out from there the three sons of Anak, Sheshai, Ahiman, and Talmai, the sons of Anak.’ ‘That day’ refers to the incident in Numbers 13 and 14 when the twelve spies went to explore the land of Canaan. At that time, the Israelites were afraid of the descendants of Anak and refused to conquer the land of Canaan, but a generation died in the wilderness.
The skeletons and bones of the Nephilim are being excavated all over the world, and they range in height from 3m to 20m. Perhaps the city that the twelve spies of Israel explored in Numbers 13 and 14 was Hebron. This Hebron was formerly called Kiriath Arba, and Arba was said to be the tallest man among the Anakim, so the average height of the descendants of Anak in Hebron was probably 10-20m. Then, we can see that the Israelite spies were not exaggerating when they said that they were like grasshoppers compared to the descendants of Anak, but were true. By the way, Caleb conquered Hebron. Joshua 11:22, “Then Joshua came and cut off the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel; he utterly destroyed them with their cities. None of the Anakim were left in the land of the children of Israel; only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod some remained.”
What we should think about in this verse is how many descendants of the Nephilim were in the land of Canaan. It shows how zealous Joshua was in annihilating the Nephilim. God commanded to completely destroy the Nephilim, that is, the descendants of Anakim, even their newborn babies. In this verse, Joshua said that none of the Anakim were in the land of Israel; only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod some remained. Gath, Gaza, and Ashdod are the lands of the Philistines. These Anakim appear in 1 Samuel 17. That person is Goliath. In 1 Samuel 17:4, Goliath is said to be a man of Gath.
In 2 Samuel 21:15-22 and 1 Chronicles 20:4-8, it is said that the Anakim were all killed by David, his brothers, and David’s men. ‘The Philistines fought against Israel again, and David and his servants went down to fight against the Philistines. And David was weary, and Ishbibenob, one of the sons of the mighty, whose spear weighed three hundred shekels, and whose new sword he had, sought to kill David. But Abishai the son of Zeruiah helped David to kill the Philistine. …
In verse 18, it says that after this there was war again with the Philistines at Gob, and Sibbecai the Hushathite struck down Saph, one of the sons of the mighty, and killed him. And there was war again with the Philistines at Gob, and Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim the Bethlehemite killed Lahmi, the brother of Goliath the Gittite, whose spear staff was like a weaver’s beam. Again, there was a war at Gath, where a man of great stature had twenty-four toes, six on each hand and six on each foot; he too was the son of a man of great stature. So Jonathan the son of Shammah, David’s brother, put him to death because he defied the men of Israel. These four men, the sons of a man of great stature in Gath, died by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.’
After this account, the descendants of the Nephilim do not appear in the Bible.
The Nephilim that appear in Genesis 6 existed before and after the flood, but the Nephilim after the flood first appear in Genesis 14. At that time, there were a great number of these Nephilim tribes. During the time of Abraham in Genesis 14, the Palestine region was filled with these Nephilim tribes. God hated these Nephilim tribes so much that He wanted to completely exterminate them from this land. The descendants of Anak were killed by God by the Ammonites, the Horites were destroyed by the Esau tribe, and later all the descendants of Anak who remained in Canaan were completely exterminated by the Israelites.
In Genesis 15, God made Abraham’s descendants go down to Egypt and live as slaves for 400 years before returning, which seems to have been to keep Abraham’s descendants away from the influence of these Nephilim. In Genesis 15:16, “Your descendants will return here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites has not yet reached its fullness,” the sin of the Amorites is related to the Nephilim. God has fallen into the sin of the Canaanites, the Amorites, in Genesis 6.
In Numbers 13:33, God caused all 600,000 of the first generation of Israel to die in the wilderness because they refused to go against the Anakim. God tried to use the Israelites as a tool to completely destroy the sins of the Amorites, the Nephilim, in Genesis 15:16, but they refused. Joshua led the second generation into Canaan and completely destroyed the Anakites. In addition, Caleb completely destroyed the Arbaites, the tallest and strongest of the Anakites.
As the first generation, the two people who were able to enter the land of Canaan, Joshua and Caleb, could enter the land of Canaan because they followed God’s will and completely destroyed the descendants of Anak. It can also be said that God loved David because David destroyed the descendants of Anak.
Finally, in Joshua 11:22, it says that Joshua destroyed the Anakim from all the hill country of Israel, and there were no Anakim in the land of the children of Israel. How relieved must God have been?
In Joshua 11:22, it says, “Then Joshua came and destroyed the Anakim from the hill country, from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab, from all the hill country of Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel; he utterly destroyed their cities. None of the Anakim were left in the land of the children of Israel; only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod some remained.”
However, it says that only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod, in the land of the Philistines, some remained. After 500 years since the time of Joshua, a small number of remaining Nephilim appear in 1 Samuel 17. Even these are destroyed by David.
However, as I was tracing the Nephilim after the flood in the Bible, I realized that there were many passages in parentheses about the Nephilim. This means that some manuscripts are missing them. It may be an attempt to hide the facts about the Nephilim. For example, Deuteronomy 2:10-12, 2:20-23, 3:11, 13, etc.
But why were there so many Nephilim in this land of Canaan?
To trace this, we go back to Genesis 9:20-27.
‘Noah began to be an husbandman and planted a vineyard. When he drank some of the wine, he became drunk and uncovered himself within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside. Then Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it on their shoulders and walked backward and covered their father’s nakedness. But their faces were turned away and they did not see their father’s nakedness. When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his younger son had done to him, he said, “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers!” And he said, “Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem! May Canaan be his servant; and God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem; and may Canaan be his (Japheth’s) servant.”’ The name Canaan appears four times in these verses. Canaan was cursed and would be the servant of servants of his brothers, and Canaan was cursed to be the servant of Shem and also the servant of Japheth.
However, there are many strange parts in these verses. Because Ham saw his father naked while drunk and told his brothers, how could Noah curse Canaan, the son of Ham, the first ancestor of mankind, like this? Therefore, we realize that it was not just Ham and Canaan who saw their father’s naked body. There seems to be a big secret in this word, ‘saw his father’s naked body.’ And the one who saw his father’s naked body was Ham, so why did Noah curse Ham’s son Canaan like that?
First, let’s look at verse 24. After Noah woke up from his drunkenness, he said, “I knew what my younger son had done to me.” What Noah is saying is that he knew what Ham had done to his own body. This refers to sexual harassment or homosexuality on Noah’s body. Let’s look at Leviticus 18:6,7. [None of you shall come near to his close relative to uncover his nakedness. I am the Lord. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father or your mother; she is your mother; you shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother.] This statement includes both incest and homosexuality. Therefore, through Noah’s testimony and the words of Leviticus, we can naturally understand what it means in Genesis 7:22 that Ham and his son Canaan saw their father Noah’s nakedness.
In this incident, it seems that Canaan did something worse than his father Ham. He probably took off his grandfather’s clothes while he was sleeping soundly while drunk and raped him. Do drunk people take off their clothes just because they are drunk? Isn’t that strange? If so, it seems that Canaan took off Noah’s clothes. And after committing a bad deed (homosexuality) on his grandfather’s body and leaving, Ham, who did not know anything, told Shem and Japheth about his father’s drunkenness and nakedness. Ham’s mistake was that he should have covered his father’s nakedness and not told anyone, but he did not cover it and told his brothers, so he committed the sin of not covering up another’s fault and criticizing them.
What we should think about here is that people think that Noah cursed Ham, but there is not a single word about Ham. If he had cursed Ham, all of Ham’s descendants would have been under that curse. He only cursed Ham’s son Canaan. And in Genesis 9:21, after it says, “They drank some wine and became drunk, and they were uncovered in their tents,” it says in verse 22, “Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness,” so the Bible mentions Canaan’s name before his father Ham. In Genesis 9:18, it says, “The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth; Ham was the father of Canaan,” and it continues to mention Canaan’s name in Genesis 9. It seems like Canaan will do something big.
Because of this curse of Noah, Canaan was cursed, and his descendants became sexually immoral and depraved. Satan made the sons of God take the daughters of men and have children through the Canaanites in order to make the world like it was before the flood. These are the Nephilim after the flood. God was waiting for the time to judge them (Genesis 15). That time was the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites, the descendants of Abraham, 400 years after the Exodus. The descendants of Canaan are described in Genesis 10:15 as, “Canaan begat Sidon his firstborn, and Heth, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites, and the Girgashites, and the Hivites, and the Arkites, and the Sinites, and the Arvadites, and the Zemarites, and the Hamathites. After this, the families of the children of Canaan were scattered. The territory of Canaan was from Sidon to Gerar as far as Gaza, and as far as Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha.”
In this passage, Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim are said to be descendants of Canaan, but in Genesis 19, they are cities that were destroyed due to sexual corruption, sexual immorality, and especially homosexuality. The sin of Canaanite homosexuality spread to their descendants.
After 400 years, the Israelites marched into Canaan. In Genesis 15:16, it says, “In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites has not yet reached its fullness.” God reveals a list of the tribes that the Israelites must destroy in the land of Canaan.
In Exodus 23:23, it says, “My angel will go before you and bring you into the land of Canaan, among the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; and I will cut them off.” The list of these tribes matches the genealogy of the descendants of Canaan in Genesis 10:15: ‘Canaan begot Sidon his firstborn, and Heth, and the Jebusite, and the Amorite, and the Girgashite, and the Hivite, and the Arkite, and the Sinite, and the Arvadite, and the Zemarite, and the Hamathite. After that, the tribes of the descendants of Canaan were scattered. The border of Canaan was from Sidon to Gerar as far as Gaza, and as far as Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, as far as Lasha.’
- Why are there no Nephilim today?
Satan would want to continue to produce Nephilim. So he would want to lead the world to sexual immorality and sexual depravity. However, Satan could no longer use this method because of climate change. Before the flood, the climate was good and there was plenty of food, so it was easy to provide food for such a large number of people. Public utilities existed in this era. How much did those 21-meter-tall animals eat? The fact that they were able to live in such large numbers means that the climate was good, the environment was good, and there was plenty of food. At that time, there was so much food that the Nephilim could grow and multiply.
And even though it was a thousand years from the time of Noah to the generation of Abraham, the human lifespan was only about 400 to 200 years, so the climate, environment, and food were relatively abundant. Therefore, even in Abraham’s generation, there were a huge number of Nephilim in the land of Canaan. Even during the conquest of Canaan by Israel, 400 years after Abraham, the land of Canaan was so fertile that the spies picked a bunch of grapes from the land and carried them back with two people. That’s why the Nephilim, the descendants of Anak, were abundant in the land of Canaan during that generation.
However, after the flood, the climate changed rapidly and the average lifespan of people gradually decreased. Food supply was also not easy. As the population increased on the land, it would not have been easy to provide food for the giants. And although their bodies were 3-4 meters tall and could overwhelm people, in reality, in war, they were at a disadvantage because their bodies were large and slow to move. Please do not miss the fact that they were always defeated by the enemy. The Horites were conquered by the Esau tribe, the Emites by the Ammonites, and the descendants of Anakim and the Amorites by the Israelites. The Goliath brothers among the Philistines in Canaan were killed by David and his confidants.
Even in Genesis 14, we only see them being defeated by their enemies. And even during Abraham’s time, there were many giants, but by the time of David, we could see a few among the Philistines. After Joshua conquered Canaan, it is said that there were no giants left in the land of Israel. Therefore, Satan could no longer use the method of producing giants.
And the more important reason is that in Jude 6:7 and 2 Peter 2:4-7, it is said that the fallen angels who took the daughters of men in the time of Noah and gave birth to Nephilim were confined in hell and bound until the judgment. One might think that the Nephilim have disappeared in this generation because the fallen angels who took the daughters of men and went after other flesh were locked up in hell.
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