Giants in the Bible: Nephilim, Goliath, and What Scripture Says
When we read about giants in the Bible, we need to distinguish the Nephilim in Genesis 6 from the peoples and warriors Israel encountered centuries later. Scripture does not give us a complete family tree connecting them. It does tell us why the later giants frightened Israel and how Joshua, Caleb, and David responded. I believe we can take these accounts seriously, including the unusual events before the Flood, without filling the gaps with theories about hidden races or modern bloodlines.
Genesis 6 and the Rebellion Before the Flood
Genesis 6 describes the world God was about to judge through the Flood. Moses places an unusual union alongside humanity’s spreading wickedness:
Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them,
that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose.
And the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”
There were giants 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.
Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
Moses describes the sons of God taking human women as wives while the population was multiplying. He names the Nephilim and the mighty men of renown, then goes on to describe the evil thoughts of the human heart and the violence filling the earth. The union belongs to that corrupt setting, but Moses does not present it as the sole reason for the Flood. Human beings remained responsible for their wickedness; the involvement of rebellious spiritual beings did not excuse their choices.
I understand the 120 years as a period of patience before the Flood, rather than an immediate limit on everyone’s lifespan. God said He would not continue striving with man indefinitely. He allowed time before judgment, but people could not take that delay as permission to continue on the same course. His patience did not mean He had changed His mind about their sin.
The identity of the sons of God requires a closer look. Job uses that expression for beings who appear before the LORD in a heavenly assembly:
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them.
Job 2:1 uses the phrase in the same setting, and Job 38:7 uses it in describing the earth’s creation. Those passages help explain why I identify the sons of God in Genesis 6 as fallen angels. The Sethite view instead identifies them as godly men descended from Seth who married women from Cain’s line. On that reading, the passage describes ordinary human marriages through which the faithful line was drawn into corruption.
Genesis, however, does not identify the participants as sons of Seth or daughters of Cain. It calls them sons of God and daughters of men and places their union alongside the Nephilim and men of extraordinary renown. I believe the Nephilim were giants produced when fallen angels had relations with women. We should consider the Sethite interpretation fairly, but the strangeness of the angelic reading is not by itself a reason to reject it.
Jude and Peter give further grounds for taking this rebellion seriously. Jude describes angels who abandoned their proper domain:
And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day;
Peter places the judgment of sinning angels beside the judgment that overtook the ancient world:
For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly;
Jude and Peter describe rebellious angels under God’s judgment. I read these passages as further support for the fallen-angel interpretation of Genesis 6. Neither passage explains the physical details of that union, so we should not treat a proposed mechanism as something God has revealed.
The beings involved remain creatures accountable to God. They are not divine rivals, and they should not be confused with appearances of the Son before He became human. The study on Angels examines created heavenly beings, while Christophanies in the Old Testament treats those divine appearances separately.
The Nephilim and the Limits of What We Know
The NKJV translates the rare Hebrew term Nephilim as giants in Genesis 6:4 and Numbers 13:33. A proposed connection with falling has led to explanations such as fallen ones or people who cause others to fall. Those proposed meanings cannot tell us more about their nature or ancestry than the passages themselves reveal. Moses also calls attention to mighty men of renown, but he gives no measurements of their bodies.
Genesis 6:4 says “and also afterward.” Those words do not tell us that the Nephilim survived the Flood or explain the ancestry of later giant peoples. We encounter the name again in the spies’ report in Numbers, but neither passage supplies an exact genealogy. The study on How to Study the Bible Properly explains why we need to distinguish what a passage states from the explanations we propose for it.
Giants in Canaan and the Fear at Kadesh Barnea
Long after the Flood, Israel reached the edge of Canaan with God’s promise to bring them into the land. Numbers 13 describes strong inhabitants and fortified cities, so the military danger was real. Ten spies returned speaking as though the enemy’s strength had made God’s promise unreliable:
"There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants);
and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight,
and so we were in their sight."
The grasshopper comparison reveals how thoroughly fear had shaped their judgment. These were the people God had redeemed from Egypt by blood and power. They had crossed the Red Sea and lived by His provision in the wilderness. None of that had ceased to be true because the inhabitants of Canaan were tall. Yet the ten men spoke as though the danger in front of them settled what God could do.
We also need to consider their claim about the Nephilim in the context of that report. They moved from describing powerful inhabitants and fortified cities to saying the land devoured its inhabitants and all its people were tall. They may have applied an ancient, frightening name to unusually large men, or there may have been a deeper connection with Genesis 6. Scripture does not explain one. We should not deny that they encountered formidable people, but their report does not establish every proposed genealogy.
Caleb urged Israel to go forward, and Joshua joined him in calling the people to trust the LORD:
"Only do not rebel against the LORD, nor fear the people of the land, for they are our bread;
their protection has departed from them, and the LORD is with us. Do not fear them."
Joshua and Caleb had seen the danger too, but their confidence rested on God’s presence and His promise to Israel. They did not need to pretend the enemy was small. The people rejected their counsel, and God condemned that rebellious generation to die in the wilderness. He would keep His promise while holding accountable those who refused to trust Him. Past deliverance had not made present obedience automatic.
In Deuteronomy, Moses prepared Israel to enter the land and recalled the tall peoples who had occupied the surrounding regions. He uses Rephaim as a broad designation, with some groups known by different names among their neighbors. Those who had lived in Moabite territory were called Emim; the Ammonites called a comparable people Zamzummim. The Anakim, descendants of Anak, were associated particularly with Hebron and its surrounding hill country.
These were post-Flood human peoples with lands, rulers, and histories. Scripture does not trace every clan back to the union in Genesis 6. Moses also recalled that some of these formidable peoples had already been displaced before Israel arrived:
(That was also regarded as a land of giants; giants formerly dwelt there.
But the Ammonites call them Zamzummim, a people as great and numerous and tall as the Anakim.
But the LORD destroyed them before them, and they dispossessed them and dwelt in their place,
The LORD destroyed the Zamzummim, and the Ammonites dispossessed them and settled in their land. The Zamzummim’s reputation and stature had not made them invincible. Israel therefore had no reason to assume that an unusually tall enemy was beyond God’s power.
Israel itself faced Og king of Bashan before crossing the Jordan. He was identified with the remaining Rephaim, and Deuteronomy records the size of his bed:
For only Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of the giants. Indeed his bedstead was an iron bedstead.
(Is it not in Rabbah of the people of Ammon?) Nine cubits is its length and four cubits its width, according to the standard cubit.
Using an eighteen-inch cubit, that would be about thirteen and a half feet long and six feet wide. Those are measurements of a bed, not of Og’s body, so they cannot give us his precise height. Moses describes an imposing king whose strength could not prevent the LORD from giving Israel victory over him.
Joshua, Caleb, and God’s Judgment in Canaan
The conquest concerned God’s covenant promises and His judgment on longstanding wickedness. Long before these battles, the LORD had explained to Abraham why his descendants would have to wait:
"But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete."
God patiently withheld judgment until the appointed time. His later command to Israel belonged to that particular point in history; it did not give them unrestricted permission to attack whomever they chose. The conquest should be understood in light of that command and the wickedness God was judging, rather than reduced to Israel fighting unusually large opponents.
Mercy also appears within the account. Rahab was spared when she responded in faith. The Gibeonites survived in different circumstances: they obtained a treaty through deception, and Israel’s leaders then kept the oath they had sworn in the LORD’s name. Joshua 9 records both the deception and the decision not to kill them.
During the division of the land, Caleb asked Joshua for the hill country associated with the Anakim. He was eighty-five, and forty-five years had passed since the promise recalled in Joshua 14:
"Now therefore, give me this mountain of which the LORD spoke in that day;
for you heard in that day how the Anakim were there, and that the cities were great and fortified.
It may be that the LORD will be with me, and I shall be able to drive them out as the LORD said."
Caleb named the fortified cities and the Anakim as he asked for that ground. He had told Joshua in verse 11 that he was still strong enough to fight, but he did not claim that his strength made the opposition insignificant. He knew taking possession would require a battle and trusted the LORD to help him, as He had promised. Forty-five years of waiting had not changed whom Caleb was depending on.
Joshua 11 summarizes the campaigns across the hill country, while chapters 14 and 15 give details about Caleb’s inheritance. Joshua 15:13–14 describes Caleb driving out Anak’s descendants from Hebron. The earlier summary names the places from which the Anakim were removed and the cities where a remnant remained:
And at that time Joshua came and cut off the Anakim from the mountains: from Hebron, from Debir, from Anab,
from all the mountains of Judah, and from all the mountains of Israel; Joshua utterly destroyed them with their cities.
None of the Anakim were left in the land of the children of Israel; they remained only in Gaza, in Gath, and in Ashdod.
The Anakim who had once frightened Israel could not keep the people from receiving what God had promised. Joshua and Caleb had been right to trust Him, because He had actually given His word concerning that land.
Goliath, Later Giants, and the Meaning of Their Defeat
Gath appears again as Goliath’s hometown in 1 Samuel 17. He challenged Israel as the Philistine champion, and his repeated defiance kept Saul and the army afraid. They had weapons and military experience, but no one had stepped forward to meet him:
When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.
David heard the challenge and recognized more than a threat from a powerful soldier. This man was defying the living God:
Then David spoke to the men who stood by him, saying,
"What shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel?
For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?"
Circumcision marked Israel’s covenant relationship with the LORD, and David’s words identified Goliath as a man outside that covenant who was defying the LORD. David would not accept Goliath’s contempt as though Israel belonged to a powerless God. When he spoke to Saul, he also recalled what the LORD had already done for him while he was caring for sheep:
Moreover David said, "The LORD, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear,
He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine." And Saul said to David, "Go, and the LORD be with you!"
David relied on the God who had delivered him from the lion and the bear. He set Saul’s armor aside because he had not tested it and took the sling he knew how to use. The sling and stone had no magical power; he was trusting the LORD to deliver him through ordinary weapons. After Goliath fell, David took the Philistine’s own sword and cut off his head. A lesson about believing in ourselves would leave out the God David was relying on.
Later accounts describe more imposing warriors from Gath falling to David and his servants:
These four were born to the giant in Gath, and fell by the hand of David and by the hand of his servants.
Israel encountered this intimidation more than once. Earlier victories did not prevent later fear, but a new champion did not make God less faithful. These defeats belong to the history of His covenant people and His judgment of proud defiance.
We need to be careful when applying those victories to our circumstances. A diagnosis, a financial burden, or a difficult workplace is not Goliath in the historical sense. Nor is a persistent temptation. A comparison may help when visible danger makes obedience seem impossible, but we still have to ask what God has actually promised. He did not promise every believer the particular outcomes He gave Israel. Faithful people have also suffered and died, so we should not treat hardship as proof that someone failed to trust Him.
The New Testament does call us to take spiritual opposition seriously:
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Paul directs Christians to stand firm with God’s armor, holding to truth and obeying faithfully. He does not tell us to master hidden knowledge about giants. Colossians 1:16 identifies every visible and invisible power as created through Christ and for Him. Even beings now in rebellion remain His creatures, with limited authority. They are never His equals.
The Christ who created every power is also the Savior we need, because we ourselves have sinned. His victory over sin and death took place in history, rather than serving merely as an illustration of courage. Jesus was without sin and willingly gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Wicked people tortured and crucified Him, and His saving sacrifice was completed through His shed blood and death. After His burial, He rose bodily from the grave.
The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Father and Son remained united in redeeming us. Christ provided salvation for the whole world, and God genuinely offers it to every person, although people can resist and reject Him. Those who repent and believe receive forgiveness and justification, meaning God declares them righteous.
The Holy Spirit gives new life to those who believe, lives within them, and seals them for redemption. They are eternally secure in Christ, but that security gives no permission for lawlessness. A superficial profession does not establish that someone is genuinely born again. God’s mercy gives us reason to obey Him, but our courage and success do not earn salvation or keep it secure.
My Final Thoughts
I believe the Nephilim were giants born from the union of fallen angels and women, although Scripture does not explain its physical details or give a complete ancestry for later giant peoples. Joshua, Caleb, and David faced real danger, but their enemies could not overturn God’s word. I want to learn from their trust without claiming promises God has not made. When obedience becomes costly, I need to return to what He has actually said, rather than let the size of the opposition decide what I believe.