Just a question. I find it to be strange that the Giant narrative of Genesis 6 has apparently nothing to do with the deluge. My assumption has always been that the flood was intended to kill off the Nephilim. How true is this? It definitely seems to be the belief found in the Book of Enoch.
I suspect that the Nephilim were a problem because they became something close to rival gods on earth. This was why Yahweh saw the need to have them killed. Michael Heiser has shown that the violence inflicted on the inhabitants of Canaan during the Israelite conflict seems primarily directed at the Nephilim descendents.
Take this for what it is worth. But, when I was an unbeliever. I was told just like Adam and Eve, the demons knew of the coming of Christ to be the world’s savior. So, the fallen angels attempted to thwart this by tainting the blood line that eventually will bring Jesus into the world, which grieved God in creating man, resulting in Him pouring His wrath upon man for colluding with the demons unless they repented. God destroyed all men except for 7 people, and the fallen angels who possessed the bodies of men to have relations with women, were chained in darkness until the last days (book of Jude)
Why a flood that kills everything else, especially if you’re just really mad at the Nephilim and just strike them dead like using one of God’s other methods to kill.
Israel’s thorn in their side were the inhabitants of Canaan. It was the elusive enemy that kept rearing its ugly head. It started with King Saul disobeying God and allowing King Agag to live, and even King David found it difficult to destroy the inhabitants of Canaan. The bible parallels the conflict between the Israelites and the Cananites with the believer and sin. When we allow our sins to stick around, by toying with it, being pragmatic about it just like Saul allowing Agag to live, will only result in disobedience and thus pay a heavy price. Instead, we are to do like the prophet Samuel. He did not only kill Agag. He hacked him to pieces, thus that is what the believer must do to sin. It is not enough to just kill our sins. We must hack it to pieces, mutilate it to the point of it being unrecognizable.
There is nothing to indicate that the flood was to kill off the Nephilim. There is good reason why Enoch is part of the Apocrypha.
The flood was intended to cleanse the earth of sin and give humankind a fresh start. It might have helped, but it did not solve the sin problem.
The Nephilim were a different problem, the problem of corruption because angels mated with human females. It also appears to be an attack on false gods like Zeus & Co. who raped human women.
In my opinion that apparent disconnect is a real disconnect. It tells us that the Bible is not particularly interested in wrapping everything up neatly.
Also you are aware of course that Goliath was a Nephilim, so why did that “race” die in the flood and where are they today.
P.S. Even though the Philistines were lumped with other enemies of the Jews with the Canaanites, other history indicates that they were “Sea Peoples” closely related to the Greeks and other “White folks” like most of us. This may be the link between the Philistines, Zeus, and the Nephilim.
The problem you are examining is not a theological conundrum, it is a narrative conundrum.
The stories of the Old Testament once existed without a story of a Global Flood. So the uninterrupted existence of the Nephilim, or of the descendants of Cain, caused no problem.
Then, during the exile, Jewish priests adopted a Hebrew-cast version of the Sumerian/Akkadian/Babylonian flood story. Changes were made here and there to accommodate this global version of the story… but some changes that should have been made to avoid all the plot holes were never made.
Yes, you can propose this.
But what does your Working Scenario then say about the Global Flood?
Do you affirm that the story was originally about a Regional Flood, and then modified to make it global? If it was always global, or even only later global, what does that do to the survival of the Nephilim?
In Genesis 6:3, God’s decision to remove His spirit from the presence of man seems to be linked to the Nephilim, since it is right between the Angels (“sons of God”) taking humans as wives and the Nephilim that those unions produced. The purpose of the Flood was to wipe out all of corrupted humanity, which would include the Pre-Flood Nephilim. While one could suggest that the Angels and the Nephilim may have had a serious contribution to the corruptness of mankind, it was not its overall cause.
The simple answer about the Post-Flood Nephilim is they are not the same as the Pre-Flood Nephilim. Nephilim is an Hebraized Aramaic word that simply means “giant.” Ge 6:4 simply means there were giants before the Flood and there were giants after the Flood, it does not mean that the Pre-Flood giants lived through the Flood, since that would contradict Ge 7:23 “He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man [including the Nephilim] and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens.” The post-Flood Nephilim were a different group of giants, whose origins are not discussed in scripture (though one could presume that another group of Angels came down after the Flood and took Canaanites as wives).
