There Were Giants in the Earth in Those Days
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
-- Genesis 6: 1-4 (KJV)
Modern quotations of the biblical expression, "There were giants in the earth in those days" -- now meaning roughly, "They don't make men like that anymore" -- don't begin to capture the strangeness of the original.
As chapter 6 of Genesis begins, we have just learned the entire genealogy of Noah, grandson of Methuselah, in meticulous detail. In a few verses, we will hear that Yahweh plans to wash mankind (saving Noah's family) off the face of the earth. And here, out of nowhere and seemingly to no end, we learn the entirely unrelated history of peculiar beings called "Nephilim" in Hebrew and "giants" in the King James translation.
According to Genesis, the Nephilim are the offspring by mortal women of so-called "sons of God [or gods]." But who are these immortals, what are they doing with desires for women, and how do they consummate their marriages? The Bible never illuminates such questions; as for the giant Nephilim, loosely identified as famous heroes, we never learn their names. Apparently, they drown along with the rest of mankind in the Flood. (Nephilim-like giants are, however, mentioned in Numbers 13: 32–33.)
Wherever this story came from -- it does resemble ancient myths -- and whatever it's doing in Genesis, it is rather foreboding; it may be meant to exemplify the depraved shennanigans that brought on the Flood. Whoever the "sons of God" are, they clearly have no business mingling with mortals, whether or not great "heroes" are the result.
We also hear, in the middle of all this, that God decides to limit man's life to 120 years, Noah apparently excepted. Whether this is a prediction of the Flood or merely an actuarial statement (see the previous entry, Methuselah), it is not a friendly gesture. Yahweh is running out of patience; the results are described in the next entry.
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Michael Macrone is Associate Site Producer of GraceCom and the author of nine books
on language, literature, and ideas, including the best-selling
Brush Up Your Shakespeare!
