The “Sons of God” of Genesis Six

[The following article is an edited transcription of our Jan/Feb 1993 
audio teaching tape by John W. Schoenheit, The “Sons of God” of Genesis 
Six.]

Greetings and God bless you. My name is John Schoenheit, and I welcome 
you to this teaching from Christian Educational Services. Please open 
your Bibles to Genesis chapter six. The title of this teaching is The 
“Sons of God” of Genesis Six. The Devil comes to steal, to kill and to 
destroy, as we are told in John 10:10 by Jesus Christ. In fact, Christ 
said the only reason the Devil comes is to steal, kill, and destroy. And 
one of the things the Devil has done a good job of stealing is people’s 
relationship with God.

There are a large number of people that are very confused about the 
goodness of God, the graciousness of God, and the kindness of God 
because there are scriptures in the Bible that confuse them. What I want 
to do in this teaching is to show once again how, when the Bible is 
properly understood, we realize how good, how loving, how kind God 
really is.

Two things are used in the Bible and in biblical history to show that we 
can’t really rely on God’s goodness. One is the Flood of Noah. Because 
the picture most people have is that God created people (actually He 
created Adam and then formed Eve) and then they populated the earth. 
After that, things got so bad that finally He just looked down on 
mankind and said “You know, I’m really upset with how wicked all the 
people are, so I’m just going to kill them all off and start over.”

Is that all there is to it? Is it simply that God got so upset with 
mankind in their evilness that He’s going to kill them all off and start 
over?

Or what about when the Israelites went into Canaan?

Now the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, and Moses led them out of 
Egypt, and they wandered around the desert for forty years. Moses then 
told the Israelites to go into the Promised Land, into Canaan. The 
command to the Israelites was that they could make treaties with the 
people who lived around the land, but with the people in the land, they 
couldn’t leave alive anything that breathed. They were to kill off the 
fathers, the sons, the mothers, the babies, the infants – they were to 
kill them all off. “Don’t leave alive anything that breathes” was the 
command of God.

And there’s something inside you that makes you shudder when you think 
about that. “What’s wrong with raising the babies? God, what is it about 
the people of the other lands - we can make treaties with them – but 
with the Canaanites we even have to kill off the infants?” And because 
of not understanding why God had to say these things, then God becomes 
vilified, and people draw away from God, because they don’t understand 
Him and they don’t understand His purposes and His actions.

What I want to do in this teaching is to show some of the reasons why 
God has had to do what He’s done with mankind in the Flood and when the 
Israelites moved into Canaan.

So let’s look at Genesis chapter six, and we’re going to deal with this 
on a verse by verse basis. Now, I’m using the New International Version 
of the Bible, but if you are using a version like the King James Version 
that translates the word Nephilim of Genesis 6:4 as Giants, you’ll see 
by the end of this teaching why it has become very hard to ferret this 
truth out of Scripture. Because this is a brand new thing, there was no 
word for what these men were, and therefore God called them Nephilim – 
from Nephal in the Hebrew which means ‘fall’ and the im is simply the 
plural – so it’s the ones who have fallen – that’s simply the name He 
gives to these people.

    Genesis 6:1-8
    (1) When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters 
were born to them,
    (2) The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, 
and they married any of them they chose.
    (3) Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with man 
forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
    (4) 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.
    (5) The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, 
and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil 
all the time.
    (6) The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his 
heart was filled with pain.
    (7) So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, 
from the face of the earth - men and animals, and creatures that move 
along the ground, and birds of the air - for I am grieved that I have 
made them.”
    (8) But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

What then is Genesis six saying?

Well, in verse 2 it’s saying the sons of God saw the daughters of men – 
now the phrase the ‘sons of God’ is used in the Bible of created beings. 
And here it would be God’s created spirits, who we know are either 
angels, or now demons spirits (devil spirits). And here these created 
beings – the sons of God – in the Hebrew this is the bene Elohim – saw 
the daughters of men were beautiful and married any of them they chose. 
And obviously when spirits would come into concretion and walk around 
the earth, mankind did not have power to resist them, and that’s why the 
text can say that they took “any of them they chose.”

I think you know that godly men and women have protected their daughters 
for quite some time. They just don’t hand their daughter over to any old 
unbelieving person. But these spirit beings were irresistible and that’s 
why they married any they chose. Now obviously there are a number of 
Christians that do not believe that Genesis 6:1-3 is talking about 
angels or spirit beings coming into concretion and marrying the women on 
the face of the earth and producing children by them. And I want to 
examine why someone would not believe that.

There are three reasons really why people don’t believe that.

The first is there are a number of people who don’t believe in the Devil 
or devil spirits, and so they would dismiss this by saying that it 
couldn’t happen, and I would simply say that is not what the Bible says. 
The Bible is very clear that there is a Devil that heads up a spirit 
kingdom of fallen angels. [For further study read Does the Devil Truly 
Exist?]

Secondly, there are those who say “Well, everything has to reproduce 
after its own kind. There’s no way that spirit beings can make human 
beings reproduce and form a race that would be an aberrant race.” That 
seems to be a valid objection up front, although it’s not, but we’ll 
take a look at that in just a second.

Secondly, there are those who say “Well, everything has to reproduce 
after its own kind. There’s no way that spirit beings can make human 
beings reproduce and form a race that would be an aberrant race.” That 
seems to be a valid objection up front, although it’s not, but we’ll 
take a look at that in just a second.

The third reason that people say that this is not ‘sons of God created 
beings’ marrying women is that they simply say that the vocabulary 
doesn’t demand that. But I think the vocabulary does demand it, and the 
greater context demands it (as we will see).

Let’s start with what I think is the most valid objection, which is 
simply that angels cannot cohabit with men because things reproduce 
after their own kind. To start on that, let’s first establish that the 
‘sons of God’ are created spirit beings. The word ‘son of God’ in the 
Hebrew is bene Elohim, which is simply the sons of God, bene: son of 
(you might remember the movie Ben Hur. The man in the movie was Judah 
ben Hur, Judah the son of Hur) and bene Elohim is a son of God. If you 
check the Old Testament in the Bible, when someone was a ‘son of God,’ a 
bene Elohim, they were in some way created or formed by God. Adam, the 
first man ever, who had no mother and father, is called in Luke 3:38, in 
the genealogy, a ‘son of God.’ Notice that none of the other men in the 
genealogies of the Old Testament were called ‘sons of God.’

The angels here in Genesis chapter six are called ‘sons of God.’ And 
then, in the New Testament, Christians, because of the new birth, the 
new creation inside us, we are called ‘sons of God.’ Now there are times 
where God will say he has ‘adopted’ children, but He does not use the 
phrase bene Elohim for that. Go to Job chapter one, because what I want 
to do now is look at the usage of bene Elohim and see are we dealing 
with people or spirits. Because if we’re dealing with spirits, then we
need to know that. And I think it will be very clear that we are.

    Job 1:6-7
    (6) One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, 
and Satan also came with them.
    (7) The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?”

And then of course, Satan goes back and smites Job. And we know that 
Satan was a spirit being, here in verse six: one day the angels – 
Hebrew: the bene Elohim. And the King James Version and others will read 
‘One day the sons of God…’ So here we have the exact same phraseology as 
we have in Genesis 6:2. The bene Elohim – they are spirit beings.

    Job 2:1
    On another day the angels came to present themselves before the 
LORD, and Satan also came with them to present himself before him.


[For further study and clarification on this section of Scripture we 
recommend our audio teaching tape/CD, Job: The Righteous Sufferer.]

The bene Elohim – translated as ‘angels’ in the NIV, translated as ‘Sons 
of God’ which is the literal in the King James. So again here we see 
bene Elohim – we’re talking about spirit beings.

I’m not going to hit every single usage. E.W. Bullinger does a very good 
piece of work on what I’m teaching here in the Companion Bible, 
Appendices 23 and 25. It’s not completely complete because there are a 
few things he leaves out. However, with just a quick study with a Hebrew 
Concordance and a couple of Hebrew Lexicons you can get basically the 
entire picture.

Now in Job chapter thirty-eight, God is kind of getting on Job’s case a 
little bit, because Job has said things that suggest he knows more than 
he actually knows, and so God is trying to put the world in perspective 
for Job, if you will.

    Job 38:4-7
    (4) Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if 
you understand.
    (5) Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a 
measuring line across it?
    (6) On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone—
    (7) while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted 
for joy?

And all the angels – bene Elohim – shouted for joy. God is saying here 
that the angels that He had created, these created beings were really 
excited, they were singing and shouting while He was laying the 
foundation of the earth. And here in verse seven, we clearly see that 
there weren’t any people at the time of verse seven. So He says while 
the morning stars, these angels, are singing, and the bene Elohim, these 
created beings, are shouting for joy.

By the way, ‘morning star’ is again one of the idioms for angels, and 
you can see that all the way through to the book of Revelation there are 
usages of the word ‘star’ which means angels or devil spirit beings.

Let’s go to Daniel chapter three. This is the last one of these I need 
to cover. But again, for a complete list – and there’s only like two 
more anyway – you can go to a Hebrew or Young’s Concordance, and E.W. 
Bullinger’s Companion Bible, Appendix 23 and 25.

Do you remember the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the 
burning fiery furnace? And three men were tied up and thrown in the 
fire. And when Nebuchadnezzar looked in the furnace, he saw four men and 
they were loose. And of course, this startled him and in verse 
twenty-five, he says to his advisors:

    Daniel 3:25
    He said, “Look! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound 
and unharmed, and the fourth looks like a son of the gods.”

Looks like a bene Elohim, translated ‘the Son of God’ in the King James, 
which is not right at all. I mean it’s not like Nebuchadnezzar looked in 
there and said “Look, I see Jesus. I recognize the hair and robe!” That 
isn’t it at all! What he saw in there was this awesome being, and he 
said, “The form of the fourth looks like a bene Elohim – it’s a created 
being of God.”

And of course later on in verse 28 he confirms this.

    Daniel 3:28
    Then Nebuchadnezzar said, “Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach 
and Abednego, who has sent his angel and rescued his servants...”

So, there’s no question about the fact that the words bene Elohim are 
used of God’s created beings.

But can these created beings co-habit with man, or do something with 
women such that you can produce a race that in the Bible God has called 
the Nephilim, the Fallen Ones? What about things reproducing after their 
own kind? We have a seminar called The Creation/Evolution Controversy. 
It’s a four-tape six-hour series on Creation versus Evolution, and the 
subject of things reproducing after their own kind is something that’s 
covered in great detail. In Genesis chapter one, the phrase ‘after it’s 
kind’ appears ten times. But I want to take a look at how it’s placed in 
the chapter.

What exactly is the impact of the wording?

    Genesis 1:11-12
    (11) Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing 
plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according 
to their various kinds.” And it was so.
    (12) The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to 
their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their 
kinds. And God saw that it was good.

    Genesis 1:21
    So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and 
moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and 
every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

    Genesis 1:24-25
    (24) And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according 
to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and 
wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so.
    (25) God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the 
livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move 
along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

So here we see that when God made animals and plants, it’s very clear He 
made them to naturally reproduce after their kind. And does that happen? 
Absolutely. You take a farm. You put on it sheep, goats, cows, pigs, 
horses, ducks, whatever else you want to add for farm animals or wild 
animals. Go away for two thousand years and come back, and you don’t 
have one ‘glump’ animal. You still have sheep, goats, cows, pigs, 
horses, ducks, and the giraffes in the back pasture. Why? Because when 
left alone in nature, things reproduce after their own kind.

Is there anything in Genesis chapter one that says that you can’t mess 
things up? That you can’t force things to reproduce in such a way that 
they will not reproduce after their own kind? No, there’s no forbidding 
that. There’s nothing in Genesis chapter one that forbids a tampering 
with the way things reproduce.

And in fact we see this in the Mosaic Law. Also, today we know that 
there are all sorts of genetic engineering going on. Mankind has learned 
how to genetically engineer things like tomatoes. And by the way, they 
reproduce.

    Leviticus 19:19
    “Keep my decrees.” Do not mate different kinds of animals…

Why is God saying this? If everything reproduces after its own kind then 
we can’t mate different kinds of animals. No. Things when left alone in 
a natural environment in the woods, in the pasture, in the field, will 
reproduce after their own kind. That is not to say that mankind, or some 
spirit being can’t get in and mess it up. So here in Leviticus 19:19 God 
has to forbid this. So He says, “Do not mate different kinds of 
animals.” Then He goes on:

    Leviticus 19:19
    ...Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed…

You can see this again in Deuteronomy 22:9. So things do reproduce after 
their own kind when left alone, but that is not to say that things can’t 
be made to not reproduce after their own kind if they are tampered with 
(genetically engineered).

And I want to show you the greatest tampering in Scripture.

    Genesis 3:17 and 18
    (17) To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate 
from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' 
Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat 
of it all the days of your life.”
    (18) It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat 
the plants of the field.

God put man in an environment where the animals ate plants – even the 
lions ate plants, and of course the prophecy in Isaiah is that 
thankfully once God straightens all this mess out the lions will once 
again eat straw like the ox. [For further study see our book, The 
Christian’s Hope: The Anchor of the Soul – What the Bible really says 
about Death, Judgment, Rewards, Heaven, and the Future Life on a 
Restored Earth.]

God loves us so much that He puts us in this great environment. The 
Devil hates us so much that he messes up the entire world! Thorns, 
thistles, mosquitoes, poison ivy, changes in the nature of animals so 
that not only do they eat meat, they can’t even live on plants. ‘It will 
produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the 
field.’ How did the plants and animals that God created to reproduce 
after their own kind in Genesis chapter one get to the point that they 
have thorns and thistles and poison, and they bite and devour each 
other? Well, that came as sin, the curse of a fallen world, and the 
Devil got in and messed with the genetics of those plants and animals.

When you look at the human body, we start out as an egg and a sperm, and 
yet in the encoding of the DNA we get fingernails, teeth, bone, flesh 
and all the different parts of what make up the body (all different 
substances – the hardness of the tooth or the bone versus the softness 
of the flesh). All of this is “fed” by the foods we eat.

One of the things about messing with the genetics is that if you mess 
with the genetics of the parents the children will be like the parents. 
So when God made the world to reproduce after its own kind, and He made 
a bush without thorns then it will produce little bushes without thorns. 
Now again, sin, the curse of a fallen world, and the Devil have changed 
the genetics and so now you have a bush that simply by changing that 
genetic coding, it now uses some of the material it’s absorbing through 
it’s roots, but instead of becoming a wonderful bush with flowers and 
fruit, it becomes a bush with flowers and bad fruit and big thorns! And 
that’s simply genetic tampering. And this happened all over the world. 
There’s no place on earth that doesn’t have thorns and thistles and 
plants like poison ivy, harmful weeds, and annoying insects like 
mosquitoes.

Now messing around with the genetics worked really well for plants and 
animals. And yet there was a prophecy of a coming Messiah – a seed of 
the woman – that would destroy the dominion of the Devil (Gen. 3:15). 
And I can just see the Devil thinking about it. ‘Boy, that messing up 
the genetics thing really worked on the plants and animals’ (and by the 
way as far as our fleshly nature we are just like an animal). The Devil 
says ‘You know that would work for mankind too.’ And it did.

We are not sure how this worked with spirits and women in Genesis 
chapter six, because the Bible is not a technical journal on genetic 
coding, or exactly how the Devil and devil spirits messed with the 
genetics of the women to produce this race of Nephilim. God was simply 
speaking in terms that the people would understand – that the spirits 
came into concretion, that they took the women of the time and they 
produced a race called the Nephilim (from the Hebrew word to fall).

    Genesis 6:4
    The Nephilim were on the earth in those days - and also afterward…

By the way ‘those days’ were the days right before the Flood, and 
‘afterward’ were the days right after the Flood. So these Nephilim were 
on the earth and they were, if you want to call it that, genetically 
engineered people. And they’ve been genetically engineered to be really 
mean, really bad, really big (like some pit bull dogs are). In fact, 
they are bad enough and big enough that the result of their being on the 
earth was verse five.

    Genesis 6:5
    The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and 
that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all 
the time.

That’s bad! Every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil 
all the time. Now the Flood is only 1,650 years after Adam. Now since 
the Flood we’ve had 4,000 plus years of human history, and is every 
thought of every person only evil all the time? No! I don’t know the way 
it is in your state or country, but in mine there are a lot of people 
that will just pull over and help you if you’re stuck in your car on the 
side of the road. We’re not in a world where every inclination, every 
purpose, every thought of everybody’s heart is only evil all the time.

How in just a very short amount of time (historically speaking) was the 
Devil able to get the world to where every inclination of the thought of 
man’s heart was only evil all the time? He did it by genetically 
engineering a race, that had never existed before, that somehow or other 
was genetically engineered the same way a thorn bush was. A thorn bush 
is not a good bush. There may be some value to it but compared to the 
bushes that God created, a thorn bush is not a very good bush, and in 
the same way these people that the Devil genetically engineered were not 
good people. And they had gotten to the point where the earth itself was 
in danger of being destroyed by this race, and the problem was carried 
in the genes, and passed down from one generation to the next. It wasn’t 
a matter of environment, it wasn’t a matter of training, it wasn’t a 
matter that there weren’t enough people teaching morals on the face of 
the earth. It was genetically engineered evilness, if you will. By the 
way, this race had never existed before. Obviously, God had made Adam 
and Eve, and they had made people. So this race is simply called by God 
in verse four the Nephilim – the ones who had fallen – and it showed you 
in the verses earlier that this race was the product of fallen angels 
(devils) and men. By the way, in reading verses four and five there’s an 
interesting truth.

    Genesis 6:4
    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.

What’s the truth? Well, the truth is spirit beings are cohabiting with 
women and producing this race, this fallen race, these Nephilim. Well, 
is there anything like that that’s mirrored in history? Oh absolutely! 
What about the stories in the various mythologies about the gods coming 
down and having children by mortal women? What about Hercules, who was 
the son of Zeus and a mortal woman? This truth of Genesis six – these 
spirits coming down and having intercourse with women, and then 
producing these very powerful mean men who dominated the earth – this 
truth is preserved in what we know as ancient mythology, and of course, 
that’s reflected here in Genesis where it says: ‘They were the heroes of 
old, men of renown.’

And then of course, verse five goes on to show how wicked they were. By 
the way, if you understand now that these Nephilim were a genetically 
engineered race, they were the product of the spirit beings messing 
around with the genetics of the women, if you understand that you can’t 
teach them to do good, you understand that you can’t train them to do 
good, you can’t put them in an environment where they will behave in a 
nice manner, now you can understand why God has to have the Flood — 
because He wants the Messiah to come (He was protecting the 
Christ-line). He wants to be able to someday raise all men from the 
dead, so that we don’t die and just stay dead forever. We’re God’s 
family. He wants the Messiah to come and the Messiah is not going to 
come if the entire world is taken over by these people who will not 
believe, and who will destroy all those who will, including the ancestry 
of the Messiah. Furthermore, remember verse four said that the Nephilim 
were on the earth in those days and after the Flood. And after the Flood 
they hadn’t had a lot of time to spread, they were in the land of 
Canaan, because they knew that was the land that God was giving to the 
believers, and they wanted to occupy that land first. And that explains 
why God had to say to the Israelites ‘Now look, the people in the lands 
around Canaan, you can make treaties with them, that’s no problem. But 
the people in Canaan, you have to kill them off, and don’t leave alive 
anything that breathes.’

Why does God have to be so harsh about that, so strict about that? 
Because the problem is genetic. You can’t raise one of these babies – 
kill off the mother and father Nephilim and then simply raise one of 
these babies in a ‘good home’ and they’ll turn out okay. They are 
carrying a genetic aberration and it needs to be cleansed off the face 
of the earth if mankind is going to continue to survive. This then 
explains why God has to be so harsh. So is God the big Villain? Kill off 
all the babies, kill off all the people I don’t like? No, He is love (1 
John 4:8 and 16). He’s the One who is so concerned about you, and so 
concerned about me, that He’s willing to counteract the move of the 
Devil and get people like this, that will never believe and never be 
nice anyway, out of our lives so that we’re not burdened with them and 
so that the Messiah can come to redeem mankind.

Now, this truth of Genesis chapter six is preserved in the New 
Testament. In fact, it’s very neatly described in the New Testament, so 
let’s go the book of Jude and see what God says about this.

    Jude 1:6 and 7
    (6) And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but 
abandoned their own home - these he has kept in darkness, bound with 
everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day.
    (7) In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns 
gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an 
example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire.

Now read these verses closely – let’s take a look. “The angels who did 
not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home – 
these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for 
judgment.” Can this be referring then to all the spirits who rebelled 
against God with Lucifer’s rebellion? No, it cannot. Why? Because - and 
certainly you know this – not every spirit is bound in an everlasting 
chain in darkness awaiting Judgment. If they were, they wouldn’t be out 
and about bothering us (Eph. 6:10-12)! This has to be talking about a 
special segment of spirits who did something that was so heinous that 
God said ‘Ok, you can’t be free to roam. I’m sticking you in the special 
prison.’

Now what did these spirits do to deserve this ‘special treatment’ so 
that they were yanked off the earth, not allowed to torment people 
anymore and crammed into this darkness, these everlasting chains for 
Judgment. What did they do? Well, verse six says they didn’t keep their 
positions of authority, they abandoned their own home. Now this is very 
telling, because this word is oiketerion - you might remember oike 
meaning house– they abandoned their oiketerion - their own home or their 
habitation. Well, what was their habitation? It was their spiritual 
body. By the way, there’s only one other usage of this word in the New 
Testament.

    2 Corinthians 5:1 and 2
    (1) Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we 
have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human 
hands.
    (2) Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly 
dwelling,

The phrase our ‘heavenly dwelling’ is oiketerion. I’m sure I speak for 
lots of people when I say there are many of us who are groaning and 
longing to be in our spiritual body. We want the Lord Jesus Christ to 
come back. We are looking forward to the Rapture. We’re looking forward 
to being in a perfect new body. And that perfect new spiritual body is 
called here the oiketerion. That’s our new spiritual body – our 
oiketerion. In Jude 6 we see that what these spirits had done was to 
abandoned their oiketerion, which was a spiritual body. And what did 
they do when they abandoned it? Well, what they did is compared with 
what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah, because it says:

    Jude 1:7
    In a similar way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave 
themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion…

They went after ‘strange flesh’ (KJV) or another (Heteros in the Greek). 
They went after another type of flesh. So here Jude six and seven is 
very clear. There were some spirits who participated in some special 
sin, which is defined as ‘they left their spiritual body and they went 
after a heteros, a different kind of flesh.’ The NIV here is not as 
clear, where it says ‘sexual immorality.’ If you want to check this 
please grab a Greek Interlinear and you’ll see that what they did was 
they went after ‘another flesh.’ This is clear as a bell. There were a 
certain number of the devil spirits within the spirit realm that had 
fallen. They left their oiketerion – their spiritual bodies. They went 
after another flesh, (likewise people in Sodom and Gomorrah had gone 
after another flesh), and now they are in chains, in prison, awaiting 
Judgment because of their sin. There’s more detail on this in 2 Peter.

    2 Peter 2:4
    For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to 
hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment;

Now this word ‘hell’ is a very strange word. It’s a unique occurrence in 
the Bible. The Greek word is Tartarus. It’s a unique word, only used one 
time in the New Testament, and you’ve got to go into Greek mythology to 
find out what Tartarus is. Now remember the devil spirits had rebelled 
against God in the beginning, with Lucifer, when the big rebellion 
against God had occurred, and God cast a certain number down to the 
earth, and now a much smaller group had sinned in a special way. They 
had sinned by leaving their oiketerion – their spiritual body – and 
going after strange flesh, going after these women, and they took any of 
them they chose. And for this particular sin, we learn in Jude, that 
they were put in chains and they are now awaiting Judgment.

Here in 2 Peter 2:4 it says God didn’t spare these angels when they 
sinned, but sent them to Tartarus. Well, in our standard way of 
thinking, there’s no place that you can put a devil spirit he can’t get 
out of. I mean, you can’t exactly build a house and then he somehow 
can’t get out. In Greek mythology, Tartarus was a prison for the gods – 
and not a very nice place to be either. And here in 2 Peter that word 
that was already used by the Greeks in their mythology for a prison for 
the gods is pulled into the New Testament and used in Peter so that the 
people who read it will understand these were spirit beings, they were 
gods, they sinned in some special way, and are they’re in Tartarus (a 
prison for the gods), and they’re being held there for Judgment. Which 
is exactly what Jude said – they’re awaiting Judgment.

And now, in 1 Peter, we learn more.

    1 Peter 3:18-20
    (18) For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the 
unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but 
made alive by the Spirit,
    (19) through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison
    (20) who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of 
Noah while the ark was being built…

These verses contain a lot of information. Jesus Christ died (verse 
eighteen), and remember he was dead for three days and three nights. But 
then he was made alive by the spirit, given a new spiritual body, and in 
that he preached to the spirits in prison, which we learned: they are in 
Tartarus (2 Peter); they’re in chains of darkness (in Jude) awaiting 
Judgment. Now what did these spirits do that they deserved this 
Judgment? Well, we learned from 2 Peter and from Jude that they sinned. 
We learned from Jude that they sinned by leaving their spiritual body 
and went after another flesh. Here it says in verse twenty that they 
disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while 
the ark was being built. Did these spirits sin by causing the Flood? No.

These spirits sinned by doing something before the Flood that God then 
had to wait for the Ark to be finished so He could deal with them.

Genesis six is very clear that what these spirits did was they left 
their oiketerion, they took wives of any woman they chose, they 
genetically engineered a race that the Bible calls the Nephilim – there 
is no biblical name for half-god and half-people genetically engineered 
weirdos, so God calls them Nephilim, the ones who have fallen. Now these 
spirits genetically engineered this race, and God then had to wait while 
Noah built the Ark, because obviously He can’t flood the whole world and 
wipe out Noah. Notice verse nineteen that in his new spiritual body 
Jesus Christ went and preached to spirits in prison.

Now realistically, here’s Jesus Christ, he’s been crucified, he’s been 
dead three days and three nights, he’s raised from the dead, and now 
he’s going to go and preach to the spirits who are in Tartarus (prison). 
Is he going to preach to them, and talk about himself and the 
Resurrection and the love of God? No. What we’re missing here is the 
word ‘preached’ is not a teaching ministry. Jesus Christ did not go to 
teach these spirits anything. The word ‘preached’ here is a specific 
Greek word kerusso.

Now I’m sure you’ve all seen a Robin Hood movie, or any of those movies 
that have the Kings marching out. There’s a whole bunch of trumpeters 
holding these long trumpets, three or four feet long, and a lot of times 
they might have a flag hanging down from it, and they announce the 
coming of the King. They go marching out before the King arrives and 
they blow this trumpet and everybody looks up and says ‘Something big is 
about to happen or something big has just happened.’ And the trumpet 
that heralded these big important events in the Roman world was called a 
Keruss. And here, what Christ did was, he went and ‘kerusso-ed’ – he 
trumpet-blasted if you will - to announce his Resurrection to these 
spirits because they had given up their freedom so that he wouldn’t 
come! These spirits had left their oiketerion, had genetically messed 
with people to produce a race that was designed to destroy the world, so 
that the Messiah would never be able to come in the first place. And 
now, he’s come! And the fact that they have failed miserably in their 
mission is now evidently clear. So Jesus Christ goes down to Tartarus, 
and he goes “Ta-da! It’s me! I am the resurrected one. I am the Messiah 
you gave up your freedom to prevent from coming. Too bad – I’m here!”

That’s exactly what he did! He preached – he heralded to the spirits in 
prison. And that’s the meaning of 1 Peter 3:19.

So we have learned from Genesis some of the facts. We learned that the 
bene Elohim – these created beings of God - took the daughters of men 
and in some way anatomically (the Bible does not make clear) were able 
to produce a race, a fallen evil race called ‘the fallen ones’ – the 
Nephilim. And these guys went to work immediately, such that it wasn’t 
too long before every thought of every heart was only evil all the time. 
Then God had to save the line of the Messiah – the Christ-line – by the 
Flood. And now in Jude, verse six, we learn what these spirits had done. 
They had left their spiritual body to go after another flesh.

And from Peter we learned that these spirits were confined in a prison 
for the gods (Tartarus). And in 1 Peter we learn that these spirits know 
that they failed miserably because Jesus Christ went and heralded to 
them specifically. Now, what else can we learn about these Nephilim? 
Well, let’s go back to Genesis chapter six, because there is more to 
learn about this.

    Genesis 6:4
    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.

And what I want to focus on now is this ‘afterward.’ What we’ve been 
dealing with up to now is the spirits who caused this degradation before 
the Flood, and forced God into the unenviable position of having to save 
the Christ-line by wiping out all of this evil race. But here in Genesis 
6:4 it says ‘The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – the days 
before the Flood (context being verse one - men beginning to increase on 
the earth) but also afterward’ — after the Flood of Noah. And after the 
Flood of Noah there were more spirits that tried the same thing. They 
tried to genetically engineer a race. And they did it in a specific area 
in the land of Canaan, which is why God had to be so strict with the 
Canaanites. Remember that one of the purposes of this teaching is to 
de-vilify God and show His true nature. The Bible says that God is all 
love (1 John 4:8 and 16), that He is all light, that there is no 
darkness in Him (1 John 1:5), and that He is all Truth. And we want to 
understand how someone who is all love can make a statement like “Kill 
off all the Canaanites – even the babies!”

I want to go over a couple of verses from Deuteronomy, so you will see 
what God is being accused of doing, and actually did and had to do, for 
the preservation of the Christ-line, and our redemption.

    Deuteronomy 7:1 and 2
    (1) When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering 
to possess and drives out before you many nations— the Hittites, 
Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, 
seven nations larger and stronger than you—
    (2) and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and 
you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no 
treaty with them, and show them no mercy.

Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. You must destroy them 
totally. Now look at Deuteronomy chapter twenty – we’ll see a contrast 
here.

    Deuteronomy 20:10-15
    (10) When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of 
peace.
    (11) If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall 
be subject to forced labor and shall work for you.
    (12) If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay 
siege to that city.
    (13) When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the 
sword all the men in it.
    (14) As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything 
else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you 
may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies.
    (15) This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a 
distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

Here’s a very clear example of how God said if a country is outside the 
land and you attack a city, then the women and children you can keep. 
Kill off the warriors, the men, but you can keep the women and children.

    Deuteronomy 20:16
    However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving 
you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.

Outside the area of Canaan, keeping the women and children was no 
problem. Within Canaan – if it breathes, kill it!

    Deuteronomy 20:17 and 18
    (17) Completely destroy them– the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, 
Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites– as the LORD your God has commanded 
you.
    (18) Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable 
things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the 
LORD your God.

They will teach you – someone might ask “Why can’t we teach them? Why 
has it always got to be evil teaching good? Why can’t we at least save 
the little children alive, and teach them?” Because we’re dealing with a 
genetic aberration. You can take a rose with thorns and plant a billion 
seeds and every one that grows up will have thorns. You can’t take a 
rose that has thorns and sit there and get out some book about how 
thorns aren’t good and read for hours and hours, and provide the best 
fertilizer and the best environment and the best light, and hope that 
one day the thorns will fall off.

We’re dealing with a genetically implanted aberration. And the way to 
get rid of this is to kill it off. And that’s why God has to say this. 
And we have to understand this, so that God is not vilified. Because 
otherwise, we make God out to be this big bad guy that doesn’t like even 
little babies, and it’s just not true. God’s very concerned about love 
and light and truth, and He’s very concerned about people, and these 
genetically engineered people of the Devil had no chance to believe 
anyway. You weren’t going to educate them or convince them of the truth.

Once you understand that this race did exist in the Promised Land, there 
will now be a number of scriptures that will make sense that never made 
sense before. I am sure you are aware that the Israelites spent time in 
Egypt in slavery. And of course, it was Moses who led the Israelites out 
of Egypt and they wandered around the Sinai. Before they wandered they 
had gone down to Mount Sinai, and they were there worshipping, and then 
after that God said “Go into the land. Take the land for a possession.”

    Numbers 13:1 and 2
    (1) The LORD said to Moses,
    (2) “Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving 
to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders.”

Now we learn from Deuteronomy that it was the peoples’ idea first, and 
what we read here in verse one is simply God responding to what the 
people had said when they said “We want to send spies into the land.” 
Well, the spies came back, as we see in verse twenty-six, after spying 
out the land for forty days.

    Numbers 13:26 and 27
    (26) They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite 
community at Kadesh in the Desert of Paran. There they reported to them 
and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land.
    (27) They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which 
you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit.

Milk and honey were two things that you didn’t have to work hard for. 
With milk you put the cows out in the pasture, and the cows eat grass 
and sit around all day and chew their cud, and then if you simply milk 
the cows twice a day you have milk. And the same for honey, the bees did 
all the work. You just smoke out a hive and poof – there’s honey. So 
then the expression ‘flowing with milk and honey’ became idiomatic for 
‘there’s an abundance there and you don’t even have to work hard to get 
things to grow.’ And that’s the essence of what they said. They said, 
“We saw the land and boy, that land flows with milk and honey. Here is 
the fruit.”

    Numbers 13:23
    When they reached the Valley of Eshcol, they cut off a branch 
bearing a single cluster of grapes. Two of them carried it on a pole 
between them, along with some pomegranates and figs.

Now this is quite a cluster! This is a very fruitful land!

    Numbers 13:28
    But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are 
fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there.

Now, they are really scared of the descendants of Anak, and we’re going
to find out why.

    Numbers 13:29
    The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and 
Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea 
and along the Jordan.

Basically what’s going to happen is that Caleb and Joshua are going to 
dissent, but the other ten say we can’t attack those people because they 
are stronger than we are.

    Numbers 13:31-33
    (31) But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can't attack 
those people; they are stronger than we are.”
    (32) And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the 
land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those 
living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size.
    (33) We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from 
the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we 
looked the same to them.”

The Nephilim – These horrible people – These giants. And the King James 
translates it ‘giants,’ which is unfortunate, because then it’s hard to 
trace through the Bible. It’s not just that they were regular people who 
happened to be giants. They were large because that’s part of the 
genetic package that they get – big and mean, if you will. One of the 
things that we see here is a key: the descendants of Anak come from the 
Nephilim. Remember that with a genetic aberration (a genetic change) 
that it is passed down from parents to kids. So the devil spirits only 
have to mess with a certain number of the people, and then all their 
descendants will be affected and begin to multiply. And the Bible traces 
them back to a couple of people – particularly Anak and Rapha, who are 
specifically mentioned by name as being direct descendants of this 
god-woman thing that occurred. So in verse thirty-three we saw the 
Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim).

“We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to 
them.”

And so they were all upset. Now, Deuteronomy occurs in the fortieth year 
(remember the wandering in the wilderness was forty years) and Moses 
died in the eleventh month of the fortieth year, and in the twelfth 
month they mourned his death for forty days. And Deuteronomy was written 
in the very last of that fortieth year of the wilderness wanderings. So 
Moses is looking at the Israelites and he knows they are about to march 
into Canaan. And in verse nine, he wants to deal with the problem that 
they’ve got in their minds. Because the whole reason that they’ve been 
out wandering for forty years is that they didn’t want to deal with 
these people forty years earlier. They didn’t want to have to confront 
this fallen race, this Nephilim, forty years earlier. So now Moses is 
getting right in their face about it.

    Deuteronomy 9:1 and 2
    (1) Hear, O Israel. You are now about to cross the Jordan to go in 
and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities 
that have walls up to the sky.
    (2) The people are strong and tall-- Anakites! You know about them 
and have heard it said: “Who can stand up against the Anakites?”

Well, sure they knew about them – they’d been wandering for forty years 
because they’d been unwilling to fight them before.

    Deuteronomy 9:3
    But be assured today that the LORD your God is the one who goes 
across ahead of you like a devouring fire. He will destroy them; he will 
subdue them before you. And you will drive them out and annihilate them 
quickly, as the LORD has promised you.

Deuteronomy is great! If you’re into business and managing people and 
managing situations you know that if you address a problem directly it’s 
always better. And here Moses gets right with the people and says “Let’s 
talk about the Anakites.” That’s really fabulous on Moses’ part. Did the 
Israelites go into the Promised Land? Yes. Did they come into conflict 
with these Nephilim? Yes. They sure did.

    Joshua 11:21
    At that time Joshua went and destroyed the Anakites from the hill 
country: from Hebron, Debir and Anab, from all the hill country of 
Judah, and from all the hill country of Israel. Joshua totally destroyed 
them and their towns.

In other words Joshua made it his business to march around and fulfill 
this command of God to wipe these guys out.

    Joshua 11:22
    No Anakites were left in Israelite territory; only in Gaza, Gath and 
Ashdod did any survive.

Oops. Were there Anakites left? Yes. Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod – the
Philistine country. Let’s see – Goliath (Nine feet, six inches). What 
city was he from? Goliath of Gath! See this genetic aberration – they 
didn’t wipe it out completely. You leave it in a few cities, and because 
it’s a genetic implant, it begins to show up. And it showed up in 
Goliath.

    Joshua 11:23
    So Joshua took the entire land, just as the LORD had directed Moses…

Oops. Except for the Anakites in these three cities!

Now remember that these people were not natural. You know, nine feet and 
more. And they are called Nephilim. And when you run into something that 
you’ve never seen before, you’ve got to give it a name. And in 
Deuteronomy God is coaching the people about what they should do when 
they get into the land.

    Deuteronomy 2:9
    Then the LORD said to me, “Do not harass the Moabites or provoke 
them to war, for I will not give you any part of their land. I have 
given Ar to the descendants of Lot as a possession.”

Because Abraham allowed Lot to take part of the land, and one of Lot’s 
descendants was Moab, God says “Well, the Moabites came by their land 
legitimately, you can’t have the Moabite land.”

    Deuteronomy 2:10-11
    (10) (The Emites used to live there– a people strong and numerous, 
and as tall as the Anakites.
    (11) Like the Anakites, they too were considered Rephaites, but the
Moabites called them Emites.

Emites means ‘terrible ones,’ or ‘terrors.’ And here these guys come 
piling over the hill into Moab, and they’re nine feet and they’re 
horrible, and you can’t ever reform them, and they don’t do anything 
good. And when the Moabites saw them they said “Who are those guys?” “I 
don’t know, but they’re terrors!” So in Moab these guys got called 
Emites, or Terrors. By the way, we saw something here in verse eleven. 
It says ‘Like the Anakites, they too were considered Rephaites…’ And 
we’re going “What’s a Rephaite?” Well, a Rephaite was a descendant in 
the same way that we saw the descendants of Anak, now we’re going to see 
that there was another one called Rapha, and he had descendants also. 
This is very unclear in the King James. It’s much clearer in the New 
International Version.

As we will see, David ended up having to deal with these guys and 
finally get rid of them. You know, after Joshua died off, none of the 
Judges were really in a position to round them up. The Judges were so 
busy trying to keep Israel from sinning and trying to drive off people 
from other places (the Moabites, the Amonites, the Mesopotanians, the 
Midianites) that were attacking Israel. None of the Judges had the time 
or the backing to drive these guys out of the rest of Israel. So it fell 
upon David to clean up Israel and get rid of these guys.

    1 Chronicles 20:4-6
    (4) In the course of time, war broke out with the Philistines, at 
Gezer. At that time Sibbecai the Hushathite killed Sippai, one of the 
descendants of the Rephaites, and the Philistines were subjugated.
    (5) In another battle with the Philistines, Elhanan son of Jair 
killed Lahmi the brother of Goliath the Gittite, who had a spear with a 
shaft like a weaver's rod.
    (6) In still another battle, which took place at Gath, there was a 
huge man with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot-- 
twenty-four in all. He also was descended from Rapha.

Very clear here in the NIV. This giant, this one was descended from 
Rapha. And that’s why these guys were called Rephaites, which as we 
learned from Deuteronomy chapter two, in Israel they were sometimes 
called Rephaites, but in Moab they called them Emites, or Terrors.

    1 Chronicles 20:7 and 8
    (7) When he taunted Israel, Jonathan son of Shimea, David's brother,
killed him.
    (8) These were descendants of Rapha in Gath, and they fell at the 
hands of David and his men.

And again where did Goliath come from? Gath. By the way this record that 
we’ve just read is repeated in large part in 2 Samuel 21:15-22, if you 
want to see it a second time.

Now, in Deuteronomy 2:10 we learned that when these guys got to Moab, 
the Moabites had never seen anything like it, and they called them 
Terrors. Well, what about in Deuteronomy 2:19?

    Deuteronomy 2:19
    When you come to the Ammonites, do not harass them or provoke them 
to war, for I will not give you possession of any land belonging to the 
Ammonites. I have given it as a possession to the descendants of Lot.”

So the same thing as applied to Moab and Ammon – they were descendants 
of Lot. Because of what Abraham said to Lot, God said “Don’t bother the 
Ammonites.”

    Deuteronomy 2:20-21
    (20) (That too was considered a land of the Rephaites, who used to 
live there; but the Ammonites called them Zamzummites.
    (21) They were a people strong and numerous, and as tall as the
Anakites.

These guys are called Zamzummites.

So they are called:

Anakites because they descend from Anak.

Rephaites because they descend from Rapha.

Nephilim because they are the Fallen Ones.

Emites because they are Terrors.

Zamzummites which means ‘Noisy Ones.’

And you can see the Amonites saying “Would you look at the size of these
guys! What are they?” “I don’t know but they sure are noisy!” And so 
they called them Zamzummites. And realistically I think, if you look at 
Deuteronomy 2:12, it’s possible that you could say that the Horites were 
part of this race.

    Deuteronomy 2:22
    The LORD had done the same for the descendants of Esau, who lived in
Seir, when he destroyed the Horites from before them. They drove them 
out and have lived in their place to this day.

They may have other names in Scripture that are not as clearly defined. 
And in Deuteronomy 3:10 we learn about another one the Israelites killed
off. His name was Og. When the Israelites were in the fortieth year of
their wanderings they had attacked a number of towns and conquered a 
number of land areas on the east side of the Jordan river, known as the 
Trans-Jordan area. And this is where the tribe of Rueben and the 
half-tribe of Manasseh, and the tribe of Gad settled, which you can find 
on a Bible map. And while they were conquering an area called Bashan, 
which is to the east of the Sea of Galilee, in the Kingdom of Bashan, we 
read:

    Deuteronomy 3:10-11
    (10) We took all the towns on the plateau, and all Gilead, and all 
Bashan as far as Salecah and Edrei, towns of Og's kingdom in Bashan.
    (11) (Only Og king of Bashan was left of the remnant of the 
Rephaites. His bed was made of iron and was more than thirteen feet long 
and six feet wide. It is still in Rabbah of the Ammonites.)

So at the time the Israelites attacked that area only the King was left 
of the Rephaites. So this Rephaite was big, like Goliath and those other
guys. I want to address another question here, which is, before the 
Flood the Devil and his spirits genetically engineered and produced this 
fallen race. After the Flood they did it again. The spirits who did this 
were thrown into this prison for the gods- this Tartarus.

Is there any evidence that any of these guys are around today? 
Biblically there is none. Is it possible for the Devil to genetically 
engineer and mess around with people? Yes, it’s possible that he can. In 
fact, he did. He did it with plants (Gen. 3), animals (Gen. 3), people 
(Gen. 6), and after the Flood (Gen. 6:4). So the Devil can do it. But 
every time a devil spirit has ever done it, he gets chucked into 
Tartarus, and he sits there in chains awaiting Judgment.

So are there any of these Nephilim, these ‘fallen ones,’ around today? 
There’s no evidence biblically that any of them exist after the time of 
David. There may be a number of reasons. One reason may be that the 
Devil simply can’t find any spirit volunteers that are willing to give 
up their freedom to try and genetically engineer a person. It may be 
that the Devil was concerned he would lose too many spirits and the 
balance of power between angels and devils would be shifted.

Basically, we don’t know! And the Bible certainly doesn’t say.

There are a number of people who think their next door neighbor or their 
gas station attendant or the guy who runs the local movie theatre might 
be one of these Nephilim! I mean I’m sure we’ve all run into mean, 
uncompromising people, but I don’t think that’s any reason to go off on 
a tangent here and think that there’s Nephilim all over the place! The 
fact is that biblically there’s no evidence for the existence of any 
after the time of David. Although again, the reason why the Devil might 
not do this is not stated in Scripture.

Now, once we understand who these Nephilim were, and that this was a 
fallen race, and that they were dead, they were killed off by David, but
they were a horrible, unbelieving people, now we can take this knowledge 
and use it to understand how God will try to teach us things from 
Scripture using a comparison with these guys. It’s interesting that one 
of the first usages of this is in Job, chapter twenty-six. Now, if my 
eight-year-old son jumps up and down on the couch, I might look at him 
and say “Hey Tarzan, cut it out!” What am I doing? I’m importing an 
image – the image of how Tarzan jumps on things and swings from tree to 
tree and acts wild in his home environment – I’m importing that image to 
my son and saying “Look, don’t behave like this! Knock it off!” And by 
using the word ‘Tarzan,’ I’m importing a wild unrestricted image, if you 
will, on to my son’s behavior. God does the same thing.

Once we know who the Rephaim are – and again the Rephaim, or Rephaites, 
are a branch of this Nephilim – once we’ve learned who they are and what 
they’re like, then God can say “Ok, you’re aware of them, you’re aware 
of what they’re like. Now I’m going to use them and I’m going to import 
an image into my Scripture to help you understand about different types 
of behavior.” In Job chapter twenty-six is a good example of how this is 
imported. And by the way, for translators, Job twenty-six presents a 
unique problem. Now in Job twenty-five Bildad the Shuhite had just 
gotten through speaking against Job. And of course, you know that the 
three miserable comforters had said nothing that was helpful to Job, and 
by Job twenty-six Job is growing quite weary of all this lack of advice 
– and in fact more than that, just plain out-and-out lies and 
accusations.

    Job 26:1-3
    (1) Then Job replied:
    (2) “How you have helped the powerless! How you have saved the arm 
that is feeble!
    (3) What advice you have offered to one without wisdom! And what 
great insight you have displayed!

Now this is pure mockery / sarcasm. Job is not feeling helped at all!

    Job 26:4 and 5
    (4) Who has helped you utter these words? And whose spirit spoke 
from your mouth?
    (5) “The dead are in deep anguish, those beneath the waters and all 
that live in them.

And you’re like “What? What do the dead have to do with this? What’s 
going on here?” The King James is not much better.

    Job 26:5 KJV
    Dead things are formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants 
thereof.

And you can check version after version after version – this verse has 
caused translators a lot of problems! Why? Because the word Rephaim is 
in the verse. Verse five – the dead – the Rephaim. And the translators 
don’t know what the Rephaim are. And because they don’t know they have 
no idea how to translate it properly. E.W. Bullinger (who knows what the 
Rephaim are) in his Companion Bible, translates verse five as:

“Where stay the Rephaim? Where stay the mighty Rephaim of old? Beneath 
the sea, and things that are therein.”

Why would the Rephaim be beneath the sea and the things in the sea? 
Because in Job’s time they were wiped out by the Flood. So Job is saying 
here ‘You know, you guys have offered me no advice at all. Who helped 
you utter these words? Where did you guys get these idiotic opinions? 
Whose spirits flow through your mouth? You know, the Rephaim are dead! 
They couldn’t have taught you this. So where did you learn it?’ And 
that’s the imported image here in Job twenty-six, - ‘you didn’t learn 
this from the Rephaim, so where did you get it?’

Psalm 88 is another example of this imported image that’s really very 
beautiful, and very pointed. Psalm 88 is one of the Psalms where Solomon 
is crying and moaning – and realistically, life is tough, and there are 
times when we feel like we’re the last people on earth that God wants to 
help. You know and I know there are times when you feel lonely, times 
when you feel beaten down, and in Psalm 88 the Psalmist is pouring out 
his heart to God.

    Psalm 88:3-9
    (3) For my soul is full of trouble and my life draws near the grave.
    (4) I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like a man 
without strength.
    (5) I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the 
grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care.
    (6) You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths.
    (7) Your wrath lies heavily upon me; you have overwhelmed me with 
all your waves. Selah
    (8) You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me 
repulsive to them. I am confined and cannot escape;
    (9) my eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, O LORD, every day; I 
spread out my hands to you.

So what he’s saying here is “God, look at what you’ve done in my life. 
Your wrath is on me. You’ve put me in the pit. You’ve taken from me my 
friends. But what am I doing? I’m crying out to you every day, God. I 
spread out my hands to you.”

    Psalm 88:10
    Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do those who are dead rise up 
and praise you? Selah

The point that he is making is:

“God, look at all the things going wrong in my life. You’re not helping 
at all! And yet I’m praying to you. I’m trying to praise you. Do those 
that are dead rise up and praise you?”

And the word ‘dead’ is the Rephaim.

“Will those wicked, unrepentant, unsaved people – will they praise you? 
No. God, I’ll praise you. Help me out. Look upon me and help me out – 
I’ll praise you. The Rephaim, the evil ones will never praise you.”

This is an appeal to God that He would change towards this man. And this
is why he imports the image of the Rephaim here. Proverbs chapter two is 
another good one. It’s similar to Proverbs chapter nine. In Proverbs 
chapter two we’re talking about the adulteress and adultery and the kind 
of life-dominating sin that it can be. And in verse sixteen it’s talking 
about wisdom.

    Proverbs 2:16-18
    (16) It will save you also from the adulteress, from the wayward 
wife with her seductive words,
    (17) who has left the partner of her youth and ignored the covenant 
she made before God.
    (18) For her house leads down to death and her paths to the spirits 
of the dead.

The dead – the Rephaim. Do you want to know what happens to people who 
get all tied up with the adulteress and all that? The writer of Proverbs 
is saying here by revelation “Look, you’ll end up like the Rephaim. 
Don’t get tied up in that.” Now we know this is Old Testament and 
salvation by works. We’re not talking about implanted holy spirit here. 
But the magnitude of the problem you can get into when you get tied up 
with adultery, it’s here very clearly in verse eighteen and also in:

    Proverbs 21:16
    A man who strays from the path of understanding comes to rest in the
company of the dead.

Again, the ‘dead’ is the Rephaim. “If you want to make sure that you 
don’t have Eternal Life, leave God” is what he’s saying. This is Old 
Testament, of course, we understand that. But he says “You stay on the 
straight and narrow, because you don’t want to end up like the Rephaim.”

Now Isaiah 14:9 is another great usage of the imported image.

    Isaiah 14:3 and 4
    (3) On the day the LORD gives you relief from suffering and turmoil 
and cruel bondage,
    (4) you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon:

The Babylonian Kings had been real tyrants in many cases and very hard 
on peoples around them. And when they died, verse nine says:

    Isaiah 14:9
    The grave below is all astir to meet you at your coming; it rouses 
the spirits of the departed to greet you– all those who were leaders in 
the world; it makes them rise from their thrones– all those who were 
kings over the nations.

The departed ones – the Rephaim. You Babylonian Kings have been so 
horrible, so evil, so wicked, that even the Rephaim want to meet you! 
You’ve got a reputation even among the Rephaim! This is simply a picture 
to show by comparison how the Kings of Babylon had been so horrible.

And the last two usages are in Isaiah twenty-six.

    Isaiah 26:14
    They are now dead, they live no more; those departed spirits do not 
rise. You punished them and brought them to ruin; you wiped out all 
memory of them.

Verse fourteen says the Rephaim do not rise – which I understand as 
meaning ‘stand in the Judgment.’ They will be dead, they don’t have 
eternal life.

    Isaiah 26:19
    But your dead will live; their bodies will rise. You who dwell in 
the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the 
morning; the earth will give birth to her dead.

Verse nineteen says ‘The earth will give birth even to her Rephai.’ 
Every person who has ever lived will get up to be judged. Understanding 
this subject, who the ‘sons of God’ were of Genesis six, who the 
Nephilim (the Fallen Ones) were, allows us to understand why God had to 
cause the Flood, why He had to tell Moses to wipe out all the Canaanites 
(any that breathed).

Once again, we see that what God wanted to bring about was His plan to 
redeem mankind through the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. He wanted him 
to be able to live and redeem us because He wants US to someday be 
raised from the dead like Christ was and live forever. God bless you.

From TruthOrTraditon:
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