An ancient scroll beside an illustration of giants, lit by an oil lamp
When I first asked who were the Nephilim, I already carried an answer from childhood: I had grown up picturing them as the sons of fallen angels. I will be candid: this is one of the few stories Neville Goddard seldom spoke about, and for a long while I could not find his reading of it, until I came upon a passage in his lecture “Where Is Golgotha.”
I read scripture as inner wisdom conveyed through story, not as a historical record. I write for anyone who was handed a single fixed answer to these passages yet still senses there is more within them, and for anyone who wishes to know what the story can teach about the conditions they face today. If you read these passages as accounts of ancient events, you are welcome here too. I will set out the traditional views with respect, and nothing here asks you to relinquish your own reading.
Genesis 6:1 to 4 is the principal biblical passage concerning the Nephilim. It describes humanity multiplying upon the earth, the sons of God taking wives from among the daughters of men, and the Nephilim dwelling 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 to 4, KJV)
The passage leaves much unexplained about who the sons of God were and how the Nephilim should be understood. It does place them in the era when the sons of God came to the daughters of men, and it calls their children mighty men and men of renown.
The King James Version uses the word giants in Genesis 6:4. The Hebrew word there is Nephilim, and the KJV renders that same Hebrew term as “giants” in Numbers 13:33 as well.
Numbers offers a second account, through the report of Israelite spies sent to scout the land of Canaan:
“And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.” (Numbers 13:33, KJV)
Here, too, the KJV’s “giants” translates Nephilim. A translator’s choice reveals how that translator understood the term, but it cannot settle every question about the beings or people described.
The meaning of Nephilim is contested. One proposal ties the word to a Hebrew root meaning “to fall,” which leads some readers to render it as “fallen ones.” Others counter that the connection is too uncertain to resolve the matter.
That uncertainty matters. A proposed meaning can help explain why a view gained currency, but it cannot prove that the Nephilim were fallen angels. The passage itself neither defines the word nor supplies a lineage for the group.
The text does offer other descriptions: the Nephilim belong to a time when the sons of God took wives from the daughters of men, and their offspring are called mighty men and men of renown. Such language may suggest formidable warriors or celebrated heroes, but it gives no clear physical description and no measure of their stature.
Ask who were the Nephilim, and you will usually receive one of three answers, depending on how the reader understands the sons of God. There is more than one venerable interpretation of the sons of God in Genesis 6. It helps to distinguish what Genesis plainly says from what later interpreters have added.
In the angelic view, the sons of God are heavenly beings who forsook their proper station and took human women. Their offspring are identified with the Nephilim or with the mighty figures described in Genesis 6:4.
The Book of Enoch elaborates this story. It tells of rebellious angels called Watchers who descend to earth and take wives. This later account furnishes far more names and events than Genesis does, so it is vital not to treat every detail in 1 Enoch as though it appears in Genesis itself. The angelic reading is deeply rooted in Jewish and Christian interpretation, and it is the view I was raised with.
Another view takes the sons of God to be the descendants of Seth, a son of Adam, and the daughters of men to be women from another human line, often associated with Cain. In this reading, the passage describes the union of two human lineages rather than liaisons between angels and women.
Proponents of this view often read “sons of God” as a title for those who belong to God. The difficulty is that Genesis 6 names neither Seth nor Cain in this passage, so the family-line explanation rests on linking it with other parts of Genesis.
A third view holds that the sons of God were powerful human rulers or members of an elite caste. Their taking of women “of all which they chose” can be read as an abuse of power, while the mighty men and men of renown may be warriors or kings celebrated for their strength.
You can weigh these interpretations by posing three simple questions: Does the view treat the sons of God as heavenly beings or as humans? Does it lean on details from outside Genesis? Does it account for both the Nephilim and the mighty men without claiming the text says more than it does?
Genesis sets the Nephilim passage just before the flood narrative. In the wider account, God beholds widespread wickedness and violence upon the earth, and the flood ensues, without the text treating the Nephilim as a distinct group with a distinct fate.
Numbers raises a puzzle because it mentions Nephilim after the flood story. Some readers take the passage to describe the same kind of beings, or a later reappearance of the group. Others think the spies’ report relies on a fearful comparison. The verses leave the matter unresolved, so none of these explanations should be presented as certain.
Numbers 13 is, moreover, a report delivered by spies who are afraid of the people and fortified cities they have seen. The line “we were in our own sight as grasshoppers” reveals how small the spies felt. It records their perception, not an independent measurement of anyone’s height.
The spies link the Nephilim with the sons of Anak, often called the Anakim. Elsewhere, the Anakim are a named people associated with Canaan, while the Rephaim are another named group. Some translations and traditions connect the Rephaim with giants, but the names are not interchangeable.
The Bible identifies no Nephilim bloodline living today. I personally believe giants did once walk the earth, but that is my own conviction, not a fact established by these passages.
Neville’s interpretation does not treat the story as a report of some race of ancient giants. In his view, the sons of God are us: divine beings who descended into flesh to experience this world. He describes that entry into bodily life in his lecture “Where Is Golgotha”:
“So, the sons of God fell in love with the daughters of men, and came down and penetrated and annexed the brains of these garments of flesh, and their penetration and annexation of the brain animated the bodies.”
For Neville, this is an image of divine awareness entering human experience. The language of descending and taking wives becomes a story of consciousness taking on a body, not a biological account of an ancient people.
I had searched long and hard for Neville’s reading of this story. Finding that passage transformed the way I saw it. The sons of God were never strangers from some distant realm. They are the very awareness reading these words now, clothed in a garment of flesh and learning all that this world can teach.
In Chapter Three of At Your Command, Neville turns the image of giants towards the conditions that surround you:
“This does not mean a time in the dim past when man had the stature of giants. Today is the day, the eternal now when conditions roundabout you have attained the appearance of giants (such as unemployed, the armies of your enemy, your problems and all things that seem to threaten you)”
And a few lines later, he names the true problem:
“Man has placed too little value upon himself.”
The traditional interpretations are where most of us began, but this reading reaches further, and in the end it carries us beyond them. Here is the threshold: look at whatever feels larger than you, then examine the view of yourself that lends it such power.
Neville was not the first to discern divine life descending into flesh within a story of giants. The mystic Manly P. Hall, in The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928), describes the Greek Bacchic Mysteries in his chapter “The Ancient Mysteries and Secret Societies, Part Three”. There the giants are the Titans, who tear the young god Bacchus asunder and scatter him through the world of matter. From their ashes, the story tells, humanity was fashioned, and Hall draws out the meaning:
“Man is a composite creature, his lower nature consisting of the fragments of the Titans and his higher nature the sacred, immortal flesh (life) of Bacchus.”
(Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages)
Consider how the god falls in that story. Hall says Bacchus gazes into a mirror and, “seeing his image before him, accepts the image as a likeness of himself.” In TrueCosmic’s reading, that is the grasshopper moment in older garb. The divine one beholds a reflection and accepts it as the truth of who he is.
Hall’s conclusion sits remarkably close to Neville’s: “man does not know the gods by logic or by reason but rather by realizing the presence of the gods within himself.” The giant and the god dwell in the same person. Which one reigns depends on what you accept as yourself.
In this inner reading, the giants are the conditions that make you feel small. They may be money worries, conflict, a job search, a daunting decision, or a fear that seems to hold more strength than you do.
Numbers gives the feeling a vivid image: “we were in our own sight as grasshoppers.” The spies first describe how they see themselves, and only then how they imagine others see them. The story turns your attention to the inner picture you carry into any difficult situation.
Revaluing yourself does not mean pretending a real problem does not exist. It means refusing to let the problem become the measure of your worth or the final arbiter of what you can do. Once you stop treating yourself as powerless, you can meet the very same condition with steadier judgement and take the next sensible step.
This is why the story sits so naturally beside the inner meaning of David and Goliath. There, too, the image of a giant points to a challenge that appears overwhelming, while the answer begins with a different sense of who you are.
Begin by naming the giant plainly. Do not settle for a vague phrase such as “everything is wrong.” Identify the one condition that feels threatening, then notice what you have been telling yourself about your capacity to meet it.
This is a practice, not a one-off trick. Think of yourself as a ship’s navigator. You need not deny the storm, nor pretend the rocks are absent. You take your bearings, make a small correction, and keep steering the vessel towards its destination, again and again.
In this practice, the present condition is the weather around the ship, not the captain of your life. Your chosen self-concept is the compass, and your next deliberate action is the course you set. Each time fear whispers that you are only a grasshopper, make the small correction back towards the heading you have chosen.
Keep the practice simple and steady. The aim is not to force a feeling or to reproach yourself for hard circumstances. It is to place greater value on the life within you, then let that value shape what you think, choose, and do.
A seed need not become something else before it can grow. It only needed water. In the same way, you need not conjure your worth from nothing. You can nourish the awareness that it already lives within you.
Keep reading: Is Gilgamesh in the Bible? The Older Story That Shattered My Faith and Gave Me a Better One, Noah’s Ark Meaning: The Gilgamesh Flood, the Hidden Symbolism, and the Question That Woke Me Up and The Story of Samson in the Bible: Delilah, the Seven Locks and the Power You Keep Giving Away.
Reading scripture for its inner meaning is an ancient tradition, and far from a novel one. But the literal and the inner are not equal partners: the outer reading comes first, and the inner meaning, like the second son in scripture, comes to rule over it. And that realisation is no mere footnote: it is the very catalyst for transformation.
No. Genesis 6 uses the phrase “sons of God” but never defines it within the passage. The angelic view is an influential interpretation, standing alongside the line-of-Seth and human-ruler readings.
The KJV renders Nephilim as “giants,” but the word’s meaning and origin are contested. One proposal links it to a Hebrew root meaning “to fall.”
Genesis does not follow the Nephilim separately when it recounts the flood. Numbers later uses the word in the spies’ report, and how the two passages relate remains open to interpretation.
In his lecture “Where Is Golgotha,” Neville read the sons of God as divine beings, us, who descended into flesh to experience this world. In At Your Command he read the giants as present-day conditions that make you feel small.
So, who were the Nephilim? Genesis and Numbers use the term in passages about the sons of God, mighty men, and the spies’ fearful report. Traditional readers have offered several explanations, while Neville’s interpretation turns the story inward: the sons of God are you, and the giants are the conditions that seem to threaten you.
Whatever giant stands before you, the way past it already lies within you. The same power that brought all things into being dwells in you and answers when you call. You are the one who awakens it, and once you do, no giant, however towering, can stand in your way. Fear not.
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