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The phrase occurs in key passages in Scripture, most notably in Genesis 6 and Job 1–2, as well as in a number of psalms. According to Genesis 6, one precursor for the flood was the intermarriage of the “sons of God” with the “daughters of men.” Although the understanding of this passage is difficult, it seems likely, when taking into account the references to this passage in Jude and 2 Peter, that “sons of God” here refers not to men from the godly line of Seth, but rather to fallen spiritual beings. Thus, Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4 appear to be describing the unnatural union of fallen angels and humans.

Genesis 6:2 it does refer to Angels, it seems, marrying women... I'm inclined to believe that these were angelic beings in this passage. That's my understanding of it. 1 Peter reinforces this as well. There were these angels that have been kept in chains, it seems, so that they cannot repeat the issues that were going on in Genesis 6:2.

“The ‘sons of God,’ this phrase, the ‘bene Elohim’ or the ‘bene ha Elohim,’ is used everywhere else in scripture that it's found, of supernatural beings, members of the heavenly host. And, you know, everybody accepted that at face value until, you know, the 300s A.D., right up just before the heyday of Augustine.”

"To me, it's a no-brainer. You either apply true hermeneutical principles and allow God's Word to interpret itself, or you ignore hermeneutical principles and come up with your own theory, which has no biblical basis."

“[After the flood] they became legends. So that word, Nephilim, became a figure of speech after the flood referring to anyone that was bigger, faster, quicker. We know that because the flood destroyed every man, woman, and child including the offspring of the Fallen Angels and mortal women”

“Seth’s descendants were not born of God as Christians are. Nor were any kings or rulers born of God. They also were not adopted into God’s family, since we know that relationship comes only through Jesus. So there is no reason why the sons of Seth would have been referred to as “sons of God.” This eliminates both sons of Seth and kings or rulers as possibilities of who the Genesis 6 sons of God were. So what about fallen angels? They aren’t born of God through Christ. That is true, but there is another meaning to the title “sons of God.” “Sons of God” are direct creations of God. "

“Angels also are a direct creation of God and remember they are called that in Job Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7. Angels would include fallen angels, who were also direct creations of God and at one time served God in Heaven, according to His created purpose…

To further support that “sons of God” are a direct creation of God, Adam is called the son of God (Luke 3:38). Remember, Adam is the only human being who was created from nothing by God. Every person since Adam has been born of a human parent.”

“The more I look at Genesis, the more I have become convinced this passage is referring to polygamous rulers who abuse their power and brought condemnation upon humanity."

“If nothing from the Hebrew Bible survived to the present except these four verses, it could hardly be argued that this passage refers to any sort of a union between women and divine beings…"

“The passage could mean the Nephilim were not the direct descendants of the sons of God but simply a group that existed before the transgression of the sons of God.”

…the 'sons of God' are supernatural beings. They are not people. That’s probably the shortest way to answer that…

They were members of the heavenly host who transgressed the boundaries of heaven and earth with disastrous effects.

We tend to fixate on the weird Nephilim stuff but in second temple theology (his includes the New Testament), the real damage of Genesis 6 was the proliferation of human depravity not the weird Nephilim stuff.

"We take the view that the sons of God in Genesis 6 were fallen angels who somehow made it with human females resulting in some sort of angelic human hybrid... These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown."

Angels have the capability to materialize in human form, as seen in various Biblical accounts (Genesis 18:1, 2, 8, 20-22; 19:1-11; Joshua 5:13-15). However, their proper abode is heaven, serving under Jehovah (Daniel 7:9, 10). Leaving this spiritual realm to engage in fleshly relations on Earth constitutes a rebellion against Jehovah’s laws and is a form of perversion.

Currently, these disobedient angels are referred to as “spirits in prison,” having been ‘thrown into Tartarus’ and “reserved with eternal bonds under dense darkness for the judgment of the great day” (1 Peter 3:19; 2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6). This suggests that their abilities to materialize are now heavily restricted, unlike the time prior to the Flood.

In summary, the “sons of the true God” most likely refer to angels who rebelled against Jehovah’s laws, leading to significant moral decay on Earth and resulting in divine judgment.

"When I first began researching this passage in college, I found that many modern theologians oppose the ancient view that Genesis six intends to say that human beings were producing offspring with supernatural entities. Believing the Enoch corpus to be a fanciful Jewish misinterpretation, those who oppose the supernatural view usually believe that the sons of God refer to human rulers and that the Nephilim were simply a bloodline of thoroughly human fallen warriors. But is it correct to dismiss the supernatural view? In this video, I want to present several of the reasons why I believe the supernatural view is by far the more superior interpretation. The natural place to begin with the identity of the Nephilim is the etymology of the term. The vast majority of academic dictionaries routinely explain this word as the masculine plural form of the Hebrew verb and fall, which means to fall. In other words, the fallen ones."

So remember the concept of God’s heavenly staff team, the divine council, or the sons of God? In the Hebrew Scriptures, we’re told that some of these rebelled too.

After the snake comes the rebellion of the sons of God in Genesis 6. We’re told that they have sex with women who then give birth to violent warrior giants.

...Ancient readers knew exactly what was going on. The ancient kingdoms around Israel claimed to be founded and protected by giant warrior kings who were part human, part god and filled with divine wisdom.
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The giants are called by many titles in the Old Testament. They are called the Nephilim. They’re also sometimes called the Rephaim. And the Rephaim, was both a name for ancient giants and for the spirits, the deceased life presence of these beings in the underworld, in the grave.

“Now we also get some help from different passages in the Bible. First of all, that these sons of God were angels. In Job 1:6 and in Job 2:1, sons of God are called angels, and the sons of God were numbered before God, and Lucifer was numbered among them. We even have Lucifer here being called a son of God. And then in Job 38:6-7, it says, 'Where were you when the foundations of the world were laid, and all the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy?'”​​​​​​​.

I lean towards it being angels, as strange as that sounds, but I know this, that if angels do not keep their proper place, God is going to lock them up, and you and I have been given power over the enemy. Jesus said, 'Behold, I give you power to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will by any means hurt you.' What a great promise for us."

NEPHILIM (Heb. נְפִילִים), a race of giants said to have dwelt in pre-Israelite Canaan (Num. 13:33). Genesis 6:1–2 relates that the "sons of gods," i.e., divine or angelic beings, took mortal wives; verse 4 continues, "It was then, and later too, that the Nephilim appeared [lit., were] on earth–when the divine beings cohabited with the daughters of men, who bore them offspring. They were the heroes [Heb. gibborim] of old, the men of renown." This could mean that the Nephilim were contemporaneous, but not identical, with the offspring of divine beings and earthly women, who were called gibborim (so, e.g., Morgenstern, in HUCA 14 (1939), 85ff.). The above translation, however, follows an ancient tradition in equating the Nephilim and the gibborim as offspring of the union of *angels and mortals .

Medieval Jewish scholars such as Rashi and Ibn Ezra continue the rabbinic tradition of non-angelic interpretations. Rashi, for example, identifies the "sons of God" as descendants of Seth, who became corrupt over time. Ibn Ezra, however, acknowledges the angelic interpretation but leans towards a symbolic understanding of these beings as powerful rulers​​.

Modern Jewish scholarship often revisits these ancient texts with a critical eye. The late biblical scholar Umberto Cassuto argues that Genesis 6:1-4 serves as a polemic against Near Eastern myths, reducing the grandeur of demigods to mere mortals whose lifespans are limited by divine decree. This view sees the passage as a rejection of pagan immortality myths and an affirmation of human mortality​​​​.

The Genesis-based Enochic story of the sons of man and their oversized offspring is widely credited as the source of ancient Jewish, and subsequently Christian, theories of evil. We should note, as Professor Loren Stuckenbruck of the University of Munich has written in his book The Myth of the Rebellious Angels, that this wasn’t inevitable. There’s nothing in Genesis that categorically suggests the Giants were actually evil. In fact, there’s a line of tradition that blames the “daughters of men” for tempting them (which is why there’s a strange passage in Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians that tells women to keep their hair covered). Given the ambiguity of the Genesis account, writes Stuckenbruck, there may have been emerging traditions about Enoch and about the origins of evil that precede our literary records and exploded in the third century BCE.

Rabbi Dr. Samuel Z. Glaser (1929–2022), an Orthodox-trained rabbi and clinical psychologist, reads Genesis 6:1–4 as a deliberately muted remnant of a broader demigod myth. Drawing on ancient Near Eastern parallels, Second Temple writings like 1 Enoch and the Genesis Apocryphon, and rabbinic and medieval sources, he argues that “sons of God” in Genesis 6 are divine/heavenly beings whose unions with women produced heroic, semi-divine figures. Yet, within a rigorously monotheistic Bible and later Judaism, this material is repeatedly restrained, recast as angels rather than gods, and then further moralized or allegorized. Glaser traces how Jewish interpreters manage this tension, especially around Noah’s birth, to preserve strict monotheism while still…

The Fallen Angel position is the most popular theory concerning the identity of the sons of God. This is clearly the earliest position that we know of. It was promoted in apocryphal works written before the time of Christ and by every church father who commented on it until the 3rd century.

Although the Fallen Angel view is repulsive to most, it is important to understand what the text actually states. The term “sons of God” is from the Hebrew bene ha ‘elohim. This particular term is only used three other times in Scripture and in each case, it clearly refers to heavenly beings.

While there are a handful of similar Hebrew phrases used in Scripture, these are the only four passages that mention this specific term.

I argued for the view that the “sons of God” are rebel angels and that the Nephilim are human mighty men rather than supernatural offspring. When we consider how the exact expression “sons of God” was used outside Genesis 6, we’re left with Job 1:6, 2:1, and 38:7—three verses which all use “sons of God” to refer to angels.

In addition to this lexical observation, we have the compelling evidence of Peter and Jude’s letters, letters which mention sinning angels during the days of Noah. Peter and Jude are interpreting earlier Scripture (specifically, Gen. 6:1–4), and they are identifying the “sons of God” for us with language like “spirits” and “angels.”

Earlier in this article, we also considered how Jesus’s words in Matthew 22:30 and the overall strangeness of the “sons of God are angels” view are not defeaters to the view. In fact, the ancient Jewish interpretation—as well as the earliest Christian interpretation—of Genesis 6:1–4 is that the “sons of God” are rebel angels who committed sexual sin in unions with human women. And I think this ancient view is correct.

Greg Koukl is a Christian apologist and founder of Stand to Reason, and in the STRask September 19, 2016 podcast he briefly tackles a caller’s question about Genesis 6 and the Nephilim. In that episode he treats both the “sons of God” and the “Nephilim” as human, not angelic–human hybrids, and concludes that whatever the Nephilim were, they are best understood as human giants or mighty warriors rather than the offspring of fallen angels. He also says this is not a hill he wants to die on: Genesis 6 is, for him, controversial, ambiguous, and theologically peripheral. This article focuses on that single STRask episode and maps how he frames…

They [the Nephilim] are described as beings who were on the earth in those days, “when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and bore children to them.”

This appears to be an indication that rebellious angels had sexual intercourse with human women, who bore sons described as “the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.”

This understanding of the Nephilim seems to be affirmed in the New Testament in Jude, verses 6-7.

Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch were 19th‑century conservative Lutheran Old Testament scholars whose multi‑volume commentary remains a standard reference. In their treatment of Genesis 6:1–8, published in the Commentary on Genesis 6, they argue that the passage does not recount angels marrying human women or producing hybrid offspring. For them, the “sons of God” are pious men from the godly line (such as the Sethites), the “daughters of men” are women from the broader—largely ungodly—human race, and the Nephilim are violent human tyrants, not giants or angel‑human hybrids.

“It seems to me the simplest explanation is that the line of Seth (which could have been referred to as “sons of God” because they were godly and called upon the name of the Lord) started marrying the line of Cain (the “daughters of men”—women who were beautiful but ungodly). Such mixing of spiritual light and darkness destroys families."

From Moses’s retrospective perspective, these “sons of God” predated creation. They did not die, but continued to exist after creation. Had the line of Seth always existed? Were they present before creation? No, they were people who lived and died, lived and died, and lived and died. Therefore, the term “sons of God” can be used of angels, but it cannot be used of Seth’s line...
The technical term “sons of God” is never used of mankind in the Hebrew Bible, only of angels. A reference in Genesis 6 to mankind would be unique for the entire Hebrew Bible.

I am arguing here that the Nephilim were the gigantic offspring of an unnatural sexual union between celestial beings (bene elohim) and human women…

There is no reason to resort to the contrived idea that the bene elohim were actually descendants of Seth who apostatized by intermarrying with the daughters of Cain. Elsewhere in Scripture, the phrase bene elohim always refers to celestial beings.

And if it had been a merger between the lines of Seth and the line of Cain, why is all the masculinity on one side, and all the women on the other? And why on earth would such unions result in giants? And why would the entire ancient world concur with the reading that this was a perverse celestial/earthly connection, from Josephus to Beowulf to the Book of Enoch—from responsible histories to oddball books?

The line of Seth argument doesn’t really come into its own until the modern era—which is precisely when some of these ancient tales began to be a tad embarrassing for us big kids.

There are only five occurrences in the entire Bible where we have the exact expression, son of God or sons of God and it always refers to angelic beings...

We also have the, we also have the witness of the New Testament. So there are two passages in the New Testament that refer to this. One is 2 Peter chapter 2 and the other is the book of Jude and both of these texts are very closely related to each other...

Some people say, well, no, he’s not talking about Genesis 6. Well, then my question to them is, if Peter is trying to encourage his readers from well-known stories in the Old Testament and if the angels who sinned is not Genesis 6, then where else is the story? There is no other story in the Old Testament that it could be referring to... Peter is very clearly alluding to Genesis 6. Jude is doing the same thing...

So it seems very clear, Genesis 6 is telling us that these are angels who are marrying humans and Jude and Peter are telling us that is the correct interpretation.

“This whole passage hangs on exactly one Hebrew phrase, two words and it is 'Bene Elohim'. Who they are is never mentioned after this. Is there any way to understand what was being said? The fact of the matter is there is a way to understand. The actual phrase is used three other times. They're all in the book of Job and they all pertain to angels. They are angelic beings.

They're literally the sons of God as in birthed in heaven by God just as mankind was put on the face of the earth. "

Wes Huff approaches Genesis 6 and the Book of Enoch with unusual balance. He takes the supernatural interpretation and ancient Jewish explanations seriously, including the idea that demons may be the spirits of dead giants, but he refuses to present plausible theories as clear biblical doctrine. This updated article brings together two interviews and explains what Huff affirms, considers plausible, and leaves unresolved.

But what is interesting here is that these sons of God, these spiritual beings who exist in their own realm, saw the daughters of men were beautiful, and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.

Now you have the perversity here of these spiritual fallen angels, these demon beings, overstepping the boundaries of their realm. They defy God by leaving the defined realm that God has placed them, their spirit world, and they enter the human realm.

We know they can do that. Satan has already entered the realm of animals and showed up indwelling a snake in the garden.