Mind the Gap: How the Jewish Writings between the Old and New Testament Help Us Understand Jesus

by Matthias Henze

It is helpful to take a look at the Septuagint, because the Greek text of the same passage differs in some important aspects, particularly in verse 4. 4 Now the giants were on the earth in those days and afterward. When the sons of God used to go in to the daughters of humans, then they produced offspring for themselves. Those were the giants that were of old, humans of renown. (Genesis 6:4 LXX; my trans.) What the Septuagint has preserved is not simply a straight Greek translation of the Hebrew text as we have it in our modern Bibles; it is a slightly different version of the story about the fallen angels. The Nephilim are gone and have been replaced by giants (the Greek has the word gigantes). In this telling of the story, the connection between the giants and the fallen angels is now clear: the giants in verse 4 are the offspring that stem from the illicit intercourse between the fallen angels and the women. The Greek text also says that the giants were around for a while, and that they were “renowned.” In other words, the illicit liaison between the angels and the women produced the giants; their actions thus had far reaching consequences.