What is the context?
The family record in chapter 5 ended with Noah and his sons. This passage explains the world into which his story comes: people multiply, the figures called sons of God take wives as they choose, and human wickedness fills the earth. The description of the human heart in verse 5 is the clearest stated reason for the coming judgment. The difficult opening verses should not distract us from that explanation.
The name נְפִילִים, nĕfîlîm (neh-fee-LEEM), is left as Nephilim in the BSB. Brown–Driver–Briggs describes giants and treats the name's origin as uncertain. A proposed meaning of the name cannot, by itself, establish who their parents were or explain every detail of the passage.
God's grief shows that evil matters to Him. The judgment affects human beings and the other creatures in the world they inhabit. Yet the sentence is immediately followed by the notice that Noah finds favor. The story contains both God's opposition to wickedness and the preservation of life through the man He addresses.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Where do Christian readings differ? One long-standing reading understands the sons of God as heavenly beings who crossed the boundary of their appointed place. Justin Martyr's Second Apology, chapter 5, describes angels taking women and fathering offspring. The US Catholic bishops' Bible notes on Genesis 6:1–4 also identify heavenly beings. These are explanations of the passage, rather than a statement that every Catholic must hold this reading.
Another long-standing reading sees people from the family line associated with God joining themselves to those who had turned from Him. Augustine, City of God 15.22–23, identifies the families of Seth and Cain; Wesley's notes on verse 2 follow that reading. The central concern is the abandonment of faithfulness for the relationships people desire. These named teachers do not speak for every member of a modern denomination.
Readers also differ over the 120 years in verse 3. Wesley's notes take them as a period before judgment; the Catholic bishops' notes take them as a reduction of the human lifespan. The verse's meaning should be considered within the movement toward the flood and the longer lifespans still reported afterward.
Where does this fit in God's plan?
Jesus explicitly returns to Noah's days in Matthew 24:37–39. His comparison emphasizes people carrying on with ordinary life until judgment arrives. The warning does not require us to solve every question about the Nephilim before hearing it: a world that ignores God is not made safe by feeling that life will continue as usual.
2 Peter 3:5–13 likewise uses the flood when describing judgment still to come and God's patience before it. The call is to repentance and a life shaped by the promise of a world where righteousness dwells.
What is our position?
We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.
Where can I study this further?
No deeper study linked yet.