A 5-Part Series on Michael Heiser’s “The Unseen Realm” (Part 3: Rebellious Angels, Sex with Women, and Giant Offspring)

In my previous post, Part 2 of my brief book review series of Michael Heiser’s The Unseen Realm, I looked at Heiser’s take on how the concept of YHWH and His divine council plays out in regard to Genesis 2-3. In short, Heiser gives some substance to the traditional notion that Satan is a fallen angel. Of course, the serpent in Genesis 3 is not called “Satan,” for that name didn’t come along until later in Israel’s history. Nevertheless, Heiser convincingly shows that the serpent in Genesis 3 shouldn’t be understood solely as a snake, but rather as a divine being, a guardian cherub, who rebels against God and entices Adam and Eve to sin. He backs this notion up in his comments regarding Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14.

In this post, I am going to briefly look at Heiser’s take on Genesis 6:1-4’s story of the Nephilim, the story of Noah’s flood, and the story of the Tower of Babel.

Genesis 6:1-4 to Genesis 11: From the Nephilim to Babel
Heiser’s take on Genesis 6-11 can be summarized in the following way:

1. The story in Genesis 6:1-4 about the “sons of God” having sex with the “daughters of men” and fathering the Nephilim is about divine beings (i.e. angels) crossing that boundary between the supernatural and natural world, having sex with women, and fathering a race of giants known as the Nephilim (who later show up in the Exodus and Conquest narratives…more on that later). Genesis 6:1-4 is thus given as the set up and reason for the flood story in Genesis 6-8. This supernatural interpretation of Genesis 6:1-4 is reflected in books like I Enoch.
2. Genesis 6-8 as a whole is thus a variation of Mesopotamian flood stories that go something like this: divine beings known as apkallus, possessors of great knowledge, had sex with women, produced semi-divine offspring, and shared their supernatural knowledge with humanity. Even though they were punished into subterranean waters by the Babylonian god Marduk, they were nevertheless hailed as pre-flood cultural heroes in Babylon and Babylonian kings claimed to be descended from the apkallus.
3. Of course, the biblical writer switches the entire story around to say that it was rebellious divine beings against YHWH who had sex with women,  and their offspring were not glorious kings, but violent giants (whom we come across in the Exodus and Conquest narratives). And the flood was thus God’s attempt to rid the world of the immorality and sin that these divine beings encouraged in the pre-flood world.
4. Then in Genesis 11, when humanity attempts to build a tower to heaven to gain power and fame, YHWH sees this as more rebellion. And so, He not only disperses humanity into various nations, but he disinherits them as His people and puts them under the authority of those rebellious divine beings—the lesser Elohim. As Heiser puts it, it is as if YHWH says, “If you don’t want to obey me, I’m not interested in being your god—I’ll match you up with some other god” (114).
5. Even though this “disinheriting of the nations” isn’t described in Genesis 11, it is described in Deuteronomy 32:8-9, which says, “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But the LORD’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.” Heiser says these verses are referring to the dispersal of the nations after Babel and the “sons of God” is a reference to the other divine beings. Hence, Israel is the people of YHWH, whereas the other nations are under the authority of other “gods,” which are really the rebellious divine beings of Genesis 6:1-4.

If we could crystalize all this, as well as the topic of the previous post, even further, we could reduce the main points to these:

1. After YHWH created the world and placed Adam and Eve in Eden, a guardian cherub/serpent rebelled against YHWH by enticing Adam and Eve to sin in order to gain wisdom and knowledge. YHWH cursed the guardian cherub/serpent, cast him to the earth to eat dust, and then cast Adam and Eve out of Eden. And that signaled the “war” between the serpent’s offspring (i.e. the nations) and the woman’s offspring (i.e. Israel) throughout the Old Testament.
2. Genesis 6:1-4 then tells us of the rebellion of other divine beings who had sex with women, produced giant offspring (i.e. Nephilim), and who were the impetus of the eventual worldwide flood by which YHWH judged the sin of the pre-flood world.
3. Genesis 11 then tells us the story of humanity’s rebellion at the Tower of Babel. As a result, YHWH disperses them into different nations and puts them under the authority of other divine beings, other elohim—the rebellious ones.

My Initial Reaction: Positive
All that said, I have to say Heiser’s general take on the more supernatural take on Genesis 1-11 seems pretty on point, and at least intriguing enough to consider. I’ve long said that Genesis 1-11 essentially acts as a prologue, written in the genre of ancient Near Eastern (ANE) myth, to set up the entire Old Testament story of YHWH’s interaction with Israel within history. To use a theater metaphor, I see Genesis 1-11 as the stage and backdrop against which the Old Testament play of history transpired. The literary similarities between the various episodes in Genesis 1-11 and other ANE myths are just too obvious to ignore.

Therefore, Genesis 1-11 doesn’t just reveal the truth about YHWH as the true Creator God and the nature of human beings, it also provides the basic storyline and theme that will unfold throughout history: YHWH has declared war on the serpent (i.e. rebellious guardian cherub) and has promised that eventually the “woman’s offspring” will crush the “serpent’s offspring” and thus sin, death, and the serpent himself will be destroyed. Thus, the entire Old Testament story is the history of that war of the offspring: Israel as the woman’s offspring vs. the idolatrous nations as the serpent’s offspring. (The New Testament offers the concluding act to this “play,” but that will be addressed in a later post).

Given that, everything Heiser proposes fits: (1) The serpent (Genesis 3) was the first rebellious angel/divine being who plunges the human race into sin and death; (2) The sons of Elohim (Genesis 6:1-4) are the other rebellious angels/divine beings who further corrupted the human race, so badly that it warranted YHWH sending the flood; and (3) Because of humanity’s continued rebellion after the flood, YHWH allows them to be ruled, not by Him, but by these lesser/rebellious divine beings (Deut. 32:8-9—about what God did after Babel).

That being said, there are a few things at this point I’m a bit hesitant on…

A Secondary Reaction: Perhaps not Negative, but Certainly Cautious
My first bone of contention has to do with Heiser’s fundamental interpretation that the sons of Elohim in Genesis 6:1-4 was about angels having sex with women and fathering essentially semi-divine giants. I’ve longed interpreted it as being about how corrupt human kings (who often claimed to be descended from the gods) abused their power to corrupt and take advantage of helpless humanity. The idea of angels having sex with women just seems, well, too Mormon for my tastes!

Heiser causes me further pause when he, quite correctly actually, points out the connection between the Canaanite “giants in the land” and the Nephilim. In both the Exodus and Conquest accounts, we are told about how the giant Anakim were living in the land, and that they had descended from the Nephilim. The natural question is thus, “If everyone but Noah and his family were destroyed in the flood, how did the Nephilim survive?” Heiser suggests that maybe the rebellious divine beings of Genesis 6:1-4 had more sex with women after the flood and thus continued to produce Nephilim offspring, from whom Goliath and his fellow Anakim descended. Therefore, it is thus implied that when Joshua and the Israelites were taking over Canaan, that they were fighting, not just the Canaanite people, but also semi-divine beings who were fathered by rebellious angels.

I’m sorry, but that just sounds a bit too out there. I think the problem is rooted in the fact that Heiser doesn’t seem to clearly state what his view of the genre of Genesis 1-11. I can totally see Genesis 6:1-4 as a biblical twist on the Mesopotamian myth about the apkallus, as long as it is seen as, in fact as myth and not history. It can then act as a polemic against not only the foreign gods of the nations, but also against the pagan kings who claim to be descended from such beings. But Heiser’s attempt to say that these rebellious divine being had sex with women after the flood and that explains the origins of specific people within the Book of Joshua, which is clearly presented as history—that throws up a big red flag for me.

Let’s Tweak and Clarify a Few Things
All that said, my take is this: If you clearly understand that Genesis 1-11 is in the genre of ANE myth and clearly differentiate it from historical books like Joshua, most of what Heiser says makes sense. That entire supernatural worldview and interpretation in Genesis 1-11 “sets the stage” on how various events in Old Testament history are to be interpreted. But one screws a whole lot of it up if one even seems to imply that, for example, the peoples of the pagan nations in the Old Testament were somehow literal “serpent offspring,” or that there were a specific group of people in Canaan who were the descendants of literal semi-divine offspring of sex-crazed rebellious angels.

To be fair, the descriptions of figures like Goliath, the Anakim, and King Og of Bashan—these certainly are meant to draw connections to the Nephilim of Genesis 6:1-4. That’s the point: These guys were bad and tyrannical…just like those figures in the story of Genesis 6:1-4. I just think we make a mistake if we interpret these connections to Genesis 6:1-4 as actual historical claims.

The purpose of myth isn’t to give history; it is to provide an interpretive grid to interpret history. It is to provide the imagery and language needed to try to explain a reality that is beyond our full understanding. And so, one of the main truths conveyed in Genesis 1-11 is that this world is corrupted and under the dominion of evil, spiritual forces that have caused God’s good creation to go bad and God’s image-bearers to suffering under bondage to sin and death. Yet, YHWH the Creator God has set in motion a plan to redeem His creation, purify His image-bearers, and ultimately crush the evil forces who are at work in this world.

So, how do you even begin to explain that reality? Well, Genesis 1-11 is telling a story in the genre of myth so that we can interpret what happens in history. So, when we read in Joshua these conflicts with the Anakim—Are we to think that they literally descended from rebellious angels, or should we understand that some of the clans in Canaanite were literally bigger than the Israelites and were particularly vicious pagans who fought against the Israelites? Because of that, the writer of Joshua has chosen to describe them with imagery from Genesis 6:1-4, essentially to say, “The Israelites are God’s people; this conquest somehow fits into God’s plan to redeem creation; therefore, these vicious people in Canaan are like the Nephilim in Genesis 6; those pagan rulers who claimed to be descended from divine beings are like those awful ‘sons of Elohim’ in Genesis 6.”

I propose the latter. Therefore, when the Israelites under Joshua took Canaan and battled with the Anakim in history, the writer of Joshua is interpreting those historical battles against that mythological grid of Genesis 1-11, and thus is pointing to the ultimate spiritual warfare that was behind the historical events in Joshua.

One last thing to be clear: I’m not saying that there really aren’t evil spiritual forces at work in the world. The Bible clearly teaches there are—we call the chief one Satan and the others fallen angels or demons. I am saying, though, that I don’t think Genesis 1-11 is trying to tell us of their literal, historical origin. Rather, it provides us a story, imagery and language to help us begin to grasp a reality that is ultimately beyond our comprehension.