How were there Nephilim after the flood (Numbers 13:33)?
ContestedTexts of equal or higher authority genuinely pull both ways, and SAM names both sides.
The text offers two competing explanations, and neither is stated outright as the definitive answer: Genesis 6:4 contains a phrase suggesting the Nephilim-producing union happened both before and after the flood, while the flood narrative says all land-breathing flesh died, leaving the question genuinely unresolved within the text itself. The Numbers 13:33 claim, importantly, comes from the mouths of the ten faithless spies whose report the text explicitly condemns as false.
The tension is between Genesis 6:4's narrator phrase "and also after that" (implying the phenomenon recurred) and Genesis 7:21-23's narrator statement that all land-breathing flesh died in the flood, both narrator-level statements pulling in different directions on the same question.
The unresolved tension: The text is silent on exactly how or whether the post-flood giant clans (Rephaim, Anakim, etc.) are connected to the pre-flood Nephilim. Genesis 6:4's "and also after that" implies a recurrence but never narrates one post-flood. The text never explicitly states whether the "sons of God" unions happened again after the flood, nor does it confirm or deny the spies' identification of the Anakim as Nephilim descendants.
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