1 Enoch 7 · 10 · 15–16 · Featured Study · A Labeled Study Resource, Not Canon

The Giants of 1 Enoch

Genesis names them in one verse and moves on: the Nephilim, “the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.” 1 Enoch stops and looks. It describes the Watchers’ offspring as giants the earth could not feed: devourers who turned on mankind, then on the animals, then on each other, until the earth itself “laid accusation against the lawless ones.” And then the book says the strangest, most consequential thing in its pages: when the giants’ bodies died, something came out, spirits that keep the earth as their dwelling, hunger without eating, and harass mankind “until the day of the consummation.” That is where the Judaism of Jesus’s day got its answer to a question Scripture never directly answers: where did the demons come from? This page lays the whole account out honestly, and follows the canon’s own giants thread from Genesis 6 all the way to Gath.

Gustave Doré, 1832 - 1883, The Titans, Inferno Canto XXXI, 1861. Public domain.

Summary

1 Enoch expands Genesis 6:4's one verse into a full account: the Watchers' giant offspring devoured mankind, destroyed each other, and left spirits behind that the Gospels' demons echo. The canon carries its own version of the same thread from Genesis to Goliath of Gath, and Christ's authority over these spirits is where the page lands.

1 Enoch 7 describes the giants devouring mankind, animals, and finally each other, until 'the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.'
1 Enoch 15 says the giants' spirits survived their bodies' deaths and remain on earth, hungry and hostile, until the day of judgment.
The Bible's own giants thread runs from the Nephilim in Genesis 6:4 through the Anakim of Numbers 13 and Joshua 11 to the descendants of Rapha in Gath in 2 Samuel 21.
The Gospels describe demons behaving in ways this ancient account anticipates: restless outside a body, clinging to territory, and aware of a fixed day of judgment.
1 Enoch is a labeled study resource, not Scripture, and the sixty-six-book canon stands on its own.

From Oath to Haunting

the book's own six-step chain: each step in its own verified words

1 · 1 En 6 · study resource

The Watchers descend

Two hundred swear together on Hermon: the oath page tells that story in full.

2 · 1 En 7:2 · study resource

The giants are born

“And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants….” And the earth cannot feed them.

3 · 1 En 7:3–6 · study resource

They turn on the earth

“The giants turned against them and devoured mankind… and drink the blood. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.”

4 · 1 En 10:9,12 · study resource

They destroy each other

Gabriel is sent to “send them one against the other that they may destroy each other in battle: for length of days shall they not have.”

5 · 1 En 15:8–9 · study resource

Their spirits remain

“The giants… shall be called evil spirits upon the earth… Evil spirits have proceeded from their bodies.”

6 · 1 En 16:1 · study resource

Active until the judgment

“Thus shall they destroy until the day of the consummation, the great judgement.”

1 verse
Genesis gives the Nephilim
chs 7–16
1 Enoch's expansion
70 gens
the Watchers bound
“no food”
yet hunger and thirst (15:11)
Matt 8:29
“before the time”

The Earth Could Not Feed Them

1 Enoch 7: the indictment, plainly and honestly

“And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another’s flesh, and drink the blood. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.”1 Enoch 7:4–6 (Charles, 1917) — a labeled study resource, not canon

The escalation is deliberate: first the giants consume what men produce, then men themselves, then every order of creature, then each other, ending at the one act the Torah singles out with horror, the drinking of blood. It is a portrait of appetite without limit, and its climax is legal, not lurid: the earth files suit. Genesis says the same thing in its own register: “the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and full of violence” (Gen 6:11, BSB). In both books, the Flood is not an overreaction; it is an answer to a courtroom already in session.

Said honestly: 7:2 gives the giants’ height as “three thousand ells”, a deliberately fantastic figure in the text’s own legendary register, printed here as the text gives it, asserted as nothing more. The book’s argument never rests on the number; it rests on the violence.

What Came Out of Them

1 Enoch 15–16: the Second Temple answer to where demons came from

“And now, the giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh, shall be called evil spirits upon the earth, and on the earth shall be their dwelling. Evil spirits have proceeded from their bodies… they take no food, but nevertheless hunger and thirst, and cause offences. And these spirits shall rise up against the children of men and against the women, because they have proceeded from them.”1 Enoch 15:8–9, 11–12 (Charles, 1917)

Because the giants were born of two natures (spirit from their fathers, flesh from their mothers), the book reasons that death could only take half of them. The flesh fell; the spirit remained, earthbound, dispossessed, and hungry. Read with that frame in mind, several strange features of the Gospels’ demon encounters snap into focus, not as proof of dependence, but as a shared first-century understanding:

RESTLESS WITHOUT A BODY

“But the unclean spirit, when he is gone out of the man, passeth through waterless places, seeking rest, and findeth it not.” Matt 12:43

CLINGING TO THE LAND

The Gerasene spirits dwell among tombs and beg Jesus “that he would not send them away out of the country.” Mark 5:10

THEY KNOW THE DEADLINE

“Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?” Matt 8:29, the same fixed day 1 En 16:1 calls “the day of the consummation, the great judgement.”

◈Where demons come from: the positions, and who holds themcontested

Spirits of the dead giants: the Enochic reading

The Second Temple view this page traces, and the early church’s own for its first centuries: Justin Martyr writes that the angels’ children by women “are those who are called demons” (Second Apology 5), and Athenagoras teaches the same. On the modern roster, Michael Heiser (Demons, Lexham, 2020) presents this as the understanding Jesus’s hearers actually had.

Fallen angels, simply

The later and long-standing majority view, from Augustine forward, most of Western theology has identified demons with the angels who fell, without an Enochic middle step. Held across confessional lines and honored here.

The honest floor

Scripture describes what demons do and what Christ does to them; it never narrates their origin. Both positions above are inferences, one from Second Temple context, one from later synthesis, and this page stamps no verdict. The doctrine’s full treatment lives on the Demonology study.

The Canon's Own Giants Thread

Genesis 6 to Gath: the seed war the Bible itself traces

Whatever a reader does with 1 Enoch, the giants thread itself is canon. Genesis says the Nephilim were on the earth “in those days and afterward as well”, and the Bible keeps its word about the afterward. The spies meet Anakim descended from the Nephilim; Joshua drives the Anakim out of the hill country but leaves a remnant in three Philistine cities; and one of those three cities is Gath, where, generations later, a giant champion steps out to defy the armies of the living God.

1 · Genesis 6:4 (BSB)

The Nephilim

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and afterward as well—when the sons of God had relations with the daughters of men. And they bore them children who became the mighty men of old, men of renown.

2 · Numbers 13:33 (BSB)

Grasshoppers in their sight

We even saw the Nephilim there—the descendants of Anak that come from the Nephilim! We seemed like grasshoppers in our own sight, and we must have seemed the same to them!”

3 · Joshua 11:22 (BSB)

A remnant in Gath

No Anakim were left in the land of the Israelites; only in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod did any survive.

4 · 2 Samuel 21:20, 22 (BSB)

Descended from Rapha, in Gath

And there was still another battle at Gath, where there was a man of great stature with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot—twenty-four in all. He too was descended from Rapha, … So these four descendants of Rapha in Gath fell at the hands of David and his servants.

The thread runs Gen 3:15 → Gen 6 → Num 13 → Josh 11 → Gath → the shepherd with five stones. The full David & Goliath story page is coming to the Iconic Stories series; until then the verses above are live doors into every link of the chain.

Osmar Schindler's David und Goliath (1888): the seed war's most famous single combat: the remnant of the giants against the anointed of the LORD.
Public domainOsmar Schindler (1869-1927)Wikimedia Commons →

The Stronger Man

what Christ does with all of this

Whichever origin story a reader holds, the Gospels’ portrait is the same: the spirits are real, they are hostile, they know their sentence, and they obey Jesus of Nazareth like defeated soldiers. He does not perform rituals over them. He speaks, and they go. He himself explains what His hearers were watching:

“Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man’s house and steal his possessions, unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can plunder his house.” Matthew 12:29 (BSB)

John says it as a mission statement: “This is why the Son of God was revealed, to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8, BSB). 1 Enoch’s giants are a labeled study resource, not Scripture, and this page asserts nothing beyond what each text says for itself; the Bible remains the sixty-six books. But the old book preserves what the demons’ own words in the Gospels confirm: the powers of darkness have a fixed appointment they cannot move, and the Son of Man who keeps that calendar has already walked into the strong man’s house.

The Voices on the Giants

with the work named

Michael Heiser

Demons: What the Bible Really Says About the Powers of Darkness (Lexham Press, 2020)

Cite-only, ≤50 words, per the modern-voice rule. The roster's systematic treatment of the Second Temple view this page traces, that the demons of the Gospels were understood in Jesus's day as the disembodied spirits of the dead giants. Reversing Hermon (Defender, 2017) carries the same case into the New Testament.

Justin Martyr

Second Apology, ch. 5 (c. AD 153)

Public domain, early-church witness: Justin taught that the angels transgressed with women, begot children who are “those who are called demons.” Evidence that the Enochic reading was the church's own in its first centuries.

Chuck Missler

Learn the Bible in 24 Hours (Thomas Nelson) — the Genesis 6 session

Marcus Brown's formative teacher on the angelic reading of Genesis 6 and its “days of Noah” stakes (Matt 24:37), the frame in which the giants are not mythology but the reason for the Flood.

Gary Wayne

The Genesis 6 Conspiracy (2014)

Cite-only. The roster's most extended popular treatment of the POST-flood giants, the “and afterward as well” of Genesis 6:4 followed through Anakim, Rephaim, and Gath. A topical synthesis, not a commentary, and labeled so.

George W. E. Nickelsburg

1 Enoch 1 (Hermeneia; Fortress Press, 2001)

The standard critical commentary on the Book of the Watchers, the scholarly anchor for chapters 7, 10, and 15–16 and their internal logic: violence, accusation, sentence, residue.

Marcus Brown's own commentary leads above all; within a tier, all voices are equal.