In the Hebrew Bible, there are three interconnected passages referencing the nephilim. Two of them come from the Pentateuch. The first occurrence is in Genesis 6:1–4, immediately before the account of Noah's Ark. Genesis 6:4 reads as follows:
The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bore children to them; the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.
Where the Jewish Publication Society translation simply transliterates the Hebrew nephilim as "Nephilim", the King James Version translates the term as "giants".
The second reference to the Nephilim is Numbers 13:32–33 where ten of the Twelve Spies report that they have seen fearsome giants in Canaan:
Numbers 13 And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.
Outside the Pentateuch there is one more passage indirectly referencing nephilim and this is Ezekiel 32:17–32.
Ezekiel 32:27 But they do not lie with the fallen warriors of old, who went down to the realm of the dead with their weapons of war—their swords placed under their heads and their shields resting on their bones—though these warriors also had terrorized the land of the living.
With the traditional vowels added to the text in the medieval period, the phrase is read gibborim nophlim ("'fallen warriors" or "fallen Gibborim"), The verse can be translated like this,
Ezekiel 32:27 They lie with the warriors, the Nephilim of old, who descended to Sheol with their weapons of war. They placed their swords beneath their heads and their shields upon their bones, for the terror of the warriors was upon the land of the living.
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