Since the Nephilim could not possibly be angel hybrids, we have to ask ourselves what is this story about. We know it's about God's wrath, but is there something in the broader context that explains God’s striving with mankind, the limiting of time for that to conclude, the declaration that man is flesh, and that this whole affair seems like it was touched off by a separation between the godly and the merely human being no longer maintained?
YES! resoundingly so, YES! Let's jump in and see how it all comes together.
It does need to be pointed out at this point that it wasn’t the separation itself that was important in causing God's judgment. That the whole race of humankind was becoming violent as a result of it no longer being maintained is what mattered. The story, after all, is about violence, and specifically, about God's wrath in response to it. In that regard, the story doesn't really begin in Genesis 6, but back in Genesis 4 with the violent death Cain visited upon Abel.
Genesis 4:8-24 lays out God's reaction to Cain's crime: he and his family were driven from the presence of the Lord; Cain was marked in case someone stumbled into him and wanted to take vengeance; he was enjoined from farming and sentenced to be a restless wanderer (hunter/gatherer is the implication) instead. His wife went with him into exile and so a race of people followed, separated from the rest of mankind and alienated from their created purpose of tilling. The lineage derived was more tightly constrained genetically than the Sethites, which had many offspring of Adam and Eve with which to reproduce.
In chapter 5, the story of mankind is retold but without any reference to Cain and Abel (Cain’s line is treated separately in 4:17-24). Humankind without Cain is recast as God’s children, the creation of God through Adam and Seth as can be seen in the repetition of "likeness." Adam was made in the likeness of God, Seth in the likeness of Adam. With the appointment of Seth (which means put, set) to take the place of Abel, and Cain segregated, a human line of God's children was reestablished.
Many sons and daughters were born to Adam after Seth, but Seth was the named successor and so the head of the line that were sons to God (remember Luke 3). At that time, the Sethite, human, sons of God began to call on the name of the LORD. So the situation leading up to the Nephilim account was that, near the beginning of human history, God's judgment had separated the line of Cain from the rest of humanity because of violence. The line of Cain was human, certainly, but it was the line of Seth, though human as well, that carried the name of God, called on that name and had the distinction of being called "sons of God."
At some point in time, when Cain's line had multiplied sufficiently, the males of Seth's line began running into and noticing the daughters of Cain's line. They were beautiful. The Sethite sons of God took (in a replication of Eve’s sin in garden) as many as they wished as wives and cross-bred. Since the cross-breeding was only one way (Seth’s line took Cain’s women, but Cain's line did not take Seth’s women) the implication is that unequal strength was brought to bear, perhaps even... violence.
The interbreeding within Cain’s line up to the time of this cross-breeding produced a much more constrained gene pool in Cain's line as compared to Seth's. When the lines cross-bred, gigantism manifested, probably not dissimilarly to the production of ligers when lions breed with tigers. The giants thus produced were called “Nephilim.” These folks of great stature physically also gained stature socially, and I think the inference that they did so through violence is reasonable.
It seems that the gene signal for gigantism remained a recessive trait in some of those descended from cross-breeding but not expressing it. This may have been the case for Noah's daughters-in-law, or Noah's wife, or maybe even in Noah himself, maybe even some combination of all those possibilities. Whatever the source, in the post-diluvian Sethite race derived from Noah's sons and their wives, gigantism manifested itself again. When it did, it seems the same proclivity toward violence and notoriety was manifested in Nephilim whether prediluvian or post.
The problem that led to The Flood, with all it's death and destruction, was that the human, but godly line of Adam and Seth had become violent, like the human but ungodly line of Cain. In the mixture of those populations, violence filled the earth and giants roamed the land. God regretted having made any of them and so judgment came in a deluge. So there it is, simple and straightforward—no angels, no angelic hybrids—just human sinners doing as sinners do, all the time.
Thankfully, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and so can we.
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