Here are my thoughts on the topic, from my forthcoming Genesis commentary in the ESVEC series:
6:1-4 The timing of this episode is introduced in rather vague terms: “When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them… (Gen. 6:1). However, from what follows, it appears that these events occurred during the lifetime of Noah. At this time “the sons of God
saw that the daughters of men were attractive (lit. “good”). And they
took as their wives any they chose” (6:2). The language of seeing and taking something perceived to be good echoes the first temptation in Genesis 3:6, so it is clear that this action represents a significant sin on the part of the “sons of God”. But who were “the sons of God” and the “daughters of men” and why was their intermarriage sinful?
Three views of the identity of these groups have been argued, with the first two explanations both finding support since the earliest interpreters.
[1] The first view suggests that the “sons of God” were the descendants of the line of Seth, with the “daughters of men” being the descendants of Cain.
[2] The second view interprets the “sons of God” as (demonic) spirit beings, who engaged in sexual intercourse with human women (“the daughters of men”). Justin Martyr (100-160 A.D.) writes, “God, when He had made the whole world, and subjected things earthly to man, . . . committed the care of men and of all things under heaven to angels whom He appointed over them. But the angels transgressed this appointment, and were captivated by love of women, and begat children who are those that are called demons.”
[3] Meanwhile, a third view identifies the “sons of God” as kings, who in many ancient Near Eastern societies claimed divine status for themselves as “sons of the gods”. These kings had the power of life and death over their subjects., and on this interpretation, the stress lies on the rulers taking on “any [of the daughters of men] they chose” in Genesis 6:2. These kings seized whatever women they wished for their harems – not just marrying one woman, as God had intended for them (2:24), but as many as they chose. Where Lamech first broke God’s pattern for marriage by having two wives (4:19), these kings multiplied that sin many times over by multiplying for themselves wives.
[4]
Each of these views has able exponents and is defensible, though each has its own problems.
The greatest challenge for the first view is that nowhere else in the Old Testament are human beings described as “the sons of God”; on the contrary, the term consistently designates angelic beings (see Job 1:6; Job 38:7; and [probably] Deut. 32:8).
[5] In addition, “the daughters of men” in verse 2 seems obviously related to the daughters born to men in verse 1, which doesn’t seem to limit them to a particular sub-group (i.e. the daughters of the line of Cain).
[6] Moreover, some New Testament passages seem to reference the involvement of spiritual beings in these events. For example, Jude 6-7 speaks of angels leaving their proper home and sinning in a way that was similar to the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah in pursuing “strange flesh”.
[7] Similarly, 1 Peter 3:19-20 references the proclamation of the gospel to spirits who were disobedient in the time of Noah.
The main challenge for the second view is the question whether angels are capable of producing offspring through intercourse with humans (see Matt. 22:30). John Calvin says the angelic view “is abundantly refuted by its own absurdity; and it is surprising that learned men should formerly have been fascinated by ravings so gross and prodigious,”
[8] though it must be said that ancient audiences did not find the idea as obviously absurd as Calvin did. Moreover, Genesis says remarkably little about the world of angelic beings, good or bad; on the contrary, it is much more closely focused on human sin and its consequences.
[9] Indeed, the transgression in Genesis 6 (whatever it may have been) seems to result in a specific judgment coming upon humanity, not on angelic beings.
The third view offers a potential explanation for the use of the language of “the sons of God” to describe humans but doesn’t necessarily provide a much better alternative overall. In general, ancient Near Eastern kings as individuals may have styled themselves as “the son of the gods” but there is little evidence for “the sons of the gods” being used as a collective term for kings or rulers. There seems little interest in the political organization of the ancient city-states in Genesis 4, which references farming, music and technology as advances belonging to the line of Cain but says nothing at all explicitly about kingship.
It is hard to establish which of these interpretations is to be preferred with any certainty. However, a significant contextual consideration is the fact that the contrast between the lines of Cain and Seth forms the larger backdrop against which this episode occurs. Indeed, Genesis 6:1-8 is itself incorporated into the larger genealogy of Seth that starts in Genesis 5 and concludes in Genesis 9:29.
[10] On this view, the passage provides an explanation of why the two families do not result in large numbers of people in the category of “righteous” and “wicked.” Because so many of the sons of the line of Seth intermarried indiscriminately, the result was an almost complete loss of the righteous line.
What is more, it is also true that even though the Old Testament does not elsewhere use “sons of God” to describe God’s people, the idea is not entirely foreign to the passage. In Genesis 5:1-3, image and sonship are intimately connected: Adam is made in God’s image and he passes that image on to his children through Seth. If Adam is thus, by virtue of bearing his image, God’s son (Luke 3:38), and Seth is explicitly made in the image of Adam (5:3), could not Seth and his line rightly be called “sons of God”?
[11]
Finally, elsewhere in the Bible, Satan’s three primary modes of attack on God’s people take the form of deception, persecution and seduction,
[12] and it could be argued that the same
modus operandi is evident already in the opening chapters of Genesis, deceiving Eve (Gen. 3), martyring Abel (Gen. 4), and now seducing the line of promise (Gen. 6:1-4). These considerations, taken together, persuade me that the interpretation which understands the sin as being the wrongful mixing of the lines of Seth and the line of Cain is correct, though the alternative views each have their strengths.
Whichever interpretation is adopted, what is abundantly clear is that as humanity multiplied and filled the earth – evidence itself of God’s blessing (see Gen. 1:27) – sin multiplied also. The sin of these verses formed an evil parody of the creation mandate: these beings, who aspired to be in the image of God, sought to fill the earth with their offspring as God had commanded, but they went about it in the wrong way, abusing the marriage relationship to serve their corrupt desires and seeking to make a name for themselves, following the pattern of Cain (6:4; 4:17; “men of renown” is literally “men of name”).
In this pursuit, they were unsuccessful, as is the case for every act of human rebellion in Genesis. God judged the “sons of God” and their sin resulted in curse and destruction rather than the blessing and prosperity that was sought. Just as indiscriminate eating in Genesis 3 resulted in death, so too indiscriminate marriage that transgressed the boundaries set by God, also resulted in death. In contrast to the lengthy lives of the antediluvian patriarchs in Genesis 5, human life will be limited to a mere 120 years.
[13] The reason given, “for he is flesh” (6:3) could describe human mortality or corruption; in fact, both are in view: human mortality is the result of human corruption, and the expansion in corruption in these verses will be matched by a decrease in human lifespan. The divine breath/spirit gives life to humanity and when it is withdrawn, the result is death (see Gen. 2:7; Ezek. 37:10; Ps. 104:29; 146:4).
The judgment of verse 3 logically separates verses 1-2 from verses 4-5, though they are linked by the renewed mention of the sons of God and daughters of men in verse 4. The result is a chiastic structure that focuses our attention on the judgment curse that falls on humanity:
A: Humanity multiplies on the face of the earth (6:1)
B: Sin increases: the sons of God and daughters of men transgress (6:2)
C: Judgment declared upon humanity (6:3)
B’: Sin increases: the Nephilim and mighty men transgress (6:4)
A’: Human wickedness grows great in the earth (6:5)
The significance of this observation is to note that the sin in verse 4, while contemporaneous with that in verse 2 (“when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and had children by them”),
[14] is not necessarily the same as it. In other words, the Nephilim and the mighty men are not necessarily the offspring of the sons of God and daughters of men, as is often assumed by the interpretation that sees the sons of God as angelic beings.
[15] Genesis 6:4, however, simply asserts that the Nephilim (“fallen ones”) were also present during these corrupt days, as well as later on. It does not tell us anything about the Nephilim, assuming that readers are already familiar with these people.
The only other explicit reference in the Bible to the Nephilim is Numbers 13:33, where the scouts claimed that the fearsomely large Anakim that they encountered were “of” (
min) the Nephilim. This Hebrew construction could mean that the Anakim were “descended from” the Nephilim, though that raises questions about how the Nephilim could have survived the flood.
[16] More likely, the point of the comparison is that the Anakites shared the characteristics of the Nephilim of old, not that they were actually related to them. In that case, Numbers 13 gives us a window into what the original audience of Genesis thought the Nephilim were like: tall and strong, fearsome and invincible in battle.
Given this, it makes sense to identify the Nephilim as the antecedent of pronoun in the last part of Genesis 6:4: “they” would then refer to the Nephilim rather than to the children of the illicit unions who immediately precede it, so the Nephilim would be the “mighty men” (“warriors”;
gibborim) and the “men of renown” (literally, “men of name”). In that capacity, the Nephilim represent a different manifestation of the growth of sin, namely self-promoting violence rather than sexuality. Their sin lay in seeking to make a name for themselves through their military conquests, rather than humbly calling on the name of the Lord, as the line of Seth did earlier (see 4:26). Not coincidentally, Lamech celebrated his deviancy in both his sexuality and fame-seeking violence in Genesis 4:19-24; so too, the universal spread of sin in Genesis 6 is demonstrated in both these areas. Yet, as the concentric structure emphasizes, what counts ultimately is not human striving but God’s action – here in judgment (and later, in making a name for his chosen one, Abraham; see Gen. 12:2).
[1] On the early interpretation of this passage, see Robert C. Newman, “The Ancient Exegesis of Genesis 6:2, 4”,
Grace Theological Journal 5 (1984): 13-36.
[2] This view is held by, among others, Augustine,
City of God, 15.22-23; John Calvin,
Genesis (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1554, reprint 1992)
, 238; Robert S. Candlish,
Studies in Genesis (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1979 reprint), 123-24; Mathews,
Genesis 1:1-11:26, 324-31.
[3] Justin Martyr,
Apology 2.5 (cited by Newman, “Genesis 6:2, 4”, 21-22). Although popular among ancient interpreters, it has not been widely adopted by modern readers.
[4] For this view, see Meredith G. Kline, “Divine Kingship and Genesis 6:1-4,”
Westminster Theological Journal 24 (1962): 187-204; so also Waltke,
Genesis, 116-17.
[5] Deuteronomy 32:8 has text critical difficulties, but the reading “sons of God” rather than “sons of Israel” seems probable. See Michael S. Heiser, “Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sons of God”,
Bibliotheca Sacra 158 (2001): 52-74.
[6] It is possible to adapt the first view to take “the daughters of men” globally as covering
all women, not just the daughters of the line of Cain. On this understanding, the sons of Seth were not deliberately marrying outside the line of promise but were carelessly marrying whichever women they chose, without reference to their origins. See Mathews,
Genesis 1:1-11:26, 330.
[7] It is worth noting that Jude also cites elsewhere from 1 Enoch, which clearly adopts the supernatural being view. See Newman, “Genesis 6:2, 4”, 16, 28-29.
[8] Genesis, 238.
[9] See Vos,
Biblical Theology, 48.
[10] See Mathews,
Genesis 1:1-11:26, 329.
[11] It is striking that in Genesis 5, it is explicitly
Seth who bears Adam’s image, not Cain. Moreover, all the other uses of
bene-’elohim occur outside the Pentateuch (with the possible exception of Deuteronomy 32:8).
[12] Deception (2 Cor. 11:14; Rev. 12:9); persecution (1 Pet. 3:8; Rev. 2:10); seduction (2 Cor. 11:2-3; Rev. 19:2).
[13] On the translation issues of Genesis 6:3, see Mathews,
Genesis 1:1-11:26, 332-5. This is obviously not an absolute limitation of age, since Abraham lived to be 175 (Gen. 25:7), but after this point very few people exceed this number.
[14] We may note the similarity to the temporal clause in verse 1 (“When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them”) as supporting the interpretation of this phrase in verse 4 as temporal rather than causal.
[15] A connection that is likely behind the Septuagint translation,
gigantes (“giants”), which was then followed by the KJV.
[16] The Talmud suggests the unlikely possibility of one of them clinging to the outside of the ark!
sad. This seems to be a strawman or poisoning the well or some type of fallacy like unto it.
