Genesis
6: 1-6
1
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to
them, 2 the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they
took as their wives any they chose. 3 Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not
abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” 4 The
Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of
God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were
the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. 5 The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was
great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually. 6 And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the
earth, and it grieved him to his heart.
This passage has been
debated among theologians and no amicable consensus has been reached. Since Moses did not explain it by giving
details or by positively identifying those who were involved in this activity,
no one today can with absolute certainty declare who its participants were, nor
can anyone give its definite interpretation that would satisfy everyone. Moses merely recorded the account as fact without
giving conclusive commentary. The result
of the sexual encounters between the sons of God and the daughters of man were
the Nephilim. Those are the facts that
are recorded in Genesis. No attempt at
explaining those facts is made. I
believe that Moses did not give an explanation of these events because Israel,
whose history he was recording, knew who the participants were and therefore
needed no further explanation. What has
caused misunderstanding among Bible students today is that through the years
too many Theologians have offered their opinions on these events and have
muddied the waters of interpretation.
There are two major thoughts as to who the sons of God are and who the
Nephilim are.
One of them, it seems to
me, can be discarded without serious consideration, although among many Godly
Christians it is the proper interpretation.
It says that the sons of God are fallen angels – those of you who believe this please hear me out before you take up
stones - who took human wives unto themselves and the resulting offspring
were physical giants, the word “Nephilim” interpreted by the Septuagint as
meaning “giants”. To prove their point,
they quote Job 1:6
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves
before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.
Job
2: 1 Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves
before the LORD, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the
LORD.
Also, Job 38:7 when the morning stars sang
together and all the sons of God shouted for joy
Since “the sons of God”
in these verses refer to angels, then, these interpreters assume that the same
nomenclature in Genesis 6: 2 must also refer to angels. I have at least two problems with that
interpretation. The term "sons of
God" does refer to angels in Job
1:6;
2:1;
38:7;
but these are unfallen angels faithfully
serving God, not those who followed Satan in his rebellion against God. The words, “and Satan came among them” proves that he is not counted as
included in the “sons of God” in
these passages. He is separate from
them, and therefore, so are demons.
Even if fallen angels
could make themselves appear in human bodies, why would they want to marry
human women and settle down on earth?
Certainly their wives and neighbors would detect something different
about them and this would create innumerable problems. Do immortal spiritual beings desire and lust
after mortal flesh? I don’t think
so.
A second problem I have
with this is that nowhere does the Bible even remotely indicate that angels can
have sex with humans. Yes, angels have
assumed human form, but they are not human.
They are still spiritual beings with spiritual characteristics. Do they have a fully functioning human body,
i.e. reproductive abilities when they take on human form for a time? I rather doubt it, and I believe it takes a stretch
of the imagination to see that possibility.
Angels may appear as a human i.e. look like them, but they do not have
the same bodily functions.
Mark 12: 25 states that
in the resurrection people will be like the angels in heaven, in that there
will be no marriage, nor by implication, no sex. Angels do not have sex.
Mark 12: 25 For when they rise from
the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in
heaven.
Immediately
someone is shouting out, “It says angels in
heaven. In heaven they don’t have
sex, but Genesis 6 is on earth, not in heaven.
The angels can have sex on earth.”
That,
however, is not a valid argument since it is an argumentum ex silentio, an argument from silence. Just because Jesus said the angels in heaven do not have sex that
does not even remotely imply that the opposite is true; it gives absolutely not
one shred of evidence that on earth they can and in fact have had sexual
relations with human women. In logic, an
argument from silence is never taken as a valid one. If you use arguments from silence, then you
can prove whatever you want to prove.
Just say, “Since there is no evidence to disprove that what I say true,
it must be true.” That is what an
argument from silence is; if there is no empirical evidence to the contrary to
disprove what I am maintaining, then what I argue must be taken as valid and
correct. But, that is not true. It is an invalid argument because it is based
on assumption, namely, if ‘A’ is proven to be true and I claim that ‘B’ is true
because nothing is proven contrary to what I am claiming, I am, therefore,
correct in my assertion.
Of
course, the focus of what Jesus was teaching when He mentioned the angels in
heaven in Mark was that there is no need for marriage in heaven because those
who populate heaven will never die; so in that way they are like the angels in
that they have eternal life. There will
be no births in heaven because there are no deaths in heaven. He was teaching that there is a need for
marriage on earth in order to propagate life since people on earth die. If they did not reproduce, then the human
species would die out. His primary
teaching was not whether or not
angels were capable of having sexual relationships, but rather that those who
populate eternity have no need to reproduce since they will never die. Since angels do not die, there is no need for
them to reproduce other angels. In fact,
they are not capable of doing so. What
would be the purpose of angels having reproductive capabilities since God has
already created all the angels He intends to create?
In
addition to their claim that “in heaven”
excludes angels “on earth” from the
Lord’s prohibition of marriage, they point to Jude 6 as further proof that
angels had sexual relations on earth with human women.
Jude 6 And the angels who did not
stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he
has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the
great day
Jude
is comparing the false teachers of his day who had infiltrated the church,
posing as teachers and ministers of the gospel - who in essence were profane
perverters of the gospel - to the disobedient Israelites in the wilderness and
to the angels who rebelled against God by not being satisfied with their
position as holy angels, but wanted to be more than that, and to the
inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, who were slain with fire from heaven because
of their blatant in-your-face depraved homosexual practices. They wanted to have sex with angels (see Genesis 19:5) – the opposite of
what some claim occurred in Genesis 6 - but the men of Sodom were prevented
from doing so. This is just another
indication that angels do not have sex on earth. It is because of the juxtaposition of the
angel verse to the verse about Sodom and Gomorrah that some perceive the angels
to have been involved in sexual misdeeds with women. “Since
they are adjacent verses, then they must have the same sexual context.” But the context does not demand such an
interpretation. It merely states that
the false teachers will be in the same condemnation as the rebellious
Israelites, the rebellious angels and the perverted inhabitants of Sodom and
Gomorrah. Nothing about sexual
encounters between angels and humans is even implied.
Furthermore, the emphasis
in Genesis 6 is
on the sin of man and not the
rebellion of angels. The word "man"
is used nine times in verses 1-7
and God states clearly that the judgment was coming because of what humans had
done. "And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth" (verse 5). Another problem with this
interpretation is that verse 2 states that the “sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they
took as their wives any they chose.” This verse clearly states that the sons of
God were lusting after the daughters of men.
Do
angels lust after human flesh? Do angels
think of human women as an object of desire?
Do spiritual beings wish they could be fleshly in nature so they can
have sex? They are far superior to human
beings, so why would they want to do what inferior beings do? Do you, as a human being, desire to live as
an animal so you can procreate with one?
The idea is abhorrent. It is
disgusting to even imagine. The idea
that the sons of God were angels who lusted after human women just does not
make sense.
And
the verse continues by saying that they “took as their wives any they chose.” The
sons of God married the daughters of
man. The word “wife” implies the intent of an enduring relationship. Would angels make a conscience decision to
relinquish a spiritual manifestation in order to remain in a corporeal
manifestation just so they could remain in a relationship with a human for the
purpose of having sex? It just does not
begin to make sense. Once again I refer
you to Mark 12:25. Angels do no marry. They do not reproduce. They are eternal in nature so there is no
need for them to have offspring. Neither
are they capable of doing so.
But,
someone says, this was Satan’s way of destroying the human race that God
created to worship and serve Him. How
better to defeat God’s work than to mix demon blood with human blood? (This
falsely assumes that angels have blood.)
One of Satan's most successful devices is compromise. If he can delude God's
people into abandoning their privileged position of separation from sin and
communion with God, then he can corrupt them and lead them into sin.
What was Satan's plan for
defeating God's people in Noah's day?
It was to entice the godly line of Seth ("the sons of God") to mix with the ungodly line of Cain ("the daughters of men") and
thus abandon their devotion to the Lord.
This is the identical temptation that Christians face today: to be
friends with the world (James 4:4),
love the world (1 John 2:15-17),
and conform to the world (Rom. 12:2),
rather than be separated from the world (2 Cor. 6:14-7:1.
Those
who teach that the sons of God were fallen angels also teach that the offspring
of those relations were physical giants who viciously, violently and
tyrannically ruled others. They cared
not for any person other than themselves.
They terrorized those they ruled and trampled upon the rights of
all. Since they were bigger and stronger
than everyone else, half angel and half human, who could stop them? But, is this the proper interpretation?
To
give support to that position, they point to Goliath and his brothers who were
physical giants and to Numbers 13: 32
So they brought to
the people of Israel a bad report of the land that they had spied out, saying,
"The land, through which we have gone to spy it out, is a land that
devours its inhabitants, and all the people that we saw in it are of great
height. 33 And there we saw the
Nephilim (the sons of Anak, (who come from the Nephilim), and we seemed to
ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them."
Because of the physical
stature of the inhabitants of Canaan - which may have been greatly exaggerated
because of their fear of confrontation with unknown forces – the spies thought
of them as having descended from the Nephilim who had inhabited the
ante-diluvian world. But, there is at
least one major problem with that interpretation. If all of the Nephilim were drowned in the
flood and only Noah and his family survived to begin populating the
post-diluvian world, how did these Nephilim, these physical giants, get
there? Was there a second (supposed) invasion of angels having sex
with human women? Were they physical
giants? The Bible clearly states that
there were physical giants that lived in Canaan – not all the inhabitants were
physical giants, but the descendants of Anak were - but they were not the
Nephilim that existed prior to the flood.
The ante-diluvian Nephilim were something else because they were all
destroyed in the flood. The two groups
are not at all related to each other.
But these Nephilim that the Israelites saw in Canaan were similar the
first group of Nephilim in that they were godless, tyrannical men who sought
only their own desires and had no thought of the true God. Genesis
6: 4 clearly states that 4 The
Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and
also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and
they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men
of renown.
The
words “and also afterward” gives
meaning to who the ante-diluvian Nephilim were.
Nephilim that were similar to the Genesis Nephilim were also in Canaan
and were seen by the Israelite spies.
These Nephilim were men who had rejected truth for a lie and were the
mighty ones who led the Gentile nations within Canaan.
It
seems to me that the more sensible and Biblical interpretation would be that
the sons of God are the descendants from the godly line of Seth. These are the people whose ancestors had “called upon the name of the Lord” (Genesis
4: 26). These sons of God had been
taught the ways of God, but now have rejected those ways for the ways of the
world, for the ways of the ungodly line of Cain - the daughters of man.
They
“saw” them, that they were “attractive” or beautiful. They “took”
whoever they wanted as wives. They
failed to remain faithful to God and to their calling as His children, as His
offspring, those who had been sanctified by Him as his own, and they chose to
intermingle with those who were apostates and rejecters of all that God is. Just like Eve in the Garden of Eden, they “saw” that what they desired was “attractive” so they “took.”
They
turned their backs on God and the obedient way of life because they lusted
after beautiful women. They chose only
with their eyes, emotionally, not with their minds or spirits, intellectually
or spiritually. They were living by
sight, not by faith. They only saw what
was outward; they did not see what was real.
They chose outwardly fading beauty over real substance, that which is
inward and lasting. They chose women
over God. They chose to have sexual
encounters with as many women as they desired over God’s holy way of life. They chose very temporary pleasure over
eternal joy. They chose death over
life. How foolish. How utterly insane. The devastating results of their choices
would be seen in a few years; the death of the world that they knew, just like
Adam and Eve witnessed the death of their garden and of the blessed life they
knew in the presence, protection, and power of God when they saw, lusted, and
chose.
Seeing,
lusting, choosing always brings death, no matter who, when, where, how, why or
time frame. It has not changed from the
beginning of time to this day. Men have
still not learned that what God says He means and He has the right and the
power to enforce what He demands.
No. Let me change that. Men have chosen to rebel against what God
says and have thought that God will not punish them for disobedience. If, indeed, God really cares at all what men
do since He does not immediately take action against them for disobedience.
Having
seen and desired the beauty of the women they saw, they “took.” There is something
that bodes sinister in this. They “took” has an implication of force. “They
took any… they chose.” Perhaps there
was consent with the one being taken, perhaps not. Did they take more than one? Two?
Three? Several? It seems from the context that if the taker
wanted what he saw, then there was no question that he would take whoever he
wanted whether or not the woman – or women - wanted to go with him. There was no limit to his taking by
force. The violence that followed in
their society confirms this. Perhaps I
have misread this, but I think not.
This
“seeing”, “desiring” and “taking” on the part of the sons of God
was the beginning of the end for the ante-diluvian world. This lust for godlessness was the beginning
of violent, worldwide evil. There was no
more Godly influence, for all sought only selfish pleasure. What started as what some may think of as
only natural desire, a man’s desire for a beautiful woman, the tiny seed of
passion, grew exponentially into continual, unending wickedness and
violence. The spark of lust ignited a
world of greed, violence, evil and ungodliness.
The
Nephilim who were born of these unions were the “men of renown” the “mighty
men” in the earth. There is nothing
in verse 4 that indicates they were anything other than human men. They were fully human, not an aberration of a
cross species. The Gesenius Lexicon of Hebrew
renders the word “Nephilim” as
meaning excellent, noble and skillful.
The lexicon insists that the word does not carry the meaning of “large in body.” These Nephilim were giants of politics,
industry, business, and social life.
They were also the warriors, the military, the enforcers; they were
bullies, thugs, hoodlums, punks, gangsters, mobsters. What they wanted, they took with
impunity. They took by might and power. They were brutal, sadistic, fierce, and
forceful in their demeanor. No one dare
oppose them on pain of death, or at minimum, a severe beating.
Were
they physical giants or not? They may or
may not have been – the context is ambiguous – other interpreters render the
word Nephilim as meaning physical giants and others as “fallen ones” - but regardless, they were unstoppable in their
conquering and domination of others.
They were totally without fear of other men or of God. Their ancestors had known God and followed
Him, but for the sake of temporary pleasure, they had turned their backs on
Him, and now their descendants had no inkling of who He was and what He
demanded of man. They were totally on
their own. No Godly guidance.
What
began as what some may view as an innocent and casual glance at a beautiful,
but godless woman by one of God’s children, set in motion the rapid and
irreversible decline of a Godly society into a cesspool of Satanically inspired
evil, wickedness, and violence. It is
almost inconceivable to imagine a world such as what they lived in. The thoughts of their hearts were only evil
continually. No one thought of anything
worthwhile. They were totally consumed
with evil.
So
it is today. The outward covering of
skin, no matter how humanly desirable is not to be desired over inward
beauty. So many people are still
choosing in the same way the sons of God chose back then; and they are making
the same mistakes as they did. Now,
there is, of course, nothing wrong with having a beautiful wife (just ask me) or handsome husband (just ask my wife), but outward
appearances are not to have priority over Godliness. When God’s people choose the ways of the
world over God’s ways, evil and destruction is always the result. It will never be the other way around. The influence of godlessness crushes the
life out of Godliness when it is embraced by those who deliberately decide that
the world has more to offer and is less demanding and stressful than living
Godly lives. Unlike what the old TV
commercial says, they would rather switch than fight. When God’s people marry godless people, no
matter how stunning their appearance, the result is usually the same. Perhaps not 100% of the time; many people
could probably give an example of the exception to this, but a high percentage
of the time being unequally yoked destroys the godly influence that the
Christian may have. It is always the
Godly spouse who must compromise with the ungodly one by being less and less an
influence upon the other. God’s way is
always the best way. Marry only another
Christian.
And there is a very good
reason for the decline of Godliness when one decides to do things his own
way. Because of the deliberate rejection
of God by the sons of God, those who at one time had been taught His ways, He
rejected them. The Holy Spirit will not
always strive, or plead, or contend with them to repent and do His will. He allows mankind to reap the fruit of what
they have sown. This is the worst of all
judgments. To be allowed to live in any
way one chooses to live with no regard for God or His laws. The sons of God, with forethought and
deliberate alienation from God’s commands, chose to entangle themselves with
the daughters of men. All thought and
remembrance of God were lost as they progressively grew further and further
from Him. And now He allows them to go
their own way with no restraint, with no sense of wrong doing, with no pang of
conscience. It is not to be desired to
be allowed to live with no Godly restraint.
It means certain death. It means
God no longer cares what you do. It
means you are past feeling the influence of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4: 19). The world that was the result of these
ungodly unions was one of total chaos and unmitigated evil.
In support of this view,
I refer you to Exodus 34, where God warns Israel not to make any covenant with
the inhabitants of Canaan, especially in regard to the worship of their gods
and in the taking of their daughters for their sons as wives.
Exodus
34: 11 “Observe what I command you this day. Behold, I will drive out before
you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites,
and the Jebusites. 12 Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants
of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. 13 You shall
tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim 14
(for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a
jealous God), 15 lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and
when they whore after their gods and sacrifice to their gods and you are
invited, you eat of his sacrifice, 16 and
you take of their daughters for your sons, and their daughters whore after
their gods and make your sons whore after their gods.
Also see Deuteronomy 7: 1 “When the LORD your
God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it,
and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the
Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven
nations more numerous and mightier than you, 2 and when the LORD your God
gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to
complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to
them. 3 You shall not intermarry
with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for
your sons, 4 for they would turn away your sons from following me, to
serve other gods. Then the anger of the LORD would be kindled against you, and
he would destroy you quickly. 5 But thus shall you deal with them: you
shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and chop down
their Asherim and burn their carved images with fire. 6 “For you are a people holy to the LORD
your God. The LORD your God has chosen you
to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on
the face of the earth.
God clearly warns that
any slackening of their resolve to honor Him completely would lead to
disastrous consequences, both spiritually and socially. If you pay attention to what the passage is
saying, you cannot help but notice that it is the godless women who will lead
the Godly men away from worshiping God and into idolatry. The women would hold an inordinate control
over the men. So it was in Genesis
6.
Ezra 9 and 10 and
Nehemiah 13 spell out in clear and strong language the results of intermarrying
with someone who does not hold the same spiritual values as you do. Godless spouses always cause a spiritual
downfall. The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians
7: 39 instructs Christians to marry “only
in the Lord.”
Covenant making with the
ungodly always leads to spiritual compromise, which leads to decreased fear of
God, which leads to judgment. When God’s
people put the ungodly on spiritual par with themselves, when they take their
values as their own, tragedy occurs. It
is tragic when God’s people lessen their adherence to God’s commands and
interact with the ungodly as spiritual equals.
God calls this
interaction “whoredom.” God does not
mince His words. He tells it just like
it is. It is playing the whore – not a
nice word at all – with those who care not for God or His ways. It is prostituting oneself with idolatrous
people. Does anyone really want God to think of himself or herself as a “whore”?
A spiritual whore? That is a
dangerous position. I’m sure the ancient
Israelites thought the same way as is popular today, that we should not be
judgmental or close-minded in regard to what some else practices or believes
regardless of what God says about the situation. Open-mindedness and tolerance may be behavior
that is desirable to humans, but it is not acceptable to God. The only question that needs to be
considered is this: who do I want to please, man or God?
The most likely
interpretation of Genesis 6:4 is that God
saw the people of that day as "fallen
ones," while men saw these people as mighty leaders. When the descendants of Seth compromised with
the descendants of Cain, they fell from God's blessing. God was grieved that
they married into the godless line of Cain, choosing wives as they pleased
without considering God's will (Genesis 6:2). Did they not realize that they were
jeopardizing God’s promise of a coming Redeemer? How could God bring a Redeemer into the world
through an unholy people? They had
disregarded the warning that Enoch and Noah gave about the coming judgment.
Human history was now at the place where only Noah and his family—eight
people—believed God and obeyed His Word. God's Spirit was striving with lost
people, but they resisted the call of God; and God was grieved at what man was
doing.
Whoever you believe the
sons of God were, fallen angels or the descendants of Seth, there is no
question that when they took the daughters of men as wives, it involved
grievous sexual perversion of some kind.
It was the catalyst that precipitated the destruction of the old world,
for it multiplied into absolute rejection of God. It fulfilled James 1: 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by
his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and
sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
