Genesis 6:1-4

The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men

1-4. This fragment seems to have been placed here as an instance of the wickedness which necessitated the Flood. Stories of unions between deities and the women of earth, which resulted in gigantic and corrupt races, were common to many nations of antiquity; and it is now generally held that we have here traces of a similar tradition among the Hebrews, which had survived to the writer’s day. But though the passage retains signs of these primitive ideas, it is free from the polytheistic and impure features which are found in the pages of heathen mythology. Probably such passages as 2 Peter 2:4; Judges 1:6., which speak of the fall of the angels, are based on these verses.

2. The sons of God] This expression occurs in other passages, e.g. Job 1:6; Job 38:7; Daniel 3:25 RV, where it is evident that the angels are meant, and this seems the only possible explanation here. It used to be supposed that the ’sons of God’ meant the Sethites, who became corrupted by marriage with the Cainites. But the phrase is nowhere else used to describe them, and, as Bishop Ryle remarks, ’the popular assumption that Cain’s descendants were pre-eminently wicked has no foundation either in Genesis 4 or Genesis 6.’ Nor could such unions have produced the race of giants mentioned in Genesis 6:4. The religious idea suggested is that the wickedness that prevailed was too great to be entirely of mere human origin.

3. The general meaning is that God now sets a limit (an hundred and twenty years) to human life, which up to this time had been indefinitely long. My spirit] refers to the spirit of life with which the fleshly nature of man had been endowed. It will not sustain man for ever (RV) in this world.

4. There were giants] RV ’the Nephilim were.’ The Nephilim, a race of giants, famous in popular legend, are represented as being men of renown at the same time as these angels formed unions with the daughters of men. They are alluded to by the spies (Numbers 13:33 RV) as ancestors of the giant races of Canaan: and this is probably what is referred to by the words and also after that.