Who Were the “Sons of God” of Genesis 6?

Introduction

As Umberto Cassuto (1973) correctly observed, Genesis 6:1-4 “is unquestionably one of the obscurest sections of the Torah” (p. 17).

We read in Genesis 6:1-2, “When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose” (NIV). Then verse 4 says, “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days - and also afterward - when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown” (NIV). God’s response to this behavior is given in the following verses: “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth...’“ (Gen. 6:5-7, NIV).

But who were these “sons of God” and where did they come from? They appear entirely without explanation. As Victor Hamilton (1990) has said, “The narrator’s assumption is that they are readily identifiable by his audience. But if his audience knew their identity, it has been lost to subsequent readers.” (p. 262) Echoing this thought, The Interpreter’s Bible says, concerning Genesis 6:1-3, “No one can say surely what these verses mean. They come from some period of primitive thought which is dim to our perception.” (Bowie et al, 1952, p. 533)

There are four broad divisions of opinion on this question of the identity of the “sons of God”:

1. They didn’t exist, since the story is only a myth.

2. They were superior men such as kings or other aristocrats.

3. They were godly men, such as the descendants of Seth, in contrast to the ungodly descendants of Cain.

4. They were supernatural spirit beings.

I will deal with each of these views at length, before setting forth what I believe to be the correct understanding of the identity of the “sons of God” of Genesis 6. Finally, I will show the essential theological point of the whole passage.

Only A Myth?

Perhaps the easiest solution to the problem is simply to deny that anything actually happened, and to postulate that the story, like much of the early chapters of Genesis, is only a myth. As G. Herbert Livingston (1987) has noted, “some scholars have declared that this section is a vestige of an old polytheistic myth; thus the sons of god were deities who engaged in illicit relations with humans” (p. 143). Expressive of this view are the words of Stanley Cook (1936) who proposed that “the mythical origin of the Nephilim belongs to a fairly coherent series of traditions” (p. 58). Ronald Clements (1978) also wrote, “It may be frankly accepted that there are stories in the Old Testament which should be properly classed as ‘myth’, and few would deny this. In this category we should certainly include such episodes as the marriage between the sons of God and human women (Gen. 6:1-4)” (p. 49).

In reply to this view it must firstly be stressed that the emphasis of Genesis 1 - 11 is thoroughly and deliberately anti-mythical, and the writer of Genesis “evidences no embarrassment as he blended together his belief that the events in Genesis 1 - 11 had actually happened with a clear-cut (and consistent) theological point of view...Genesis 1 - 11 is the bearer of religious beliefs that extend forward into the rest of the Bible” (Livingston, 1987, p. 152).

Secondly, to deny the reality of the events of Genesis 6, is to deny the inerrancy of the Word of God as a whole, and for conservative scholars and Christians that is entirely out of the question. Paul wrote, in 2 Timothy 3:16, that “all scripture is given by inspiration of God”, and “all scripture” certainly includes Genesis 6. Since we know that God did not give us lies and myths to build our faith upon, we know that, whatever the identity of the “sons of God” of Genesis 6 may be, this story, nevertheless, is not a mere myth.

Kings or Aristocrats?

Another view supposes that the “sons of God” were dynastic rulers, an early royal aristocracy, and the daughters of men, whom they took as wives, constituted their royal harems. The sin, then, is .

Walter Kaiser (1978) holds to this view and wrote, “The rulers of the day, having adopted for themselves the Near Eastern titulary of ‘sons of God,’ autocratically began to multiply as many wives for themselves as they pleased. Their lust for a ‘name,’ i.e., a reputation (v. 4), led them to compound their excesses and abuse the purposes of their office. In exasperation God gave up on mankind...Such ‘mighty men’ (v. 4), or aristocrats must be halted in their wickedness.” (p. 80)

As Victor Hamilton (1990) has noted, “The major advantages of this view are that it removes Gen. 6:1-4 from any mythological or nonhistorical understanding; it allows the unit to serve as an appropriate introduction to the Flood story; and it attempts to be faithful to the immediately preceding context about Cainites and Sethites.” (p. 264)

On the other hand, one major weakness of this interpretation is that while individual kings were indeed called God’s “sons” in the Old Testament as well as in other ancient Near Eastern texts, yet there is no evidence that this title was ever used to denote groups of kings (Hamilton, 1990, p. 264). Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, there is a sense, in Genesis 6, of the extreme gravity of the sin of women ual relations with the “sons of God.” This sin is so great that it calls forth for the entire destruction of humanity. A few kings taking on too many wives would not seem to be a sin that would warrant such retribution!

The Descendants of Seth?

The third view proposes that the “sons of God” are the godly Sethites and the “daughters of men” are the ungodly Cainites (Keil & Delitzsch, 1951, p. 127). The sin, then, is the forbidden union of what God intended to keep apart, the intermarriage of believer with unbeliever. This is the interpretation held by most Protestant conservative scholars. “Evangelicals who are committed to the unity and the credibility of the Scriptures...generally identify the sons of God with the godly portion of the descendants of Seth who involved themselves in indiscriminate mixed marriages.” (Barton Payne, 1962, p. 206)

While this proposition is commendable in that it defends the accuracy of the Scripture, nevertheless, the two objections aimed at the previous view apply here too. Firstly, nowhere in the Old Testament are Sethites identified as the “sons of God.” Secondly, the sin of mixed marriages between believers and unbelievers, while condemned throughout the Scripture, would not seem to be the height of iniquity that would warrant the entire destruction of humanity.

Supernatural Spirit Beings?

The final view, and the one we believe, holds that the “sons of God” are angels who took corporeal form. According to this view, the sin was the union of evil angels and women. While perhaps defying the normal experience of many conservative scholars, this interpretation “seems most faithful to the plain intent of the language” (LaSor, 1982, p. 82). This is a fairly popular view; interestingly, in Paradise Lost, the poet Milton conceived of the “sons of God” as being rebellious and fallen angels too (Bowie et al., 1952, p. 533).

The major support for this interpretation is that elsewhere in the Old Testament (cf. Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7; Ps. 29:1; 89:6; Dan. 3:25) angels are designated as “sons of God.” They are described as “sons of God,” not in the physical, genealogical sense, but generally as belonging to the world of Elohim (von Rad, 1962, p. 114). Walther Eichrodt (1961) correctly relates the passage in Genesis 6 to other passages in Genesis that concern “the idea of the heavenly court” such as Gen. 3:22; 6:1ff; 11:7; 18:1ff (p. 195).

Further supporting this view is the antithetical relationship, in Genesis 6:2, of the “sons of God” with the “daughters of men” with whom they consorted. Just as the sons are contrasted with the daughters, so are the heavenly natures of the sons likely contrasted with the human natures of the daughters.

In addition there is possible New Testament support for this interpretation in Peter’s first epistle: by the Spirit, Jesus “went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah,...” (1 Pet. 3:19-20, NKJV).

Further New Testament evidence may also be found in 2 Peter 2:4-6, where the fallen angels, the Flood, and the doom of Sodom form a series that could be based on Genesis, and in Jude 6, where the angels’ offence is that they “did not keep their proper domain, but left their own abode” (NKJV). Moreover, the craving of demons for a body, evident in the Gospels, offers at least some parallel to this ed hunger for experience (Kidner, 1977, p. 84).

It is significant that the Septuagint translates the Hebrew “sons of God” as “angels of God,” revealing the opinion of the early Jewish scholars. Cassuto sheds more light on the traditional Jewish understanding of the “sons of God”: “The oldest interpretation, so far as we know, is: the angels. This view serves as the basis of a complete narrative in the Book of Enoch (The Ethiopic Version, ch. vi ff.); it is also reflected in many passages of the Pseudepigrapha (e.g., Ethiopic Enoch chapter lxxxvi 4-6; Book of Jubilees iv 22, v 1; Testament of Reuben v, 6-7) and in the Zadokite Document discovered by Schechter, and was accepted by Philo, Josephus and by many of the church Fathers and ecclesiastical writers...The legends based on this interpretation have been incorporated in a number of Midrashim” (Cassuto, 1973, p. 17).

Some have dismissed this interpretation of the identity of the “sons of God” as simply “bizarre” and “irrational” (Hamilton, 1990, p. 262). But in response to this charge, there is considerable evidence that this kind of thing happens even today. I have personally prayed for a number of people (particularly women) over the years for deliverance from demonic oppression who had experienced physical sexual attacks from demons.

Others deny its possibility on the grounds that Jesus taught that angels do not marry (Matt. 22:29-30; Mark 12:24-25; Luke 20: 34-36). But while angels certainly do not have these kinds of relations as spirits, is it not possible that these evil angels in Genesis 6 took upon themselves some kind of corporeal form in which they engaged in sexual activity? It is certainly not unknown in the Old Testament for angels to appear in physical form, even eating and drinking (Gen. 18:1-8; cf. Heb. 13:2), whereas angels, as spirits, obviously have no need to eat or drink.

The major contextual argument against this identification is that it has mankind being punished for the sins of evil angels (Hamilton, 1990, p. 263). But the fact that these angels “took them wives of all which they chose” (Gen. 6:2) does not rule out the possibility of the acquiescence of the women involved. Moreover, even if the women were taken entirely without their consent, my experience has been that for someone to receive this kind of unwanted demonic visitation requires that they were heavily involved in some significant form of activity beforehand.

Certainly this sin had to be a particularly terrible one since it immediately preceded God’s assessment of man’s wickedness as “great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). This sin must have represented the pinnacle of man’s iniquity because it precipitated a divine judgement of the magnitude of the Flood and the universal destruction of humanity. In view of this fact it seems that the correct understanding of the “sons of God” is that they were indeed fallen angels.

The Main Purpose of the Passage

As Derek Kidner (1977) has well written, “The point of this cryptic passage, whichever way we take it, is that a new stage has been reached in the progress of evil, with God’s bounds overstepped in yet another realm” (p. 83). The sin of man, which entered in the early chapters of Genesis, has reached this extraordinary depth of depravity. Genesis 1 - 11 contains a series of illustrations of human beings who were not content with their God-given state, and who reached for divine status, in an attempt to overstep the limits that God had imposed on them. As Elmer Martens (1981) has demonstrated, “Adam and Eve sinned against God,” “Cain sinned against his brother”, “the sin of the ‘sons of God’ against the ‘daughters of men’ violated the moral order,” and “man’s sin of pride in the Tower of Babel incident was sin against civilization and culture” (p. 29). So, in this context, the story of the “sons of God” supplies another example of such iniquity, and shows the extent to which sin, if it remains unchecked, will go. In the words of Gerhard von Rad (1962), “This catastrophe was more serious than any of the previous ones, since it was much more than something which concerned the world of man alone; now the boundary between man and the heavenly beings was thrown down” (p. 156).

By the time of the events of Genesis 6, man has sunk to a rare depth of transgression. His sin cries out for the severe judgement of God which soon comes. Yet God, in the midst of His wrath against the awful sin of man, doesn’t give up entirely on mankind, and, as an expression of His grace, chooses one man and his family whom He purposes to save and establish upon the earth again. God’s purpose to destroy man entirely, which is described in Genesis 6:5-7, is immediately followed by the amazing words of verse 8: “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” The depth of man’s sin is exceeded only by the height of God’s grace!

References

Bowie, Walter Russell, Paul Scherer, John Knox, Samuel Terrien, Nolan B. Harmon, eds. The Interpreter’s Bible. Vol. 1. New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1952.

Cassuto, U. Biblical and Oriental Studies. Vol. 1. Bible. Translated by Israel Abrahams. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1973.

Clements, Ronald E. Old Testament Theology. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1978.

Cook, Stanley A. The Old Testament: A Reinterpretation. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1936.

Eichrodt, Walther. Theology of the Old Testament. Translated by J. A. Baker. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1961.

Hamilton, Victor P. The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1 - 17. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990.

Kaiser, Walter C. Jr. Toward an Old Testament Theology. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1978.

Keil, C. F. and F. Delitzsch. Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament. Vol. 1. The Pentateuch. Translated by James Martin. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1951.

Kidner, Derek. Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1977.

LaSor, William Sanford, David Allan Hubbard and Frederic Wm. Bush. Old Testament Survey. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982.

Livingston, G. Herbert. The Pentateuch in Its Cultural Environment. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1987.

Martens, Elmer A. God’s Design: A Focus on Old Testament Theology. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1981.

Payne, J. Barton. The Theology of the Older Testament. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1962.

von Rad, Gerhard. Old Testament Theology. Vol. 1. The Theology of Israel’s Historical Traditions. Translated by D. M. G. Stalker. London: Oliver and Boyd, 1962.