Losing our identity (Genesis 6:1-8)

Why was there a flood in Noah’s day? Genesis introduces the story like this:

Genesis 6:1-2 (NIV)
¹ When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, ² the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.

Who does sons of God refer to? It is the human descendants in the image of God, as in the previous chapter? Or is it angels?

The angelic beings who form God’s court are referred to as sons of God in Job 1:2 and 2:1. Is Genesis 6 telling us that angels found pretty girls irresistible, had sex with them, and gave birth to offspring that ended up being demons?

That interpretation strikes me as a male (chauvinistic) view. The assumption is that angels are biologically male, that they lust after women, and that angels are capable of impregnating women and producing hybrid offspring. It’s an odd but old interpretation that can be traced back to the Persian period.

But God’s people are also referred to as his sons. Israel is God’s son in Exodus 4:22 and Hosea 11:1. Deuteronomy 32 spells out both sides of that relationship: God is their Father (verse 6), and so his people are the sons of God (verse 8 ESV).

Who are the sons of God in Genesis 6:2? The angels in God’s heavenly court? Or the family who represent on earth their Father in the heavens?

Context decides. Which view fits the story so far? Humans or angels?

There’s only been one reference to angels. Back in 3:24, God sent cherubim to guard the Garden from the humans. There’s nothing about angels in Genesis 4. There’s nothing in Genesis 5. There’s no reason to turn the discussion into angels in Genesis 6.

What we do have in the previous two chapters is two communities of humanity:

1. One group went out from the presence of the Lord. They built a city to honour humanity and human creativity. They celebrated a leader with multiple women and a physique to frighten people into submission (4:16-24).
2. The other group responded to the pain of the violent world by calling on the name of the Lord (4:25-26). They saw God’s image in Adam (5:1-2), walked with God (5:24), and looked for the promise of God comforting his people and saving them from the curse (5:29).

The whole context is these two groups (4:17-22, and 5:1-32). It’s a very Jewish way to view the world, of course. The people of God suffer at the hands of the “city” that relies on human power instead of calling on the Lord. So, which group could be called the sons of God? (Compare Luke 3:37.)

The trouble comes when the distinction between these two groups breaks down. They intermarry. The godly sons take partners from the community of mankind on the basis of how good they look, without regard for what is good in God’s eyes.

Here’s a very literal rendition of the Hebrew words in verses 1 and 2:

Genesis 6:1-2 (my translation)
¹ And it came to be that humankind began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them ² and the sons of God saw that the daughters of humankind were good and they took them for wives from all that they chose.

Compare that to Eve and Adam turning from how God defined good and evil, when they took what looked good to them:

Genesis 3:6 (my translation)
The woman saw that the tree was good for food and a delight to the eye and the tree was desirable to make wise, she took from its fruit and ate and gave also to her husband with her.

That didn’t end well. Pain and conflict came into God’s world. Violence and death came to their family. They became not gods, but mortals (3:14-24).

The results are the same when the sons of God reject his values. God will not keep wasting his breath/Spirit on non-responsive people. He sets this deadline:

Genesis 6:3 (NIV)
³ Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

If the disobedient sons of God were angels, God got it wrong. God thinks the problem was with the humans. What do you think?

The next verse is crucial to the Enochian interpretation that the sons of God were fallen angels producing demon-children:

Genesis 6:4 (NIV)
⁴ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days — and also afterward — when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

Who were the n^ep̄î·lîm?

That’s an untranslated Hebrew word. It means something like big-muscly-fighters-who-are-hard-to-defeat (Numbers 13:33). The Septuagint (Greek translation) calls them giants. The parallel expression at the end of this verse explains who they were: the heroes of old, men of renown.

Big burly fighters like Goliath were feared in the ancient world where warfare relied on physical force. The boastful Lamech (4:23) fits the profile of a nephilim … a hero of old, a man of renown.

The point of Chapter 6 is that the world had gone mad because God’s people had lost their values.  The stories they told focused not on God but on human power. They were preoccupied with their physique: how good a girl looked (verse 2), how a guy fought (verse 4). All they thought about was imposing their own power on everyone else (verse 5). Their violence corrupted God’s world (verse 11).

The Enoch literature tells a different story. It treats the nephilim as demons, the offspring of fallen angels and human women. According to 1 Enoch, these hybrid beings were so abominable that God sent the flood to rid the earth of them. But that didn’t work: being half-spirit they survived the flood. So now these demons roam the world craving for bodies to possess because they’re half-human.

Now, the point of this interpretation is to blame demons for the state of the world. According to 1 Enoch, the demons taught war to men and seduction to women. The reason the world is in a mess is not human sin but the invasion of evil spirits.

That’s the exact opposite of what Genesis 6 says. God does not say, “My Spirit will not tolerate these hybrid demons causing all the wickedness.” God is very clear who is responsible:

Genesis 6:5-7 (NIV)
⁵ The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. ⁶ The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. ⁷ So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”

In summary, 1 Enoch is a reinterpretation of Genesis 6. Influenced by Persian dualism (the cosmic fight between good and evil), and living century after century under foreign rule, the Jewish people became acutely aware of the spiritual power of evil. They wrote creative stories where evil spirits were responsible for their plight, but this is not what Genesis 6 said in the beginning.

When the people of God lose their values no longer image God to the world, the whole world is corrupt. Even God loses hope, filled with remorse.

The story is over, then? No, not quite:

Genesis 6:8 (NIV)
But Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord.

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Overview of 1 Enoch A collection of writings by different authors over a wide span of time
Book I	Chapters 1 – 36	2nd century BC
Book II	Chapters 37 – 71	40 BC – AD 68
Book III	Chapters 72 – 82	3rd century BC
Book IV	Chapters 83 – 90	175 – 171 BC
Book V	Chapters 91 – 108	Early 2nd century BC

Related posts

• Who corrupted God’s world? (Gen 6:1-6)
• “Son of Man” in Enoch