The Sons of God and the Daughters of Man, Part 1
Getting Our Bearings In a Notoriously Difficult Passage
In Genesis 6:1–4, the reader encounters one of the most challenging passages in all of Scripture to interpret. I’d like to spend some posts exploring this passage. In this first article, let’s get our bearings. Here’s the passage in the ESV.
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.
Echoes from Genesis 1–3
People multiplying is an echo of Genesis 1. God made “man” (Gen 1:26–27), and then he commissioned his image-bearers to be fruitful and “multiply” (1:28). In 6:1, we read of this multiplication happening.
The reference to God “Spirit” in Genesis 6:3 reminds us of 1:2, the second verse in the Bible. There the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters, and in 6:3 the Lord’s Spirit shall no longer abide in image-bearers for extraordinary lengths of time. The limit of “his days shall be 120 years.”
Marriages are reported in Genesis 6:1–4, and marriage is rooted in Genesis 2. Adam and Eve were the first image-bearers, and they were the first married couple. Many generations later, marriages were happening in Genesis 6.
In Genesis 3, Eve’s sin occurs when she takes the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the tree God had forbidden his image-bearers to eat from. Note the language in 3:6: the woman “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise,” so “she took of its fruit and ate.” In 6:2, the sons of God “saw” that the daughters of man were “attractive,” so they “took” as their wives any they chose. In Genesis 3 and 6, there was a “taking” of what someone “saw” as “desirable,” and this “taking” was something that should not have happened.
Sons and Daughters in Genesis 5
The four verses of Genesis 6:1–4 come right after a genealogy. In Genesis 5, we see a ten-member linear genealogy that takes us from Adam to Noah. The purpose of this genealogy is to take the reader to the days preceding the flood, and that means the days of Noah.
Some language in Genesis 5 is noteworthy for our purposes because the words “sons” and “daughters” in 6:1–4 occur in this genealogy as well. The genealogy implies marrying and having children, and long lives are reported right before the statement that the genealogy member “died.” Take Adam as an example. “The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died” (5:4).
In Genesis 6:1–4 we read about marriages and about children born from these unions (6:2, 4). The long lives will now not exceed 120 years (6:3). And interestingly, the terms “sons” and “daughters” appear in 6:2. To be sure, these terms are part of larger phrases: “sons of God” and “daughters of man.”
In the Days of the Promised Flood
Having reviewed what comes before Genesis 6:1–4, let’s remember what comes after it. God beholds the widespread wickedness of the world and promises to judge his image-bearers (6:5–8).
So Genesis 6:1–4 occurs between a genealogy and a judgment. This judgment is a divine response to “the wickedness of man” that “was great in the earth” (6:5). Whatever 6:1–4 means, its literary placement suggests that the disobedience described there was part of what angered the Lord and resulted in a divine judgment that occurred in the days of Noah.
In the next post, we’ll look at the various interpretations of Genesis 6:1–4.