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Genesis, the Beginning
What the first eleven chapters say, what they do not say, and where the real arguments are.
The sons of God and the daughters of men
Genesis 6:1-4 is the strangest passage in Genesis 1 to 11. The Divine Council Index has the full treatment; this is how it sits in the primeval history.
Genesis 6:1-4, in every translation this tool compares.
The real question: who were the "sons of God" in Genesis 6, and why does the story sit right before the flood? "Sons of the prophets" were not the prophets' children. Hebrew uses "son of" for belonging to a group. So "sons of God" could mean divine beings, godly men or kings who claimed divine descent.
Four verses introduce the sons of God, the daughters of men, a limit of 120 years and the Nephilim, and then the narrative moves straight into the flood. How they connect decides how much of the flood story is about human sin alone.
The phrase is bene ha-elohim, the same phrase used of heavenly beings in Job 1:6 and 38:7. The Nephilim are said to be on the earth "in those days, and also afterward."
Lennox does not address Genesis 6:1-4 in Seven Days.
The IVP Bible Background Commentary notes that sons of God refers to angels elsewhere, but that ancient kings were often thought to be engendered by deity, and reads the offense in light of the Gilgamesh Epic's royal abuse of the wedding night. Walton's fuller case for the royal reading, and his three objections to the divine reading, are summarized in the Divine Council Index.
Heiser reads the sons of God as divine beings, with 1 Enoch preserving the original Mesopotamian backstory. The MacArthur Study Bible also reads them as fallen angels, who it says possessed human male bodies. It reports and rejects two other views: that the sons of God were the line of Seth marrying the daughters of Cain, and that they were human kings building harems.
See the Divine Council Index entry for what each reading still leaves open.
Not a side story. Its placement before the flood is part of why the passage matters.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/divine-council-index\/jude-6-2-peter-2-4\/","n":"Jude 6; 2 Peter 2:4","s":"Angels who abandoned their proper dwelling, held in chains until judgment.","r":"Jude 6; 2 Peter 2:4"}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/divine-council-index\/numbers-13-33\/","n":"Numbers 13:33","s":"The spies report the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, and call themselves grasshoppers.","r":"Numbers 13:33"}
- Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament (2000), on Genesis 6:1-4
- Heiser, Reversing Hermon (2017), chs. 1-3
- The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Genesis 6:2
