SONS OF GOD (Genesis 6)

The meaning to the term sons of God bene [ha]’elohim does refer to angelic beings.  This point is a proven and only requires an honest appraisal of the instances in the Old Testament where it occurs.  Those instances that state it directly are included here in full.

Job 1:6 “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.”

Job 2:1 “… there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the LORD.”

Job 38:7 “When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”

With these passages in mind we should then look at the other two verses in Genesis 6 

                   

Gen 6:2 “That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.”

Gen 6:4 “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”

In answer to critics who believe the subject of Genesis 6:1-2 is men, I would point out that the word 'âdâm refers not to the man but to the species, to mankind (men and women) as the phrase 'born unto them' proves.

Genesis 6:1 "And it came to pass, when mankind began to multiply on the face of the earth (Men and women), and daughters were born unto them"

Genesis 6:2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of mankind that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose."  

The reference in verse one is to the 'daughters of mankind'.

If the reference of verse two was to a godly line of Seth it would read "That the sons of mankind saw the daughters of mankind..."  ...For what purpose?

We must find the meaning of bene [ha]’elohim elsewhere, as has been done in the Job passages above.

Still not convinced that these 'sons of God' were angelic beings?

Then I would point out that the term and similar terms i.e. ‘Son of God’, ‘sons of God’, ‘son of God, ‘Children of God’, are all products of creation, NOT procreation.  Below are those who have one of these appellations attached to them and who are shown as being created.

Angels are spiritual beings so I think we can assume theirs was a spiritual not material creation.  When they were created is a moot point, but we know they shouted for joy at the laying of the earth’s foundations (Job 38:4-7) so we can say their creation was prior to the earth’s.

Adam was a direct creation and is called ‘the son of God’ (Luke 3:38).

Jesus was born of the virgin Mary as  Luke 1:35  states “And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God”.

Christians are referred to as children of God (1John 3:1) for we are all created in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15).

The opponents to the proposal that Genesis 6:4 refers to angelic beings, reject these evidences, claiming the ‘sons of God’ are of the godly line of Seth who mated with ungodly women the ‘daughters of men’ (this is the so called Sethite view).  The proponents of this Sethite view probably have Cain as the culprit for the ungodly women for he displayed his ungodliness in the murder of Abel.

But physically Cain was as was his brother Seth; they were sons of physically perfect parents.  It takes several generations for genetic changes to be made and from the statistics we have of Og king of Bashan, those changes prior to the flood must have been massive indeed.  Og was one of the gigantic men after the flood 'also after that’ (Genesis 6:4) and was probably smaller than the ‘mighty men which were of old, men of renown’.

Below is a representation of Og against that of a normal man today.

How could intermarriage between human beings, even ungodly human beings on both sides, produce so great a mutation as is clearly revealed in scripture?  We have many centuries of such marriages yet we see and hear of no man of Og’s stature on secular record.  There have been tall men in photographic history, but not those whom you could compare to Og or call mighty men of renown.

To emphasize the rarity of gigantism today I also add the scriptural record of there being a number of tribes (tribes not individuals) such as Deuteronomy 2:10 mentions; “The Emims dwelt therein in times past, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims”.  

Deuteronomy 2:19-21 speaks of the land of Ammon as being once recognized as a land of giants named Zamzummims “a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims”.  Much later we come across Goliath whose height is also given in the scriptures; he was going on ten foot.

Do a quick visual calculation on the picture above; on the left we have Og, a man thirteen foot tall against one approximately six foot tall… Goliath would be somewhere just below ‘Og’s’ shoulders.    

While we are on the subject of giants we should also answer the question, how could these mutant giants be ‘also after that’ if the originals were all destroyed by the flood?

It happened because either the genes produced by the mating of angelic ‘sons of God’ and the ‘daughters of men’ (Genesis 6:4) were in one of Noah’s son’s wives, or there was an unrecorded second angelic infiltration after the flood.

I single out Noah’s daughters in law because in Genesis 6:8-10 we are shown that Noah was a just man, a lawful righteous man who was ‘perfect in his generations (dore)’.  Noah could trace his ancestry back to Adam in a perfect unbroken posterity.  There is an emphasis here pointing out the purity of Noah’s genealogy in distinction to the impurity of the rest of the human race, an impurity that occurred after ‘the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men’.   I believe we can safely assume Noah was careful in his choice of a wife and his sons were just as pure in their genealogy. 

Notwithstanding this, for all his purity of descent Noah was never said to be a ‘son of God’ and neither was Seth; they were both descendants of Adam by procreation, not creation.

We also know that none of the line of Seth survived the flood so the Sethite view regarding the mighty men is untenable.

Another reason people oppose the ‘angelic sons of God’ view is the belief that ‘angels do not marry’.

But if we look at the only two scriptures that mention angels and marriage we will see they are likening the resurrection as a marriage-less state similar to that of the angels in heaven (Matthew 22:30; Mark 12:25).  Heaven is a spiritual sphere, not material or fleshly; sex has no place in heaven.  Yet we know of certain angels who deliberately quit heaven.    

Jude 1:6  “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day”.

“Kept not their first estate” is to ‘put aside their original place’ with “left their own habitation” meaning to forsake their habitation or house.  These angels quit their original place (heaven) and forsook their habitation.

Habitation (the Greek oikētērion) is an interesting word.  It is used only twice in the Bible with the only other occurrence being in  2Corinthians 5:2-3 where it is used in regard to the Christian’s future bodily existence; a house oikētērion which is from heaven.

2Co 5:2-3 “For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked.”

The word is in relation to heaven in both cases, the angels left theirs, and we will be clothed upon by ours.  The significance of this cannot be lightly ignored. 

The significance is also accentuated in the very next verse, Jude 1:7 “Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire”.

The words ‘even as’ have the meaning ‘in the same manner’, and refer to these angels behaving like the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by going after strange (different) flesh.  The ‘daughter’s of men’ would be very different from their own original heavenly state.

It is evident these beings are those mentioned in Peter 3:19-20 “By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison;  Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing"

The word "preached" kērussō is to herald, to proclaim a victory, and since it is a proclamation to those angels who had been disobedient in Noah’s day (prior to the flood) the proclamation would have been one of victory.

If we compare this with Colossians 2:14-15 the contents and purpose of that proclamation can be established.  He had accomplished the removal, the blotting out of God’s condemnation against the human race by nailing OUR just condemnation to HIS cross, and he was able to do this because their attempt to infiltrate, contaminate and destroy the Adamic race and his blood line from Adam had been defeated.      

To save you looking this passage up I quote it here “Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; And having spoiled principalities and powers (angelic beings), he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:14-15)

Why mention Christ’s blood line?  Messiah needed to be equal with both God and man if he was to fulfill his role as the ‘seed of the woman’ and that of the ‘kinsman redeemer’.  

Mankind could not be saved other than by a perfect man giving his perfect life as a perfect sacrifice.

All these points add a visual effect to the scriptures that I for one cannot lay aside.