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The Sons of God and “Strange Flesh” in Genesis 6:1–4

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The Sons of God and “Strange Flesh” in Genesis 6:1–4 MSJ 31/1 (Spring 2020) 79–105 THE SONS OF GOD AND “STRANGE FLESH” IN GENESIS 6:1–4 Dr. David L. Beakley Academic Dean and Professor of Exposition and Biblical Languages Christ Seminary, South Africa The “sons of God” text in Genesis 6:1–4 often receives nothing more than a brief comment from the pulpit or commentary. Coming right before the great deluge and God’s covenant with Noah, the passage seems to be a minor glimpse into antedilu- vian history. There have been several major views proffered over the past two mil- lennia, and the view that the “sons of God” were demonic angels who cohabitated with human women is one. In 1981, William VanGemeren proposed a re-examination of the “ungodly angel view” as the identity of the “sons of God” in Genesis 6:1–4. This article intends to answer this call for further exegetical scrutiny by examining the text through the lens of a biblical-theological and exegetical methodology. By viewing the text using this methodology, and the understanding of a specific center, or constant theme throughout the corpus of Scripture—which is the idea of God’s grace given in the midst of judgment—then the answers to difficult questions such as the reason for the Flood, identity of the sons of God, and the purpose of the Nephilim become much more clear and harmonize with the immediate context of Genesis 1– 11. * * * * * Introduction After two millennia of intense study of the Scriptures, controversies still abound over select passages that generate intense debate among evangelicals. One of these perplexing and unresolved passages is Genesis 6:1–4 and the identity of the “sons of God” and the “Nephilim,” and the motivations for the global deluge that follows. Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daugh- ters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man for- ever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also 79 80 | The Sons of God and “Strange Flesh” afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.1 Without question, even heralding from the pre-Christian era, this passage re- mains one of the most abstruse in Scripture.2 Difficulties abound due to the brevity of the pericope, as well as to the literary, lexical, and theological problems, which have been treated in numerous articles, commentaries, and monographs. Essentially, one’s view of the passage revolves around the interpretation of the nature of the “sons of God” and “daughters of men,” the relationship between the two, and the nature of their actions.3 In general, the views can be broadly put into three categories: the “sons of God” are (a) ungodly angels, demons, or evil spirits, who cohabitated with human women, (b) men from the godly line of Seth who mar- ried women from the ungodly line of Cain, or (c) despotic rulers who forcefully took women to be wives in their harems. A second question arising from these views deals with the identity of the Ne- philim described in Genesis 6:4. Either they are exclusively a product of the unions between the “sons of God” and daughters of men, or they are people [men] who hap- pened to be coexisting at the time these “sons of God” came into the daughters of men.4 A third possibility is that they could have been “mighty warriors” who were influenced by the “despotic rulers” and were responsible for the increase in violence stated in Genesis 6:11. From a historical standpoint, the “ungodly angel” view is the oldest, with the Septuagint (LXX) having some extant manuscript variant readings οἱ ἄγγελοι τοῦ θεοῦ “the angels of God” for the Hebrew ~yhil{a/h'(-ynEb. (“sons of God”).5 In addition, the books of 1 Enoch (possibly second-century BC) and Jubilees (first-century BC) pre- sent an interpretation of angelic cohabitation with women in Genesis 6. This view is also referenced in many passages of the Pseudepigrapha, and was accepted by Philo, 1 Unless otherwise specified, all Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible (La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995). 2 A sampling of comments can be found with Umberto Cassuto, “The Episode of the Sons of God and the Daughters of Man,” in Biblical & Oriental Studies I (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1973), 17, who calls this text “one of the obscurest sections of the Torah,” and Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis = Be–reshit: The Tradi- tional Hebrew Text with New JPS Translation. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 45, who says, “The account given in these few verses is surely the strangest of all the Genesis narratives.” Robert Davidson, Genesis 1–11, The Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: University Press, 1973), 69, goes further by describing this passage as “one of the strangest passages in the whole Old Testament.” Ephraim Speiser, Genesis: Introduction, Translation, and Notes, The Anchor Bible (New York: Double- day, 1964), 45, even adds the implications to the confusion by stating that “this isolated fragment makes it not only atypical of the Bible as a whole but also puzzling and controversial in the extreme.” 3 Henry Morris, The Genesis Record: A Scientific and Devotional Commentary on the Book of the Beginnings (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976), 165; Kenneth Mathews, Genesis 1–11:26, NAC (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996), 323. 4 Some commentators have taken the position that they were both. They hold that the Nephilim were not really special, other than they were equated with the “mighty warriors” described at the end of v. 4. Thus, Nephilim were around when the improper marriages took place, and even more Nephilim were created through these marriages. 5 Cassuto, The Episode of the Sons of God, 17. It should also be noted that in v.4, the LXX also uses γίγαντες “giants” without a variant for the Hebrew ~ylipiN>h; “Nephilim,” and ~yrI±BoGIh; “mighty men” indicating that these Nephilim were the offspring of the marriages between the “sons of God” and daughters of men. The Master’s Seminary Journal | 81 Josephus, and many church Fathers.6 The “ungodly angel” view is currently the po- sition most accepted by most modern commentators.7 The earliest work that suggests the “Sethite” interpretation for the “sons of God” was Julius Africanus (AD 160–240), and its popularity arose because it avoided the suggestion of carnal intercourse with angels.8 This view remained dormant until Au- gustine (AD 354–430) discussed the passage in his work City of God, and was the predominant Christian interpretation from the Reformation up until the nineteenth century,9 but has few advocates today.10 The “despotic ruler” interpretation entered Jewish exegesis about the middle of the second century AD, and was also driven by the conviction that angels could not indulge in sexual intercourse with women.11 It remained mostly in orthodox rabbini- cal Judaism12 and was not readily accepted by Christianity, who had turned more to the “Sethite” view.13 Specifically, this view saw the ~yhil{a/h'( ynEB. as “judges” or “princes,” but did not gain in popularity due to lexical difficulties. A variant of this view was developed by Meredith Kline,14 who suggested that the “sons of God” were sacral kings that regarded themselves as divine. The term “sons of God,” or “sons of the gods” were actually appropriated to the antediluvian kings.15 Since the publica- tion of Kline’s analysis, the view of “despotic rulers” has generated increasing inter- est by commentators and scholars.16 A Call to Re-examination In 1981, William VanGemeren17 issued a clarion call for evangelicals to re-think their naturalistic assumptions and tendency towards demythologization. His concern 6 In his article, Robert Newman, “The Ancient Exegesis of Gen 6:2, 4,” Grace Theological Journal 5/1 (1984): 13–36, presents a thorough analysis of the ancient sources that attest to the “ungodly angel” view of Genesis 6:1–4. 7 Gordon Wenham, Genesis 1–15, vol. 1, Word Biblical Commentary (Waco, TX: Word, 1987), 139. 8 Ibid., 140. 9 John H. Walton, Genesis, vol. 1, NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 291. This is the position of Calvin, Luther, and Keil. Also, William H. Green, “The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men,” The Presbyterian Reformed Review V (1894): 654–60, and Donat Poulet, “The Moral Causes of the Flood,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly IV (1942): 293–303 supported the “Sethite” position, but in recent years, the “Divine ruler” view (view 3) has gained some support, and Poulet (Moral Causes, 655) even conceded that the “ungodly angel” view has been popularized by a number of modern scholars. 10 Wenham, Genesis, 140. 11 Ibid., 139. 12 Carl Friedrich Keil, The First Book of Moses (Genesis), trans. James Martin, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2001), 81. 13 Walton, Genesis, 291. 14 Meredith Kline, “Divine Kingship and Genesis 6:1–4,” Westminster Theological Journal 24 no. 2 (May 1962): 187–204. 15 Ibid., 192. 16 See Leroy Binney, “An Exegetical Study of Genesis 6:1–4,” Journal of the Evangelical Theolog- ical Society 13/1 (1970): 43–52; Walton, Genesis, 293–98; and David Livingston, “Who Were the Sons of God in Genesis 6?,” Bible and Spade 22/2 (2009): 34–40.
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