Gen 6.2 tells us that “the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful and they took wives to themselves, whoever they chose.” Genesis in Hebrew is “B’reshit” or “in the beginning” so it is a book of beginnings. It is the story of the righteous line through whom the “promised seed of the woman” would come who will defeat the “seed of the serpent.(Gen 3.15). Gen 6 continues to document Satan’s attempt to corrupt mankind and the promised seed. The Scriptures are full of examples of this. Balak hires Balaam to corrupt Israel and 24,000 fell among Israel. The sons of God in Gen 6.2 are those who are followers of Yehovah and believers, and they were intermarrying with unbelieving women (in Judges 3.6-7 the same thing happened which caused Israel to go into idolatry). There are those who believe these “sons” were angels, but that is not the case. The term “sons of God” can mean several different things. It can be a term for angels, Adam, the kings of Israel, believers and the Messiah. The context will dictate which one it is.
These can’t be angels because angels are sexless and can’t reproduce (Matt 22.30). Then you have a DNA problem and the fact that man cannot reproduce anything other than “their kind”, and that is “built into” the creation by God. Gen 6.2 gives us a clue as to what happened because it said they picked wives for themselves from “whoever they chose”, meaning anyone, and not necessarily a believer. In Gen 6.4 some say that the “Nephilim” were the offspring of these “angelic and women” unions, but the word means a fallen one, bully, giant, tyrant or famous. It also says the Nephilim were men, called “mighty men” and “men of renown.” If the flood was sent to stop these offspring of angelic unions from corrupting mankind, it didn’t work because the “Nephilim” were on the earth “afterward” (Gen 6.4; Num 13.32-33). Those were the “mighty men” of old, and the Hebrew word for mighty is “gibborim” and that is the same word used to describe David’s “mighty men” in 2 Sam 23.8. In Matt 24.37-39 Yeshua said that before the flood came the people were “eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage.” This describes normal activities and there is no hint of the flood coming because of so-called “angelic unions”, but the indictment was the fact they were too busy to listen to the call for repentance from Noah (2 Pet 2.5), and did not “understand until the flood came and took them all away” (24.38).
It seems that if anyone would have repented, he could have been saved. Their death had nothing to do with wiping out the line of men corrupted by angels, that is biologically impossible anyway. It had to do with sin and the rejection of God’s purposes due to unbelief. Yeshua said it would be the same when “the Son of Man” returns. The simple truth of the matter is there has always been a righteous line in the earth through whom the Messiah would come. Satan has made countless efforts to stop Yeshua from being born, and to corrupt, destroy or annihilate this line through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in order to save himself and to fight against God to stop his own demise. Yehovah gives us the choice who to serve. This portion of Scripture is not referring to angels as “sons of God”, but the Godly line (Abel, Seth, etc) that was corrupted through the idolatry and paganism of the daughters of men who were unbelievers.
Let’s look at the phrase, “sons of God (benei elohim)” that we see in Gen 6.2 and try to gain some additional understanding and its meaning. We know that this term can refer to Adam, angels, believers and the kings of Israel starting with Solomon. We know the term is not talking about Adam, nor is it talking about angels because angels cannot have sexual relations with humans, just on the DNA problem alone. It can’t mean the kings of Israel because they did not exist at this time. Believers can be a possibility, but there is another viable meaning to it. So let’s first look at the possibility that these were believers.
Quoting from the book, “The Temple Revealed in Noah’s Ark: From Chaos to Order”, p.10, by Dinah Dye, “Covenants were made between two parties in order to join their identities. YHVH’s covenant promise to Israel means Israel received the land as an inheritance along with a promise that a descendant would forever sit on the throne-2 Sam 7.16. This covenant was confirmed through the exchange of names, such as the God of Israel and the children of YHVH.” In other words, the term “sons of God” shows that there has been a covenant cut, such as the Adamic Covenant by this time, between God and believing man, and there has been an exchange of names. As we have mentioned before, this term can also be referring to angels as in Job 1.6, Adam as in Luke 28.5-7, Solomon and the later kings in 1Chr 28.5-7. In this case, these would be believers who had the true knowledge of God passed down to them by the previous believing generations in Gen 5 and have entered into a covenant with Yehovah, as seen in Rom 8.14. The meaning is determined by context. This term never refers to fallen angels, and this may be referring to the line of Seth, who began to call on the name of Yehovah in Gen 4.25-26. These sons of God saw that the daughters of men (unbelievers who had no covenant with God) were beautiful and they took wives to themselves (unequally yoked) whomever they chose (like in Judges 3.6-7).
Now, let’s look at another possible meaning from another perspective. This view is interesting and has some merit. We will paraphrase this view, for the sake of expediency, from the same book mentioned above by Dinah Dye, pp. 74-77. Dye writes that the sons of god were the kings, rulers, princes, and noblemen elite pre-flood and were seen as divine beings, and even took the title “sons of god” just like the kings after the flood who regarded themselves as deities, like Pharaoh, the Greek kings and the Roman emperors for instance, but not limited to the Egyptians, Greeks and the Romans. Many kingdoms over the centuries believed the same thing. These kings/sons of god were royalty and ruled city-states. They were born into a world of royal bloodlines and the elite, and were considered men of renown, or givorim. As a result, the world was ruled by these men of renown, and they had talent, skill, and dominion over the rest, believing they were a royal priesthood and offspring of their god.
So, these sons of god, the ruling elite, married their inferiors, the daughters of men, and produced “Nephilim” or fallen ones, meaning those who had fallen from the truth of God and were masters of violence and corruption. These kings would have many children through their “harem” to solidify their dynasties. The harem would include wives, concubines, daughters of foreign kings, female servants of another king who lost in battle, and so on. Some were raised to be noble ladies who were given to other kings and nobility. The belief was that these daughters of men in the harem would marry aristocracy, who were compared to the “sons of god” or the royal kings marrying the “daughters of mortal men.” As a result, these dynasties of the sons of god, the givorim, produced children and became corrupt and filled with violence, and headed for destruction.
Therefore, we do not believe that the sons of God mentioned in this verse are fallen angels having sexual relations with women. Even Yeshua said in Matt 22.30, “For in the resurrection they (believers) neither marry nor are given in marriage, but as are the angels of God in heaven (who do not reproduce).” Then we have the DNA issue, which makes sexual relations between angels and humans impossible because God designed all his creation to multiply “after their kind” in Gen 1. This myth is still quite popular today, and no one should ever consider this view as anything other than a fairy tale, based on the evidence presented above.
We would like to quote again from the book by Dinah Dye mentioned above, p. 79, where we have some very important concepts brought out that will give us more insight into this question. We quote it because it is very concise and one of the best ways to explain what is happening. Dye says, “After the flood, kingship was again lowered from heaven. The Bible declares Nimrod a mighty hunter, a Gibborim in the land (Gen 10.8-10), who made a great name for himself. Nimrod, of the line of Ham, ruled over great cities of the Land of Shinar: Babel, Erech, Akkad, and Calneh. The cultural and political milieu of the pre-flood era had returned, and the Gibborim continued using the same tactics in exercising political power. They enslaved their subjects, took control of the region, and again resorted to violence in the pursuit of power. These rulers rejected YHVH’s sovereignty, until at the Tower of Babel, the world was ripe for judgment. Kingship is a central theme in the Bible, and the Bible often presents the failures of human kings. We might ask how the Kingdom of God can manifest itself on the earth through human agency in building a foundation of righteousness and justice for the people. Deuteronomy instructs that the king was not to be like the Gibborim who filled the earth with violence and corruption. The king was not to commit injustice against the weak and powerless. The king was to judge rightly while breaking the back of those who oppressed his people (Kline 1962: 203). The king was not to multiply wives unto himself, nor horses, nor silver and gold (Deut 17.14-17). For Israel and the world, kingship would reach its pinnacle only under the sovereignty of YHVH who sent his heir, Yeshua the Messiah, Son of God, to remove chaos, restore order, and renew the cosmos.”
In other words, the kings of Israel, called sons of God in 1 Chr 17.11-14, 22.10, 28.5-7, were instructed to be the opposite of the pre-flood “sons of God” who ruled the earth with violence, corruption, polygamy, and oppression, who ruled the weak, the helpless, the poor, widows and orphans by force. They were not to rely on military power to pursue their power, but to submit themselves to the sovereignty of God in all their policies, and to administer the justice of Yehovah in an impartial way. In this they would remove the chaos and disorder that was prevalent in the days before the flood, and after. However, these goals will only be reached in its fullness with the coming of Yeshua the Messiah, the Son of God.
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