Who are the Sons of God mentioned in Genesis 6 verse 2?
- Genesis 6: 1 And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,
- Genesis 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.
- Genesis 6:3 And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.
- Genesis 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.
- Genesis 6:5 And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
- Genesis 6:6 And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.
- Genesis 6:7 And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
Genesis 6 is no doubt a difficult passage to interpret. There are 3 significant points that I have come to know about this chapter,
a) There are three interpretations of this chapter that have merit, and several smaller interpretations that can be ignored.
b) These three interpretations directly oppose of each other.
c) There is a significant amount of very smart Christians on all sides of this debate.
Any intellect will have eyes like dinner plates as they read Genesis 6, the chapter should make our hairs on our back stand straight! There is clearly something significant going on here that God is telling us. One of the most frustrating times of my Christian walk under a pastor was to be taught as an absolute and unquestionable fact that Genesis 6 is talking about nothing more than humans, normal humans that were well known, I sat there enduring the informal “lecture” whilst watching the pastor awkwardly argued against the simply and clear reading of the text.
Interpretation 1: The Sons of God in Genesis 6 were the descendants from the Godly line of Seth.
Interpretation 2: The Sons of God in Genesis 6 were fallen angels, who sinned and took human form and pro created with beautiful human women.
Interpretation 3: The Sons of God in Genesis 6 were normal human men whom had significant reputation of being strong or powerful men of the day.
The Common Sense Test
Before going deep into the original text, I would propose that any 10 year old that reads Genesis 6 would come to the conclusion that the Sons of God mentioned in this text speaks of something different to “normal men”. The word of God is making it very clear and precise that it is portraying these “Sons of God” to be something other than “men” by the way it speaks of men in the normal sense at the beginning of the passage, then referring to the Sons of God mid-way through as a different article. If this passage being simply read shows this difference, why then do we find pastors and Christians attempting to make the text say these Sons of God are just normal men? The answer to that question is, I don’t really know. There doesn’t appear to me to be a clear motive other than the usual suspect of denominational conformance.
Down Deep to Defend the Truth
It is clear that the plain reading of the text shows a separation between normal humans and these “Sons of God”. Let’s take a look at the original text and see if that shows some light on the topic.
The Hebrew text bənê hāʼĕlōhîm “H1121,H430”, or written in hebrew בני אלוהים is found in 5 locations in the word of God,
Genesis 6:2
Job 1:6
Job 2:1
Job 38:7
Daniel 3:25
In all of these verses, the text is definitively referring to Angels. There is not one location in the word of God that states bənê hāʼĕlōhîm are humans. There are some locations in the New Testament where the phrase the Sons of God is found in the Greek “G5207, G2316” but in each case the context is undebatable and clear that it can only be humans and is referring to the relationship between us and God as a father son relationship.
Context
Directly after the word mentions these Sons of God, the very next verse shows the Lord himself saying “My spirit shall not always strive with man”. Clearly whatever occurred here was significant, and not good! Actually, bad enough that it made the Lord grieve in his heart that he made man the earth. As the passage continues, we see another clear distinction between normal men and the Sons of God “Angels” in verse 4,
“and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men”
Reader, this couldn’t be clearer, the Sons of God are different to the daughters of men.
Final Confirmation
- 2 Peter 2:4 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment;
- 2 Peter 2:5 And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly
Reader, Peter held the opinion that the Sons of God were fallen angels. He mentions them in 2 Peter and connects them to Noah’s flood.
Conclusion
In our opinion Genesis 6 is absolutely referring to fallen angels, who sinned against God and took human women as wives. The offspring of these ungodly unions were pure evil. To close we share the following video which is an excellent and exhaustive explanation of verse 1 through 7.