Our main text today is:
The Corruption of Mankind
Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. 3 Then the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless, his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” 4 The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also 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.5 Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6 The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. 7 The LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.” Genesis 6:1-7 NASB
In the above text we find references to the Sons of God and the Nephilim. My understanding of the Sons of God, a reflection on who these sons of God were. angels and not men.
So then from the time of Adam’s sin up to the time of Noah sin infiltrated humanity but also heaven itself. Within Jewish Scripture and tradition, we see glimpses of this including the fall of angels and how immoral they were:
2 Peter 2. 4
“For if God did not spare angels when they sinned but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of darkness, held for judgment.”
Jude 1.6
“And angels who did not keep their own domain but abandoned their proper dwelling place, these He has kept in eternal restraints under darkness for the judgment of the great day.
For me Jude1.6 reminds me of the sons of God in Genesis 6.2
As I have said many times before the Apostles used the Greek Old Testament of the Second Temple. The translation here is:
“ἰδόντες δὲ οἱ ἄγγελοι τοῦ θεοῦ τὰς θυγατέρας τῶν ἀνθρώπων ὅτι καλαί εἰσιν, ἔλαβον ἑαυτοῖς γυναῖκας ἀπὸ πασῶν ὧν ἐξελέξαντο.” (from https://biblehub.com/sepd/genesis/6.htm)
International Standard Version
“some divine beings noticed how attractive human women were, so they took wives for themselves from a selection that pleased them.”
(The above translation also uses other manuscripts in its influence. You have to make your own judgement if you trust it; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Version:
For me the translation has crossed a boundary by using too much dynamic equivalence. It is however useful in that as a paraphrase we can get a glimpse of what is going on. Heaven and earth were facing corruption and God had to sort this terrible problem out.)
There is also hard evidence that within the Dead Sea Scrolls Jewish Community that Genesis 6. 2 were angels and thus would have been a topic in the second Temple before it was destroyed. (Have a look at cave 4 for example in gnosis.org. Here we find a description of how low some angels came morally. (gnosis.org/library/dss/dss_book_of_giants.htm)
The interpretation of
- Higher Princes marrying into the common folk (which they are not supposed to)
- The line of righteous Seth becoming corrupted (which it did)
- Angels in breed with humans and that’s how giants came into the world.
(Although I don’t agree with the first two views, I still respect those who hold to these views because they have been argued by God fearing people. Two such people who did not think the sons of God were angels are John Calvin and Herman Bavinck. They did not have the foresight of the dead sea scrolls and other documents. Perhaps if they were alive today, they may have taken the view that the sons of God in this context are indeed angels)
As well as these quotations from the New Testament we see Satan as the ringleader of these bad angels in the Old Testament in the oldest book in the Bible Job 1:
“Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. 7 The LORD said to Satan, “From where do you come?” Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” 8 The LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.” 9 Then Satan answered the LORD, “Does Job fear God for nothing? 10 Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11 But put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face.” 12 Then the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your power, only do not put forth your hand on him.” So Satan departed from the presence of the LORD.” Job 1:6-12 NASB
Satan is also the one to come and test our Lord Jesus at his weakest moment of fasting and praying in the Wilderness of Judea for example:
“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”” Matthew 4:1-3
‘Son of God’ here is a title of the Messiah and Satan was trying to get him to doubt his Trinitarian office.
..
There were also some interesting lines of thought in the Biblical Archaeological Review on the Sons of God. This led me to go deeper into what was being said in the Old Testament:
Sons of God present themselves to God.
Job 1:6; 2:1
6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. Job 1:6
1 Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD. 2 The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” Job 2:1-2
Gods divine assembly
Psalm 89:7; 29:1
7 A God greatly feared in the council of the holy ones,
And awesome above all those who are around Him? Psalms 89:7
1 Ascribe to the LORD, O sons of the mighty,
Ascribe to the LORD glory and strength. Psalms 29:1
In academic circles Deuteronomy 32:8 has caused caused quite a stir because the dead sea scrolls gives a variant reading to that of theMasoretic text. Instead of saying Sons of Israel it says Sons of God.
The DSS says:
you]. 8 When [the Most High] gave [to the nations] their inherit[ance, when] he separated [humankind, he set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of] the children of God.163 [9 For the LORD’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of] his [inher]itance.
(Abegg Jr., Martin G.; Peter Flint; Eugene Ulrich. The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible: The Oldest Known Bible Translated for the First Time into English (p. 191). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.)
The footnotes say:
(163. 4QDeutj LXX. Israel MT SP.)
This means that the ‘Sons of God’ reading is found in the dead sea scrolls found in cave 4 and this is the same reading as the Septuagint. The Reading of Israel is found in the Masoretic text and the Samaritan Pentateuch version
(ibid)
We can infer from these that the Sons of God were a council which presided in the presence of God, but we also know as in Genesis 6 that some of them turned against God and with humans were responsible for the Nephilim. I don’t have a problem with this reading because angels did take on human form from time to time. An example of this was in Lot’s house when the neighbours broke in to do obscenities on the visiting angels whom they mistook for human beings. It also seems to be the case that the Sons of God also took wives after the floods too.
Even though I don’t agree with Bavinck or Calvin on the nature of the Sons of God, I do however agree that the emphasis is on human sins. It is human sin that brought about the flood although there were other cosmic forces also playing a hand (but that ought to be put as a minor point.). The lines of Seth and Cain do play a part in the story and it is worth following through what Bavinck has to tell us about what is going on.
So then heaven and earth had their rebellions. So far, we have learned that from my point of view is that the correct interpretation of the Sons of God was that they were angels. This still does not change the main thrust of the story, that focuses on how low and depraved people became and thus the earth had to be flooded. From that perspective even if one disagrees with who the Sons of God were, we cannot escape the progression of sin. Herman Bavinck and John Calvin are still useful exegetes for us in this department.
There are reasons why Herman Bavinck rejected the idea that the Sons of God in Genesis were not angels. This is found in his Reformed Dogmatics, book 2, page 256 , edited by John Bolt, Baker Books.
In the first paragraph Bavinck shows us that he was well aware of the LXX (Septuagint). He shows that a particular corporeality was given to the angels and this was the line by lots of Church Fathers including Luther:
“But angels are bounded in relation to time and space; if they really move from one place to another, they have to be—in their own way—corporeal. Similarly, angels are not simple like God but composed of matter and form. For that reason also, a certain material—finely ethereal, to be sure—corporeality has to be attributed to them. Added to this line of thought was the exegesis that considered the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 as angels. This exegesis of Philo, Josephus, the Jews, and the Septuagint [LXX, i.e., Greek Old Testament] was taken over by many church fathers:60 Justin, Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian, Lactantius, Cyprian, and Ambrose (et al.); it was adopted also by Luther and again defended in modern times by Ewald, Baumgarten, Hofmann, Kurtz, Delitzsch, Hengstenberg, Kohler, and Kubel (et al.). In addition, in arguing for the corporeality of angels, people appeal to their appearances, to certain special texts in Holy Scripture, such as Psalm 104:4; Matthew 22:30; Luke 20:36; and 1 Corinthians 11:10; and sometimes also to the fact that as inhabitants of the stars they certainly have to be corporeal.
In the next paragraph Bavinck rejects this line of thought and puts the emphasis on angels as ‘spirits’. He is justified to do this because this is how the Bible in general speaks about angels.
Over against all these arguments, however, stands the clear pronouncement of Holy Scripture that the angels are spirits (pneumam; Matt. 8: 16; 12:4 5; Luke 7:21; 8:2; 11:26; Acts 19:12; [23:8;] Eph. 6:12; Heb. 1:14), who do not marry (Matt. 22:30), are immortal (Luke 20:35—36) and invisible (Col. 1:16), may be “legion” in a restricted space (Luke 8:30), and like spirits, have no flesh and bones (Luke 24:39). Moreover, the conception that the “sons of God” in Genesis 6:2 are angels and not men is untenable. Though this designation is used repeatedly for angels (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7), it can also very well denote humans (Deut. 32:5—6; Hos. 1:10 [2:1 MT]; Ps. 80:17 [16 MT]; 73:15), and is in any case inapplicable to bad angels, who must have committed their sin on earth. Moreover, the expression “took to wife” [q]? $4] in Genesis 6:2 is always used with reference to a lawful marriage and never to fornication. Finally, the punishment of the sin is imposed only on humans, for they are the guilty party, and there is no mention of angels (Gen. 6:3, 5—7). Neither do the other Scripture passages prove the corporeality of angels. Psalm 104:4 (cf.Heb. 1:7) only says that God uses his angels as ministers, just as wind and fire…”
Bavinck says a lot more on the nature of angels and I will be going through this sometime. Here we were answering a question on who the sons of God were. Next time I will go back to the general discussion of the nature of angels.
Pannenberg then made an accurate estimation and surprise at Barth not speaking about the nature of angels. Pannenberg on the other hand tried to tie the angel’s nature down to nature and this ended up being an abysmal failure (from my point of view). (See the previous blog on Barth and Pannenberg on angels.) Herman Bavinck on the other hand, is not afraid to talk about the nature of angels and everything else.
Reflection
The Genesis story is not interested in angels per se, on the contrary Genesis is interested in humankind who are the image bearers of God (not angels). Moses when he was penning this story down with the elders of ancient Israel under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit were well aware of the Paganism of the time. They would have known about the Ugaritic texts of El and the pantheon of gods on all the different levels. The Pagan literature of the time was probably re-adapted in the cause of the Lord of Creation (Ha Shem). This is not a bad thing because Moses was dealing with revelation from God and to pass God’s word down to us faithfully. We do seriously need to remind ourselves of Bavincks and Calvin’s exegesis here. It is humanity that is going to be judge not angels in this story thus we ought to put the emphasis on human sin. It is human sin that brought about the universal flood.
Weaver1has's Blog 