Genesis 6:1-7
Review
of the genealogy of Adam to Noah:
- Adam means “man”
- Seth means “appointed”
- Enosh means “mortal,
frail, miserable” from root anash “to be incurable”
- Kenan means “sorrow,
dirge”
- Mahalalel means “blessed
God” from “mahalal” for “blessed” and “el” for “God”
- Jared means “shall
come down”
- Enoch means “commencement,
teaching”
- Methusaleh means “his
death shall bring” from “muth” for “death”; “shalach” for “bring or
send forth”
- Lamech means “despairing”
(similar our word lament or lamentation)
- Noah means “comfort
or rest”
In
order the first ten generations of first born sons makes the following
statement of a promise and the gospel message:
“Man is appointed
mortal sorrow; but the blessed God shall come
down teaching that his death shall bring the despairing rest.”
6:1
When men began to increase in number on
the earth and daughters were born to them,
This
age of man is described as a time of increase in population.
Estimates of the population at this time are huge.
Estimates range from 5 to 17 billion people
See
this article here
6:2
the sons of God saw that the daughters
of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.
Three Views of the Identity of the “Sons of God”
|
|
View One |
View Two |
View Three |
|
“Sons of God” |
Fallen
Angels |
Seth’s
Chosen Line |
Kings
and Pharoahs or their Sons (Princes) |
|
“Daughters of Men” |
Daughters
of Men |
The
Lind of Cain |
Daughters
of Common Men |
|
The Sin of these Marriages |
Fallen
Angels married Women |
Godly
people married Ungodly people |
Harems
and Polygamy |
“Sons of God” is the Hebrew “Bene ha elohim”. “Ben” means “son of” and “elohim” is the
Hebrew word for God.
Sons
of God in scripture refer to beings that come directly from the hand of God
such as:
- Adam
- Jesus
- Born again believers
- Angels
“Sons
of God” refer to angels in Job 1:6; Job 2:1; Job 38:7; Psalm 29:1; 82:6; 89:7;
Daniel 3:25.
In
Luke 20:34-36 men are compared to angels, but the angelic comparison is used to
point out that men will not die after the resurrection. Mankind will not be married after the
resurrection but that was not the reason that Luke records Jesus saying we will
be like the angels.
Apparently
angels do not have baby angels since angels were created directly from
God. But, this does not mean that
Genesis 6:2-5 can’t mean what it clearly is saying.
Genesis
18:2 angels appear as men and eat.
Genesis
19:1 angels are thought to be men by the people of
Hebrews
1:7 angels are transformed into wind or fire.
Ezekiel
28:13 describes the creation of Lucifer’s angelic body
Luke
1:35 the Holy Spirit overshadows a woman and she conceives
6:3
Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will
not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and
twenty years."
“mortal” is the word “flesh”.
God’s problem with man was man’s state of being sinful flesh first. The actions of man were secondary.
“a hundred and twenty years” indicates the length of time before God destroys
mortal man with the flood.
a. In the days of Noah the Spirit of God was trying to
draw all men back to him. The Spirit did
this in a variety of ways that we know:
i.
The preaching
of Noah (1 Peter
ii.
The inward
checks and the law written on their hearts (Rm.
b. Point One: The
Spirit strives with sinners to turn them to God
c. Point Two: The
Spirit will eventually stop calling each individual and group back to
himself. There is a ending point to the
Spirit’s work of urging men to repent.
i.
“The Israelites
are stubborn, like a stubborn heifer. . .Ephraim is joined to idols; leave him
alone!” Hosea 4:16,17
d. Point Three:
Man is mortal (also translated, “flesh”) and is naturally opposed to the
immortal Holy Spirit. It is simply
natural and must be accepted that many men will resist the Spirit’s work. Grace is not an eternal option. In every case the day of opportunity passes.
e. “contend”
(NIV) also means “strive” with, “rules”
in or is “humbled” in.[i][i] In his 1870 book “Old Testament Word
Studies,” Wilson gives the meaning of this Hebrew word as “to judge, contend,
to be at strife. Most of the ancient
versions give it the sense of remaining or dwelling. . . .Gen. 6:3 may be
translated, ‘My spirit shall not always be despised by man, i.e. I will not
suffer my spirit, admonishing them and pleading with them by the prophets, to
be perpetually neglected, I will punish them.”[ii][ii] More modern studies of etymology show the
meaning of “contend” to be better translated as “continue” or “last”. The Septuagint and the Vulgate confirm
this. This makes more sense of the
context and fits the whole theology of the Holy Spirit than the word “strive.”[iii][iii]
6:4
The Nephilim were on the earth in those
days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and
had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.
Nephilim- (Hebrew: “nepilim”) “
- The term itself almost certainly means ‘fallen ones,’ whether morally
fallen in the general sense or fallen from (i.e., cast out of) heaven in a
more specific sense.
- The word is used twice in scripture: Gen. 6:4 and Numbers 13:33
- It has been plausibly proposed that the Nephilim were princes born
into the royal houses of the ‘sons of God’ (Gen. 6:4) and that they were
‘the mighty tyrants who . . .esteemed their might to be their right.’
- Certain Jewish exegetes have ingeniously assumed that the later
Nephilim strain of Num 13:33 was preserved through the Flood in the
persons of Noah’s daughters-in-law.
- The literature of the intertestamental period, however, takes a
different track. According to Sir
16:7 the ‘ancient giants’ were rebellious and deserved divine
punishment. Wisd. 14:6 and
Bar.3:26-28 are even more specific:
The giants were destroyed by the Flood. If so, the later Nephilim were
namesakes, not descendants, of their earlier counterparts.” (New
International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis, 1997)
- Virtually every ancient culture has an
account of gods or star people or angels who produce offspring on the
earth:
Sons of God– In Job 1:6 and 2:1 the
same Hebrew phrase “sons of God” is translated “angels.”
Heroes- (Hebrew: “gibbor” or “gibborim”) and is translated as “mighty men” in 2 Sam.
23:8; JOB 16:14; 2 Samuel 10:7. The LXX (Septuagint, a Greek translation of the
Hebrew scriptures around 250 BC) translates “gibbor” with the Greek word
“gigas” or “gigantes” (“giant”) in:
Gen.10:8-9,1 Chr. 1:10, Ps. 19:5,6, Ps. 33:16, Isa.
3:2, Isa. 13:3, Isa. 49:24-25, Ezek.
32:12; 32:21, 27; 39:18, 20
Nephilim is used in the Hebrew in Numbers 13:32,33:
“All the people we saw there are
of great size. We saw the Nephilim
there (the descendants of Anak
come from the Nephilim).”
This was a true report (but, faithless) since
Deuteronomy 2:10-12 records:
“The Emites used to live
there (
and as tall as the Anakites. Like the Anakites, they too were
considered
Rephaites, but the Moabites
called them Emites. Horites
used to live in Seir,
but he descendants of Esau drove
them out.”
Rephaites was the general name for people like the
Anakites, Emites, Horites. In
Deuteronomy 2:20 they are called Zamzummites by the Ammonites:
“That too (region of
who used to live there; but the Ammonites called
them Zamzummites.
They were a people as numerous, and as tall as the
Anakites.”
The Greeks who settle in
Goliath and Og were the two best-known
Rephaites. Also named in scripture are
Ishbi-Benob and Lahmi
Two
Options
- Sons of God are the Nephilim (Anak, Rapha, etc.) >
Descendents of Anak and Rapha would be the Anakites and the Rephaites,
etc.
- Sons of God produced
the Nephilim who were beings like
Rapha and Anak who then produced the Anakites, Rephaites, etc.
The Descendents of the Nephilim
|
Og, King of |
Rephaites |
Deut. 3:11, 13; Jos. 12:4;
13:12 |
|
Anak comes from the Nephilim |
Anakites |
Num.13:33 |
|
|
Emites |
Dt. 2:10-12 |
|
Ammonites called them |
Zazummites |
Dt. 2:20 |
|
|
Horites |
Dt. 2:12 |
|
Philistines drove out the |
Avvites |
Dt. 2:23 |
|
Descendants of Rapha |
Raphaites |
2 Sam. 21:16, 18, 20, 1 Chr.
20:4-8 |
Joshua 11:21-22 – Joshua drove the Anakites out of
1 Samuel 17:4 – Goliath was one of the descendents
of the Nephilim living in
1 Samuel 17:40 – David picks up 5 smooth stones.
2 Samuel 21:15-20 – Four more of the descendents of
the Nephilim from
Skeletons
3.2 meters tall have been excavated in
A dry river bed in the
The Valley of Elah where David killed Goliath. The Philistines fled back towards Gaza.
6:5
The LORD saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every
inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. 6 The LORD
was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with
pain.
6:7
So the LORD said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face
of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and
birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them." 8 But Noah found
favor in the eyes of the LORD.
Demons
Demons
– seek bodies Lke 8:26 and Mark 1:24
2 Peter 2:4 - Tartarus – is the abyss or one of the “bottomless”
pits in the Abyss. The word is used in
Greek mythology where hero’s and gods were thrown. For example, the Titans were punished
here. Hellenistic Judaism took the word
and used in the book of Enoch as the place for fallen angels (1 Enoch
20:2). The angel Uriel rules
Tartarus. It took 9 days for a rock to
fall into it from the earth.
In
Revelation 9:1-11 at the sounding of the fifth trumpet, the key to the Abyss
was given to a fallen angel who opened it and released locust like creatures,
probably demons. They torment the earth
for five months. The king over them is
the angel of the Abyss whose name is Abaddon (Hebrew) or Apollyon (Greek). The
name means “Destroyer.”
Jude 6, 7
Compare what Enoch says with Jude 6:
12:4
– The angels have abandoned the high heaven, the holy eternal place= Jude 6a
10:4
– Bind Azazel hand and foot and throw him into the darkness = Jude 6b
10:6
– that he may be sent into the fire on the great day of judgment = Jude 6c
Verses
7 of Jude says:
“as
The
word “THEM” (toutois or toutoiV)is masculine and can not
refer to “them” “cities” because “cities” is feminine. “THEM” refers back to “angels” in verse 6
making the sin of
1 Peter 3:19 – spirits in prison
Map
of underworld
Seed of the Woman
verse the Seed of the Serpent
Genesis
3:15:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman
and between your offspring and hers.”
Satan’s
continual attack on the seed of the woman:
- Cain and Abel
- Nephilim
- Abraham
- Hebrews in
- David’s line such as when
Athaliah killed all the royal grandchildren but one, Joash, escaped to
spare the line of David (2 Chron. 23:10-20
- Jews in
- Herod and
- Anti-Semitism
- Revelation 12 with
the vision of the woman and the dragon
Luke
17:26, 27
“As it was in the days of Noah so it will be at the coming of the Son
of Man.”
Rev.
12:1-9 and 13-17 – The woman and the dragon
Rev.
13:1-10 – The beast from the Sea
Rev.
13:11-18 – The beast from the Land
Rev.
19:11-16 – Jesus Returns
Rev.
19:19-21 – The Beasts are thrown alive into Gehenna or the
Heb.
9:27 – Man is destined to die once and face the judgment
2
Cor. 5:10 – Believers will ALL stand before the judgment seat of Christ
Rev.
20:12, 13, 15 – Each person (unbeliever) was judged
Rev.
20:1-3 – Satan in the Abyss
Rev.
20:7-10 – Satan released and the thrown into Gehenna or the
Rev.
20:11-15 – The Great White Throne Judgment
The Great Delusion of
the End Times
2
Thessalonians 2:3,
“Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way for
that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is
revealed, the man doomed to destruction.
He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is
called God or is worshiped, so that he
sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.”
2:9,
“The coming of the lawless one will be in
accordance with the work of Satan displayed in all kinds of counterfeit
miracles, signs and wonders, . . For this reason God sends them a powerful
delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned
who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.”
Revelation
13 records worship of the beast, a fatal wound that is healed, miraculous signs
including fire coming down out of heaven, an “image” that was given life and
could speak and the killing of anyone who opposed this “god”.
First Enoch Chapter 6
and 7
This
is the text of the First Book of Enoch chapters 6 and 7:
Chapter 8
1 And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those
days were born unto
2 them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the
heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us
choose us wives from among the children of men
3 and beget us children.' And Semjaza, who was their leader, said unto them: 'I
fear ye will not
4 indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a
great sin.' And they all answered him and said: 'Let us all swear an oath, and
all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations
5 not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.' Then sware they all together
and bound themselves
6 by mutual imprecations upon it. And they were in all two hundred; who
descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called
it
7 and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. And these are the names
of their leaders: Samlazaz, their leader, Araklba, Rameel, Kokablel, Tamlel,
Ramlel, Danel, Ezeqeel, Baraqijal,
8 Asael, Armaros, Batarel, Ananel, Zaq1el, Samsapeel, Satarel, Turel, Jomjael,
Sariel. These are their chiefs of tens.
Chapter 7
1 And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each
chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile
themselves with them, and they taught them charms
2 and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with
plants. And they
3 became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand
ells: Who consumed
4 all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the
giants turned against
5 them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts,
and reptiles, and 6 fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the
blood. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.
Chapter 15:8-12
8 And now, the giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh, shall be
called evil spirits upon
9 the earth, and on the earth shall be their dwelling. Evil spirits have
proceeded from their bodies; because they are born from men and from the holy
Watchers is their beginning and primal origin;
10 they shall be evil spirits on earth, and evil spirits shall they be called.
[As for the spirits of heaven, in heaven shall be their dwelling, but as for
the spirits of the earth which were born upon the earth, on the earth shall be
their dwelling.]
11 And the spirits of the giants afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle,
and work destruction on the earth, and cause trouble: they take no food, but
nevertheless
12 hunger and thirst, and cause offences. And these spirits shall rise up
against the children of men and against the women, because they have proceeded
from them.
Josephus
In his book Antiquities of the Jews, written 70-90 AD, Josephus writes the
following:
Chapter 2:3 – This is about the tribe of
”For which reason they removed their camp to
Chapter 12:2 –
This portion records one of David’s mighty men, Sibbechai the Hittite, killing
those who claimed to descend from the Nephilim
”When they were gathered together at the city Gaza, he sent an army against
them, when Sibbechai the Hittite, one of David’s most courageous men, behaved
himself so as to deserve great commendation, for he slew many of those that
bragged, they were of the posterity of the giants, and vaunted themselves
highly on that account.”
The
These are some comments written by the early church leaders that we still
have. They wrote these views from around
160-245 AD.
Justin Martyr (160 AD)
”The angels transgressed this appointment and were captivated by love of
women,. And they begat children, who are
those who are called demons.”
Athenagoras (175 AD)
”These angels, then, who have fallen from heaven, and haunt the air and the
earth, and are no longer able to rise to heavenly things, and the souls of the
giants, who are the demons who wander about the world, perform similar
actions.”
Irenaeus (180 AD)
”In the days of Noah, He justly brought on the Deluge for the purpose of
extinguishing that most infamous race of men then existent, who could not bring
forth fruit to God. For the angels who
sinned had commingled with them.”
Clement of
”The angels who had obtained the superior rank, having sunk into pleasures,
told the women the secrets that had come to their knowledge. In contrast, the rest of the angels concealed
them, or rather, reserved them for the coming of the Lord.”
Tertullian (197 AD)
”By our sacred books, we are instructed how from certain angels, who fell of
their own free will, there sprang an even more wicked demon brood.”
Commodianus (240 AD)
”And from their seed, giants are said to have been born. By them, arts were made known in the earth. .
. When they died, men erected images to them.”
Julius Africanus (245)
”When men multiplied on the earth, the angels of heaven came together with the
daughters of men. In some copies, I
found “the sons of God.” What the Spirit
means, in my opinion, is that the descendants of Seth are called the sons of
God, because of the righteous men and patriarchs who have sprung from him (even
down to the Savior himself). However,
the descendants of Cain are named the seed of men, as having nothing divine in
them, because of the wickedness of their race. . . . However, if it is thought
that these refer to angels, we must take them to be those who deal with magic
and sorcery, who taught the women the motions of the stars and the knowledge of
things celestial. By the power of those
angels, they conceived the giants as their children, by whom wickedness reached
its peak on the earth. Finally, God
decreed that the whole race of the living should perish in their impiety by the
deluge.”
Origin (248)
”Among angels, some are angels of God, and others are angels of the devil. But among demons, there is no such
distinction. For they are all said to be wicked.”