For the past few weeks, we've been exploring an account of “the generations of Adam” (Genesis 5:1), which up to now has mainly been a genealogy with stories sprinkled in (Genesis 5:3-32). Unlike the Cain genealogy (Genesis 4:16-24), here we've caught glimmers of hope we're looking at a new humanity, a righteous people of God. But as we try to wrap up these generations of Adam, our foot gets stuck in the mud of 'sons of God,' 'daughters of Adam,' 'fallen ones,' 'mighty men'... oh boy, quite the quagmire. These four verses that launch chapter 6 are nobody's idea of a cakewalk! They've been called “the strangest of all the Genesis narratives,”1 “ambiguous by nature,”2 “mysterious,”3 “cryptic and obscure,”4 “one of the most difficult texts to interpret in the Hebrew Bible,”5 “among the most debated texts in the entire Bible.”6 Well... don't you just feel encouraged?
It all starts by pointing us back to the time already covered by the chapter 4 and 5 genealogies; we're retreading ground previously gained.7 Those genealogies are all about how “the human began to multiply on the face of the ground” (Genesis 6:1). In pagan stories set in this time, humans multiplying doesn't go over as a good thing: “the peoples had increased, the land bellowed like a bull, the god was disturbed with their uproar.”8 But in the Bible, God doesn't mind that; actually, humanity multiplying is a sign of his original blessing (Genesis 1:28). So the human being, the Adam, is multiplying, “and daughters were born to them” (Genesis 6:1), just like last chapter told us (Genesis 5:4, 7).
Onto the stage step characters we don't yet recognize: “the sons of God.” A whole lot depends on who or what they are, but that's a big question we'll have to circle back to. For now, let's read what they did. “The sons of God saw the daughters of humanity, that they were good” (Genesis 6:2). The 'daughters of humanity' – we just heard about them a verse ago. But the sons of God see these human women and appraise them as good9 – which probably means, in this context, somehow attractive, beautiful, and desirable.10 That's often taken to mean that the sons of God feel a passionate desire, a lust for the women's physical beauty.11
If so, they act on it: “they took for themselves wives” (Genesis 6:2). And some readers figure there's nothing going wrong here: “no commandment is broken.”12 But notice the three key words: they see, they say it's good, therefore they take. Who's that remind you of? Eve in the garden, that's who (Genesis 3:6).13 That's not a promising sign. Acting out of their own vision, they take wives for themselves, like Lamech when he “took for himself two wives” (Genesis 4:19), making us wonder if the 'sons of God' here stick to one wife a piece or not.14 Notice, after all, that they take wives “from all whomsoever they chose” (Genesis 6:2). But it's in the pagan world, not in Israel, where people are said to 'choose' a wife.15 And the phrase 'from all' contrasts with God's warnings Israelites not marry Canaanite women (Genesis 24:37; Nehemiah 13:27) and mandates that their priests marry none but ladies of Israel (Leviticus 21:14; Ezekiel 44:22). Legally, “nobody [in Israel] could choose freely among all women.”16 But the 'sons of God' abide by no such laws. In at least one way (if not more), a boundary is being broken by “a mixing of things that should be separate.”17
Into this situation, the LORD himself suddenly speaks (Genesis 6:3), but what he says is hard to read – there are a lot of words that show up only here in the Bible, and I've seen totally different translations of this verse. God says his spirit – (the Holy Spirit? the breath of life?) – won't strive (or remain, or be strong?) with humans forever, since also he's flesh (or by their transgressing he is flesh?).18 All we can tell for sure is, God answers a problem. Somehow, the sons of God marrying human women could be thought to lead to humans exceeding all limits, like when the serpent promised to make humans like gods (Genesis 3:5) but then God refused to let humans 'take' what would let them live forever (Genesis 3:22).19 The LORD says he's not having any of that this time either: humans are still just flesh and have a limited number of days to live, either individually or collectively.20 Because of this weird new situation, God has to be extra clear about this.21 And the way the story's written, God acts immediately, “before the story can begin to unfold any further.”22
After that, we get a further comment: “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days (and also after), when the sons of God came in to the daughters of humanity and they bore children to them. These were the Gibborim who were of old, men of the name” (Genesis 6:4). You'll note two weird words there. 'Gibborim' is easier: that means 'mighty ones,' like warriors or heroes. Then there are 'Nephilim,' who most scholars think are the same as the Gibborim here, children of the sons of God and daughters of man,23 though some think they're unrelated.24 'Nephilim' means, literally, 'the fallen ones.'25 Fallen from heaven to earth?26 Fallen morally from prior holiness, like Adam and Eve?27 Fallen, as in born abnormally?28 Fallen in battle as a slain warrior, like when David laments “how the mighty ones have fallen in the midst of battle” (2 Samuel 1:25) or when Ezekiel sees “the mighty ones, the fallen... who went down to Sheol with their weapons of war” (Ezekiel 32:27)?29
The big question of it all is, who or what are the 'sons of God'? Setting aside more crackpot ideas like aliens30 or Neanderthals,31 one major theory is that they're angels, who – maybe assigned on mission to earth already, maybe looking down from heaven – decide they have an interest in human women, and so they show up, adopt human form, marry, and have kids who are just... all wrong. That theory sounds weird – it is weird – but that's “the earliest known explanation” of what's going on here,32 accepted with utter sincerity by Jews up to the time of Jesus,33 plus Christians for the next couple centuries.34 Gradually, though, people got uneasy with that theory. Didn't Jesus himself contrast “the angels in heaven” with humans who “marry and are given in marriage” (Mark 12:25)? So “how could it not amount to folly to say that spirits... desire fleshly things?”35 No way can “spiritual natures have carnal relations!”36 Only “mad fools” could buy that... right?37
So some turned to a new theory, the idea that that the 'sons of God' were the upper class – maybe kings who claimed to represent God, maybe judges who acted like gods on earth, maybe the rich in general, maybe especially strong or skilled people.38 This would then be a “self-deification of the powerful,” when “the ruling class became captives of their own appetites.”39 In the second and third century, this approach became popular among the rabbis.40 One problem (among others) is that nowhere else are judges or kings, as a group, called 'sons of God.'41
Around the same time, Christians, starting in Syria,42 began pioneering the soon-to-be-popular idea that the 'sons of God' were actually the male descendants of Seth in Genesis 5, while the 'daughters of humanity' were only the female descendants of Cain from Genesis 4, and the problem was then being “unequally yoked with unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 6:14).43 This theory held sway for over fifteen centuries in the church, but the problem is that it's based on iffy translations of an earlier verse,44 plus that it's Seth's family that's identified with Adam and is known for daughters, so the 'daughters of humanity' can't just be the people of Cain.45
Most pastors I talked to about this sermon said they'd just leave things here: lay out a few major options, shrug, and call it quits. They said they'd leave it up to you to go read your Bible and try to make up your own mind, to decide whatever it means to you. That doesn't quite sit right with me. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16), and so God breathed out these verses, he gave them a meaning, and so it must be profitable to teach from them somehow. After combing through as much of the up-to-date research as I could find, taking hundreds of pages of notes, and turning it over in my mind for several years now... let me tell you what I think makes most sense.
The cultures around Israel used the phrase 'sons of God' or 'sons of the gods' to refer to divine beings, deities.46 They were often the chief god's courtiers and companions, those who make up the heavenly assembly or divine council, “the celestial entourage of God.”47 'Sons of gods' could also be a class term, meaning 'gods.'48 The Bible has no problem with this: it says that when the LORD made the world, “the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7), and that on occasion “the sons of God come to present themselves before the LORD” in his royal court. In the Bible's view, they're never the LORD's peers: “Who among the sons of God is like the LORD, a God... awesome above all who are around him?” (Psalm 89:6-7). Later Israelites came to understand the sons of God as angels serving the LORD. But they could also be identified as “the gods of the nations” (Jeremiah 14:22), since “the Most High... fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God” (Deuteronomy 32:8).49 In Genesis 6, we're probably looking at pagan ideas about their gods.
The idea of gods sleeping with mere humans, especially a long time ago, was a common idea in the mythologies of pagan cultures around Israel; and so was the idea of them producing children who'd go on to be important heroes and kings.50 This is, in fact, “a defining aspect of the time of the heroes.”51 Many pagans looked back at a heroic age when these sorts of things happened, a time of ancient human women “mingling with gods” and so bearing them “splendid children,” starting with “the race of illustrious kings.”52 There was then “a race of heroes, godlike men... called demigods.”53 In Greece, for example, the hero Heracles was born when the god Zeus rushed down from Olympus, “desiring the love of a fine-girdled woman.”54 The famous Argonaut heroes of Greek mythology included not only Heracles the son of Zeus,55 but Ancaeus, Erginus, and Euphemus the sons of the sea god Poseidon;56 Erytus, Echion, and Aethalides the sons of the herald god Hermes;57 Ascalaphus and Ialmenus the sons of war god Ares;58 Augeas a son of the sun god Helios;59 and, oh, you get the picture. Even some Romans thought the founder of Rome was the son of a mortal maiden who “united in marriage” with the god Mars.60 The Hurrians had a king named Kirta whom Canaanites called a son of the god El,61 and a myth about a boy named Silver who was fathered by the sky god Kumarbi and a mortal woman.62 The Babylonians looked back to legendary kings like Gilgamesh, “a giant in height, 18 feet tall...,” since he was “two-thirds god and only one-third human,” having been born to the god-king Lugalbanda and the goddess Ninsun.63 Pagans often figured some of the ancient heroes of that age had ultimately been fully “changed into gods” themselves.64
Although that was a lost age ended by the gods, who for unknown reasons had chosen to “destroy the lives of the semi-gods” in a great catastrophe,65 pagans often celebrated that heroic generation as having been a golden age marked by justice, much better than our world and its people afterwards.66 Those were days, they said, of “righteousness and piety,” when humans were often “guests of the gods, eating at the same board,”67 and so the heroic race were “more righteous, better far,” than other generations.68
Such heroes and kings might be gone now, the pagans said, but pagan elites claimed special privileges and pride due to being descended from these part-divine heroes.69 The Sumerian king “Shulgi, mighty man, king of Ur,” started spelling his name with the symbol for a god,70 and he claimed to be a brother of the god-king Gilgamesh.71 Plenty other kings claimed to be descended from gods and striving to earn godhood through their rule.72 Two noble families in Athens boasted their descent from Neleus son of Poseidon and Aeacus son of Zeus, respectively. The kings of ancient Sparta claimed to be descended from Heracles,73 as did the ruling house of Macedonia, including Alexander the Great.74 Julius Caesar thought his family was “descended... from the immortal gods,” tracing his heritage back to Aeneas the son of Venus.75 It was a common pagan brag.
So in that light, what's going on in Genesis 6? God is giving Israel a way to take the wind out of everybody's sails. Genesis is saying, let's suppose for a moment that your myths are all real. Fine, say the pagan gods came and had kids with human women. Well, if they did, they that was an aggressive transgression of both natural and nuptial boundaries: like Eve, they blurred heaven and earth; like faithless Israelites, they married outside the law (Genesis 6:2). Those gods are, at best, idiots. It's like Psalm 82, where God “takes his stand in the divine assembly and judges among the gods” (Psalm 82:1), convicts them of being too ignorant and incompetent to deserve their godhood (Psalm 82:2-5), and declares: “I said, 'You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you.' Nevertheless, like humans you will die, and like one of the princes you will fall!” (Psalm 82:6-7).76 And so these 'sons of gods' shouldn't really be called gods after all.77 And their sort of religion is therefore wrong,78 exposed in all its falsity by “the radical and subversive gaze of God.”79
Where pagans thought some of those ancient heroes had been awarded immortal godhood,80 Genesis says those pagan heroes are as “flesh and blood” as the rest of us (Genesis 6:3).81 The LORD marks here “a clear division between divine and mortal.”82 All heroes, no exceptions, were “mortal human beings;”83 each did “die like a mortal.”84 The heroes were 'fallen ones,' doomed from the get-go (Genesis 6:4). Not merely noble “heroes falling in battle strife,”85 they were monsters of sin, fallen to damnation, for “the proud shall stumble and fall, with none to raise him up” (Jeremiah 50:32). Calling them 'Nephilim' might as well be naming them 'the losers,' 'the goners'! And for all their credit as “men of the name,” men with a heroic reputation sung about in legend, Genesis denies them any individuality (Genesis 6:4). “Their story is jarringly brief” here,86 and their names and supposed stories are “lost in the dustbin of history.”87 In Genesis, any pagan heroic age came and went and wasn't worth remembering. Such heroes of old were just “weeds sown among the wheat” (Matthew 13:25),88 and those who claim descent from the ancient heroes are, at best, frauds.
And last of all, Genesis makes clear that the heroic age was no golden age of justice after all; it was a dark age of spreading evil, violence, and corruption (Genesis 6:5). All this time the 'sons of God' were impulsively looking at the goodness of the daughters of humanity (Genesis 6:2), the true God and Father was looking, taking centuries of evidence into account, and seeing something very different: that “the evil of humans was great on the earth” (Genesis 6:5).89 These 'sons of God,' presuming to see and judge like God, were blind to what he can plainly see.90 As humans multiplied (Genesis 6:1), so humans multiplied evil on the earth (Genesis 6:5).91
And this wasn't accidental or casual; it was deliberate, outward actions of wrong and harm which testify to an inward heart-rot.92 Where God had once “formed” man from the dust (Genesis 2:7) and day by day “forms the hearts of them all” (Psalm 33:15), the human heart turns out to all day be “forming” designs that are pure disaster (Genesis 6:5).93 This picture of “constant, unceasing, and active devising, planning, and carrying out of evil” is a shocking dash of hyperbole showing what happens when we cut the brake lines amid our downward spiral.94 “In the state of fallen nature,” we all have such an inborn “impulse to evil” that we “need the help of grace in order not to fall.”95 Or, as Scripture puts it, “the hearts of the children of humanity are evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live” (Ecclesiastes 9:3).
Here, instead of multiplying to “fill the earth” with God's image and goodness (Genesis 1:28), humans have opted to “fill the earth with violence” (Genesis 6:11). If “the one who sows to the flesh will from the flesh reap corruption” (Galatians 6:8), then humanity's become a gambler on the carnal slots, which always pay out their poison. God sees that “sin had reached its climax, ruling from the depths of the human soul and filling the breadth of the earth.”96 As a result, the earth itself is polluted, corrupted, ruined (Genesis 6:13). Our savagery spreads to other creatures, who react to our beastliness by becoming beastlier; our behavior hurts the health of the land, as we pollute it and treat it like garbage.97 The earth becomes unfit for God's purposes for it.98
The other Sunday, facing the curse already on the ground, we read Lamech's dear wish for “comfort from our making and the agony of our hands” (Genesis 5:29). Now, those same three Hebrew words crop up again, in a “poetic interweaving of linguistic irony.”99 Lamech's root for 'comfort' can also form a word for 'being sorry.' And God is sorry, remorseful, regarding his 'making' humans who produce agony or grief, not for our hands, but for his very heart (Genesis 6:6).100 Now, God is all-knowing. “God sees what will happen many generations in the future as if it had already happened.”101 In fact, before God made one molecule of the universe, he knew each and every deed, word, or thought – good or bad – that would take place in his creation. So nothing catches God by surprise. God is sovereign and has no second thoughts. “God is incomprehensible and immeasurable, for whatever it is that we're able to know or sense about God..., he is by many degrees far better.”102 Nothing harms or shocks him or disturbs him, because “God always abides in his own glory.”103 But for us to apprehend this God beyond comprehension, “the Bible uses words of God as if he possessed human passions.”104 It may not be speaking literally, but it's definitely speaking seriously.
At the mind-boggling interface of the timeless God and our time and space, the only way we can begin to understand is to imagine God heartbroken, to imagine God disturbed, to imagine God disgusted. Only by such impassioned pictures can we reach out to the impassible God. As heavy as the curse weighs on the ground of this globe, so heavy does the evil of earthlings weigh on the mind of their Maker. As bitter and piercing as all the thorns and thistles, such are the arrows of our sins shot into the tenderness of God's purity. More noxious and rotting than the foulest decay to us is the stench which the corruption of creation causes its Creator. The relentlessly imaginative devisings of the human heart are what frustrate the holy heart of Heaven (Genesis 6:5-6).105 These are agonies of a Father whose children torch the neighborhood and throw away their lives.106
No wonder God's portrayed this way, to help us understand “the bitterness of our sins.”107 So God is said to regret his creation, and resolves: “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the earth – man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heaven – for I am sorry that I made them” (Genesis 6:7). The cost of our dominion over creation is that they share the consequences for our corruption. Since all flesh had “ruined the earth in God's sight” (Genesis 6:11), God will therefore “ruin both them and the earth” (Genesis 6:13).108 It's “both devastating and undeniably just.”109 Because human evil had so thoroughly infected earth, the only remedy yet available was a system reboot, wiping things clean.110 ...Yet available.
But in the fullness of time, God would show a fuller solution to human evil, and that was to send forth his Son. God the Son took on human flesh, human blood, a human heart, a human will. And that will never once swayed toward evil. Here was a Son of God who never called evil good or good evil. Here was a Son of God who did not take as he chose, but always receives what his Father gives. Here was a Son of God who came to redeem the sons and daughters of humanity, offering liberty from first to last. Here was a Son of God whose giant goodness worked mighty works on the earth.
Embracing human feelings, he made visible and palpable the grief of God over sin. As he taught us stubborn crowds, “he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart” (Mark 3:5). But in the end, over the very city whose unbelief cried for judgment, he wept hot tears of sorrow (Luke 19:41-44). Facing the darkest depths of human evil, his “soul was very sorrowful, even to death” (Mark 14:34). The Son of God offered his life to raise those who had fallen. Only through an agony shared somehow between God and man could the perfect likeness of God in creation take shape, and so “surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4). Now that, in God's sight, is a hero! He embraced our ruin and devastation, opening his heart to be pierced so sharply. He stretched all human evil from first to last on the length and the width of his cross, excruciatingly bearing it all, to blot out, not human life, but human sin (Psalm 51:9).
“Repent, therefore..., that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19)! And let us not, by further sin, “grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom we were sealed for the day of redemption” (Ephesians 4:30). “Take care, brothers and sisters, lest there be in any of you an evil and faithless heart” like the hearts of the failed heroes (Hebrews 3:12), and “do not devise evil in your hearts against one another” (Zechariah 8:17). “Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed, and make yourselves a new heart” this day (Ezekiel 18:11), that you may “love the Lord your God with all your heart..., and your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). This is not easy. “The righteous one falls seven times – and rises again” (Proverbs 24:16). In so rising again, “the one who overcomes will be clothed thus in white garments” for an eternal golden age ahead; “and I will never,” says this true Son of God, “never blot his name out of the book of life” (Revelation 3:5). Hallelujah! Amen.
1 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 45.
2 Ellen White, Yahweh's Council: Its Structure and Membership (Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 43.
3 Stephen K. Ray, Genesis: A Bible Study Guide and Commentary (Ignatius Press, 2023), 91.
4 Ronald Hendel, “The Nephilim were on the Earth: Genesis 6:1-4 and its Ancient Near Eastern Context,” in Christoph Auffarth and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, eds., The Fall of the Angels (Brill, 2004), 11.
5 Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 274.
6 Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 72.
7 Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 277-278; Carol M. Kaminski, Was Noah Good? Finding Favour in the Flood Narrative (Bloomsbury, 2014), 72-74; Tremper Longman III and John H. Walton, The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate (IVP Academic, 2018), 124; Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 14.
8 Atrahasis I.353-355, in Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (CDL Press, 2005), 239.
9 Richard J. Clifford, “The Divine Assembly in Genesis 1-11,” in Joel Baden, Hindy Najman, and Eibert Tigchelaar, eds., Sibyls, Scriptures, and Scrolls: John Collins at Seventy (Brill, 2016), 283.
10 John Day, From Creation to Babel: Studies in Genesis 1-11 (Bloomsbury, 2013), 80-81.
11 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 45; Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 27.
12 John J. Collins, “The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men,” in Martti Nissinen and Risto Uro, eds., Sacred Marriages: The Divine-Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity (Eisenbrauns, 2008), 261.
13 Johnson T.K. Lim, Grace in the Midst of Judgment: Grappling with Genesis 1-11 (De Gruyter, 2002), 167; Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 278; Iain W. Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters (Baylor University Press, 2014), 169-170; Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 73; Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11, Christian Standard Commentary (Holman Reference, 2023), 293.
14 Martin Sicker, Reading Genesis Politically: An Introduction to Mosaic Political Philosophy (Praeger, 2002), 76; Richard M. Davidson, Flame of Yahweh: Sexuality in the Old Testament (Hendrickson Publishers, 2007), 184.
15 Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 306.
16 Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 485.
17 David W. Cotter, Genesis, Berit Olam (Liturgical Press, 2003), 53.
18 Ronald Hendel, “The Nephilim were on the Earth: Genesis 6:1-4 and its Ancient Near Eastern Context,” in Christoph Auffarth and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, eds., The Fall of the Angels (Brill, 2004), 15; John Day, From Creation to Babel: Studies in Genesis 1-11 (Bloomsbury, 2013), 89-90; Richard J. Clifford, “The Divine Assembly in Genesis 1-11,” in Joel Baden, Hindy Najman, and Eibert Tigchelaar, eds., Sibyls, Scriptures, and Scrolls: John Collins at Seventy (Brill, 2016), 285; Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 29-49.
19 Iain W. Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters (Baylor University Press, 2014), 170; Richard J. Clifford, “The Divine Assembly in Genesis 1-11,” in Joel Baden, Hindy Najman, and Eibert Tigchelaar, eds., Sibyls, Scriptures, and Scrolls: John Collins at Seventy (Brill, 2016), 284; Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 27-28; Adam E. Miglio, The Gilgamesh Epic in Genesis 1-11: Peering into the Deep (Routledge, 2023), 109-110.
20 Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 54.
21 Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 281.
22 Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 72.
23 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 45; Ronald Hendel, “The Nephilim were on the Earth: Genesis 6:1-4 and its Ancient Near Eastern Context,” in Christoph Auffarth and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, eds., The Fall of the Angels (Brill, 2004), 16; Bill T. Arnold, Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 89-90; Tremper Longman III, Genesis, Story of God Bible Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 114; Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 68-71; Michael B. Hundley, Yahweh among the Gods: The Divine in Genesis, Exodus, and the Ancient Near East (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 277.
24 Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 286; John Day, From Creation to Babel: Studies in Genesis 1-11 (Bloomsbury, 2013), 82-83.
25 Ronald Hendel, “The Nephilim were on the Earth: Genesis 6:1-4 and its Ancient Near Eastern Context,” in Christoph Auffarth and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, eds., The Fall of the Angels (Brill, 2004), 21; John J. Collins, “The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men,” in Martti Nissinen and Risto Uro, eds., Sacred Marriages: The Divine-Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity (Eisenbrauns, 2008), 262; Tremper Longman III, Genesis (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 115; Michael B. Hundley, Yahweh among the Gods: The Divine in Genesis, Exodus, and the Ancient Near East (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 275.
26 Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Genesis 6:4, in Aramaic Bible 1B:38; Ellen White, Yahweh's Council: Its Structure and Membership (Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 44.
27 Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 196.
28 Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 301; Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 58.
29 Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 59.
30 Zecharia Sitchin, The Stairway to Heaven (Bear & Company, 1980), 105.
31 Gregg Davidson, “Genetics, the Nephilim, and the Historicity of Adam,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 67/1 (March 2015): 30.
32 Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 171.
33 Book of Watchers: 1 Enoch 6-7, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 23-25; Book of Giants: 4Q203 fr.7 i.6-7, in Florentino Garcia Martinez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (Brill, 1999), 411; Dream Visions of Enoch: 1 Enoch 86:3-6, in George W. E. Nickelsburg and James C. VanderKam, 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation (Fortress Press, 2012), 120-121; Jubilees 5:1, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:64; Testament of Reuben 5:5-6, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 1:784; Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.73, in Loeb Classical Library 242:35.
34 Justin Martyr, 2 Apology 5.3, in Ancient Christian Writers 56:77; Athenagoras, Legatio 24.5-6, in William R. Schoedel, Athenagoras: Legatio and De Resurrectione (Clarendon Press, 1972), 61; Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 3.59.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 85:292; Tertullian of Carthage, On the Apparel of Women 1.2.1, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 40:118-119; Lactantius, Divine Institutes 2.14.1-5, in Translated Texts for Historians 40:160.
35 Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch 2.1.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 137:83.
36 John Cassian, Conferences 8.21.1, in Ancient Christian Writers 57:305.
37 Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 47.1, in Library of Early Christianity 1:97.
38 Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 193-194.
39 Martin Sicker, Reading Genesis Politically: An Introduction to Mosaic Political Philosophy (Praeger, 2002), 76.
40 Simeon bar Yoḥai, quoted in Genesis Rabbah 26:5, in H. Freedman and Maurice Simon, Midrash Rabbah (Soncino Press, 1983), 1:213; Targum Onqelos Genesis 6:2, in Aramaic Bible 6:52; Targum Neofiti Genesis 6:1-2, in Aramaic Bible 1A:71-72; Symmachus' Greek translation of Genesis, discussed in Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 80.
41 Michael S. Heiser, Reversing Hermon: Enoch, the Watchers, and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ (Defenders Press, 2017), 12; Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 191-193.
42 Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 174.
43 Sextus Julius Africanus, Chronographiae fr.23, in Martin Wallraff, ed., Iulius Africanus: Chronographiae (De Gruyter, 2007), 49; Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 6.3-5, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:134-136; Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 39.7.1-3, in Frank Williams, The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis (Brill, 2009), 1:280; John Cassian, Conferences 8.21.2-9, in Ancient Christian Writers 57:305-307; Augustine of Hippo, The City of God 15.22-23, in Works of Saint Augustine I/7:172-176; Cyril of Alexandria, Glaphyra on the Pentateuch 2.1.2, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 137:84-85; Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 47.3, in Library of Early Christianity 1:101-103.
44 Michael S. Heiser, Reversing Hermon: Enoch, the Watchers, and the Forgotten Mission of Jesus Christ (Defenders Press, 2017), 10; Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 175, 201.
45 Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 116.
46 James Chukwuma Okoye, Genesis 1-11: A Narrative-Theological Commentary (Wipf & Stock, 2018), 92; Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 205-214; Michael B. Hundley, Yahweh among the Gods: The Divine in Genesis, Exodus, and the Ancient Near East (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 269.
47 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 45.
48 Ellen White, Yahweh's Council: Its Structure and Membership (Mohr Siebeck, 44-45); Michael B. Hundley, Yahweh among the Gods: The Divine in Genesis, Exodus, and the Ancient Near East (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 270.
49 Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 244; Michael B. Hundley, Yahweh among the Gods: The Divine in Genesis, Exodus, and the Ancient Near East (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 272.
50 Ronald Hendel, “The Nephilim were on the Earth: Genesis 6:1-4 and its Ancient Near Eastern Context,” in Christoph Auffarth and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, eds., The Fall of the Angels (Brill, 2004), 30-32; John J. Collins, “The Sons of God and the Daughters of Man,” in Martti Nissinen and Risto Uro, eds., Sacred Marriages: The Divine-Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity (Eisenbrauns, 2008), 273; Michael B. Hundley, Yahweh among the Gods: The Divine in Genesis, Exodus, and the Ancient Near East (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 273.
51 Ruth Scodel, “Heroes and Nephilim: Sex between Gods and Mortals,” in Adrian Kelly and Christopher Metcalf, eds., Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 175.
52 Pseudo-Hesiod, Catalogue of Women, fr.1, lines 5, 14-16, in Loeb Classical Library 503:41-43.
53 Hesiod, Works and Days 159-160, in Catherine Schlegel and Henry Weinfield, Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days (University of Michigan, 2006), 62; cf. also Homer, Iliad 12.23, in Peter Green, The Iliad: A New Translation (University of California Press, 2015), 222, and Homeric Hymns 32.19, in Diana J. Rayor, The Homeric Hymns (University of California Press, 2014), 102; see also discussion in Brian R. Doak, The Last of the Rephaim: Conquest and Cataclysm in the Heroic Ages of Ancient Israel (Ilex Foundation, 2012), 127.
54 Pseudo-Hesiod, Shield of Herakles 30-36, in Loeb Classical Library 503:5; cf. Pseudo-Hesiod, Catalogue of Women, fr.187a, in Loeb Classical Library 503:263.
55 Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.122-132, in Loeb Classical Library 1:13-15; Pseudo-Apollodorus, Library 1.9.16, in Loeb Classical Library 121:97.
56 Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.179-189, in Loeb Classical Library 1:19; Pseudo-Apollodorus, Library 1.9.16, in Loeb Classical Library 121:97.
57 Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.51-54, in Loeb Classical Library 1:7; Pseudo-Apollodorus, Library 1.9.16, in Loeb Classical Library 121:97.
58 Pseudo-Apollodorus, Library 1.9.16, in Loeb Classical Library 121:99; cf. Homer, Iliad 2.511-515, in Peter Green, The Iliad: A New Translation (University of California Press, 2015), 55.
59 Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.172, in Loeb Classical Library 1:17; Pseudo-Apollodorus, Library 1.9.16, in Loeb Classical Library 121:97.
60 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.77, in Loeb Classical Library 319:257; Ovid, Fasti 3.11-24, in Loeb Classical Library 252:121-123.
61 Legend of Kirta: KTU 1.16 I:10, in Writings from the Ancient World 9:31.
62 Song of Silver 4, in Writings from the Ancient World 2:49.
63 Gilgamesh 1.48, 53, in Sophus Helle, Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic (Yale University Press, 2021), 5.
64 Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.2.4, in Loeb Classical Library 272:353.
65 Pseudo-Hesiod, Catalogue of Women, fr.155, lines 98-100, in Loeb Classical Library 503:233; see discussion in Brian R. Doak, The Last of the Rephaim: Conquest and Cataclysm in the Heroic Ages of Ancient Israel (Ilex Foundation, 2012); Ruth Scodel, “Heroes and Nephilim: Sex between Gods and Mortals,” in Adrian Kelly and Christopher Metcalf, eds., Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 177-180.
66 Brian R. Doak, The Last of the Rephaim: Conquest and Cataclysm in the Heroic Ages of Ancient Israel (Ilex Foundation, 2012), 131.
67 Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.2.4, in Loeb Classical Library 272:353.
68 Hesiod, Works and Days 158, in Catherine Schlegel and Henry Weinfield, Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days (University of Michigan Press, 2006), 62.
69 Ruth Scodel, “Heroes and Nephilim: Sex between God and Mortals,” in Adrian Kelly and Christopher Metcalf, eds., Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 176.
70 Shulgi of Ur, inscription E3/2.1.2.11, in Douglas Frayne, The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Early Period 3/2 (University of Toronto Press, 1997), 121.
71 Shulgi Royal Hymn C 106, <https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.2.4.2.03>.
72 Tyson L. Putthoff, Gods and Humans in the Ancient Near East (Cambridge University Press, 2020), 77.
73 Plutarch, Life of Lysander 2.1, in Loeb Classical Library 80:235.
74 Plutarch, Life of Alexander 2.1, in Loeb Classical Library 99:225.
75 Suetonius, Life of Julius Caesar 6.1, in Loeb Classical Library 31:9; Adrian Goldsworthy, Caesar: Life of a Colossus (Yale University Press, 2006), 32-33.
76 Ellen White, Yahweh's Council: Its Structure and Membership (Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 32-33; Walter Brueggemann and William H. Bellinger Jr., Psalms, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 354-355; Michael B. Hundley, Yahweh among the Gods: The Divine in Genesis, Exodus, and the Ancient Near East (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 272.
77 Jaap Doedens, The Sons of God in Genesis 6:1-4: Analysis and History of Exegesis (Brill, 2019), 261-262; Ruth Scodel, “Heroes and Nephilim: Sex between Gods and Mortals,” in Adrian Kelly and Christopher Metcalf, eds., Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 181.
78 Iain W. Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters (Baylor University Press, 2014), 111-112.
79 Natan Levy, The Dawn of Agriculture and the Earliest States in Genesis 1-11 (Routledge, 2023), 123.
80 Hesiod, Works and Days 167-173, in Catherine Schlegel and Henry Weinfield, Hesiod: Theogony and Works and Days (University of Michigan Press, 2006), 62; Pseudo-Hesiod, Catalogue of Women, fr.22, lines 26-28 (Heracles as a god), in Loeb Classical Library 503:77; An=Anum 6.283-285 (Gilgamesh as a god), in Wilfrid G. Lambert and Ryan D. Winters, An = Anum and Related Lists: God Lists of Mesopotamia, Volume 1 (Mohr Siebeck, 2023), 226.
81 Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 45.
82 Ruth Scodel, “Heroes and Nephilim: Sex between Gods and Mortals,” in Adrian Kelly and Christopher Metcalf, eds., Gods and Mortals in Early Greek and Near Eastern Mythology (Cambridge University Press, 2021), 181.
83 Pseudo-Hesiod, Catalogue of Women, fr.155, line 104, in Loeb Classical Library 503:235.
84 KTU 1.16 I:17-18, in Writings from the Ancient World 9:31.
85 Pseudo-Hesiod, Catalogue of Women, fr.155, line 119, in Loeb Classical Library 503:235.
86 Adam E. Miglio, The Gilgamesh Epic in Genesis 1-11: Peering into the Deep (Routledge, 2023), 110.
87 Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 197.
88 Raymond R. Hausoul, God's Future for Animals: From Creation to New Creation (Wipf & Stock, 2021), 60.
89 Ronald Hendel, “The Nephilim were on the Earth: Genesis 6:1-4 and its Ancient Near Eastern Context,” in Christoph Auffarth and Loren T. Stuckenbruck, eds., The Fall of the Angels (Brill, 2004), 12-13; Carol M. Kaminski, Was Noah Good? Finding Favour in the Flood Narrative (Bloomsbury, 2014), 46.
90 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 79; Adam E. Miglio, The Gilgamesh Epic in Genesis 1-11: Peering into the Deep (Routledge, 2023), 110.
91 Kenneth A. Mathews, Genesis 1-11, Christian Standard Commentary (Holman Reference, 2023), 284.
92 Didymus the Blind, Commentary on Genesis 6:5-7, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 132:148.
93 Ingrid Faro, Evil in Genesis: A Contextual Analysis of Hebrew Lexemes for Evil in the Book of Genesis (Lexham Press, 2021), 49; Brian Neil Peterson, Genesis: A Pentecostal Commentary (Brill, 2022), 79.
94 Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 197-198; Tremper Longman III and John H. Walton, The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate (IVP Academic, 2018), 38.
95 Thomas Aquinas, Disputed Questions on Evil q.3, a.1, ad 9, in Richard Regan, Thomas Aquinas: On Evil (Oxford University Press, 2003), 145; cf. Erasmus, A Discussion of Free Will, in Collected Works of Erasmus 76:59-60.
96 Mark J. Boda, A Severe Mercy: Sin and Its Remedy in the Old Testament (Eisenbrauns, 2009), 21.
97 James McKeown, Genesis, Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary (Eerdmans, 2008), 54; James Chukwuma Okoye, Genesis 1-11: A Narrative-Theological Commentary (Wipf & Stock, 2018), 102.
98 David W. Cotter, Genesis, Berit Olam (Liturgical Press, 2003), 55.
99 Natan Levy, The Dawn of Agriculture and the Earliest States in Genesis 1-11 (Routledge, 2023), 120.
100 Carol M. Kaminski, Was Noah Good? Finding Favour in the Flood Narrative (Bloomsbury, 2014), 59-60; Ingrid Faro, Evil in Genesis: A Contextual Analysis of Hebrew Lexemes for Evil in the Book of Genesis (Lexham Press, 2021), 160.
101 Theodoret of Cyrus, Questions on Genesis 50.1, in Library of Early Christianity 1:107.
102 Origen of Alexandria, On First Principles 1.1.5, in John Behr, Origen: On First Principles, 2 vols. (Oxford University Press, 2017), 1:29.
103 John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Incomprehensible Nature of God 3.3, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 72:96.
104 Origen of Alexandria, Against Celsus 1.71, in Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge University Press, 1953), 65.
105 David W. Cotter, Genesis, Berit Olam (Liturgical Press, 2003), 53.
106 Stephen K. Ray, Genesis: A Bible Study Guide and Commentary (Ignatius Press, 2023), 92.
107 Ambrose of Milan, On Noah 4 §9, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 140:35.
108 Adam E. Miglio, The Gilgamesh Epic in Genesis 1-11: Peering into the Deep (Routledge, 2023), 111.
109 Bill T. Arnold, Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 91.
110 Zvi Grumet, Genesis: From Creation to Covenant (Maggid Books, 2017), 83.
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