We turn to one of the most enigmatic and mysterious chapters of the Bible in Genesis 6. It’s hard to understand what the great sin of the angels that caused God to want to flood the earth and start over was. I hope to help you understand better what probably happened back then.
There are several interpretations of these verses. I will give you some of those interpretations and tell you what I believe is happening in this time period. Whatever this great sin was, it made God regret creating man and beast. Considering His redemptive nature, this must have been serious.
As we dive into the text, I will tell you when the New Testament, Second Temple literature, and other resources have mentioned passage. They all help us understand a little better what was going on. This is going to be fun!
The Great Sin of the Angels
Genesis 6:1-3: Then it happened that humanity began to become numerous upon the face of the land and daughters were born to them. And the sons of God saw the daughters of man were beautiful. And behold, they took as wives any of them which they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever because he is flesh, and his days will be 120 years.”
This must have happened as Adam’s and Eve’s children were having children of their own and populated the earth. We are given a clue to the timing of the events. How we understand Genesis 6:3 is one of those interpretive moves I mentioned in the introduction. We will flesh this out in a few paragraphs. I want to stay with the text as we seek to understand the great sin of the angels in the days of Noah.
The daughters born to these men are important to understand what happened. The great sin of the angels does not concern the sons born to these men. Only the daughters, for that is where the great sin of the angels began. It involves a corruption never seen before on the earth.
The first interpretation we must understand is, “Who are the sons of God”? Also, though it may seem obvious, we must ask, “Who are the daughters of man”? We need to know these groups so we can understand what the great sin of the angels is.
One interpretation is that the sons of God are the godly line of Seth. People who suggest this interpretation say that the daughters of man are the ungodly line of Cain. So, the great sin of the angels is the mixture of the ungodly with the godly. This sounds good at first. But there’s nothing in this interpretation that would warrant God wanting to wipe out everything on the earth.
The rest of the Old Testament gives us an interpretive clue that helps us understand who the sons of God are. Sons of God often refers to angels. Here are the places in the Old Testament where sons of God appears Genesis 6:2, 4; Deuteronomy 32:8; Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7.
Job is especially helpful because no one can contest the references as referring to angels. In Job 1:6 and Job 2:1, the angels present themselves before the Lord. They are present when God creates parts of the universe after creating them in Job 38:7. Deuteronomy 32:8 is an interesting reference because it talks about the borders of the nations being fixed according to the sons of God. It’s basically saying that the nations were given portions according to the gods they serve.
Genesis 6:2 and Genesis 6:4 are referring to the sons of God as angels. The Old Testament evidence is overwhelming. If that’s not enough, the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament from the second century BC, the earliest Old Testament work we have except for the Dead Sea Scrolls also has “angels” as the translation for Genesis 6.
This is all very convincing. The New Testament has something to say about it also (2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6). It may be even more confusing when we see that Peter and Jude are actually quoting the book of Enoch. The Book of Enoch, chapters 6-8 describe this event from Genesis 6. You probably have several questions.
For instance, how do we consider what Peter and Jude wrote if they were quoting from an Old Testament apocryphal book that is not in my Bible? Does that make Enoch an inspired book of the Bible? What should I think about the Book of Enoch? How does a book written later have any bearing on our interpretation of Genesis 6? Are the Old Testament apocryphal books inspired? How should I understand Old Testament apocryphal books?
These are just a few of the ones that popped into my head when I discovered these facts. This is not my first time dealing with this event in Genesis 6. The first time I discovered these facts, I dug deep until I was satisfied I understood what was happening and how to understand all these other questions.
In this issue, however, we will not be discussing the New Testament books of Jude and 2 Peter as far as inspiration. They are in the New Testament because the Holy Spirit inspired them. We want address at length how to deal with 2 Peter and Jude because they quote from Enoch.
My short answers are that Peter and Jude quote from Enoch not because it is a popular and well-Redbook in the first century. Their listeners what have known what they were talking about. Treat it like a sermon illustration from Peter and Jude to their audiences. Also, just because they quote from Enoch does not make it inspired. It is just an example for them to use. We will talk about Enoch in more detail in my next issue.
As for the Old Testament apocryphal books, they can be helpful for understanding the history of the Jews and sometimes they provide insight on biblical passages, especially on what the first century Jews thought of these passages and how they interpreted them.
Getting back to Genesis 6:2, the great sin of the angels is committed by these fallen angels. Not only did they leave their posts where they should have been, they also violate God’s design for marriage and the separation between celestial beings and humans.
Who are the daughters of men? They were the daughters born to men on the earth. The Bible does not make a distinction between canes line or Seth’s line. I would imagine Cain’s line was more apt to interact with these fallen angels. But nothing is impossible because by the time of the Flood only eight people from Seth’s line remained in the ark and on the new world.
These angels noticed the daughters of men were beautiful. If that is their justification for committing the great sin of the angels, they will still pay for it. I will get to their consequences toward the end of this issue.
Think of all the ancient literature that talk about the gods and how they took women for themselves and created demigods and the like. This biblical account is probably the source for all those. All I can say is that there is a lot of Ancient Near Eastern literature that has myths and legends about this event. There is other ancient literature with a lot of these ideas.
The great sin of the angels has multiple folds to it. The angels did not stay in the God ordained place for them. They were not fulfilling their duties. Instead, they came down to earth, probably in a way that looked like the gods descending upon the people. They took advantage of the daughters of men.
They married them and violated the marriage covenant between a human male and a human female. Scripture does not say if they married more than one woman. But this violation of the marriage covenant instituted by God is bad enough.
God’s reaction is telling in Genesis 6:3. He sees all that is happening in His beautiful and perfect creation being destroyed with corruption and sin. We know God to be a redemptive and gracious God. He is loving and kind to His creation. The great sin of the angels was so bad that it caused God to declare that the Spirit would not strive or contend with man forever.
Even though people were living extremely long lives by the standards of today, they were still flesh and blood. God probably refers to the mortality of humanity when he says they are flesh. They were no longer eating from the Tree of Life. After being kicked out of the garden of Eden, people were susceptible to death.
This declaration by God has much more to understand in it than we realize. First, God will not contend with us forever. There is an end to His grace. We see that in these last days as we move toward the end times of God’s judgment. Second, God would rather have His Spirit dwelling within us than contending with us in our sin.
Third, we must consider another interpretive understanding. Many people believe that when God says, “his days will be 120 years” that God was limiting the lifespan of humans. It’s possible to interpret this statement by God this way considering that many of us would be happy to live 120 years.
I think sin and sickness limit our lifespan more than anything. It’s possible this is what God is referring to. The problem with this interpretation is that even after God pronounces this, possibly 120 years before the Flood and His judgment, people are living longer than 120 years. Even Noah lives 950 years, and 350 years after the Flood.
Consider the context of God’s declaration. Genesis 6:3 is its best context. God is talking about His judgment. He is saying His Spirit will not contend with man “forever.” He is placing a limit to His grace amid the rampant sin of man, and now even more so because angels are committing the great sin of the angels.
Place the statement about man’s days within the context of God’s coming judgment. He gives a specific time for His grace to reign so that men will change and correct this situation caused by the fallen angels. Remember that humans bear God’s image and are therefore in charge of the earth as God is in charge of His creation.
God gives time, 120 years, until He will bring His judgment. It’s just like God to be gracious in the amount of time He gives us to repent and be reconciled to Him. This means that we are not limited in our lifespan. We have many other factors to consider that limit our lifespan. But a declaration from God did not limit it.
This is not a new concept. When Jesus was walking the earth, He did not know when the end times would begin. He told us that no one knows when He would return for His Church. But the Father knows when His grace period is over. The Scriptures tell us how expertly God uses time.
For instance, He sends His Son will miss of time, at the proper time (Galatians 4:4). He is not slow in bringing the end times because He is waiting for the full number of people to be redeemed (2 Peter 3:9). These are just two examples of God’s management of time.
Peter is most telling because he says that God waits so that His grace can be fully realized. The same thing is happening in Genesis 6:3. God gives the timestamp for when His grace is over and His judgment, in the Flood, will come. Therefore, we can understand the event of fallen angels violating God’s ordained laws as happening 120 years before the Flood.
The Result of the Great Sin of the Angels
Genesis 6:4: And it came to pass that the Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterword, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men and they bore children to them. They were champions which were from of old, famous men.
Here is the other piece of the mysterious puzzle of Genesis 6. Soon after fallen angels marry the daughters of men (it came to pass), they produce children. But these children are not like the children of men. They are aberrations in creation. The Bible simply calls them the Nephilim.
Your Bible translation may have made the interpretive move for you and has “giants” instead of the word Nephilim. That is easier to understand but it does not make you wonder and study and go through the material to understand what this word means and how it is used.
Some Bible scholars do not want to just go to the default understanding of this referring to Giants because when the Flood happens, all human life is wiped out on the earth, but the Giants exist later in history. Genesis 6:4 tells us these Nephilim live “afterword,” or after the Flood. We’ll get to that evidence below.
So, what are these Nephilim and how do they relate to the great sin of the angels? They are the aberrant result of something that should not have naturally happened, humans and angels procreating. The Nephilim are the children of the fallen angels and the daughters of men. The angels marrying instead of just taking advantage of the daughters of men did not cover up the great sin of the angels of the fallen angels. You can’t cover up sin with obedience elsewhere.
“Nephilim” in Hebrew means “fallen ones.” It could have referred to ancient warriors, Giants, or “strange-looking” men. They could also have been semi-divine beings. They appear in Genesis 6 and in Numbers 13:33. There are other words for giants such as families and clans of Anakim, Rephaim, Emim, and Zamzummim.
Scholars have problems with their inability to explain why giants or Nephilim were there before the Flood and after it. How did they escape the Flood? When they can’t answer that, they want to put the Nephilim conversation away. I will not do that because the Bible talks about them, so I will too.
Let me first say that giants is probably the best understanding of the Nephilim. These are monstrously huge beings that consume and corrupt the earth. In my next issue, I go into more detail about their corruption and what they did from the book of Enoch and the passage in the latter half of Genesis 6. For now, let’s accept that they are giants, large human beings.
Here are places where giants show up in the biblical text: Genesis 14:5; 15:19-21; Numbers 13:32-33; Deuteronomy 1:28; 2:10-11, 18-21; 3:11: 9:1-2; Joshua 11:22; 12:4-6; 13:12; 14:12-14; 15:8; 17:15; 18:16; 2 Samuel 21:8-20; Amos 2:9-10.
There are some helpful articles in Bible dictionaries to dive deeper into this. I recommend the Lexham Bible Dictionary. I believe it comes with Logos Bible Study under the free package. If not, it is worth the expense. There are other more in-depth Bible dictionaries but they are much more expensive.
We naturally want the answer to the question, “Where did the Old Testament Giants after the Flood come from” but we do not have enough information to determine that. Probably the most common answer is that other angels did this all over again after the Flood. They would then be punished as these angels were by God. We will talk about punishment at the end of this issue.
Genesis 6:4 describes these Nephilim as champions and men of renown, or famous people. They were people “from of old.” They could’ve been men of renown because they were known in every culture and many myths were written about them.
People would’ve referred to them as people from of old because of their existence before the Flood. They were champions because nations probably did not want to address them in battle, like Goliath. They would match almost anyone they faced.
The Lord’s Plan for the Great Sin of the Angels
Genesis 6:5-7: And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and all the intentions of the thoughts of his heart were only evil all the day long. And the Lord regretted that He made man on the earth and He was grieved in His heart. So the Lord said, “I will wipe out man which I have made from the face of the land from man to animals to creeping things to everything that flies in the skies, for I regret that I have made them.”
Although the sons of God committed the great sin of the angels, it corrupted all humanity. The Lord saw that wickedness was increasing in all the earth. He who sees into the hearts of people saw only that the intentions of their thoughts and hearts was wickedness.
This phrase about people’s intentions, “were only evil all the day long” stresses with emphatic words the hopelessness of the situation. Whatever God saw in the intentions and thoughts of people, it was enough for Him to have just one plan – re-creation. He had to start over.
I believe we are coming close to those days again. Jesus said that before He returns on the earth it will be like the days of Noah (Matthew 24:37-39). How many people with such wickedness in their thoughts, heart, and intentions with the Father require to send the Son to Get His Church? We’re down to a Numbers Game before the end comes.
What a crazy thing to read when we see that the Lord regretted, repented, was sorry, that He had made humans! None of us can get into that headspace today. He was grieved in His heart. I can’t imagine how evil people really were for God to be in this predicament.
Let’s stop and think about how much our sin hurts God’s heart. We spend so much time thinking about the legal ramifications of our sin that we forget the relational ones. When we sin, we heard God’s heart. We punch Him in the stomach. We burn the bridge to our salvation.
That’s what the corrupt people of the earth did. They were so numerous and so sinful that they could not do anything good. We all know as a person thinks, so that person is. God could not even look into the hearts and thoughts of people without seeing the same hurtful sin and rampant wickedness. If you will think it, you will do it. If you can perceive of it, you can commit it.
It’s clear that people were not only thinking wicked things but were doing them. God’s solution to the problem was the most graceful He could be – to blot out all living things from the earth to begin again. He wiped out every living thing from this world. That was the only way He could save it.
Genesis 6:7 includes not only people but land animals, creeping things like insects, and birds. Notice, though, that He does not mention anything in the oceans and seas. We know there were dinosaurs because we have dug up their bones.
Scientists say that crocodiles and alligators, and many reptiles, resembled dinosaurs, or what we know of them. I bring this up because there are still mysteries surrounding the Flood. For one, God does not mention destroying all marine life. So, are the fish and creatures in the ocean more engines than we can imagine? The Flood would not concern something that lived under the ocean.
Did Noah take dinosaurs onto the ark? I don’t know the answer to that. But if some reptiles have the same traits or jeans/DNA of dinosaurs, I really don’t know. Another question I can ask the Father when I get to heaven.
One thing I do know. When Noah built the ark, God sent him the animals He wishes to save. All other humans, animals, insects, and birds die in the Flood. If you think the birds could fly and save themselves from the Flood, they eventually will get tired of flying and will have to land. There is nothing to land on.
We will talk about this in more depth when we talk about Noah and the Flood. There’s actually another reason for why God destroyed all animals and all animal life of every kind. We will document that in our next issue.
Genesis 6:6-7 twice says that God regretted making the living creatures of creation God shows regret only 13 times in the Old Testament (Genesis 6:6, 7; Numbers 23:19; Judges: 18; 1 Samuel 15:11, 19 [2], 35; 2 Samuel 24:16; 1 Chronicles 11:15; Psalm 110:4; Jeremiah 18:10; heal 24:14).
A Glimmer of Hope
Genesis 6:8: But Noah found favor in the Lord’s eyes.
With the darkness and wickedness looming all around, Genesis 6:8 provides a glimmer of hope while dealing with the great sin of the angels. Before this verse and the proceeding versus, we would only assume God meant His only restoration of this wicked time was to destroy all created life and nothing after it.
Rest assured, God would be completely justified in destroying all His created beings and leaving it at that. How many times have you or I ever just given up on something because it was too hard or it didn’t seem that it would ever work?
I’m thankful God is not me. While God did remove everything with the Flood, He was not finished with His created beings. There couldn’t be a more hope-filled verse in the Bible up to this point until Genesis 6:8.
All the sudden, the whole narrative flips on one word: but. While God regrets everything He has made, Noah finds favor in the Lord’s eyes. Picture the whole earth as black with one small light. That’s Noah. Without him, everything God created would never be known again.
This is the verse that creates a transition from what we have seen to what God will do to fulfill a plan of redemption through one man and his family. Because of Noah, not everything God made was doomed to nonexistence. He is the stopgap to guarantee life will continue on planet Earth, albeit in a small seedling..
Punishing the Great Sin of the Angels
The angels did not get away with committing the great sin of the angels against God. I mentioned that the New Testament has something to say about the punishment of these fallen angels. Peter tells us in his scathing rebuke against false teachers using the Genesis 6 account: “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment” (2 Peter 2:4).
Peter uses the Greek word for Tartarus, a reference for the Greeks who especially believed it was a place of holding four dead people. Peter may have been aware of the myth, and Josephus talks about it in several of his writings. Jewish literature sees Tartarus as an apocalyptic image. This is the only time Tartarus is used in the New Testament.
Jude also refers to the judgment of these fallen angels. He says, “And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day” (Jude 6).
Jude says the angels had a position of authority that they left to commit the great sin of the angels. They rejected God’s authority and the authority He gave them to violate His divine order. They left heaven, their dwelling place, and came down to earth.
Jude describes their punishment as a place where they are kept in eternal chains. They are still there today. He describes the punishment as gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. This refers to the Day of the Lord, the judgment at the end of the age and Peter echoes it almost exactly.
God dealt with these fallen angels by throwing them into a place of gloomy darkness for eternity. He will deal with them by throwing them into the lake of fire on the day of judgment. They will join Satan there. God deals with sin and wickedness. We may have to wait until the judgment day but they will be dealt with.
The Saga Continues…
We have been talking about the great sin of the angels of the fallen angels and how they took wives to themselves and that their place of authority in heaven. This has been a look at one of the strangest great sins in the Bible.
It is just the beginning as it catapults the entire earth and all living things in it toward God’s judgment in the Flood. In our next issue, we will continue to see what the Bible says about God’s judgment in the Flood and how God saves Noah and his family to start anew.
