- Well, Genesis 6:1-4 is a difficult text. And as we attempt to interpret it, we should be humble because there are
different interpretations that have been taken of this text and I don't think that whatever interpretation we take, I don't think we should be divisive with other Christians in the church or among the people of God. There are three, Genesis 6 says that the sons of God saw the daughters of men and that they chose the daughters of men
for themselves as wives and they married them. So the question is, who are the sons of God that are marrying the daughters of men? Well, there are three
different interpretations. One is that the sons of God is a reference to the godly line of Seth. Cain killed Abel so after Abel died, Adam and Eve had relations and Seth was born and Seth carried on the godly faith of Abel. So one idea is that the sons of God are the descendants of Seth
marrying the daughters of men, the ungodly line of Cain. Second interpretation
is that the sons of God refers to angels, angelic beings intermarrying with humans. The third idea is that the sons of God are heroes from the
mythical past, tyrant kings. We have stories from
the ancient Near East. For example, we have stories of a person by the name of Gilgamesh and he was part god and part human and accomplished many mighty feats. So, how do we, how do we find the right interpretation? The exact expression, sons of God, only occurs four or five
times in the Hebrew Bible. We have one occurrence here in Genesis 6. We have two occurrences
in the introduction to the book of Job. In the introduction to the book of Job, we see God gathering
in His heavenly court, His heavenly assembly with the angels. The angels are called sons of God there. There's another occurrence
in the book of Job, Job chapter 38 where God is challenging Job and He says, Where were you when I created the world? When He created the world, the sons of God sang for joy. So it seems to, there it also seems to be a very clear reference to angelic beings. The last occurrence is in Aramaic in the book of Daniel. When the king looked into the furnace, he saw four, four people there and it says that one
looked like a son of God, which would mean a divine
being, an angelic being. There are only five
occurrences in the entire Bible where we have the exact expression, son of God or sons of God and it always refers to angelic beings. We must distinguish this use from other places. There are other places in the Bible where they indicate that
the relationship of a human to God is like a father-son relationship. So Adam and God have a
father-son relationship. In the covenant that God makes with David, God and David have a
father-son relationship. But it doesn't say that, it doesn't actually say
that Adam is a son of God. It doesn't use that linguistic expression and it doesn't say that
David is the son of God. So the only time that
linguistic expression occurs in the Bible, it always and very clearly
refers to angelic beings. We also have the, we also have the witness
of the New Testament. So there are two passages
in the New Testament that refer to this. One is 2 Peter chapter 2 and the other is the book of Jude and both of these texts are very closely related to each other. In 2 Peter chapter 2, Peter is talking about how difficult days are
coming for the Christians and there will be people
who deny the faith, who deny the truth about Jesus Christ, the truth about His work, who deny the gospel. There will be false teachers and they will bring
corruption into the church and destruction into the church. What Peter does is he
appeals to the Old Testament and he says, well, if God could deliver, if God could deliver His faithful people in difficult times in the Old Testament, then He will be able to do it
in the New Testament as well. Peter refers to two examples in the Old Testament. One is the story of the, of Genesis 6 and Noah and the other is the story of Lot being rescued from the
destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. And if you look in the Greek text of 2 Peter, it's very clear that there are two examples and not three examples by the use of the word and. So if God did not spare
the angels who sinned and He delivered Noah and He did not spare the
cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and He rescued Lot. So there are two examples joined by the word and and each example has two parts, a negative part and a positive part. A negative part and a positive part. So, when Peter is talking about the angels who sinned, he's very
clearly talking about Genesis chapter 6
because this is connected with the story of Noah. Some people say, well, no, he's not talking about Genesis 6. Well, then my question to them is, if Peter is trying to encourage his readers from well-known stories in the Old Testament and
if the angels who sinned is not Genesis 6, then
where else is the story? There is no other story
in the Old Testament that it could be referring to. Some people think that
it's the fall of Satan but as we, we're going to
see when we talk about that, there is no story, there is no story in the Old Testament that describes the fall of Satan. Peter is very clearly
alluding to Genesis 6. Jude is doing the same
thing and it's very obvious in the book of Jude because he's talking about people who are false teachers, people who are going to deny the faith and he also appeals to the Old Testament and shows how God delivered
His people in the past and He will do so in the future. He also refers to two events. He refers to angels who abandoned their proper dwelling place, their proper home. He also talks about the
cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and he says, since they, in the same way as these committed strange immorality. Well, in the Greek text, the they refers to the angels and the same way as these, the these refers to the
cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. So what the story of Genesis 6 has in common with the
story of Sodom and Gomorrah is that there's an abnormal
form of sexuality going on. If God can deliver His people from even the strangest perversions, then He will deliver the people who are listening to Peter and the people who are listening to Jude. He will deliver us. Now, someone might come to me and say, well, Jesus in the gospels says that the angels in heaven neither marry nor are given in marriage. So it's impossible for an angel to have physical relations
with human women. Well, they're not reading
the gospels accurately and clearly because Jesus is saying that when, in the resurrection, when Jesus returns at the end of history, we, who are resurrected, are not going to marry
because we're going to be like the angels in heaven. Notice he says the angels in heaven and Jude says they left their proper dwelling place. So there's no contradiction
between Jesus and Jude. In heaven, the angels don't marry. In Jude, they abandoned
their proper dwelling place and they go to commit strange immorality. So there's no confusion. So it seems very clear, Genesis 6 is telling us that these are angels
who are marrying humans and Jude and Peter are telling us that is the correct interpretation. The next piece is who are the Nephilim. In verse 4 of Genesis 6, it says, the Nephilim were on
the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of God had
relations with human women and they bore children of them. End of sentence. New sentence. They were the heroes who
were from the ancient past, men of renown. There's two major sentences there. First one says, the
Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward. There are two possible interpretations of this expression, they were on the earth in
those days and afterward. What does that mean, they were there in those
days and afterward? Well, some people think this means that the Nephilim were the children that came from the angels
who married the women in Genesis 6:1-3 and that the Nephilim were the product of these unnatural unions and they appeal to texts
from the 3rd century B.C. and 2nd century B.C., the so-called Enochic traditions, the traditions about Enoch where the Nephilim are
interpreted as giants. There's another interpretation
that's possible. When it says the Nephilim
were there in those days and also afterward, it could mean that before the angels had
sex with the human women, the Nephilim were there and they were also there after the angels had sex with women. So it could mean that the
Nephilim had nothing to do with the angels marrying the humans. I think that is the correct interpretation for two reasons. First of all, I examined every occurrence of this expression and also afterward. I went to the Hebrew Bible, I looked up every
occurrence of this phrase and I examined how it was used. And the second interpretation best fits and suits how this word is used. So when it says, they were there in those
days and also afterward, it means the Nephilim
were there before angels cohabited with humans and they were there after
angels cohabited with humans. There's a second reason why this is the correct interpretation. The last sentence says, they were the heroes who
were from the ancient past, the men of renown. This sentence does not begin with and. Now that's very very important. Almost every sentence in the
Hebrew Bible begins with and. When a sentence does not begin with and, it does so for two reasons. It could be because it's beginning a new section or secondly, because it's making a comment on the previous sentence, what we would call a footnote. It's very clear that this
sentence is not beginning a new section but it's
acting like a footnote on the previous sentence. So the previous sentence is saying that the Nephilim were before, were there before the angels
and the humans cohabited and they were there after. And it's making a brief comment that they were the ancient heroes. In this case, what Moses is doing is he's demythologizing the Nephilim. You notice one of the things
that we should notice is the text doesn't tell us
who the Nephilim were. What does that mean? Why doesn't the text tell us who they were? Because they were well-known
to the first readers of this text. The first readers of this text knew who the Nephilim were and didn't need that explained to them. And all Moses is saying is, look, whoever you think these heroes are like Gilgamesh, these ancient heroes, these men of renown, you've read about them in
the ancient mythologies. Whoever they were, they're
not part of this story. They don't come from the cohabitation of angels and humans. And I think that's the
correct interpretation. But the problem is, this has been a difficult
text to interpret and it has not always
been interpreted correctly down through the centuries. And in the 3rd century B.C. and the 2nd century B.C., they came to an incorrect interpretation. They thought that the Nephilim were giants who were produced by angels
cohabiting with humans and this got into the book of Enoch. And Paul warns his readers against this because he says in his letters to Timothy, Don't argue over endless genealogies and foolish myths. This is a direct reference
to the book of Enoch which has a long genealogy
of all the angels until you finally come down to Satan and then they blame all the
evil in the world on Satan. What they're trying to
do is they're trying to blame chaos and death and evil in the world on angelic sin instead of blaming it on human sin and the Bible clearly
puts the blame on humans. Genesis 3 shows how sin
came into the world. How did we live in a world that is troubled by chaos, by death, by evil, by sin, by selfishness, by all kinds of corruption. That came about because
God made a covenant with the first humans and
they broke that covenant. They were fickle, they were disloyal, they were unfaithful, they cheated on God in the relationship and they rebelled against Him. And so when Jude quotes and
refers to this material, he's showing that it's, the sin is in the world
because of human rebellion not because of angelic sin. (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Thanks for
watching "Honest Answers." Don't forget to subscribe.
