Blurred Lines: Genesis 6.1-4

As we saw last time, Genesis 5 is connective material that brings us from the stories of Adam and Eve and their children to Noah and the flood. But, chapter 6 does not pick up where this story left us. Instead, it begins with a four-verse story that biblical scholars have called “surely the strangest” (Sarna), and “most curious” (Brueggemann) text in the Bible. It has no connection to chapter 5, and is only awkwardly connected to the flood story that follows — though casual readers do so all the time, generally encouraged by how Bibles tend to group it with verses 5-8 (Brueggemannn). I’m talking about the story of “the sons of God” marrying and interbreeding with “the daughters of men.”

[In keeping with the new format of these posts, this post starts with an integrated summary, for readers wanting the end result of the study but not really interested in the details of ‘showing the work’. The details follow for those who want more.]

Integrated Summary

This brief story is one of the strangest and most problematic texts in the whole Bible. It has no connection to any preceding material, does not fit into the narrative that follows it, and its basic resolution is immediately made obsolete by the flood and then ignored as Genesis moves forward. And, of course, it introduces strange beings known as ‘the sons of God’ and the ‘Nephilim,’ which come out of nowhere. It’s most likely that the story plays on longstanding Ancient Near Eastern literary tropes of gods mating with humans to produce a race of superhumans with divine characteristics. Just as Genesis did for the Enuma Elish in chapter 1, it incorporates these legends by reframing them within a firmly monotheistic worldview: everything is subject to God’s sovereignty.

Nothing in the text suggests a moral problem here. It is not a case, like in the garden, of humanity overstepping its bounds through sin. Instead, there’s a blurring of lines through the natural increase of humanity’s capacities through intermarriage with divine or angelic powers. The particular concern for God here is not the great size or strength of these heroes, but their potential for immortality. Bodies were simply not meant to contain the breath of life for ever. And so, God places a cap on the human lifespan at 120 years. This is shown in the text to be a preventative rather than punitive measure.

Again, the text is awkwardly placed in Genesis. It breaks up the natural flow from chapter 5, which ends with Noah, and the flood story, which starts in 6.5. While most English Bibles group 6.1-4 and 6.5-8 together, thereby implying verse 5-8, which describe humanity’s great sinfulness that led up to the flood, are a verdict on the story here, there is nothing in the text at all to support this. As far as these verses are concerned, the problem has been solved, and it was not a moral problem anyway.

Like the gaps in the Enoch story we looked at last time, this story has inspired a lot of speculation over the millennia. But, as always, it’s best not to allow ourselves to get distracted by marginal things, and to keep our focus on living faithful lives.

---

Text

[6.1] When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, [2] the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. [3] Then the LORD said, ‘My spirit shall not abide in mortals for ever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred and twenty years.’ [4] The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterwards—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown. (NRSV)

Experience & Encounter

Of all the strange stories at the start of Genesis, this is definitely the strangest. I’m confused as to where it comes from and why it’s here. I can’t help but notice most English Bibles group it under a heading with the next section, but the two don’t seem to fit at all.

I also have to wonder who the ‘sons of God’ and ‘Nephilim’ are.

The only real character here is YHWH, who, for the second time since Genesis 3, puts limits on human life.

Explore

I have nothing but questions for this text. Thankfully, it’s short enough that we can go verse-by-verse and ‘explore’ the whole thing.

6.1-2: The Sons of God and the Daughters of Men

6.1 is straightforward enough. It introduces the story by describing the expansion of humanity across the earth. 6.2 is where things start to get strange, with the introduction of the ‘sons of God’. It seems clear that this story reworks — and contracts — older, well-known stories, since it assumes the reader will know who the ‘sons of God’ (and later the Nephilim) are (Sarna (1989) 45).

While there were ancient interpreters who took a mundane approach to the ‘sons of God’ (bnei-Elohim) as being the sons of powerful human rulers, it seems most likely that the term referred to lesser deities in a polytheistic framework, who were later reimagined as angels as biblical monotheism emerged (Carr, Brueggemann, Sarna (1989) 45; c.f. the discussion from earlier in the series about the divine council). The ‘Sons of El’ were a known group of subordinate deities in Ugaritic texts; considering Ugarit was one of the major Canaanite cities that formed the cultural backdrop for the emergence of early Israelite religion, this almost exact parallel is particularly relevant (cf. Job 38.7; Carr, Sarna (1989) 45). This interpretation is further supported by the nature of God’s concern in 6.3, which requires there to be a strong distinction in the rank or status of the two groups (see below): There’s an essential, rather than conventional, violation at play here.

If this interpretation is correct, then, this story participates in a very common literary and mythological motif from cultures across and beyond the Ancient Near East (ANE), from Babylon to Egypt to Greece, in which sex between divine beings and humans creates a superhuman race of heroes or giants (Brueggemann, Carr). This interpretation is further supported by the mention of the Nephilim in 6.4. Other examples of these traditions in the Israelite tradition include Numbers 13.33, and the apocryphal 1 Enoch 6-11.

6.3: YHWH’s Response

YHWH reacts to the emergence of these superhumans with concern, saying: “My spirit shall not abide in mortals for ever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred and twenty years,” There are a few things worth mentioning here. First, in keeping with stories from surrounding cultures, the offspring of heavenly and human couplings inherit some of the more-than-human characteristics of their heavenly parent (Carr). This causes a disruption of the order of the created world, since it means that not only are they bigger and stronger than humanity as God envisioned it, but also, potentially, immortal (Brueggemann, Carr). And this seems to be God’s big concern: His Spirit, that is, the breath of life in all things, is not meant to give life to mortal beings for ever. And so, to keep this from happening, God places a limit of one hundred and twenty years on human life.

Second, God’s concern here is not moral, but theological (Brueggemann). This doesn’t seem to be about wrongdoing, either by humans or the sons of God, but about God wanting an essential difference within the created order to be maintained. The limits God places on human life here are not punitive, but preventative (Carr).

Third, it’s hard to square this story with either what has preceded it or what will follow it. Genesis 1-5 contains only marginal mention of angelic beings. There is no story of an angelic rebellion or ‘fall’, so this comes out of nowhere. This story is also hard to square with the Genesis 2-3 creation story. Genesis 2-3 reads as an explanation for mortality; this story seems to associate mortality instead as a basic feature of embodied life: ‘flesh’ was not designed to hold the breath of life for ever. In a similar way, while English Bibles like to group 6.1-4 with 5-8, the two don’t seem to have anything to do with each other. Again, 6.3 suggests no moral qualms whatsoever, but rather a concern about humans pushing past the natural boundaries of their created existence. This situation does not match the moral panic with which the flood story begins. Moreover, the flood cannot be a solution to this problem, since God has already solved it here through the age limit. The story also fails to connect with the rest of Genesis since the 120-year limit is later broken, many times: in Genesis 9.29, 11.10-26, 25.7; 35.28; and 47.28.

All in all, this is a story that does not play nicely with the rest of Genesis.

6.4: The Nephilim

The Nephilim are known elsewhere in the Bible from Numbers 13.32-33, where they are a race of giants inhabiting the land of Canaan. There they are associated with the Anakim, another race of giants mentioned in Deuteronomy (1.28, 2.21, 9.2). As with many of the narrative gaps in Genesis we’ve seen so far, the Nephilim later grew into important figures in Jewish angelology and demonology. The origin of the term is uncertain, but many throughout history have linked it to the root npl ‘fall’, and interpreted this to mean they are the descendants of the ‘sons of God’ in 6.2, understood to be fallen angels (Sarna (1989) 46, Carr).

Like so many details we’ve seen in the opening chapters of Genesis so far, the discussion of the Nephilim here, and later during the Exodus story, does not mesh with the story of an all-destroying flood (Carr). (There is even an ancient Jewish tradition that tries to explain this by having one of the Nephilim survive the flood by hanging onto the outside of the ark (Carr).)

Challenge

The general sense of the scholarship on these verses is that they represent what are at most “marginal motifs” in the Bible (Brueggemann). The story was likely included in Genesis as a way of claiming and thereby containing these known elements in ANE culture within the emerging monotheistic worldview of Israel. But, by way of a challenge, it has to be noted that the sons of God and Nephilim have been fodder for millennia of speculation about angels and demons, in both Judaism and Christianity.

This is an interesting aspect of the tradition to me, since it does not resonate with me in the slightest. I think there’s always a danger in religion to become distracted by strange details or speculation about the nature of the spiritual world, just as it’s easy to become distracted by trying to systematize theology, or becoming overly interested in ritualism, or church music. The point of the life of faith is to live it, and that often means we’re better off leaving speculation to the minimum. I’m in full agreement with Paul’s assessment in Colossians:

Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, dwelling on visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God. If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? (Colossians 2.18-20)

Expand

What then are to make of this strange passage, and what does it contribute to our emerging reading of Genesis?

As much as these verses don’t fit in well with the narrative of Genesis, they do connect to it thematically: Along with Genesis 1, they speak to a world that was created with a plan and purpose in mind; with Genesis 2, they speak of a plan that includes boundaries that must not be violated — there, it was independent moral agency that to be God’s alone, here it is immortality. And in terms of theological approach, with Genesis 1, these texts represent the Bible’s willingness to incorporate the religious world outside Israel, but in a way that confronts and challenges it, and reinterprets it in view of YHWH’s compete sovereignty.