More Things ... 7

After the ruin of Eden, the human story heads south in a hurry. That is to be expected. The curses that followed the events in the garden bound the fate of humanity with the spiritual descendents of the Nachash, all those who oppose the rule of God either in the earthly or spiritual realm. The rule of God known as Eden would disappear, kept alive only through a fledgling humanity to whom God extended mercy.

Careful her; the spiritual lineage of the Nacash is rebellion; it is literal also because the rebels live either as humans or divine beings. (this is not shepherd’s chapel stuff, more on that later) This description has secure biblical roots… Jesus told the pharisees, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father (James 8:44), and called them “serpents” and “offspring of vipers” (Matt 23:33). Let’s look at 1 John 3: 8-12

1 John 3:8–12 ESV

Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.

This passage describes people who lives are characterized by wickedness as “children of the devil,” a contrast to the spiritual “children of God.” This is a spiritual lineage since the Holy Spirit dwells within. Peter echoes the same thought, call those born again (born from above) as being born not as mortal offspring but from the word of God. So biblical language places people either in the line of God or the Nachash.

Things will get so bad (Cain kills his brother) and it is horrible:

Genesis 6:5 ESV

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

But there are some verses before this that were very important to the Hebrews, the second temple period and the first few centuries of the church. There is another divine rebellion, other supernatural beings violate God’s design and strategy for His rule on earth.

It’s interpretation has been messed up somewhat (by Augustine for one) and we tend to miss it. But what we will do is read the text, then look at flawed views (that are common) and then give you what I consider (and scholars) to be the more clear view.

Most pastors would rather skip this:

Genesis 6:1–4 ESV

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

Uhh? Let’s look at some flawed views:

Sethite Interpretation

this is the most common view - since the late fourth century A.D. In this approach the sons of God are merely human beings, men from the line of Seth, Adam and Eve’s own son who was born after Cain killed Abel (from here you get heresies like Murray Shepherds Chapel). In this reading everyone came from two lines, both from Adam and Eve’s kids (Murray says not). They are godly and not godly. The supporting text used here is Gen 4:26

Genesis 4:26 ESV

To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord.

this view (Sethite) says the line was to remain pure and separate from the evil lineage. The marriages in Gen 6: 1-4 messed that purity up and therefore brought the flood. Several problems that are easy to dismiss when they are thought about.

Genesis 6:1–4 ESV

There is nothing in Gen 4:26 that connects the people calling on the name of the Lord with only Seth’s line. That idea is imposed on the text.

It doesn’t explain the Nephilim at all. (we will get to this)

The text never calls the women the ‘daughters of Cain” Rather, they are the daughters of humankind. There is NO actual link in the text to Cain. This means that the Sethite view of the text is supported by something NOT present in the text, which is the very antithesis of exegesis (good bible reading).

There is no command in the text regarding marriages or any prohibitions against marrying certain persons.. there are no Jews and Gentiles yet.

nothing in this reading or anywhere else in the Bible identifies people who come from Seth’s lineage with the phrase “sons of God.” that connection is purely an assumption through which the story is filtered by those who hold the Sethite view.

A close reading of Gen 6: 1-4 makes it clear that a contrast if being created between two classes of individuals, human and divine. When speaking of how humanity was multiplying on earth, the text mentions only daughters. The point is not literally that every birth in history of the earth after Cain and Abel resulted in a girl. Rather the author is setting up a contrast of two groups. The first group is human and female. Verse two introduces the other group for the contrast: the sons of God. That group is not human.

There are more deficiencies in this viewpoint than I will take the time to expose, but the point is evident. The Sethite hypothesis collapses under the weight of its own incoherence.

Human Rulers understood as sons of god.

This school of thought suggests that we should read this as human rulers thought of as divine. A survey of the literature which supports this idea reveals that it springs from the following:

taking the phrase “sons of the Most High” in Psalm 82:6 as referring to humans, then reading that back into Gen 6: 1-4.

Noting language where God refers to humans as his sons, which it is argued that ancient Near Eastern beliefs considered kings as divine offspring,

The evil marriages were polygamy and rape in essence …

We have already seen that the human view of the word and plural elohim language in Psalm 82 fails, so the fundamental flaw does not need to be presented here. There are other ones:

The text never says that the marriages were polygamous. Once again, an idea is read into the text.

Second, the ancient parallels restrict divine sonship language to kings. A group of sons of God lacks a coherent parallel. and in multiple texts in the OT the precise phrase refers to supernatural beings.

The broad idea of human diving kingship that is a much later development does not connect with this very early event … no kings yet.

This doesn’t hold. The marriages here corrupt the earth (and polygamy is bad, but…) in the prelude to the flood. A view of this as humans does not do that.

So, in summary, the plurality of the phrase “sons of God” and the heavenly contexts of its use elsewhere show there is no exegetical reason to exclude the occurrences of the phrase in Gen 6 from the list of supernatural beings. What drives this rejection of the supernatural is not the text by apprehension about what the text actual says.

Peter and Jude

Peter and Jude did not fear the alternative (and i think I prefer to model them than later folks). These Biblical authors embraced a supernatural view of Gen 6: 1-4 let’s look at what they say.

2 Peter 2:1–10 (ESV)

But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of truth will be blasphemed. And in their greed they will exploit you with false words. Their condemnation from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep.

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; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked (for as that righteous man lived among them day after day, he was tormenting his righteous soul over their lawless deeds that he saw and heard); then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.

Bold and willful, they do not tremble as they blaspheme the glorious ones,

Jude 5–7 (ESV)

Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe. 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— just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, (in the same way as these) serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

It is agreed that these passages are about the same subject matter. They describe an episode from the time of Noah and the flood where “angels” sinned. That sin, which precipitated the flood, was sexual in nature; it is placed in the same category as the sin which prompted the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah. The transgression was interpreted by Peter and Jude (through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) as evidence of despising authority and the boundaries of “proper dwelling” for the parties concerned. All of these elements are transparent in Gen 6: 1-4. There is simply no other sin in the Old Testament that meets these specific details — and no other “angelic” sin at ALL in the OT that might be the referred to item.

The punishment for the transgression, however, is not mentioned in Gen 6:1-4. Peter has the divine sons of God held captive in “Tartarus” in chains of darkness until a time of judgment. Jude echoes this though and clarifies the judgment as the day of the Lord. These elements were common at the time and were in Jewish literature in the Second Temple period. The most famous text from that period is 1st Enoch. That book informed the thinking of Peter and Jude; it was a part of their intellectual worldview. The inspired New Testament writers referenced content from 1st Enoch — the New Testament writers quote the culture in which they lived to let people understand … we need to understand the thought world they are communicating in to really understand the Biblical worldview.

These observations are important. All Jewish traditions before the 4th century (and the New Testament ..) took a supernatural view of Gen 6: 1-4. In other words, they were in line with 2nd Peter and Jude. The interpretation of the passage, at least with respect to its supernatural orientation, was not an issue until the later 4th century, when that view fell out of favor with some influential church fathers, especially Augustine of Hippo. (see handout).

Biblical theology

But Biblical theology does not derive from the church fathers. It derives from the biblical texts, framed in its own context. The Second Temple views of this text correspond with other early views and show a familiarity with the cultural context in which Gen was written. For persons who consider the Old and New Testament to be inspired, interpreting Gen. 6: 1-4 in context means untilizing the contextual material we have to understand it (not later material).

Filtering Gen 6: 1-4 through later Christian tradition that arose centuries after the NT cannot be honestly considered interpreting Gen 6: 1-4 in context.

Next week we will look at it in context. This text has a major role in the larger biblical narrative that is often ignored.

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