The Sons of God and the Nephilim

¹And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born unto them, ²that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all that they chose. ³And Jehovah said, My Spirit shall not strive with man for ever, for that he also is flesh: yet shall his days be a hundred and twenty years. ⁴The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them: the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.

The text itself: בְנֵי־הָאֱלֹהִים (bene ha-Elohim) take wives; the Nephilim (H5303) are in the earth 'in those days, and also after that'; their offspring are the gibborim, 'men of renown.'

⁶Now it came to pass on the day when the sons of God came to present themselves before Jehovah, that Satan also came among them.

The same phrase, bene ha-Elohim, in the Bible's other early usages — Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7 — where the sons of God present themselves before the LORD and shout at creation's founding.

⁶And angels that kept not their own principality, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.

Jude: 'the angels which kept not their first estate' held in chains; verse 7 continues 'EVEN AS Sodom… going after strange flesh.' Jude 14-15 quotes 1 Enoch 1:9 by name.

⁴For if God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell, and committed them to pits of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; ⁵and spared not the ancient world, but preserved Noah with seven others, a preacher of righteousness, when he brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly;

Peter dates the angels' sin to the flood context: 'spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell (ταρταρώσας)… and spared not the old world.'

¹⁹in which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison, ²⁰that aforetime were disobedient, when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water:

'Spirits in prison… disobedient… in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing.'

³³And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, who come of the Nephilim: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.

'And there we saw the Nephilim (giants), the sons of Anak, which come of the Nephilim' — the post-flood giant clans; compare Deut 3:11 (Og's bed).

The Watchers (angelic) view

The earliest attested reading: the Septuagint tradition (some codices read 'angels of God'), 1 Enoch, Jubilees, Philo, Josephus, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Athenagoras, Tertullian. Modern advocates include Chuck Missler and Michael Heiser (cited, not reproduced).

Reads bene ha-Elohim as heavenly beings — the divine council language of Job — who transgressed their station; the Nephilim are their unnatural offspring, and the flood answers the corruption.

Its steel

• Every other Torah-era use of bene ha-Elohim (Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7) denotes heavenly beings.
• Jude 6-7 parallels the angels' sin with Sodom's — 'going after strange flesh' — and 2 Peter 2:4-5 places the angels' sin in Noah's context.
• It is the oldest reading on record: dominant in Second Temple Judaism and the earliest church fathers.
• It explains why the offspring are Nephilim/gibborim, 'men of renown,' rather than ordinary children.

The Sethite view

Augustine (City of God 15.23), Chrysostom, and most of the Reformers including Calvin; the majority Western reading from the fifth century to the modern era.

Reads the sons of God as the covenant line of Seth and the daughters of men as the line of Cain: the passage describes the intermarriage and collapse of the godly line before the flood.

Its steel

• Genesis 4–5 deliberately lays out two genealogies side by side — the narrative HAS two lines in view.
• 'Sons of God' is used covenantally of humans elsewhere (Deut 14:1; Hos 1:10).
• Matthew 22:30 — 'in the resurrection they neither marry' — angels are presented as not marrying.
• It requires no supernatural biology and keeps the flood's cause squarely on human wickedness (Gen 6:5).

The divine-kings view

Attested in some rabbinic sources (rulers/judges reading, e.g. Targum Onkelos's 'sons of nobles'); developed in the modern era by Meredith Kline and others from ancient Near Eastern royal ideology.

Reads bene ha-Elohim as tyrant kings who claimed divine sonship — as pharaohs and Mesopotamian kings did — seizing wives at will (polygamous harems); the gibborim are their dynasties of renown.

Its steel

• Ancient Near Eastern kings routinely styled themselves sons of the gods — the title fits the second-millennium world.
• Targum Onkelos (the synagogue's own Aramaic rendering) translates 'sons of nobles/great ones.'
• 'Taking wives of all which they chose' reads naturally as royal harem-taking; 'men of renown' as dynastic fame.
• It preserves a fully human referent while explaining the language of divinity.